Personal Example; Questions; Choices.

Personal Example

It is easier to use social example, gentle guidance, associated positive experience, to avoid or dissipate bad habits and anti-social behaviour in young children, than to organise consequences or disciplines to correct behaviour in later years when it is hard work and difficult to ensure improvements. It is important that adults helpfully support their young children in the early years to avoid bad habits and reactive anti-social behaviour. Then later the child’s own growing conscious discernment is less likely to be overwhelmed by established behaviour patterns and the weight of associated experiences, feelings, fears, and anxieties. For example a little girl would slap or hit people when she felt unsafe with their mood or behaviour. This action did not appear to involve genuine aggression or any specific desire to hurt or provoke retaliation. However, she often got defensive and aggressive responses, which exceeded the intensity of her own behaviour.  Thus, this antisocial behaviour was creating examples of aggressive anti-social interaction which encouraged the young child to feel she needed to develop levels of aggression and defence that would protect her in the future. Her level of cognitive development was not able to consider all the related elements of her situation at this young age, her social responses were limited to a simple survival level. Interestingly, this little girl’s cosy, comfortable, intimate sharing time with her family (adults and older children) was normally sitting together watching TV and computer games and this may have adversely influenced her sensitive disposition and disturbed the development of her social confidence.

There has been much debate about how TV violence adversely affects the behaviour of those that watch TV.

‘After being presented with five volumes of scientific data showing that sex and violence shown on YV and film had a significant effect on society, American ABC network executives issued a statement denying that televised imagery affected real-world behaviour in any way.’ [Health Wars by Philip Day; Credence publications’ 2001:217]

It does not take all that much intelligence to conclude that the extremely high cost of TV advertising can only be justified by the resulting success this media has on influencing the public viewers. These lucrative advertising campaigns in themselves prove the powers of influence that are in the hands of the TV and film producers. How can anyone believe that the general public and especially children and teenagers are not also influenced by the presentation of violence and sex? The author has witnessed that films and even the news can encourage children to develop fear related strategies and behaviour patterns because their consciousness has not developed to a level that can perceive what is presented on the screen as separate from their own everyday reality.

 

‘In the UK, we are now watching 26 hour of TV a week, twice as much as in the 1960’s. Almost all our youngsters between age 7 and 18 are now classified as ‘inactive’> Why are we surprised that the statistics for heart disease, cancer and other serious illnesses continues to grow before our eyes?’ [Health Wars by Philip Day; Credence publications’ 2001:216]

Ask a Question:-

Ask a simple empathetic question related to the child’s immediate circumstances can help the child consider the practicalities of present participation rather than abstract issues related to past and future. An appropriate and gently presented open-ended question can also illustrate to the child that the carer is offering a supportive listening space rather than a judgemental or interactive response, e.g. ‘How can I help you?’; ‘What would you like me to do?’; ‘Would you like me to………?’ Alternatively an adult may respond to a child/person’s distress as follows: ‘Is there anything that would be good for me to know about?’; ‘Is there anything that you have not told me?’; ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘What do you feel most uncomfortable about right now/at the moment?’

Most people would want to talk to the child/person about the disruptive behaviour. However, in most situations the child who feels safe and confident enough to talk about an issue or situation is unlikely to be expressing themselves through disruptive behaviour. Disruptive behaviour is about unresolved inner confusion and conflicts of interest. Therefore questioning children about the reason for their disruptive behaviour would usually cause additional stress and anxiety within a situation that is already beyond what the child/person can manage. The carer needs to consider carefully the value of any form of verbal interaction. A silent and still special sense of timely companionship and may therefore be better than any spoken communication. Spoken communication is usually associated with some form of response. However, given some time the carer may consider what OpenQuestion might be helpful to the situation.

Open Questions

How are you feeling? Can I help you?
What would you like me to do?  Would you like to tell me about……..?  

• Generate consideration of environmental choices.
• Encourage creative thinking and imagination
• Relate to social and environmental opportunities
• Invite personal and social responses sharing choices, ideas and the integration of past, present and future.
• initiate spontaneous communication from genuine interest and/or social interaction.

Who gave you that lovely hat?  My Granny gave me this hat she knitted it for my birthday and it is really warm. It has a soft cosy lining…….

Does your dog like to play?    Would you like anything extra?

Are those shoes difficult to get on?

When what, when, who, where, which, and how are followed by ‘are’, ‘did’, or ‘can’ they encourage personal responses and enquiry.

What are your favourite animals?  Who did you see at the park? What can you see?

 

Closed Questions

What is your dog’s name?    Which is the biggest?     What is the time? Etc

• Relate to specified knowledge and experience.
• Encourage logical thinking and memory skills.
• Often require the description of factual knowledge and/or adult initiated ideas and directions.

Yes-No answers can generate the ‘I don’t know’ feeling /response.

• No answers tend to discourage personalised and/or imaginative responses.

No answers can present as: a need to control, a negative judgement, a resistance to social interaction and communication, unnecessary interference, or unwanted interference.

• Yes answers can be more easily expanded into a personalised and/or imaginative responses.

Is that …..your blue hat? Yes, it’s my blue school hat.

My mum said it had to be blue but I wanted a pink one, I don’t like the dark colour it is sad…..

Is your dog called Tom?   Do you want extra peas?   Did you put your own shoes on today?

Even the more open style of what, when, which, where, who, why, questions can be very limited when the word ‘is’dominates the question. ‘Is questions inevitably calls on a simple yes or no reply.

Questions loaded with judgment are not helpful. ‘What’s the matter with you!!? ‘that was a stupid thing to do wasn’t it !!?’ ‘your screaming is making me angry’. It is important that the child is not blamed for the other person’s emotional upset. ‘I’m feeling angry and right now I need to find/have a quiet space.’ Sharing in a simple and honest way about our feelings can be comforting to the child because s/he can recognise that the emotions they are sensing in the other person is being acknowledged with a sense of personal responsibility by the person concerned.

Children are often more aware of our inner feelings than we are ourselves.  A young child’s safety may depend upon how well he can assess the adult carer’s mood and emotional disposition.  The child’s happiness is directly related to the happiness felt and expressed by his carer.  An unhappy adult who is denying his/her unhappiness is unlikely to be able to sustain the happiness and wellbeing of the young child. Intimacy demands a level of authenticity beyond that needed for everyday living.

Give choices   

• Would you like to a or b? This level of simplicity is particularly helpful for younger children
• Would you like to a or b? or (c) which is a third choice that of presenting anything else that might be suitable to both of us. (Ideally this third open ended choice is for those over 9 years, however, in some circumstances a younger child of 7 to 9 years has the necessary information and experience to think up a very suitable third option that the adult may not have already considered.

Steiner schools present that young children should not be given the burden of responsibility presented by the intellectual activity required when evaluating choices.

• Giving calculated choices would not normally be presented to children under seven. Because it requests a level of understanding and responsibility that may cause stress and confusion. In order to establish a sense of safety and reassurance young children need to perceive the adult carer as capable and competent to supervise with responsibility for their care.
• Children 7-9 would normally address choices as a question of what experience they would like to gain at that particular time. Children at this age generally do not consider an assessment of possibilities and consequences.
• Children 9-11 can make more calculated choices from a personal perspective along with a personalised assessment of possibilities / consequences for themselves.
• Between 11-14 children learn to consider other peoples perspectives and possible influences upon themselves and their own choices. Now choices can include a consideration of consequences not only for themselves but also others. These new social skills are practised alongside a passionate social focus on peer group interaction.

 

Choices can be helpful because:-

1. They can direct the child into a voluntary activity of conscious thinking.
2. They can give control to the adults who are organizing the choices and conditions the child must except with each respective choice

E.g.  ‘You can choose to play something that does not disturb the other children or you can play your boisterous game in the garden’.

1. Every set of choices can be tailored to suit individual circumstances and situations accommodating different dispositions, changing circumstances and a wide variety of practicalities.
2. Choices give children a positive alternative to inciting their own changes through disruptive/anti-social behaviour.
3. Choices encourage children to be flexible.
4. Choices encourage children to organize activities that will support their own inner motivations and purpose.
5. Choices simplify situations and help children find their way through complex circumstances that may be too hard for them to intellectually accommodate.

 

Adverse  Influences

Our responses to choices can be adversely influenced by emotional disruptions related to traumas of Separation,Exclusion and Isolation. [See pages 69-73]

Exclusion is associated with a state of spontaneous negative responses. As if, a no response has to be prerequisite to any real acknowledgment and consideration of choices and feelings. Alternatively, negative responses can be used to establish that there really is a choice to say either Yes! or No! These negative systems of self-protection are not unusual and commonly appear in many aspects of social inter-action as an obstruction to authentic and conscious consideration of a particular situation of opportunity.

Those children and adults who habitually respond in the negative are often presenting a belief that negative responses are the most empowering way for them to express themselves. Certainly we can all understand that a No response is heard all the louder than a Yes response. A yes response is often associated with passive agreement rather than an individual’s personal choice. A reflective response to a negative answer can help the speaker to feel respectfully heard and may encourage further consideration and subsequent negotiation. The negative responder is certainly seeking to be heard and wanting to avoid passive and impersonal agreements.

Neale Donald Walschin his book ‘What God Wants’[ Hodder Mobius, 2005:156- 158] quotes Pope John Paul11 Rome July 28, 1999:-

‘Eternal Damnation is never initiated by God, it’s the self-imposed punishment of those who choose to refuse God’s love and mercy……..’No’ said the Pope; Hell he announced, does not exist as a place , but is a “situation in which one finds oneself after freely and definitively withdrawing from God, the source of life and joy.” The Pope hereby eliminated the fear of hell as a theological means of influencing the morality of the people and the evolution of spiritual God consciousness. ‘If humans are One with God, there is nothing to learn , there is only to remember what has been forgotten.’