Wednesday, February 25, 2009

There's power in being positive

No, I'm not talking about those people who go around saying "Have a nice day" and always seem to have an insincere smile on their face. I'm talking about being positive with your child, for a refreshing change. All of us who are parents are all too familiar with those moments when your child does something you didn't see coming, usually in public, and we long for the floor to open up and swallow us. For those of us with spectrum and ADHD kids, this is territory that we learn to deal with, all of us a little differently. I've always been from the school of removing the child from the area, and dealing with it either at home or someone away from the general public. Happily, the Nurtured Heart Approach is giving me some tools to deal with these situations much more comfortably, and maybe even lesson them so I won't have to deal as much!

You see, in this house we have adapted a zero-tolerence to negativity. Not a zero tolerance to consequences for inappropriate behavior; instead we have taken a vow not to get sucked into the big, vapid vaccum of the scowling, yelling, begging, bargaining, bribing, lecturing, door-slamming brand of "discipline". We have basically vowed to erase these ineffective strategies from our lives and instead substitute something that seems to be taking root, growing, and actually working- being positive.

I think that overall our society is very negative. Just look at the news. Sure, some "feel-good" stories are thrown in for human interest, but the lead stories are always negative, doom and gloom type stuff. People who complain get lots of attention. Those who "go with the flow" or actually dare to praise someone or something are forgettable. To be sure, this attention is of the negative kind (of course), but it's still making a statement like "I'm being acknowledged- I matter! People are listening to me!"

Think of how that translates to our kids. If the only time they are getting BIG TIME attention from us is when they are misbehaving, this is gonna become the vehicle by which they define themselves. They think they get the most bang for their buck when they are bad. Think about how animated and "in the moment" you are when you are mad. Compare that to how sedate you are when spending "normal" time with them or even praising them. Even if we try to go over the top when giving them positive feedback, it somehow seems fake or too scripted. (like the overly-positive person described above).

Those of you that know Sam have seen that he is one of those kids that feeds into negative attention. Many times in the past he's expressed how he can't wait to tell someone how badly he did that day in school, or what he broke or disrupted. Clearly he is looking for the big reaction such revalations usually generate. In the past, I've felt pretty helpless in these situations, wondering how to break the cycle and turn things around.

So that's what we are doing, breaking the cycle. Making an effort to observe Sam in his day to day activities, make specific comments about what he is doing and how it contributes to the kinds of things we want him to do. We've seen a decrease in "problem" behavior overall in the last couple of weeks, an increase in his independence, and he's even been observing and commenting positively on the things that Tom and I do!

Even without any observed differences in Sam's behavior, I still would be feeling good about this approach because of the way it makes me feel about my parenting skills. I no longer feel helpless when confronted by the kinds of doubt I had when I wondered how I could help Sam get over the hump of feeling so negative about himself. I know that I am actively creating situations for him to succeed, and pointedly down-playing the ones that are not so successful. He still gets a time out when he has crossed a line, but now the time out is meant more like a break from creating successes. He's learning that in order to get back to being able to receive positive feedback and get connected with us, he has to serve his time out well, then get back in the game. I feel so much better knowing that I don't have to waste my time doing all those disipline things that never worked with him. No more yelling, and then feeling like crap after doing it.

Nothing is perfect of course, but I'm so excited about the change this approach is bringing to our family.