Showing posts with label discipline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discipline. Show all posts
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Raising tomato-kids
Here’s an article for those of you who are trying to raise children without spankings and time-outs – relying instead on compassion, patience, questioning, natural consequences and the theory that little people are designed to unleash stormy emotions and make mistakes (and be allowed to learn from them). Writing for mothering.com, Erin Liles compares raising kids naturally (and without lots of external controls imposed by parents) to raising home-grown organic tomatoes. It may be stuff you already know, but if you’re in the throes of deciding how to manage your strong-willed children (and really, aren’t most young children strong-willed at least some of the time?), it’s a nice, reassuring read.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Rethinking discipline with Alfie Kohn
Go here to read my column in Saturday's Ledger-Enquirer, which features a Q&A interview with parenting and education expert Alfie Kohn, whose book “Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason,” made me reconsider how I was using praise, and occasionally rewards, with Will.
Here’s a few extra questions and answers that didn't make it into the paper but are interesting nonetheless:
Do you have a favorite example of how you managed one of your own children’s less than exemplary behavior?
When my daughter Abigail was in preschool she took forever to get ready in the morning and I wasn’t pleased with this or with my own nagging. So in such cases, what do you do? Well I certainly didn’t threaten her with the loss of a privilege or promise her some goody when she got ready on time. I’m raising a child here, I’m not house-training a dog. But what I did was I sat down with her one evening when we were in a good mood and had plenty of time and laid out the problem for her after inviting her to imitate the way I sounded in the morning … and then put the question to her. She was 4 years old. “What do you think we can do to speed things up in the morning?” And she eventually decided that she took a lot of time each morning getting dressed so she should just wear her clothes to bed. And I said, “Why not?” and she continued to do that for years and it really helped. But what was more important than the solution she came up with was the fact that I asked her to participate. It was her solution, as opposed to what almost all discipline books are about, which is: ‘Here’s what you can do unilaterally to your children to make them comply.’ And when kids feel listened to, when they feel that their input matters, that helps them feel competent and confident in a way that all the patronizing pats on the head and ‘Good jobs’ can never do.
You say in your book “Unconditional Parenting”: “The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn’t permissiveness but the fear of permissiveness.” Can you talk about your view that we are micromanaging children?
It’s a fiction that the main problem in our society is lax discipline and permissive parents. I mean a trip to a shopping mall on Saturday is enough to convince us, if we’re honest, that everywhere we look we see parents who are bullying and threatening their children, overly restricting them and so on. I’m not advocating permissiveness either – fortunately we don’t have to choose between traditional punitive discipline on the one hand and anything-goes permissiveness on the other. The whole notion that permissiveness is the only other option is a lie perpetrated by the folks who would like to see us become even more controlling than we already are.
I’m sure there are many educators out there who scoff at your notion that it’s possible to manage a classroom without rewards and punishments and without a focus on grades as completely unrealistic. What do you say to them?
People who say you can’t do this without traditional reward-and-punishment type control are merely confessing their own lack of familiarity with the many places where it’s done successfully every day. That’s why somebody who’s appropriately humble would say, ‘Wow that’s fascinating, please tell me more. How does it work? What does the research say? Where are some examples? As opposed to folks who are tenaciously clinging to their own practices, unwilling to reconsider them and simply saying I don’t know how to do this, therefore it can’t work. But in classrooms as in families you have to start dealing with much larger issues rather than just looking for a new technique for “managing” children – a word that makes me uneasy. So for example when I was visiting classrooms all over the country specifically to see how terrific teachers dealt with obnoxious behavior, what I discovered again and again in these classrooms was there wasn’t much obnoxious behavior to observe. My first reaction was, ‘Darn! I came on the wrong day again,’ until it finally dawned on me that these teachers were doing something so there were fewer problems to have to deal with. So I went back to my notes to see what these teachers were doing and the first thing that I noticed was they weren’t making a fetish of classroom management. They weren’t thinking about how to control kids. What they were doing had a very specific pattern to it. First they were creating warm, loving relationships with each child, unconditionally supportive, as I would later put it. Second they were working hard on creating a caring community in the classroom so the kids really came to feel a sense of belonging and concern about one another. That in turn required not only doing some things but refraining from doing the things that kill community -- for example having contests in the classroom, which destroy any sense of concern children might have about one another. Third, these terrific teachers were bringing kids in on making decisions individually and collectively on a daily basis so many of the things that most teachers decide on their own -- like what goes up on the bulletin board, what book we’ll read next, where we’ll take our field trip, how the furniture will be arranged, how we’ll assess the learning from this last unit -- were typically decisions made by the kids and teachers together. And the fourth thing I noticed was that such teachers had a truly engaging meaningful curriculum where the kids were not memorizing forgettable facts for a quiz or practicing skills on worksheets; they were tackling problems and projects that really mattered to the kids themselves. When that happens you don’t get much acting out. If your classroom is basically just an extended period of standardized test preparation then you’re going to have a lot of behavior problems and be desperate for some management program to deal with the problem that your curriculum created.
My original question about rewards (the second question of the interview) included using sticker charts for potty training as one example, partly because it was a strategy I tried on Will with no long-term success. Here’s what Kohn said about that:
I would not put potty training at the top of my list of practices where rewards are particularly damaging because I don’t have a commitment to wanting to see kids develop a lifelong love of defecation. However, I happen to want kids to become generous people, which is why I get a lot more upset when people say “Good job!” when kids share. And I want kids to become lifelong readers, which is why reading incentive programs are so powerfully counterproductive. In other words the more you want kids to want to do something the more you should should avoid offering them goodies to make them do it.
Do you have experience as a classroom teacher. What led you down this career path?
I did teach for a number of years but it was a while ago and I’ve learned most of what I now know from watching teachers who are far more talented than I was in the classroom as well as from reading a bunch of research and the works of a lot of other very wise people…
Read more:
Here’s a list of some of Alfie Kohn’s books. Visit http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.html for more information and to read numerous articles he has written on education and parenting.
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason; Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community; Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes; The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing; What Does it Mean to be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies; The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools; The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"; What to look for in a classroom... And Other Essays;
(He also recommends “Learning to Trust: Transforming Difficult Elementary Classrooms Through Developmental Discipline,” by Marilyn Watson, who spent two years advising a teacher in an inner city about moving beyond punishments and rewards.)
Here’s a few extra questions and answers that didn't make it into the paper but are interesting nonetheless:
Do you have a favorite example of how you managed one of your own children’s less than exemplary behavior?
When my daughter Abigail was in preschool she took forever to get ready in the morning and I wasn’t pleased with this or with my own nagging. So in such cases, what do you do? Well I certainly didn’t threaten her with the loss of a privilege or promise her some goody when she got ready on time. I’m raising a child here, I’m not house-training a dog. But what I did was I sat down with her one evening when we were in a good mood and had plenty of time and laid out the problem for her after inviting her to imitate the way I sounded in the morning … and then put the question to her. She was 4 years old. “What do you think we can do to speed things up in the morning?” And she eventually decided that she took a lot of time each morning getting dressed so she should just wear her clothes to bed. And I said, “Why not?” and she continued to do that for years and it really helped. But what was more important than the solution she came up with was the fact that I asked her to participate. It was her solution, as opposed to what almost all discipline books are about, which is: ‘Here’s what you can do unilaterally to your children to make them comply.’ And when kids feel listened to, when they feel that their input matters, that helps them feel competent and confident in a way that all the patronizing pats on the head and ‘Good jobs’ can never do.
You say in your book “Unconditional Parenting”: “The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn’t permissiveness but the fear of permissiveness.” Can you talk about your view that we are micromanaging children?
It’s a fiction that the main problem in our society is lax discipline and permissive parents. I mean a trip to a shopping mall on Saturday is enough to convince us, if we’re honest, that everywhere we look we see parents who are bullying and threatening their children, overly restricting them and so on. I’m not advocating permissiveness either – fortunately we don’t have to choose between traditional punitive discipline on the one hand and anything-goes permissiveness on the other. The whole notion that permissiveness is the only other option is a lie perpetrated by the folks who would like to see us become even more controlling than we already are.
I’m sure there are many educators out there who scoff at your notion that it’s possible to manage a classroom without rewards and punishments and without a focus on grades as completely unrealistic. What do you say to them?
People who say you can’t do this without traditional reward-and-punishment type control are merely confessing their own lack of familiarity with the many places where it’s done successfully every day. That’s why somebody who’s appropriately humble would say, ‘Wow that’s fascinating, please tell me more. How does it work? What does the research say? Where are some examples? As opposed to folks who are tenaciously clinging to their own practices, unwilling to reconsider them and simply saying I don’t know how to do this, therefore it can’t work. But in classrooms as in families you have to start dealing with much larger issues rather than just looking for a new technique for “managing” children – a word that makes me uneasy. So for example when I was visiting classrooms all over the country specifically to see how terrific teachers dealt with obnoxious behavior, what I discovered again and again in these classrooms was there wasn’t much obnoxious behavior to observe. My first reaction was, ‘Darn! I came on the wrong day again,’ until it finally dawned on me that these teachers were doing something so there were fewer problems to have to deal with. So I went back to my notes to see what these teachers were doing and the first thing that I noticed was they weren’t making a fetish of classroom management. They weren’t thinking about how to control kids. What they were doing had a very specific pattern to it. First they were creating warm, loving relationships with each child, unconditionally supportive, as I would later put it. Second they were working hard on creating a caring community in the classroom so the kids really came to feel a sense of belonging and concern about one another. That in turn required not only doing some things but refraining from doing the things that kill community -- for example having contests in the classroom, which destroy any sense of concern children might have about one another. Third, these terrific teachers were bringing kids in on making decisions individually and collectively on a daily basis so many of the things that most teachers decide on their own -- like what goes up on the bulletin board, what book we’ll read next, where we’ll take our field trip, how the furniture will be arranged, how we’ll assess the learning from this last unit -- were typically decisions made by the kids and teachers together. And the fourth thing I noticed was that such teachers had a truly engaging meaningful curriculum where the kids were not memorizing forgettable facts for a quiz or practicing skills on worksheets; they were tackling problems and projects that really mattered to the kids themselves. When that happens you don’t get much acting out. If your classroom is basically just an extended period of standardized test preparation then you’re going to have a lot of behavior problems and be desperate for some management program to deal with the problem that your curriculum created.
My original question about rewards (the second question of the interview) included using sticker charts for potty training as one example, partly because it was a strategy I tried on Will with no long-term success. Here’s what Kohn said about that:
I would not put potty training at the top of my list of practices where rewards are particularly damaging because I don’t have a commitment to wanting to see kids develop a lifelong love of defecation. However, I happen to want kids to become generous people, which is why I get a lot more upset when people say “Good job!” when kids share. And I want kids to become lifelong readers, which is why reading incentive programs are so powerfully counterproductive. In other words the more you want kids to want to do something the more you should should avoid offering them goodies to make them do it.
Do you have experience as a classroom teacher. What led you down this career path?
I did teach for a number of years but it was a while ago and I’ve learned most of what I now know from watching teachers who are far more talented than I was in the classroom as well as from reading a bunch of research and the works of a lot of other very wise people…
Read more:
Here’s a list of some of Alfie Kohn’s books. Visit http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.html for more information and to read numerous articles he has written on education and parenting.
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason; Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community; Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes; The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing; What Does it Mean to be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies; The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools; The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"; What to look for in a classroom... And Other Essays;
(He also recommends “Learning to Trust: Transforming Difficult Elementary Classrooms Through Developmental Discipline,” by Marilyn Watson, who spent two years advising a teacher in an inner city about moving beyond punishments and rewards.)
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Talking to tantrumers (and spanking debate follow-up)
After things got a bit heated in the response to my blog on “the spanking debate” (See the post from August 24), lactation consultant Jennifer Fletcher sent me an e-mail disclaimer about her stance against paddling and spanking, both in the home and in schools. See an excerpt from her note below. (By the way, Psychologist Julie Rose's letter to the editor on the same subject drew much more heated and more numerous responses. To read that verbal battle go here and click on "We're still doing this?")
In my response to one of the comments on this blog, I had discussed my attempts to both talk to Will after (and sometimes during – although that’s always futile) a tantrum and to encourage Will to say to other kids who push or hit: “Stop. That is not nice.” Jennifer had some good advice about choosing words that are effective when kids are angry or tantruming:
Here are her thoughts:
In reading a little further in your Blog space I noted that you try to encourage Will to use his words by reminding him that hitting is "not nice." Well, here is something to think about. When a child is really angry, he could care less about being "nice." He is angry, frustrated, and purely pissed off. Being told that something is "not nice" may tend to make it just exactly what he most wants to do, because at that moment he isn't feeling very nice at all.
With my boys I used to say, "I bet you're really mad!" or "Boy, that's a mad face!" Sometimes I would have to resort to, "THAT WON'T DO!" (They knew what that phrase meant!) Sometimes I would say nothing at all, just remove them from the situation. And I would never, ever make them say, "I'm sorry" unless they really did feel some contrition. Otherwise the words become entirely meaningless. Just something to think about from one who's been there.....
With each of Will’s tantrums I still struggle to find the right words. I try to offer him a couple explanations for why he can’t have the thing he so desperately wants in that moment (this is usually the problem) but it’s quickly apparent that he has absolutely no interest in logic. Rob and I are learning to respect his need for a good cry here and there. We try to acknowledge his frustration, offer our rationale for not letting him have a cookie for breakfast(as one example), perhaps offer an acceptable alternative (which never interests Will) and then let him know that we won’t keep discussing it since it only seems to be making him madder. Usually if we’re able to leave the room, he calms down faster. Then he’s not confronted by our power, which of course is the root of most tantrums – the desire to have power when you cannot. We do try to choose our battles, let Will make choices and comply with his reasonable requests. But when tantrum boy rears his ugly head, I am always searching for the best way to discuss appropriate behavior after the tantrum simmers down (this is the only time for real talking with Will, and for most toddlers I presume.)
A good while back, I tried Harvey Karp’s recipe (from “The Happiest Toddler On The Block”) for mirroring your toddler’s frustration by getting down on their level and trying to vocalize their frustrations with the same level of rage they seem to be feeling (“Will is mad, mad, mad…. Will wants to…..” hitting fists on floor for emphasis. Then following up with a more soft-spoken explanation of why they can’t have the thing that you totally understand that they want.) It’s a nice enough idea but I couldn’t pull it off. Will was neither comforted nor amused by my primate-like empathy and I felt like a goof and a lousy actress. Anyone else tried that trick?
I’d also really love some ideas about how to talk to your toddler about what to do (and what to think) when another child hits them or pushes them. Anyone have thoughts on that one?
And finally the disclaimer from Jennifer Fletcher regarding comments to that August 24 post: Since she commented on an earlier post regarding co-sleeping safety, she was concerned she might be mistaken for the Jennifer who weighed in in favor of paddling. Jennifer Fletcher says: “I am 100% opposed to corporal punishment in any setting, but most particularly in the schools … So do whatever you need to do to assure your readers that Jennifer Fletcher, RN, IBCLC could never condone violence against our precious little ones.”
In my response to one of the comments on this blog, I had discussed my attempts to both talk to Will after (and sometimes during – although that’s always futile) a tantrum and to encourage Will to say to other kids who push or hit: “Stop. That is not nice.” Jennifer had some good advice about choosing words that are effective when kids are angry or tantruming:
Here are her thoughts:
In reading a little further in your Blog space I noted that you try to encourage Will to use his words by reminding him that hitting is "not nice." Well, here is something to think about. When a child is really angry, he could care less about being "nice." He is angry, frustrated, and purely pissed off. Being told that something is "not nice" may tend to make it just exactly what he most wants to do, because at that moment he isn't feeling very nice at all.
With my boys I used to say, "I bet you're really mad!" or "Boy, that's a mad face!" Sometimes I would have to resort to, "THAT WON'T DO!" (They knew what that phrase meant!) Sometimes I would say nothing at all, just remove them from the situation. And I would never, ever make them say, "I'm sorry" unless they really did feel some contrition. Otherwise the words become entirely meaningless. Just something to think about from one who's been there.....
With each of Will’s tantrums I still struggle to find the right words. I try to offer him a couple explanations for why he can’t have the thing he so desperately wants in that moment (this is usually the problem) but it’s quickly apparent that he has absolutely no interest in logic. Rob and I are learning to respect his need for a good cry here and there. We try to acknowledge his frustration, offer our rationale for not letting him have a cookie for breakfast(as one example), perhaps offer an acceptable alternative (which never interests Will) and then let him know that we won’t keep discussing it since it only seems to be making him madder. Usually if we’re able to leave the room, he calms down faster. Then he’s not confronted by our power, which of course is the root of most tantrums – the desire to have power when you cannot. We do try to choose our battles, let Will make choices and comply with his reasonable requests. But when tantrum boy rears his ugly head, I am always searching for the best way to discuss appropriate behavior after the tantrum simmers down (this is the only time for real talking with Will, and for most toddlers I presume.)
A good while back, I tried Harvey Karp’s recipe (from “The Happiest Toddler On The Block”) for mirroring your toddler’s frustration by getting down on their level and trying to vocalize their frustrations with the same level of rage they seem to be feeling (“Will is mad, mad, mad…. Will wants to…..” hitting fists on floor for emphasis. Then following up with a more soft-spoken explanation of why they can’t have the thing that you totally understand that they want.) It’s a nice enough idea but I couldn’t pull it off. Will was neither comforted nor amused by my primate-like empathy and I felt like a goof and a lousy actress. Anyone else tried that trick?
I’d also really love some ideas about how to talk to your toddler about what to do (and what to think) when another child hits them or pushes them. Anyone have thoughts on that one?
And finally the disclaimer from Jennifer Fletcher regarding comments to that August 24 post: Since she commented on an earlier post regarding co-sleeping safety, she was concerned she might be mistaken for the Jennifer who weighed in in favor of paddling. Jennifer Fletcher says: “I am 100% opposed to corporal punishment in any setting, but most particularly in the schools … So do whatever you need to do to assure your readers that Jennifer Fletcher, RN, IBCLC could never condone violence against our precious little ones.”
Friday, August 24, 2007
The spanking debate
I was disheartened to read in today’s Ledger-Enquirer, that corporal punishment is still used in Georgia and Alabama schools. Somehow I was thinking by now it was illegal here. You can read Wednesday’s story about a Harris County boy who was suspended (after his parents opted against a spanking or paddling) for throwing grapes in the cafeteria and other misbehavior, along with today’s story, which spells out policies for various school districts around here (all of which allow limited use of corporal punishment) and includes a chorus of comments from readers expressing approval for paddling in schools.
While I’ll be the first to admit that I’m often lost as to how to best discipline our willful Will, Rob and I have made a very deliberate decision not to hit him. On occasion when Will gets in a resistant mode he will start flailing his arms, and hitting at our legs or arms. We remove him from the scene and then talk about hitting. One of the first things I point out is how it hurt me to be hit and how no matter how frustrated we get, mommy and daddy never hit. We use our words.
I’ll admit that we might be able to scare Will out of hitting in the short term if we wailed on him every time he started to hit. But in the long term we would be teaching him a lesson: It’s okay to use physical force when you don’t like someone’s behavior. It would be a lot more difficult to explain to Will a year from now why it’s not okay to hit little brother Owen when he messes up your railroad track or your block tower. I know Will’s going to work through some aggression as a toddler trapped in that primitive state where you aren’t able to do many things for yourself and yet desperately want to assert your independence. But I want to model nonviolent ways of coping with frustration so that as he matures we can build toward a peaceful house. It may require some creative approaches for venting frustration (I have a friend whose father insisted that his sons could only wrestle, not hit each other, when they were angry. So they wrestled through their younger years, then tired of it and just got along like great friends for the rest of their years in the same house.)
A hitting-free household may sound like a pipe-dream for a mom facing life with two testosterone-filled siblings. We’re not there yet, but I like the challenge and I’m hoping with some deliberate, loving discipline we can make it happen.
Check out this website to find out which states have banned corporal punishment (I counted 29 of them) and for statistics about how frequently it is used in states that permit it.
Here are a couple quotes from this American Academy of Pediatrics article entitled “Guidance for Effective Discipline”:
“Spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression in preschool and school children.”
“Although spanking may result in a reaction of shock by the child and cessation of the undesired behavior, repeated spanking may cause agitated, aggressive behavior in the child that may lead to physical altercation between parent and child.”
“Spanking is not more effective as a long-term strategy than other approaches, and reliance on spanking as a discipline approach makes other discipline strategies less effective to use.”
And for some insight on alternatives to punishment, check out this book by Alfie Kohn: "Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason." (It's influenced my parenting, although we still resort to carrots and sticks some of the time.)
What do you think? Is it ever appropriate to spank or paddle a child – and should school administrators be allowed to use corporal punishment as one among many discipline tools?
While I’ll be the first to admit that I’m often lost as to how to best discipline our willful Will, Rob and I have made a very deliberate decision not to hit him. On occasion when Will gets in a resistant mode he will start flailing his arms, and hitting at our legs or arms. We remove him from the scene and then talk about hitting. One of the first things I point out is how it hurt me to be hit and how no matter how frustrated we get, mommy and daddy never hit. We use our words.
I’ll admit that we might be able to scare Will out of hitting in the short term if we wailed on him every time he started to hit. But in the long term we would be teaching him a lesson: It’s okay to use physical force when you don’t like someone’s behavior. It would be a lot more difficult to explain to Will a year from now why it’s not okay to hit little brother Owen when he messes up your railroad track or your block tower. I know Will’s going to work through some aggression as a toddler trapped in that primitive state where you aren’t able to do many things for yourself and yet desperately want to assert your independence. But I want to model nonviolent ways of coping with frustration so that as he matures we can build toward a peaceful house. It may require some creative approaches for venting frustration (I have a friend whose father insisted that his sons could only wrestle, not hit each other, when they were angry. So they wrestled through their younger years, then tired of it and just got along like great friends for the rest of their years in the same house.)
A hitting-free household may sound like a pipe-dream for a mom facing life with two testosterone-filled siblings. We’re not there yet, but I like the challenge and I’m hoping with some deliberate, loving discipline we can make it happen.
Check out this website to find out which states have banned corporal punishment (I counted 29 of them) and for statistics about how frequently it is used in states that permit it.
Here are a couple quotes from this American Academy of Pediatrics article entitled “Guidance for Effective Discipline”:
“Spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression in preschool and school children.”
“Although spanking may result in a reaction of shock by the child and cessation of the undesired behavior, repeated spanking may cause agitated, aggressive behavior in the child that may lead to physical altercation between parent and child.”
“Spanking is not more effective as a long-term strategy than other approaches, and reliance on spanking as a discipline approach makes other discipline strategies less effective to use.”
And for some insight on alternatives to punishment, check out this book by Alfie Kohn: "Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason." (It's influenced my parenting, although we still resort to carrots and sticks some of the time.)
What do you think? Is it ever appropriate to spank or paddle a child – and should school administrators be allowed to use corporal punishment as one among many discipline tools?
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