The Essential Baby Stuff - Part 2 - Harvey Karp

image from Amazon.com

I want to continue with last week's topic of "things that every hospital should teach new parents..." meet Harvey Karp.
Every generation has a baby guru: Spock, Leach, Sears, Brazelton etc...
I'm just glad that Harvey Karp was the one to listen to when we had our first baby, and he still is today.
His ideas are easy, they make sense and they work.

The Essential Baby Stuff - Part 1 - Skin-to-Skin

When I hear that someone is about to have a baby there are two things that I really want to share with them.  Then the passive side of me holds me back because I am not one to get in someone's face and tell them how to do things.  I tend to share these techniques only when asked.  These techniques are seemingly not widely taught and yet I can't imagine having not been taught them.

Change the Label... Change the Behavior

Tonight I was going to post about something that is not behavior related because I don't want to define my blog as a blog that is only about behavior methods.  However, I have been having trouble writing the post that I was working on so I am going to go ahead and share another behavior method... the coolest and easiest one.
We learned this method on the second night of my behavior course.  It can be done with any person you know from about age 2 (maybe 1 1/2) up to 102.  Try it; you'll love it!

Here's what you do.
Make a list of your family members, your class, coworkers or any group of people that you are around on a regular basis.
Now, write down the first word you can think of next to each name.
These terms are not suppose to be carefully chosen.  They are not suppose to be kind or nice, just true.  Don't worry you can burn the list later.  In order to do this you need to be completely honest with yourself.

The WHY of Behaviors

What is behavior?  Some might say that behavior = being bad.  But look at it this way: all behavior (particularly for babies and little kids but often for big kids and adults too) is communication.  I know it doesn't sound like it at times but all they are trying to do is tell you what they want/need.  Again, I am pulling directly from the course I took on behavior.  This was so eye opening to me when we learned this.
All behavior shown by babies and little kids (and often others) is to either get something or avoid something.  It is that simple.  Once you figure out what they are trying to get or avoid you have something tangible to work with.