Critical Comments Flow Freely from Parents
Posted: Thursday, January 21, 2010
by Kathy Slattengren
Priceless Parenting
Do you make more positive comments or negative comments to your children? If you're like most parents, you make a lot more negative comments than positive ones. In her book, Building Moral Intelligence, Dr. Michele Borba writes "studies reveal that the average parent makes 18 critical comments to his child for every one positive comment."
Sadly the research clearly indicates that parents easily fall into the habit of paying more attention to misbehavior than good behavior.
Getting Attention for Misbehavior
Whenever you find yourself yelling at your kids or nagging them, you're focusing on the behavior you don't want. Statements like these focus on children's misbehavior:
- "Stop whining!"
- "Don't look at me that way."
- "You're wasting time - now get going on your homework."
- "Quit your fighting!"
- "Don't lie to me."
One example comes from a mom in one of my parenting classes who was complaining about how her 2-year-old son was driving her crazy with his screaming. Whenever he was frustrated, he would scream at the top of his lungs. Typically she would stop whatever she was working on, go find him and help him resolve the problem. She found it especially irritating when she was busy preparing dinner and he kept interrupting her with his screaming.
After reflecting on the situation, she realized the attention she was giving him for his screaming was actually encouraging him to do it more often. This was the opposite of what she wanted! Her new plan was to periodically go find him when he wasn't screaming and compliment him on his behavior. She also decided to ignore his screams of frustration. This new approach worked far better!
Paying Attention to Good Behavior
Since paying attention to our children's good behavior doesn't seem to come naturally to most of us, it's going to take effort to do this. We need to specifically watch for our children to behave well and then acknowledge it.
There are many ways to reward good behavior:
- A light touch on the shoulder, a quick back rub
- A smile, hug or kiss
- Saying "Thank you."
- Kind words, words of encouragement
- "I noticed that you put away the puzzle after you were done playing with it. That was great."
- "I heard you practicing your trumpet. It's really sounding good."
- "I appreciated how you held my hand when we crossed that busy street."
- "Thanks for helping set the table."
- "I love how well you're sharing the markers."
Give Attention to Behaviors You Want to Increase
Children crave attention and when they can't get positive attention they will go for negative attention. Our job is to make sure we're giving them so much positive attention that they don't need to misbehave to get attention!
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Funny how the simple things often elude us, isn't it? Very good article.
Thanks Joyce! It is very easy to get into the habit of pointing out what's wrong instead of what's right with our children's behavior. The idea of noticing what they're doing well is a simple concept and yet it can be quite challenging to actually do!
Thanks for the information, Kathy. We all look back and rue some of our behavior toward our kids.
Excellent article Kathy. I wish all parents of young children would read this. It's sad, but children often become what they've been told they are. You tell a child they're slow, lazy or stupid often enough, and that's exactly what they'll become.
Thank you for your comments Jack and Brianna. When parents actively work on making positive remarks to their children, they are often amazed at how much better their children behave. I like the saying "Always look for the best in someone and both you and they will find it."
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