praise and encouragement

last night, i made this redic bold statement to chris "i do not want to give anymore praise to nathaniel" chris was stunned. so i repeated "no more praising nate" chris was still looking at me funny. then i gave a list of off the top my head praise that i do not want to ever say to nate. some examples

you are so smart or the famous you are the smartest kid ever!

you are so cute!

look at you go (this is one of my personal fav's) or check you out!

you are the best swimmer!

you are so great at building

you are the best kid in the world!

why?

those are praise statement. they are based 100% on emotion. emotions change fast, like every few seconds fast. emotions make a child feel great! who doesn't want their child to be happy all the time. but is that realistic? feel good words/statements only build up the kids emotions based on what they are doing at that moment

praise is not good for kids bec it's usually not true most of the time, it's false and it's used to make your child feel good. kids are smart enough to know the difference.

taking the light off of nate. i wanna share something about me. for years i have told chris that i was told my entire life that i was "the smartest girl in my class" or "i was so smart" i shared my frustration with chris about knowing, as a young girl that this was not true! i was NOT the smartest kid. truth? i barley passed, i was the "dumb" (i couldn't think of any other words to use) girl. always last, always the lowest marks and EVERYONE knew this. i wondered why my parents didn't? (ouchy mom and dad you know i love you both!!!) i was confused as to why i was told almost every day that i was the smartest. i didn't believe it, i knew it was not the truth. i was scared to tell my parents that they were wrong. i never did. i just felt more embarrassed that they were out of the loop...

i may have been not been the brightest light bulb in the class room but i was creative and friendly. i knew at a young age what was true and what was not

encouragement on the other hand builds up the child and encourages them based on things that are true. i shared with chris instead of praising nate up with "you are the smartest kid in the world" (which, is NOT the truth) some statements that are true are

you swam so well today! i loved how you did your bobs

you finished your letters and did a great job

what a great tower you built. you really concentrated

you are so creative, look at the picture you did

check out that artzooka! i like how you did it

you worked hard (for this and such) and i am proud of you

the other day, before i read this book, i saw something and shared it with chris. bec it flows with what i am learning i will share it:

nate use to fight home schooling. he would fight me on everything. he refused to color and it was a battle. the other day we did the letter r, i found a rocket ship. i had him color it, cut it out and glue it on a piece of paper. he did all of it himself. when he was finished, he sat back, looked at it, held it up to me and said "look at what i did. i feel funny about it"

funny? it took me a second until i realized that he felt proud! he was proud that he did this task by himself and did it well

i shared with him that he feels proud! and he should. HE worked hard and he can look at that rocket and think "man i did that by myself!"

encouragement is not the same as praise. praise is emotion based. encouragement is based on the act

right now nate is building cars with lego, which is giving me lots of practice of not praising him. ha. but encouraging him to build on his own, be creative etc...i've caught myself slipping into the praise a few times already...oops!

when we encourage kids with an act, we are really encouraging them to be competent and to get out there and try something new! and they can because they already succeeded in an other area

my job as a parent is not to make nate happy! an unhappy child is a healthy child. bold statement eh?! but if you are happy and things are good (which is like SO not real or true) then you are not put in a place to change. i know myself, i change when things are not good. i sit back, look around and think man i need to change something because i am not happy! so why would that not apply to kids. if all of a sudden nate is not happy with his punishment for being rude, would that not put him into a place to change his behavior so he can become happy? by nate choosing to obey on his own he did it by himself. know what i mean?

i think he dumb things down for our kids, we set the limits low and kids raise to that. what if we were to expect more of them? i wonder what would happen?

the best quote i read was this "many children are mommy deaf-and for good reason. when rules change with hormones, why should they bother to follow them?"

see that's they key for me making this work in our family. i am emotional. god created me this way. chris is not. i am not consistent. chris is. i want to make these changes but i can't on my own. chris can however come along side of me and help me to stay on track. once chris changes gears he stays in the new road. i can have him help me in this area. i need him to!

everything in theory is great, now lets see if we can make these changes!

so there ya go. more raw honesty!

Posted by mel at 9:57 AM