Nobody’s perfect; we all know that. But it would appear that the best way to motivate children and get them to modify their behaviour is by paying less attention to their mistakes, not more. Research consistently shows that by focusing on what we’d like to see kids do, instead of what we’d like to see them do less of or stop doing altogether, we will not only get the behaviour results we want, but that they’ll also feel better about themselves and us.

The struggle for parents is that we tend to notice the mistakes so much more efficiently than the stuff that’s going well. I read somewhere that one of the reasons that “no” is so often a word that toddlers say is because as they’re learning language, it’s one of the words they hear most often. I don’t know if it’s possible to prove that one way or the other, but it is worth considering. How often do we say “no” to our children? Or put another way, how often is our attention and focus on the negative, rather than the positive?

Mistakes are hard to avoid. Sometimes we can’t even know that we’ve made a mistake until we’ve tried it out and taken a look at the results we got. We need to instil in our children that mistakes are fine, that we all make mistakes, and that there are very few mistakes that lead to truly disastrous consequences. What matters more than avoiding mistakes is gaining the courage to be imperfect, as Rudolph Dreikurs would say. Children need to develop the internal strength to acknowledge their mistakes, and move forward from them.

While our initial reaction may be to spend a great deal of time focusing on the events and decisions that lead up to the mistake (“What were you thinking?”, “Why would you do that?”, “What have you done?”, “Didn’t I just tell you to be careful?”), that will get us nowhere. We tend to believe that punishment is the best way to discourage a certain behaviour, but research consistently proves that to be a false belief – and perhaps you’ve noticed as much in your own household.

What works better is focusing on where to go from here, and what we do now that the mistake has been made. Looking at what can be done now gives our kids concrete solutions that they can act on to overcome feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment, and it helps them to develop the courage to try again. They start to build a list of times when they made mistakes, but then were able to overcome them.

And the truth is, as adults we know that once a mistake is made, it’s done. At that point, all the questioning and yelling and frustration in the world isn’t going to be able to undo it, so what’s the point? Questions, yelling, and frustration also don’t help our children to learn from their mistakes and feel confident that they can avoid them in the future, so we need to focus our efforts on not doing what we know doesn’t work, and change our approach to something more effective.

Here’s a quick plan for dealing with mistakes: demonstrate through your approach that mistakes aren’t the end of the world (i.e., avoid criticism and judgment), work together to find out where things went wrong and what could be done in the future to avoid the same mistake again, work together to find a solution to the current problem, and encourage your child to try again. Remember: the courage to be imperfect!

We’ve talked before about how important encouragement is for kids. It contributes to healthy self esteem, it fosters courage and a willingness to make a mistake but try again, it puts the emphasis on how our child can make his own interpretations matter most instead of relying on the input of others, it helps kids to feel as though they matter and belong… The list goes on and on. And while we’ve also spent a lot of time talking about some of the ways to encourage but not praise (like focusing on the effort not the result, and asking her how she feels about her performance instead of telling her what you think), I thought that maybe we’re ready for some advanced, out-of-the-box ways of encouraging our kids. Here are some ideas…

· Timing: sometimes children are receptive to encouragement right away, and it can help them shake off misbehaviour as it’s happening, but sometimes everyone needs a cooling off period before you can really get through to one another. Experiment to see what works best in your family.

· Acknowledge Improvement: when it seems as though none of what you’re asking is that hard, it can be frustrating and exasperating to have to deal with baby steps. But if we can recognize that our kids are trying, and acknowledge their improvement, they will be motivated to try again and reach just a bit farther this time.

· “Catch them being good”: Kids learn better through positive reinforcement than they do through any other method (including punishment). Use this awareness to encourage your kids by pointing out what’s already working, and leave it at that. Get used to not adding “…but…” after each of these conversations.

· Make one-on-one time a priority: nothing matters more to your kids than your undivided attention. Nothing. So give it to them.

· Practice good communication: It is extremely frustrating to be reprimanded for not meeting the mark after you’ve tried your best after only receiving vague instructions. Keep this kind of miscommunication from happening by being very clear in your directions and expectations and checking in with your kids before you send them off to make sure that you’re both on the same page. It can be very discouraging for a child to be scolded for not doing something when the real problem is the expectation: when you say, “Please take out the garbage,” and he agrees, you’re thinking “…in the next 60 to 90 seconds” but he’s thinking, “…sometime before I leave for school in the morning”. Get that all out in the open before you end your conversation.

· Forget the Jones’!: it can happen that you will feel discouraged yourself in the face of peer pressure from other parents or disparaging remarks from people like your own parents. You know what’s best for you and your family, and you know that sometimes thinking big picture means making choices and taking actions in the now that seem to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Take a deep breath, stick to your guns, and use some of those encouraging phrases we’ve discussed (“You can do it”, “I know you’ll make the best choice for yourself”, “I have faith in you to solve this issue”) on yourself!

My friend Wendy just sent me the link to this article on the Parenting Pink web site, for parents of daughters, and it’s fantastic.  And I don’t think you need to have a daughter to find these statements helpful — they’re great for sons, too.  Great find, Wendy - thanks!

I’m excited to be adding two new topics to my list of workshops:

7 Things Your School-Agers Wished You Knew About Them (based on my free report, which you can get by going to the top of this page and entering in your name and email address)

and

The Crazy Pace of Life: The Effect on Kids and Strategies to Stay Sane

If your school, or church, or workplace, or any other group you’re a part of, is looking for a speaker to hold a workshop, anywhere from an hour to a half day, call me!  I’d love to chat about our options, and I’d be happy to provide some testimonials and feedback from previous workshop participants.  There are more details on my Workshops page. for .

I think there’s a lot of pressure to succeed in our part of the world.  While I haven’t spent any time doing a scientific analysis, I think it comes partly from the fast-paced culture we live in, partly from the sheer number of opportunities we have here, and partly from our priority as parents to give our kids as much as we can.  While none of this is bad, our enthusiasm for achievement and success can rob our kids of the critical aspects (like fun!) of their activities.  Here are some easy habits to fall into that we want to avoid:

Avoid rewards as a way to motivate your kids.  While a weekly trip to Dairy Queen after soccer or swimming can become a fun family ritual, be careful about creating a we-just-worked-out-so-now-it’s-time-to-splurge mentality for your kids.  The real reward from being involved in a sport or activity is the fun, the friends, the exercise, the chance to learn something new and improve your skills, not the ice cream, or the opportunity to earn money for each goal scored or a lavish gift after the recital.  Help your children to develop a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from their performances, not aim for the treat at the end of practice.

As always, don’t compare kids.  Focus on each child’s progress and effort, and most importantly, let enjoyment be the deciding factor.  If your son isn’t great at soccer but he loves playing, fantastic!  Consider the goals of enrolling him in soccer in the first place (meet new friends?  be physically active?  learn something new?  feel good about himself?) and focus on those, not whether or not he’s the best on the team.

The number of parents making headlines for behaving shamefully at their children’s sport games is staggering.  I would hope that it goes without saying that swearing, name-calling, being a bad sport, and (heaven help us) throwing punches have absolutely no place at a children’s sporting event.  Use this opportunity to teach your kids that sometimes you try really hard and you still don’t win, but that’s ok — the point is that you have fun, you do your best, and you get a little bit better at your game each time you play.  Take the competitive edge and focus on winning out of the equation by modeling for your kids that you support all the players, even the ones on the other team, when they make a good save or an amazing play. 

And speaking of modeling, the best thing you can do for your children is show them how to be a good sport by participating in sports and being a good sport yourself.  A 2000 Stats Canada report found that when parents take part in organized sports, either by playing or volunteering, their kids are far more likely to get involved, too.  So get playing!

I always like to share good resources when I come across them, and this book, by Alyson Schafer, falls into the category of good resources.  It’s a book about discipline, or, really, the four goals of misbehaviour.  She’s broken down each of the goals into their own chapters, making this book one of the most thorough explorations of the topic of goals that I’ve come across.  Like her first book, Breaking the Good Mom Myth, it’s written in a casual, easy to read style, that acknowledges that this is a messy, complicated situation, being a parent, and that lofty, theoretical tomes are not what you need when your kids refuse to stop jumping on the bed. 

Her work is geared toward parents with kids up to age 10, and I think this is a great additional to your toolkit if you’ve got young kids.  With its main focus on helping those discipline-resistant kids function peacefully within the family, as well as a chapter devoted to her favourite discipline tool, the family meeting, it’s a nice rounding-out of some of the tools and approaches that we often wish we had more how-to information on.

Anyone else read it?

Nobody likes to see their kids get hurt.  Every parent would like to think that it’s possible for them to help their child make it through life with no hardships, no disappointments, and no failures.  We know, of course, that it isn’t true, but sometimes we still act as though it is possible.

Bad things happen to good people…even our own kids.  But when they do, one of the worst things we can do for them (or to them) is to feel sorry for them.  Even when it’s logical, it doesn’t make things better, and can actually make things worse for our kids in the long run.

Kids are very attuned to our emotions.  With their little radars, they pick up signals that we may not even know we’re sending.  If they sense that we feel sorry for them, then they think that’s the right attitude, that they should feel sorry for themselves.  Instead of acknowledging how he’s feeling, then doing some problem solving to consider his options and courageously taking a step forward, he’s more likely to get stuck in a pity party for himself.  And the more a person focus on what’s wrong and what’s not working and what’s not fair, the more consumed by all of these things that person becomes.  It can then be a huge mountain to climb to get back to a place of neutrality and optimism.  This attitude can carry far beyond childhood too - as Rudolph Dreikurs says in Children: The Challenge, "He can become convinced that the world owes him something in recompense for what he misses.  Instead of doing when he can, he counts on what others will do for him." 

I saw a woman on t.v. years ago, who was born without arms.  She was a young woman, and a mom herself, and there was footage of her diapering and feeding her kids with her feet.  She said that her own mother made a decision when this woman was born, that she would not pity her or do for her what she could do for herself — that the greatest gift she could give her was the gift of competence.  And this young lady said that her mom admitted that sometimes it was excruciating for her to watch her daughter struggle when she could so easily help her, but she knew that she would be doing her daughter no favours if she taught her to rely on the assistance and pity of others, when, with practice and perseverance, she did have the ability to take care of herself.

A perfect example of courage and encouragement in action.

Kids can learn to not only cope with, but also overcome, disappointment and adversity if we show them that we believe they can.  Our pity does them no favours, and can handicap their success later in life.  Encouragement and support all contribute to a happy life for our kids, much more than our feeling sorry for them does.

If you’ve ever resolved to be a "better" parent (and who hasn’t?)  you may have felt a moment or two of frustration over your lack of success.  What keeps us from being able to make changes in our own behaviour, even when it’s something we really want?

We seem to be hard-wired to focus on the negative in our lives.  What this means is that when something happens — say we get into a huge blowout with one of our kids — when we look back on what happened, we too often dwell on the stuff we did wrong or the worst aspects of the situation.  While this is important information to have, when we’re talking about making a change, our brains need concrete actions to take, not the vacuum created by focusing only on what we don’t want to happen. 

If we think about that argument you had with your child, when your little darling starts pulling out all the stops, you may be thinking, "I’m not going to yell.  I’m not going to take the bait.  I’m not going to argue…" which is all valid and useful stuff to not do.  The problem is that your brain is then left scrambling, wondering what exactly isn’t off limits.  And as your anger and stress levels rise, it becomes harder and harder for your brain to think rationally.  So what you’re left with is a thought process that is focusing only on the negative things, with nothing positive or helpful filling in the gaps…and the next thing you know, you’re right back to yelling and arguing again.  And then you feel lousy, disappointed in yourself, and frustrated that despite your good intentions, you’re right back to where you started.

Sound familiar?

Instead of focusing on what didn’t work after a fight with one of your kids or other situation that you’d like to handle differently next time, go over it in your mind and consider what did work (if anything).  What did you do that was helpful, what worked, what could you do more of next time?  Also consider what didn’t work, but instead of agreeing with yourself that you won’t do it again, go one step further and think about what you will do next time.  What concrete, positive action can you take?  Don’t say to yourself, "The next time she swears at me, I’m not going to swear back," say, "The next time she swears at me, I will calmly leave the room/explain to her that I won’t tolerate that kind of behaviour/remind her that we don’t swear in our house and if she’d like to continue the conversation, she needs to speak to me respectfully." 

An analysis after the fact can be an important tool in changing behaviour.  But the content of that analysis needs to be focused on what you will do next time, not what you won’t.  Succinctly define the behaviour you’d like to change, then create a plan for what you will do differently next time.  Test it out, experiment, and keep refining it until you’re pleased with the result you’re getting.

John Hoffman wrote an article in Today’s Parent (the December 2005 issue) with this title.  I loved his list of seven things, so here they are:

1. Be a responsive, loving caregiver to your baby.  Take care of her basic needs and comfort her when she cries.
2. Build and maintain a strong, secure relationship with her as she grows.
3. Help her develop life skills and give her age-appropriate control over some parts of her life.
4. Help her to succeed, but don’t try to shield her from all disappointments and failures.
5. When she’s frustrated or sad, be there for her and help her learn that it’s normal to feel bad sometimes, but that feeling bad doesn’t last forever.
6. Teach her productive ways to think about the setbacks she will inevitably encounter during her lifetime.
7. Model optimistic behaviour and thinking yourself, but make sure it is tempered with realism.

I think these seven secrets are the kind of thing we as parents should put on our fridge or read over to ourselves every once in a while.  Some of them are easier said than done, but take heart knowing that you’re moving in the right direction!

This is the title of a chapter in Rudolph Dreikurs’ classic parenting book Children: The Challenge.  It can be a tough concept for a parent to really grasp, though, because our first instinct as humans seems to be to step in and correct, instead of letting things run their course.  It gets easier the more we practice it, as with everything else, but when we start out trying to eliminate criticism, it takes a focused effort to do so.

Kids receive a lot of message based on our judgments and what we consider to be important.  To use an example from Dreikurs’ book, kids aren’t concerned at all that their thank you letter to Grandma is filled with mistakes and is incredibly sloppy.  They just enjoy the process of creating something for someone they love.  And if we step in and point out all the ways their letter is inadequate, they lose the joy and pride they felt in creating it.

As Dreikurs points out, we cannot build on weaknesses, only on strengths.  It may be tempting to focus on the negative because that’s the part that needs more work, but research has shown that by focusing our efforts more on what kids are already doing well, we increase the likelihood that their behaviour will improve.  (This is referred to as positive reinforcement.) 

Many of us, without realizing it, spend most of our time focusing on what’s not working with our kids.  All of our attention and focus goes to what we’d like to see changed, or the negative, and we spend very little time dwelling on what’s already working.  But that’s the exact opposite of what we should be doing, if we really want to see our kids make positive improvements in what they’re doing.

A matter-of-fact approach is usually a much better way to handle mistakes.  No shame, no blame, simply focusing on where things took a wrong turn and what we (or they) can do to set it back on course.  We need to get rid of the notion that in order to help kids do better what have to make them feel worse and instead put our attention on the actions that are already working and on the behaviours we’d like to see more of.  We want to empower our kids to feel ok about making mistakes and taking chances, to help them develop the courage to be imperfect but to get back up and try again anyway.  Kids want to do well.  They want to fit in, get along with others, be seen as helpful and cooperative.  And when they don’t, it’s because they’ve been conditioned to believe that nothing they do is right, that they can’t do things without screwing them up, or that it’s just better if they don’t get involved or don’t even try.  While kids can come to these conclusions on their own, as parents, we can avoid contributing to their discouragement by eliminating criticism and minimizing their mistakes.