[quote]PD version of that scene…
Kid sits at the table refuses to eat the porridge. Parent lets him know that the meal will be over at 8:30 and at that time, any untouched food will be thrown out. The next meal will be at noon and he is welcome to try again at that time. Then the parent ignores him, and does what he says. Whining about hunger? “Thank you for letting me know. Lunch will be served at noon and you can eat then.”[[/quote]quote][/quote]
my other half told me a while back of an email going round her kindergarden about how they do things in german kindies and one of the examples was exactly the same. If a child refuses to eat, the nanny doesn’tforce him, just let’s them choose to go hungry for the rest of the day. The email had lots of things that they do in Germany, I cannot remeber what they were but it was being FWDed around the company because every single method ran contrary to how things work in Taiwan.
Out of interest when and where would this group be held?
I have the same argument for “constructive criticism”
ImanOU
[quote]
Wouldn’t be nice if people took responsibility for their problems and tried to fix them instead of blaming others or working hard on not getting caught?[/quote] Yes, but the real world isn’t that way. Great to raise your kid that way, but how do you teach them to handle others who don’t see the world in that context?
That’s what we call “good ole home training.” Nothing special there. Just parents who did their jobs as oppose to trying to be their child’s friend or whatnot. I’m not into praising a kid a lot. But I’m really thinking what you’re proposing is setting a kid up for a bit of narcissism. Or at least some sort of Pavlov kind of behavior. George Carlin does a good spiel on this. Does this “positive discipline” involve just acknowledging the type of behavior a parent/teacher wants to see?
“Good home training” in many homes also involved long-winded lectures, spanking, punishments, bribery (“If you get straight A’s this semester, I’ll give you…”).
Pavlovian responses are easily seen when parents and teachers are the ones who control a child’s behavior. A child hurts his younger sibling is trained to automatically say “sorry” without thinking about why and is absolved of responsibility, usually made to “pay” by being sent to his room or spanked. The bell, of course, being the parent’s tone of voice.
Positive discipline is getting the child to reflect on, evaluate, and resolve their problems. A child hurts his younger sibling and is asked what went wrong, what can they do to help their sibling feel better, and come up with a plan to keep it from happening again. They become more aware of more positive alternatives when the problem happens again and they are responsible for fixing their own problem rather than being given a punishment that has nothing to do with the action (the “‘Don’t hit your brother!’ WHACK! WHACK!” line of thinking is one that comes to mind) being meted out by outside party, this being the parent. Traditional lines of discipline do not teach a child more responsibility for their actions. They do not teach the child how to resolve problems their actions cause. They do not teach the child alternatives to avoid the problem and they deny the child a chance to learn how to make positive decisions on their own.
Wouldn’t it be more narcissistic for parents to believe they are the only ones who know what’s right for their children and that children have no idea of how to make decisions for themselves? That the only way to be a good parent is to control every aspect of their child’s life until they are school-aged (or for many families, even older than that)?
We tell kids that practice makes perfect and then deny them the chance to practice making their own decisions and evaluate their choices. We expect them to do what we want and then get mad when they want to do things their own way.
As for the real world, the world doesn’t change for the better by doing the same thing over and over again. Change has to happen somewhere. And unlike traditional discipline where the parent is the sole locus of control, the child has been given enough experience to know how to evaluate the situation and make good decisions in dealing with problems with others.
As far as where I would like to hold meetings, I am still up in the air. I wanted to test out the idea and of course, one would need to have a better idea of positive discipline to help be a facilitator/moderator for the group so it will take time to do the training. I know there are lots of facilities around the city that have the right equipment (whiteboards, seating, A/V equipment) that would be difficult to find in a private home. There’s also the possibility of having it hosted at a school. I’m still sniffing around to see if there is any actual enthusiasm for the idea.
I know that many people who come to Taiwan and know little about teaching still think of it as a contest to undercut the competition or as a hobby to fill in the time between drinking binges. I hope that there are those out there like me who want to become better teachers for the sake of being better teachers (and also for the acute drop in stress one feels when they are no longer spending their classroom time dealing with behavior issues). Here’s to hoping.
But what if the kid doesn’t see a problem? Doesn’t see the need to make their sibling feel better? Doesn’t see the need to stop it happening again? “But mum, if I wanted him to feel better I wouldn’t have stabbed him in the first place! And as for happening again, it won’t. Just as soon as he stops being a prick.”
I wrote a long post but deleted because it was fairly negative and circular.
My main point was: impress your kids/pupils. Be someone kids want to have a positive relationship with, but don’t foist it on 'em. That’s really it.
Using your intellect to manipulate kids is is no different than using your height to bully 'em. We resent it as much as kids as we do as adults. And the problem is, there are always people taller than you.
Once I figured that out, I stopped having discipline probs in class.
All of this is fairly old hat/common practice/knowledge, no?
Hey ImaniOU, very impressed with your approach. I do a fairly half-arsed version of the same. I recall a Reader’s Digest article that a fellow teacher gave me to read at my old school. It featured a dolphin trainer whose method consisted entirely of positive reinforcement: If the dolphin exhibited unwanted behavior it was simply ignored, and when it behaved as desired then it was rewarded. The author went home and tried out this method on her husband with great success. I have done the same - ignore poor behavior and reward desired behavior - in my classroom/s with excellent results. It does require patience and attention, and I do wonder about the time you have available for this enlightened approach.
What are your thoughts on the sort of time and setting required for this approach?
Ha ha! That’s damn funny! So if I’d been getting this “positive discipline” stuff you’re saying that I’d have been out of my room in 11 seconds flat or less – “HELL yeah, I’m REAAL sorry mum! Honest-to-GOD!”
Ha ha! That’s damn funny! So if I’d been getting this “positive discipline” stuff you’re saying that I’d have been out of my room in 11 seconds flat or less – “HELL yeah, I’m REAAL sorry mum! Honest-to-GOD!”[/quote]
Well, there’s no ‘system’, despite the sales pitch or the personal beliefs of the system promoters. Kids are individuals, and all you can hope for is a few techniques that might work with some of the children, some of the time. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try out new things and aim for a handful of ‘best practice’ ideas and I’m certainly not arguing ‘against’ the aims of a group to discuss classroom management in a proactive way.
There’s also a hell of a lot of difference between teaching children and bringing up children. As a teacher, I ‘care’ about your child as one of a group of 20-40 because I’m a nice person, as most teachers are. However, my goal is crowd control in order to fulfil my class aims, not your child’s individual moral and social development. The bottom line is; I’ve taught thousands of children, and although I wish them all the best, I certainly don’t even remember all their names. ‘Positive discipline’ is easier because it doesn’t require me to engage in any conflict with a child.
I ran a very positive classroom, but part of that was down to the fact that although I liked the kids, I handed them back every day, and I didn’t really engage with them on a personal level because I was there simply to educate, not to bring up. It’s a simply, logical way to promote harmony and avoid things that aren’t really in my remit.
‘My’ children, should I ever go down that road? I fully expect them to be like I was as a child, only smarter (better nutrition, more access to information and education) and just as ‘difficult’ as I was. Children learn to be independent by opposing their parents and teachers’ views. I fully expect blood, sweat and tears because I will passionately care whether those kids are polite, honest, educated, etc, and I expect them to be as stubborn, confrontational and downright oppositional as I was, and my mother was and my grandmother was. I will scream, slap, lock in bedroom, deny pocket money, frogmarch, lecture, coerce, spy on, etc, until I am blue in the face, but no daughter of mine will be left in a room alone, timing out and thinking about what she’s done. ‘What? you’re going to leave me alone for half an hour to calm down and figure out what I’m going to do next?’
Unpredictable conflict is the result of poor behaviour in the ‘real world’. A parent does their kid a disservice by not preparing them for real life by sucking up their emotions and responding dishonestly. You’re making a huge rod for your own back and hurting them by leading teenagers into forming the conclusion that their behaviour affects all possible outcomes. There are two safe easy outcomes, one slightly more pleasant, to every situation; take your pick! Children should feel safe and secure, of course, and arbitrary or violent punishment is wrong, but to bring them up in a world where they can manipulate adults into agreeing that they can basically do what they like as long as they accept the sanctions imposed is insane.
What do you do with the dolphin who simply raises its game every time? At what point do you just say ‘Because I said so!’? Great for 4 yearolds, not so great for older kids. If all misbehaviour is met with a smiling wall of nothingness, then the kid will simply force an emotional response.
That’s more like it.
But even in the classroom, how does that really work? I mean, if my precious darling came home from the grinding mill one day and said he sat in the corner for 5 hours “thinking” about what he’d done, I’d be up there at the skule kicking up all KINDS of holy hell about negligent teachers and how they’d better pull their damned fingers out and do some edumakayshun to my brat.
[quote=“sandman”]That’s more like it.
But even in the classroom, how does that really work? I mean, if my precious darling came home from the grinding mill one day and said he sat in the corner for 5 hours “thinking” about what he’d done, I’d be up there at the skule kicking up all KINDS of holy hell about negligent teachers and how they’d better pull their damned fingers out and do some edumakayshun to my brat.[/quote]
That’s kind of my point. Teachers are there to run classes, not to educate your child; don’t lose sight of that. If your child is of average intelligence and gets on fairly well with others, then he’ll get a lot out of it. If your child is ‘different’ in any way, he’ll be sidelined and unstimulated. That’s the nature of mass education, I’m afraid.
I see where you’re going with this but I’ve had to leave a child in the room for a period of time as she was uncontrollable with her rage. Quite scary to see it exhibited in a 7 year old. I’m all for that time out, because actually it gives me more time to think what is the “correct” response to undesirable behavior rather than teaching them how to be responsible.
I think that’s the key issue-exhibit the behavior you want produced.
[quote]If the dolphin exhibited unwanted behavior it was simply ignored, and when it behaved as desired then it was rewarded.
What do you do with the dolphin who simply raises its game every time? At what point do you just say ‘Because I said so!’? Great for 4 yearolds, not so great for older kids. If all misbehaviour is met with a smiling wall of nothingness, then the kid will simply force an emotional response.[/quote]
Certain unwarranted assumptions here: the game is not to meet poor behavior with a ‘smiling wall of nothingness’ That would piss anyone off fairly rapidly. And why should the dolphin want to “up its game”? The point is to ignore undesired responses completely and only respond to the desired behavior. It’s all stimulus/response. Frequently, responding to poor behavior locks in that very behavior as a pattern. The child/individual/animal simply becomes habituated into the very pattern of behavior you want to change. You can break that habitual response by only engaging with behavior you wish to encourage.
It’s true that having gained a sense of that basic principle you must then elaborate upon/modify it to suit the situation and individual concerned. And, of course, like any of these approaches it can require considerable attention and focus in the early stages. I think its sound, nonetheless, as it certainly worked for the dolphin, the author’s husband, and the children I teach. As I say, though, you do need to be quite sharp in the early stages.
My further thought would be that its about getting in behind rational thinking - or appeals to rational thinking - and allowing the child/animal to come into the behavior naturally. Which will, of course, include some reasoning in older kids. It will be their own reasoning, however, not a reasoning imposed upon them. Needless to say, this is not a particularly Taiwanese approach.
Anyway, it sounds like ImaniOU is well ahead of the/my game as far as these sorts of approaches go. I’d have to be honest and say that I mix up my approach with a fair bit of punishment. Punishment, however, that is quickly administered and is always closely tied to the mis-doing. (is that a word?)
[quote=“Dial”]
Anyway, it sounds like ImaniOU is well ahead of the/my game as far as these sorts of approaches go. I’d have to be honest and say that I mix up my approach with a fair bit of punishment. Punishment, however, that is quickly administered and is always closely tied to the mis-doing. (is that a word?)[/quote]
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“Dial”]
Anyway, it sounds like ImaniOU is well ahead of the/my game as far as these sorts of approaches go. I’d have to be honest and say that I mix up my approach with a fair bit of punishment. Punishment, however, that is quickly administered and is always closely tied to the mis-doing. (is that a word?)[/quote]
The misdeed, my dear Watson, the misdeed.[/quote]
Ah yes, thanks, I thought there was a real word somewhere in the near vicinity
