A Cure For Mean Words: Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies

If you call a kid out for insulting another they will often say either that they were just kidding or that they didn't say anything.  The insults tend to be used at just the right moment when they are closer to the victim then you are... and they say it just loud enough for the victim to hear it but not you.  This makes addressing the issue difficult at times.

On top of that, kids often don't truly understand what it feels like to be at the wrong end of an insult.  They do, however, know that when they insult another child that they get attention (and power) from it.

Do you remember as a child laughing at that moment that one kid called another a name, even though you knew how wrong it was.  It is similar to when a child sees an adult get hurt and laughs.  It is almost uncontrollable, like a nerve reaction.  No matter how uncontrollable the audience's reaction is... what it does is feeds the ego of the name caller and results in more of the same.

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I remember hearing a story at overnight camp about "Warm Fuzzies" but that wasn't the first thing I thought of when I had a class of five year olds saying not very nice things to each other.

Generally speaking my group had been quite nice to each other but they had recently hit a rough patch and I wanted some new ideas.

I consulted with my coworker who had been working with kids for far longer than I had, and was always full of good ideas.

Here's what she said to do?  Make a "cold prickly" and a "warm fuzzy."  I asked her about it and she explained what that meant.

Change for the Better

Close your eyes and think... do you know someone who makes your life challenging because of their personality? Often people that we feel that way about are people that we have to be around all the time: bosses, family members, classmates, coworkers, etc. Here is a technique that could change that forever.  This is a post (see link below) that I wrote almost a year ago. It's a technique from the behavior class that I took, but unlike most of the techniques that we learned, this one can be used with any age. To quote the post "It can be done with any person you know from about age 2 (maybe 1 1/2) up to 102." This method is easy to do and has an almost magical result.

Sticks & Stones May Break Bones But Words Can Last Forever

Names.  Not the ones we are given, but the ones others give us.

Names and labels...  Horrible things.

A topic near and dear to me.  Very.

Kids are parrots, I think we can agree on that.  What is more, I noticed when I was a teacher that young kids think their parents' (and other trusted adults') opinions are the law of the land.  Because of this, I feel it is important that we model "Person First Language" and show our kids that all individuals are worthy of being treated with dignity and equality.

Two moments I will never forget:

When I was a teacher, a sweet little 5 year old in my class said she thought that people "with black skin" were bad people.  I remember the torturous feeling inside of me as I looked for words to say to her.  I didn't want to stand by silently and I didn't want to contradict her parents, who had taught her this.

My other memory was when I had my little cousin along with me as we were shopping for a new fridge, she was 5 at the time.  Down the aisle from us was a man using an oxygen tank on wheels.  He walked slowly down the aisle pulling the tank along.  I stood there for a moment praying that my little cousin wouldn't say anything rude.  She looked up at me and said, "Do you think we should move to the next aisle so that that gentleman can come down this aisle?"  I smiled (totally impressed) and said, "I think that is a very nice idea, sure."

You hold the remote control to your child's belief system; what are you going to do with it?

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.