How to Talk

The articles, "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk," and, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids," both reinforced how to use praise effectively when teaching or coaching children. "How to Talk" really made a point of one thing: justifying. You can say "Good job!" "Fantastic!" "Way to go!" all you want but children really need to know why. They not only need to be praised but they need to know what they did that earned it- truly. Basic praises without that reinforcement are hollow and open to sarcasm or false pretense. In the exercise within the article, I generally answered opposite of what I feel the article was looking for. When I saw the praise I usually took it as, "What a relief I pulled that off..." rather than skepticism. I do however, know a friend that is always skeptical and paranoid about everything that is said to him. He sees things as a trap. When I thought about it, I know that my parents do tend to reinforce the praise they give me like the article says. My mom says she's proud of what I've done because (fill in the blank here). My dad gives me advice and then tells me why he feels the way he does. This leads me to believe that my friend may not have been experiencing that same praise. I don't think that necessarily means he was raised wrong by any means but as the article said a good job can be taken away with a poor job the next day, while a reinforced praise can be taken back out treasured for much longer. I thought about this article a lot today because I taught my high school marching band kids. We have been having a lot of trouble getting them to take responsibility for their actions and take initiative and behave. Because we are on such a time crunch, our praise is really lacking a lot of that justification and reinforcement. This next week, I'm hoping that we can discuss as a staff these articles and try and implement these practices and hopefully get some harder work all around. I think it's going to be a difficult transition, and probably seem to be more trouble than its worth, but after it has time to take effect I hope that it will be better in the long run.