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BrierS · #13 10-30-2005, 07:46 PM

I think Kevin (Jugurba) made the one point I never thought I would have missed writing. As he said, you need to make them understand that their actions make their decision on punishment or no punishment, and if there is a need for punishment they have made that choice, not the parent. I used that premise more than any other. Basically I laid-out the ground rules and let them know if they followed them, we would have lots of normal days. Normal meant more praise and acknowledgment for the little things they did. It is so easy for us to overlook the many small (to us) things they do right since we are so busy. Let them do something wrong and they get our immediate attention. That is the wrong way. I guess the parents of the children I worked with had the benefit of someone being paid to watch nearly every minute of their child's behavior and acknowledge what they did. When something special was done, meaning them doing something for someone else, I would often wait until later and ask them how that made them feel. That approach let them know their positive action did not go unnoticed and it also psychologically provided the opportunity for them to think about how they felt. Getting that mental process connected between positive actions and being able to feel good about it is important. Manners by example also works wonders. Without drawing attention to it, putting them in places where there are young and old can provide subtle practice of acceptable social behaviors.

I spent a great deal of my time not as an authoritarian but as someone alert to what they were doing and to what their environment might be leading to. Diversion at the proper time. Teaching them to observe others and how they act plus going one step more and asking them how they think the others around would feel. Slow process and one that required me to write extensive journal entries to gauge, over periods of time, what was working and what wasn't.