Hi. My name is Hillary and I'm the mother of two active boys and a wonderful
daughter and I'm going to teach you something that will blow your mind!
Kids act out and misbehave. When that happens parents want to punish them. I
know that I did. Turns out constantly punishing my three
kids made things worse. I learned about Effective Praise and at first it didn't
seem natural and I thought it would give them permission to act out. But, boy was I
wrong. I always want my kids to know I see and appreciate the good things
they're doing. The result of Effective Praise is that my kids act out less, they
have more self-confidence, and they actually like me because I'm not mad at
them all the time. I'll tell you more about that later. The steps to Effective
Praise are. One, show your approval or find a positive. Let your child know they
did something right. You can learn how to do this
even if your child needs to be corrected. Two, describe the positive behavior.
Described specifically what they did right. Once they know they have a better
idea of what to do again. Use the skill of Observe and Describe on the Smarter
Parenting website to help you. Three, give a meaningful reason. If it's meaningful to
your child they will do it again. Four, now this one is optional, give a reward.
Sometimes it's okay to give a reward to strengthen the connection between
positive behavior and good outcomes. You'll know when it's appropriate. Let's
watch two families. "Oh, good job Peter."
The mom acknowledged what Peter did and that's a good first step. Because the
praise was so vague, Peter doesn't know if he did something well or if his mom
is just in a good mood. Lots of parents give general praise like, "good job,"
"fantastic," "great," "keep up the good work." That type of praise isn't effective.
Let's watch again. "Peter, I'm so glad you shared your cookie. Because you shared
your cookie now you know your brother can have some cookie and he'll share his
toys with you." The mother did a great job she described what Peter did well
and explained why doing that behavior is important by using something that was
meaningful to Peter, playing with his brothers toys. Let's watch another
example. This time we're going to see a dad praise his daughter even though the
task isn't finished. "Great job cleaning up the car after your friends made a
mess of it. You're still gonna vacuum, right"? "Well,
I've been a little busy cleaning everything else up, so yeah."
The father praises and then drops the ball. He didn't give a reason why it was
meaningful to his daughter that she should clean the car. Let's watch again.
"Wow, good job cleaning up the trash. Looks like you just had a little vacuuming
left. You know when you clean up the car nice I'm more likely to let you borrow
it. Come get me when you're done." "Okay." "Well? So Katie and Megan wanted to go to
the movies tonight and I was wondering..." "You wanted to take
the car out." "Yeah." " Well, you did a great job vacuuming, so yeah, you can take the
car out." "Yes!" This time the father did all the steps. He recognized what was hard
for her. He described what she did well. He gave a reason why it was important to
her, and also gave her a reward. She earned being able to use the car
next time she wanted. It may not seem intuitive to praise your
children when it seems like there's nothing to praise, but, let me share my
experience with you. Learning to find what my children did right and praising
them has made all the difference in my kids success and their love for me. It's
easy to fall into a pattern of criticism. I used to feel like my job as the parent
was to point out all of my kids mistakes, so, that they would somehow appreciate my
fault-finding and fix it. For me
criticism felt natural and genuine. In truth, it was destroying my relationship
with them. As I looked for the things they did right, and praised them for it,
it changed my attitude about my kids and the way they felt about me. I had to
learn to open my mouth when they did good things and give up on nitpicking.
They started doing the things I wanted them to do more often.
At first my efforts to Effectively Praise felt phony to me. Finding the good
in my children was hard at first simply because I wasn't practiced at it. The
more I Effectively Praised them the easier got. Now, it's very natural. I
changed from a critically focused mother to a praise oriented mother two years
ago. Everyone in my family is grateful for the change of heart--especially me.
We are a loving, close family now. Learning to Effectively Praise was the
best thing that happened for me as a parent. Use Effective Praise! It changed
everything for me in my family and I know it'll help you too. Visit Smarter
Parenting for materials, resources, and strategies to help you with a skill of
Effective Praise