| | | | Teaching Children Through Actions Instead of Words |
By Seth Mullins
Many approaches to disciplining or educating young children fail because they don’t take into account one crucial fact: during these tender years, children learn not through reasoning bur rather by imitating. This is why all our attempts to sit down with a three-year-old, for example, and explain why his or her behavior is unacceptable is likely to only bring confusion and frustration to the child. Kids generally want our approval; they want to live up to our expectations and make us proud, but they aren’t developed enough to understand those expectations on an intellectual level. They are, to a large extent, simply modeling their behavior after what they see going on around them.
Here’s a simple example that will illustrate how confusing our messages can be to children when they’re expressed strictly on a verbal level. Imagine that we have a two-year-old boy with a tendency to spit; we, naturally, want to wean him of this habit. There have been many dinner table conversations where we’ve explained that spitting is inappropriate and rude; it’s not funny, and we’re not happy to see him do it. Our child is aware enough to associate our displeasure with this particular behavior.
Then one day we’re walking along the sidewalk with our two-year-old. He notices an old piece of gum in the cracks of the concrete and immediately stoops to pick it up and put it into his mouth. Seeing this, we respond by shouting: “Spit that out! Right now!”
Imagine how bewildered our hypothetical boy will be by this mixed message. We’re demanding that he do something when he’s already learned that this action makes us unhappy with him. Children this young aren’t able to understand subtle nuances of meaning yet. What words of ours they do understand, they take quite literally. If spitting is bad, then why are we telling him to do it?
Because the minds of young children are much more attuned to learning by doing rather than by thinking, we’ll have more success with curbing behaviors that we don’t like if we creatively steer them in a new direction instead of admonishing them with words. When faced with inappropriate dinner table manners, we can suggest, “Let’s see how well you can eat your potatoes” instead of shouting “Stop that!” Also, by minimizing the stress that we lay on unwanted behaviors, we give them the message that acting out is not a good way to get our attention. They will, hopefully, soon lose interest in the game and be tempted to try out other, more constructive activities that we propose to them.
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