Nobody likes to be criticized! So why do we do it? Well, out of FEAR. Each of us wants to be the best parent we can be, and we’re afraid that if we don’t point out all the ways our child can improve, we’ve somehow done him or her a great disservice.
Think back to when your child was in elementary school and came home with the results of the spelling test. If you’re like most parents, she looked at the list of words she’s been going over all week with her son to see which ones they missed. And then, like human clock (we’ve all done this!), you start reteaching them how to spell the two that got it wrong. Instead, why don’t we focus on the 18 that got it right?
Here is your challenge for the next two weeks: Describe in specific detail what you want your child to repeat. We all have our line that divides acceptable from unacceptable behavior. Have you ever noticed that we usually say nothing when a child’s behavior is ‘acceptable’, but are all over them when they even stick their big toe under the line?
Learning is multifaceted; it requires duration, frequency and intensity – exactly what we direct at our children when they misbehave, right? But what if for the next two weeks you were to reverse this and specifically detail what they did well with intensity, duration, and frequency? I know from experience with hundreds of families who have taken on this challenge, the results are AMAZING!