I've learned a very valuable lesson from my son's 1st grade teacher this year: Speak the Positive. My normally well behaved son came home with a S- on his report card after the first quarter of 1st grade. After I got over the urge to tell him we don't earn minuses in this house or figure out how this must surely be his dad's fault I decided to go chat with his teacher. She informed me that my son was acting silly constantly and distracting other kids from getting their work done. "Oh NO!" I thought. "What are we going to do!?" I pictured having to pay private school tuition. I pictured my son going to the special school for kids with behavior problems. I pictured paying someone a lot of money to do play therapy with him since his own therapist mom apparently wasn't getting the job done. Sensing my panic, his teacher told me she was going to start praising him for every positive thing he did in class. "That's IT?" I thought. There was no way that was going to work.
My conference with my son's teacher was on a Friday. All weekend I talked to him about how we can't be silly at school, only sometimes at home. I brought home my self control workbooks from work and did activities with him about controlling his silliness. We made a silly meter so he could monitor how silly he was getting and see if it was over the line. We talked about how some silly ideas you have to keep to yourself instead of sharing with others and distracting them. We practiced not being silly at the dinner table. This is a NO SILLY ZONE!
Monday morning came. The seven minute carpool to school was basically a sermon on not being silly. All day I was nervous. Was he going to act out today? Was this the pre-cursor to some huge problem down the road? Was my son going to ask me to bring him cigarettes in jail someday? I nervously drove up to the circle drive at 3:10pm to pick him up from school that afternoon. His teacher was sitting with him. "Oh God." As we approached my older son with his teacher my younger son body checked a kid he knows. "This is it," I thought. "She and everyone else here are about to tell me both my sons are problems and I am a horrible mother."
His teacher smiled. My son had a great day. And that day was the beginning of months of good days since. Astonished I asked him what made the difference. Surely it was my PhD level play therapy books and exercises the weekend before or getting his dad to spend extra time with him or creating a special outing for him in the weekend. "Oh," he said "Mrs. J told me all these awesome things I was doing today!" WHAT? THAT'S IT?
Over the next few weeks I started copying Mrs. J. Every. Single. Positive. Thing. he did I spoke aloud. "I see you are sitting quietly playing the iPad instead of rubbing snot on your brother-that's great!" "I'm so grateful you took your dish to the sink without being asked- thank you!" "I see you ate your bagel- great job!" "You made a basket in your game today-yea!" I've been ignoring everything else. The fact that he was rubbing snot on his brother right before, that I had to ask 3x on Tuesday night to take his plate to the sink before he took it Wednesday, that there were green beans on his plate along with his bagel, and that he could make a lot more baskets if he would practice.
As I've shifted my focus away from pointing out anything wrong and toward pointing out everything I can he is doing right I've seen a positive change in him. He is more willing to do the things I ask him to do. He speaks more positively to his brother. He is able to get his silliness under control when needed. It's amazing to me that such a simple shift has made such a profound impact. As parents we often get in a rut of pointing out only what is going wrong. It's easy to focus on all the stuff our kid needs to improve. But what about all the stuff they are doing well? When's the last time you told them so?
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