Kids at Thought

No!

by Mendel

in Childhood Education,Parenting

“How many times do I have to tell you? Your food is getting cold! Harry, please come to the table to eat dinner.”

“No!”

Commonplace dialog. Right?

Except, that “No,” the one word answer from Harry has the potential to arouse all kinds of feelings in us.

Why is Harry not listening to me?

Why is he disrespectful?

What’s with him?

There’s a great lesson here. Instead of giving us a speech, Harry gives us a one word answer. Of course, it’s not the answer we want. Yet, it makes us feel a wide range of feelings.

Simple communication is effective communicatio n. The less you say, the more you’re forced to focus your message to its core. That’s what Harry does. For whatever reason, he doesn’t want to come to the table. He uses one singular word to let us know that.

You want to be more effective when communicating with kids? Say less. Think “No.”

Tagged as: Childhood Development, Childhood Education, Classroom Function, Communication, Motivating Children, Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting

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Use These 6 Strategies to Successfully Communicate Your Ideas to Children and Students

by Mendel

in Childhood Education,Therapy Approaches

Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath is a remarkable book.

It’s not a parenting book, nor is it a book about education or therapy approaches for children. Yet, it’s all of the above. All of us caring for children are in the business of communicating ideas. We all want the messages and lessons we teach to stick.

Here’s how they define a sticky idea: A sticky idea is an idea that’s understood, that’s remembered, and that changes something.

The Heath brothers outline six key strategies that are proven to make your ideas stick. Using these strategies will ensure that your children and students will be interested in what you have to say and will remember what you teach them.

They use a clever acronym for the six strategies: S.U.C.C.E.S.

Simple: You don’t have to dumb down your lesson or idea. You have to find the core of the message and present it in a brief sentence or so. Keeping your message simple forces you to prioritize what you really want to convey versus what you are just adding for decoration. Simple ideas stick.

Unexpected: Use the power of mystery to wow your students and pique their curiosity. Curiosity comes from a gap of knowledge which we feel a need to fill. You can create that gap by posing a question. Have your students make predictions about the answer. This makes them invest in the problem at hand. Get them engaged by helping them fill their knowledge gap. Unexpectedness makes ideas stick.

Concrete: Instead of abstract lessons make them concrete. You can use touchable materials. Manipulatives to learn math etc. Furthermore, use concrete vivid examples in your lessons. The best example of a concrete idea in teaching come from Jane Eliott in her famous experiment to teach her students about racism by dividing the blue eyed and brown eyed students and pitting them against each other. Use sensory language. Paint a mental picture. Concrete ideas stick.

Credible: Present credible ideas to your students that they themselves can test. Doing science projects in class is always popular. You know why? Not only is it concrete. It’s also credible. The students don’t have to take your word for it. They see the results for themselves. Statistics, when used wisely also lend credibility to the lessons you teach. Credible ideas stick.

Emotional: Emotions is what makes your children care about what you have to say. It makes them feels the message rather than just hear it. Imagine giving a lesson about the civil war and relating all the dry facts to the students versus presenting it to them in a way that they will feel like they’re there. Use props, photos, recordings. Bring it to life. Emotional ideas stick.

Stories: We all love stories. Even students who are otherwise not interested in your lesson will pay attention when they hear you telling a story. Use this power in your lesson to maximize students’ interest in your ides. The Heaths relate a story of how two professors at Georgia State University used this strategy to teach an accounting course with unprecedented success. Imagine, if they could use a story to get students interested in accounting, we can use it to garner interest in anything. Stories stick.

This is a cursory overview of the six strategies that make ideas stick. I highly recommend you read the book. In any case, the next time you plan a lesson, a treatment session, or a simple activity for your child, put your idea to the S.U.C.C.E.S. test. Ask: Will it stick or will it just fly right over your child’s head?

Your idea doesn’t need to have all six factors. But the more of these strategies you use, the more likely your idea will stick.

Tagged as: Activities for Children, Childhood Education, Classroom Function, Communication, Motivating Children, Parenting

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Approach Each Day as it’s Your First!

by Mendel

in Childhood Education,Parenting,Therapy Approaches

We’ve all heard the saying, “Live every day as if it’s your last.”

Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity blog, quoted a story about renowned restaurateur, Wolfgang Puck.

He owns many successful restaurants, and he instructs all his restaurant staff to treat each night as if it’s opening night.

Opening nights are special. A lot hinges on its success. The staff is at its best on opening night.

That’s why Wolfgang instructs his staff to treat each night like opening night. He wants them to always be at there best.

As teachers, therapists, and parents we all have opening nights as well.

Remember the first day you walked into the classroom? All the children were sitting there perky eared with straight backs, alert and curious. You might have been anxious, but you were in command. Do you remember the first day of the school year?

Remember the first day you treated a new child on your caseload? You were present for every minute of the session. You interacted with the child. You were animated and engaging. You communicated with the parent. Most importantly, you spent every minute in total curiosity about the child. Do you remember that first session?

Remember the first time you held your newborn baby? To some, including myself, this is the most spiritual moment of their lives. There your baby lies, screeching, kicking her feet, flailing her arms. The chaos is beautiful. Nothing around you matters. You and your child are one. Do you remember the first time you held your child?

As the year goes on, teachers, to an extent or another, lose control of their classrooms. You might become less anxious, and the children become less curious.

As the year goes on, we therapists become less engaging, less interactive. Most importantly, we become less curious. We quickly fall under the false impression that we already “know” the child we’re treating. We fall into an unproductive routine. We lose our creative spark.

As the years go by, we become less tolerant of our children’s crying and hand flailing. We certainly aren’t awed by any of that behavior. We feel less in the zone when spending time with them. We allow ourselves to be distracted during together time. We become short-fused to the chaos brought upon by our kids.

What would our classrooms, therapy sessions, and child-parent interactions look like if every lesson, session, encounter would be treated as the first?

Wouldn’t it be beautiful?

Granted, it’s difficult to fight falling into a mundane routine. It’s challenging to be fresh and creative every day. It’s tough being curious about a child we foolishly believe we know everything about.

However, the flipside of creativity is destruction. The alternative of curiosity is ignorance. The antonym of freshness is decay. And these descriptions should not be how we define educating, treating, and raising children.

In your personal life you may want to live each day as if it’s your last. When working with children, live each day as if it’s your first.

Tagged as: Childhood Education, Classroom Function, Creative Treatment, Creativity, Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting

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You are a Sculptor. Here are Five Important Lessons to Guide Your Work

by Mendel

in Motivational

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. ~ Michelangelo

I love this quote. It applies to raising children as much as it does to sculpting. In both, we get unfinished material, and it is up to us to form something great.

Seeing a finished statue can be awe inspiring, but we appreciate it even more when we know more about the work that went into its creation.

Working with and raising children provides us with that behind the scenes view. Here are a few lessons we can take from sculptors.

1) Persevere. Sculptures take months and often years to complete. Chip by chip has to fall for the statue to emerge. The same applies to teaching children. There are no quick fixes. Learning happens gradually. Change in therapy happens slowly. Don’t give up. Persevere till the masterpiece is in front of you.

2) Set goals. As Michelangelo tells us in the above quote, it’s up to the sculptor to discover the statue within the block of stone. The sculptor has to know what he’s looking for and where he’s looking for it. When working with kids, we also have to know what we’re working on and how we’re going to achieve it. How? By setting appropriate educational and treatment goals and pursuing them.

3) See the possibilities. A stone is a stone. Big. Lumpy. Hard. Cold. Right? Not to a sculptor. To the artist, it’s a blank canvas on which endless beauty awaits to be created. The artist sees possibility where the rest of us don’t. Great parents, teachers, and therapists are the same. They see great possibility and potential where others see challenging behaviors, developmental deficits, and pathology. Be the artist. Focus on the child’s potential.

4) Use the right tools. When thinking of sculpting a chisel and hammer comes to mind. There are many more tools, however. To sculpt an eye would take a different tool than to sculpt the shape of a head. You need different tools to achieve different results. When working with children, the tools we use need also be specific and varied for each child. All children learn differently. Some succeed by moving around. Some are visual learners. Others are auditory learners. If you’re not getting the results you want, ask yourself, “Am I using the right tools?”

5) Share it with the world. Art must be shared with the world. It’s the essence of the creative spirit. The greatest sculptures of all time would be worthless if it would stay in the garage of its sculptor collecting dust. Putting the work of art for all to take in and be inspired by, brings it to life and makes it all worth it. Our ultimate goal when working with children is to help them become independent. Whatever we teach them and help them with should support independence. What we want is the ability for them to be available to inspire the rest of the world competently and independently.

Teachers, therapists, and parents like sculptors are artists. We are all capable of creating art, regardless of inborn talent. It requires courage. It takes imagination. It demands perseverance.

Great sculptors have all of these. They are not intimidated by a large, cold stone. They don’t stifle their imagination. Rather they explore it. They are perseverant. They work long and hard to make great art.

Great teachers, therapists, and parents all do the same.

Tagged as: Childhood Development, Childhood Education, Individualized Education, Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting, Potential of Children, Setting Goals

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Let’s Step Into the Wet Cement

by Mendel

in Childhood Education

I remember as a child I once saw an advertisement with the following line: “A child’s mind is like wet cement.”

It was an ad raising awareness against exposing children to video games and other non-desirable entertainment mediums. The message was clear. Whatever you expose your child to when they are young will stay with them forever. Like a permanent footprint.

We, as children, would often like messing around with wet cement. We would hang out near construction sites, wait till the crew would leave, and then plant some footprints and handprints into the fresh pavement.

It made us feel powerful, leaving a permanent impression for all to see.

Here’s our chance once again. We have lots of young minds around us, lots of wet cement. We can make a mad mess and stomp around in it. Or we can perhaps leave a nice impression in the cement.

You are powerful. Leave a permanent positive impression on a child forever.

Tagged as: Childhood Development, Childhood Education, Childhood Mental Health, Motivating Children, Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting

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The Essence of Motivating Children is Right in Front of You

by Mendel

in Motivational

A week ago I wrote about the seven reasons not to reward children. While you may believe rewards motivate, research actually shows it to have the opposite effect. Children who are promised rewards on the condition of completing tasks end up underperforming and being less successful.

Rewards are extrinsic motivators. The child doesn’t want to complete the challenge. She just wants the jelly bean.

How then can we motivate children without promising them rewards?

Let’s turn to Wikipedia.

Once upon a time, there was the Encyclopedia Britannica. Then there was Microsoft “Encarta” Encyclopedia. Finally, we now have Wikipedia.

Wikipedia cost a lot less money to create than the Britannic and the Encarta encyclopedias. Wikipedia earned a lot less money than the Britannic and the Encarta encyclopedias.

Yet, Wikipedia had and has millions of contributors, spending hours creating content for no reward in return. Wikipedia also has twenty times more content than either the Britannic or the Encarta encyclopedias.

Why?

Because people have a need to be part of something bigger than themselves. People are motivated to get involved in projects that benefit the masses. Giving of ourselves to others is the highest form of altruism, and it makes us feel good.

This is why more than a million people spend hundreds of hours writing millions of free articles for billions of people to use at zero cost.

This is the essence of intrinsic motivation.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia would’ve offered a reward per written word that Wikipedia would’ve never been what it now is. People invested in the project because they decided so. It came from within.

I often sit and scratch my head thinking, how do we create projects and challenges for children that will have the same effect. What can we get our kids involved in, real work that will have a result as monstrous and grand as a free all-encompassing encyclopedia?

If we can find answers to these questions we can put the jellybeans and stickers away.

Motivation will come naturally, from within.

Tagged as: Childhood Achievements, Childhood Education, Classroom Function, Motivating Children, Parenting

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Teach Your Kids a Different Kind of A B C

by Mendel

in Motivational

If you’ve ever been in sales you likely know the famous three words, “Always Be Closing,” from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.

If there’s one rule to be successful at sales, it’s the above A B C. If you don’t close the deal you don’t sell.

What if we were to take the A B C acronym to kids? What would your message, your one fundamental rule, for childhood be?

Here are two that come to mind for me:

Always Be Curious

Always Be Creative

What do you think?

Tagged as: Childhood Development, Childhood Education, Creativity in Children, Parenting

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The Secret to Avoid Being Sued by Your Kids for Parental Malpractice

by Mendel

in Parenting

Why do some mistreated patients sue their doctors while others don’t?

Dr. Wendy Levinson, a physician, researcher, and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto set out to find some answers. She reviewed more than 1.000 audio tapes of conversations between doctors and their patients, and she looked for patterns and similarities in the interactions of the patients who sued their doctors versus those who didn’t.

What she found was astounding. The type of medical mistakes was in no way connected or predictive of the doctor being sued. Two doctors might have made the same mistake, one will get sued and the other won’t.

The single best predictor for future malpractice lawsuits, she found, was how the doctors spoke to the patients. The tone of voice, the amount of time spent with the patient, listening skills, and the way in which information was presented to the patients far outweighed medical mistakes in patients’ decisions to sue their doctors.

Working with kids and raising them is a minefield. There is no perfection. We have made and will make mistakes. Guaranteed.

In this process, it may be wise to take a page from Levinson’s research. Let’s focus on what we can control. Let’s try keeping our voices down, especially when reprimanding children. Let’s try to spend more time with our kids. Lets listen to them more open mindedly.

Parents like physicians make errors. We’re human, and mistakes are ok. Let’s give our kids a reason not to hold our mistakes against us by treating them humanely and respectfully.

Tagged as: Childhood Development, Childhood Mental Health, Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting

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For Best Results, Give Your Child a Goldilocks Challenge

by Mendel

in Therapy Approaches

When Goldilocks wanted to eat, one plate was too hot, and the other one was too cold. The third one was just right, and she ate it all up.

When she wanted to sit, one chair was too big, and the other one was too small. The third one was just right, and so she sat.

When she wanted to lay down, one bed was too hard, and the other one was too soft. The third one was just right, and so she fell asleep.

Had it not been for the just right porridge, chair, and bed, she would’ve gone hungry and tired.

Learning and growing always comes as a result of being challenged. When presenting a child with a challenge or activity always think Goldilocks.

If the challenge you present a child is too difficult you will scare them away.

If the challenge is too easy you will bore them.

If you want your child to be engaged and to progress, the challenge has to be just right.

Tagged as: Activities for Children, Benefits of Play, Childhood Education, Motivating Children, Occupational Therapy

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The Seven Reasons to Avoid Rewarding Children

by Mendel

in Motivational

Rewarding children isn’t all bad. But what Daniel Pink in his book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, calls “if-then” rewards (if you’ll do this, then you’ll get that) usually yields negative results.

He quotes various research studies that show people often underpeform and are less motivated when promised a reward before starting a task.

He explains in detail what happens when people are promised rewards to perform and how such performance is qualitatively deficient from that which comes from intrinsic motivation.

I believe it’s ok to reward children, then I read the following list at the end of chapter 2 of why rewards may be detrimental:

1) They can extinguish intrinsic motivation

2) They can diminish performance

3) They can crush creativity

4) They can crowd out good behavior

5) They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior

6) They can become addictive

7) They can foster short-term thinking

As caregiver of children we are their motivators in chief. We will do anything to help them succeed. Charts. Stickers. Shiny stars. Rewards. Yet, giving “if-then” rewards may do more harm than good.

It might get you better behavior in the short term, but according to Drive it may kill creativity, curiosity, honesty, and overall performance.

Tagged as: Behavior Management, Childhood Education, Classroom Function, Creativity in Children, Motivating Children, Rewarding Children, Self-discipline

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