Last night Courtney Evenchik and I ran our second workshop in the series based on the book, “How to Talk So Kids Can Learn” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, for teachers at a local pre-school in Cleveland. The topic was “Praise That Does Not Demean, Criticism That Doesn’t Wound”
In the first week of the workshop we had discussed how to deal with student’s negative feelings. At the start of this week’s workshop I invited the teachers to discuss what happened when they used their new skills.
Two teachers shared how they used these skills at home.
Story 1
“I was babysitting for my niece, Kayla. She shares her room with her baby sister. The baby was sleeping and Kayla wanted to go into her room to change her clothing. I told her she could not go in and risk waking up the baby. Well, she was very upset and started to whine and complain. I just said,
“Hmm”
“Oh boy…”
“You really want to go in and change your clothes and now you can’t because the baby is sleeping.”
“You are really frustrated about this…”
She went on and complained a bit more, but then she stopped. It really worked!”
Story 2
“My son did not want to go to school and was complaining about having to go to school. So I said,
“You sound frustrated…”
“It’s hard for you to think about going to school.”
I wouldn’t say he was happy about going to school, but at least we didn’t get into fight and empathizing with him did seem to calm him down.”
We discussed the following:
1. The importance of teaching our students to have a positive attitude.
2. The right way to praise our students so that they have a strong sense of self. (No: Good job! Your the best!)
3. How to admonish children gently and effectively so they can hear you and improve their behavior.
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