An Introduction to Positive Discipline

Transcription

1 An Introduction to Positive Discipline Time: 2 hours Developmental Competencies CFAM234-03: Understands the goals of effective discipline CFAM234-04: Knows how to implement and apply non-physical behavior management and discipline techniques: behavioral expectations appropriate for the age, capability, and cultural background of each child CFAM234-05: Understands when children are emotionally distressed and knows to respond with a focus of care, attention, and skill building CFAM239-07: Understands the need to: teach children to manage and deescalate anger; teach skills to express emotions in ways that are respectful and healthy. CFAM333-03: Able to use nurturing skills to stimulate early learning and development with children in care. Talking about Competencies An Introduction to Positive Discipline is an in-service level training for foster and kinship caregivers. This introductory training will help caregivers learn the basic parenting approach of the Positive Discipline model by providing several group activities and discussions based in real life scenarios. Positive Discipline focuses on teaching valuable social and life skills to children instead of using any form of punishment, rewards, praise, permissiveness or logical consequences. Positive Discipline focuses on helping participants learn how to use effective discipline that is kind and firm, creates connection before correction, is empowering and encouraging to children to believe in their own capability, and keeps the joy in caregiving. After completing this introductory course, participants are invited to attend the full 15 hour Parenting the Positive Discipline Way training series. Materials and Preparation Paper / Flip Chart Dry Erase Board Markers Tape 1 of 17

2 Handouts Asking vs Telling Mistaken Goals Chart Session Flow Step Delivery Method Time 1 Activity - Family Name Card Group Activity 10 minutes 2 Introductions (participants and content) Group Activity 20 minutes 3 Activity Two Lists Group Activity 15 minutes 4 Activity Asking vs Telling Group Activity 15 minutes 5 Positive Discipline Tool Cards Group Activity 10 minutes 6 Activity Iceberg (Belief Behind Behavior) Group Activity 15 minutes 7 Parents Helping Parents Problem Solving Steps Group Activity 30 minutes 8 Closing and Invitation Discussion 5 minutes Classroom Training Trainer, welcome the group to the training. Provide very brief instructions that we are going to get started by created Family Name Cards and then will do some introductions when this is done. Then begin the Family Name Card activity. OBJECTIVE: ACTIVITY: FAMILY NAME CARD To help participants remember names of other group members and to have a picture of the children they will be helping. COMMENT: The Family Name Card is a way to bring the children to class, and is a fun way to remember names. MATERIALS: 8 ½ by 11 (or larger) paper or tag board 2 of 17

3 Colored Marking Pens An example of your family name card Optional: Photos of the parents and their kids, and glue if trainer can ask participants in advance to bring these items DIRECTIONS: 1. If possible, in advance, invite parents to bring small photos of themselves and their children to class. For those who do not bring pictures, they can still do the activity by drawing pictures of their children. Some participants who will take the full class later may want to add their photos at home so they can bring their name tags to the full Parenting the Positive Discipline Way 15 hour course. Please let participants know they have this option if they want to make a more lasting name tent. 2. Show an example of your family name card and then give the following instructions: Fold the tag board in half so it will stand by itself on the floor. (During class, you will place it in front of your feet or on the table.) 3. Draw or paste a picture of the parent (or parents) on the half of the name tent that will be facing the group. Leave room for descriptive adjectives. 4. Draw or paste pictures of their children on the other side, in order of their birth. Leave room for their age and three descriptive adjectives. (Note: when name tent is folded, the group will see the participant s name, and the participant will see the name of their own children right in front of them, while seeing everyone else s names on their tent). 5. Use marking pens and write at least three adjectives that describe you and each member of your family after the pictures large enough to be seen across the room. 6. For those signing up for the full 15 hour course: please bring your family name card to each class. (After the time is over for name cards, move into introductions and then finish the Family Name Card activity) 3 of 17

4 INTRODUCTIONS Trainer, after the Family Name Card activity time is over, welcome the group to the training. Thank the group for being foster caregivers, whether that be licensed, unlicensed relative or suitable adult, tribal caregivers or wherever they are from, thank them. Thank the group for standing up for the children in our shared community and for taking the time to learn different ways to meet the needs of the children in their care. That is not easy to do. Thank the group for their energy and effort in making the name tents. Explain this is a way for participants to bring their children to the training with them, and also to keep pictures/drawings of their kids and some descriptive words at the forefront of their minds while doing this training. Explain this is a very experiential training and unlike many other trainings, this will not be a training where a trainer is standing and lecturing the whole time. There will be some lecture, but much of this training involves the adults role playing or talking to each other in small or large groups about the content. That can be hard for some people so we want folks to loosen up, keep their eyes on their children, and together we can make the most of this time together and send them away with some concrete skills to support the children in their care. This is an introductory course and will help them decide if they want to sign up for the full 15 hour course. Introduce Positive Discipline by stating: There are two kinds of parenting programs out there. Those that depend on external locus of control (punishment and rewards) that seem to work temporarily; and those (like Positive Discipline) that teach an internal locus of control to do the right thing when no one is looking. Trainer Introduce yourself, using your Family Name Card, and tell the group why Positive Discipline has meaning for you. Without further ado, invite participants to introduce themselves and their children using their family name cards AND to share what they hope to gain from the workshop. If needed, ask for a volunteer to write what they want on a flip chart. 4 of 17

5 TWO LISTS: CHALLENGES AND LIFE SKILLS OBJECTIVE: To create a list of present challenges and future goals to help parents see how the challenges they face can be used to help them understand what skills they need to teach. MATERIALS: Two Sheets of Flip Chart Paper labeled: Challenges & Characteristics and Life Skills Masking tape. DIRECTIONS: 1. On the paper with the heading Challenges ask participants to brainstorm a list of all the behavior challenges they experience with their children. 2. Let suggestions come from members of the group. If they don t mention something you would like to add to the list, it is okay to add it when they are done. Make sure not listening and back talk are on list for future activities.) 3. On the paper with the heading Characteristics and Life Skills ask participants to brainstorm a list of qualities, characteristics, and life skills they think children need to be capable, confident, contributing members of society? Invite them to include every quality they hope to help their children develop. 4. After they have brainstormed both lists, the trainer can briefly review the highlights and then offer additional behaviors that have come up from previous classes and ask the group if there is anything else they want added. 5. Post the group brainstormed lists on a wall so participants can refer to them during the other parts of the training. Explain how in the full 15 hour training, many of the items listed on these sheets are used often and referred to often to ensure the training is focused on the real life challenges these specific caregivers are experiencing. During the full training, we will refer to it often at the end of activities by bringing people who role- play children to the list to see what they learned (as children) during the activity. COMMENT: In this class you will learn that all challenges can be used as clues for what you need to do to help children develop the characteristics and life skills that will help them become capable, contributing members of society. 5 of 17

6 Now you can get excited every time you are faced with a challenge because it offers an opportunity to help children develop the characteristics and life skills as the next activity will demonstrate. ASKING VS. TELLING To demonstrate how a challenge (such as not listening from the Challenges List) can be used to teach valuable social and life skills. MATERIALS: Asking Parent and Telling Parent comments printed (and laminated) in advance. Characteristics and Life Skills List from Two Lists activity. Comment: Sometimes curiosity questions can be one simple question (motivational), and sometimes questions that invite responses (conversational) to help children explore the consequences of their choices (as opposed to imposing consequences on them). DIRECTIONS: 1. Trainer, prior to this training, be sure to cut up the Telling and Asking parent statements (at the end of this curriculum) so that each strip has a numbered statement in the Telling (A) and Asking (B) voice. 2. To being this activity, provide brief Parental Information based on the workbook, Lesson One, pages 6 and 7 which is also included here: When parents say their children don t listen, what they mean is, My child doesn t obey. Wouldn t you rather have cooperation and motivation from within than obedience from fear, or from a child who is learning to be an approval junkie? When children don t listen, it could be that you are lecturing or making demands that create classic power struggles. You say, Do. Your child says, Won t, in words or by actions. If you complain that your child doesn t listen, could it be that you aren t modeling what listening is all about? o Children will listen to you AFTER they feel listened to. 6 of 17

7 When your child tells you something, do you listen, or do you explain, get defensive or lecture? o Do you try and talk your children out of his or her feelings? o Do you try to fix your child s feelings or solve the problem? o Try listening. o Try validating your child s feelings. o Try asking Conversational Curiosity Questions (discussed in a moment) STOP TELLING o Parents tell their children: What happened What caused it to happen How they should feel about it What they should do about it o The root of education is educare, which means to draw forth. o Your lectures go in one ear and out the other. Stop trying to stuff in and then wondering why your children tune out. o Conversational Curiosity Questions instead of telling, try asking: What were you trying to accomplish? How do you feel about what happened? What did you learn from it? What ideas do you have to solve the problem or prevent it from happening again? (be sure your questions come from your heart and fit the situation, and that you are truly curious about what your children feels and thinks). 3. Ask for one volunteer to be a child, and the other class participants will volunteer to be parents who will stand in a line. Everyone participates. Explain that participation will look like reading off a card, or being the child and noticing what you are thinking, feeling, and deciding. 4. Give each parent will be given a strip that has both telling (A) and asking (B) statements. Some participants will be given more than 1 piece of paper if you have fewer than 9 parent participants. Let them know there will be two rounds. During round one, the parents will make the A. statements (telling), and during round two they will make the B. statements (asking). 5. Let the volunteer child know that he or she will walk down the line and listen to what the parents have to say. He or she is not to say anything in response to the parents just to notice what he or she is thinking, feeling, and deciding (about what to do). 7 of 17

8 In other words, the child will stand in front of the first parent in the line, listen to the statement, notice what he or she is thinking, feeling, and deciding, and then go to the next parent. 6. After the child has listened to all 9 Telling statements, process with the child by asking, What were you thinking, feeling, and deciding when hearing the statements from these parents? 7. Take the child to the list of Characteristics and Life Skills list and ask him or her to see if there is anything on that list that he or she is learning (usually none of them). 8. Now ask the child to walk down the line again, stopping in front of each parent to listen the parents B statements. Again, he or she is to notice what he or she is thinking, feeling, and deciding (about what to do) when listening to each statement. 9. Again, process with the child by asking, What were you thinking, feeling, and deciding when hearing these statements? 10. Take the child to the list of Characteristics and Life Skills again and ask him or her to see if there is anything on that list that he or she is learning (usually most of them). 11. Process with the parents by asking what they were thinking, feeling, and deciding during both rounds. 12. Invite a discussion from the group about what they learned from this activity. 13. Point out the physiology of asking vs. telling. Notice what happens in your body when you are given a command (telling). Your body may stiffen and the message that goes to your brain is resist. Notice what happens to the body when you are respectfully asked a question. Your body relaxes and the message that goes to your brain is, search for an answer. During the process of searching you are feeling respected, capable, and are more likely to cooperate. 8 of 17

9 INTRODUCTION TO POSITIVE DISCIPLINE TOOL CARDS Most Parents have a difficult time giving up punishment and/or permissiveness unless they know what else to do. A hallmark of Positive Discipline is the many parenting tools (taught experientially) that help children learn self-discipline, responsibility, cooperation, and the belief that, I am capable. These skills and beliefs serve a child for the rest of his life, in every relationship. OBJECTIVE: To give parents a glimpse of the many Positive Discipline tools they will be learning. MATERIALS: A deck of Positive Discipline Tool Cards DIRECTIONS: 1. Pass out a deck of Positive Discipline Tool Cards. If you have a small group, each person may have several cards. 2. Invite them to take just a minute or two to think about how one of the cards they received could make a difference in any relationship in their lives: children, spouse, friend, co-worker, etc. 3. Have them get into groups of 2 or 3 and share with each other. 4. Ask if anyone would be willing to share with the whole group. 5. Ask if anyone found a tool card they would like to try to solve a challenge they might be experiencing with one of their children. 6. If no one volunteers, ask for a volunteer to share his or her card with you. You ll be able to look at the list of challenges and find several that the card could help solve. Share how the tool card could work for at least one challenge. 7. Let them know that during the class they will be learning and practicing as many Positive Discipline Tools as possible. ALTERNATIVE: Choose one challenge from the Two Lists activity and ask how many have a card that might be effective to use for this challenge. They should be able to find several. 9 of 17

10 ICEBERG Activity Belief Behind Behavior Positive Discipline is one of the few parenting programs that deal with the belief behind the behavior the motivating force behind behavior. Most parenting programs deal only with the behavior. This behavior is unlikely to change unless the behavior is dealt with in ways that help a child shift his or her beliefs. Positive Discipline classes and workshops include many experiential activities that provide parents with tools to accomplish the above, and to increase the joy in parenting. Positive Discipline is based on an encouragement model instead of medical model. A medical model asks, What causes this behavior, and looks for an illness, a label, a disease and a pill to fix the problem. An encouragement model asks, What is the purpose of this behavior, and how can we use encouragement to change the purpose? The purpose of the misbehavior is almost always a mistaken way to find belonging and significance. When children feel discouraged about belonging and significance, they find mistaken ways (misbehavior) to seek belonging. Positive Discipline tools help children feel encouraged so they seek belonging through socially acceptable ways. Let s start by taking a look at one situation involving misbehavior. In this example, the tip of the iceberg is the child s behavior. (Trainer, use the printed picture or draw an iceberg on flip chart or a dry erase board) 10 of 17

11 Here s our scenario: Suppose you have a four year old child whose caregiver goes to the hospital and bring home a brand-new baby. What does the four year old see going on between mom and the baby? o Time and attention What does your child interpret that to mean? o Mom loves the baby more than me. What does the four year old do in an attempt to get the love back? o He may act like a baby himself, cry a lot, ask for a bottle, and soil his pants. When caregivers approach this 4 year old solely from his behavior (child soiling himself when he previously was potty trained, crying a lot, etc.) there is the potential for power struggles, feeling challenged, angry and annoyed, bodily responses of anger and frustration, etc. This will often cause parents to react in a certain way when they view the child as being resistant or challenging. When caregivers approach this 4 year old based on the beliefs behind the behavior, our bodily reaction is entirely different. This child isn t being willful or disobedient. This child has the belief that mom loves this baby more than me and sometimes our kids are acutely aware of their feelings that mom loves this baby more than the foster kid. The 4 year old s behavior is tied to this mistaken belief that a new baby means you will love them less, and they are likely to respond with whatever tools they have, i.e. misbehavior to force you to pay attention and notice them instead of the baby. As a parent, when you focus on the belief behind the behavior: Are you likely to engage this child in power struggles? (Probably not.) Are you likely to feel angry and annoyed? (Probably not.) When we approach this misbehavior as an opportunity to explore and express the need for belonging and significant for this child, we are not focusing on behavior, but rather on beliefs. Our discipline is able to be effective and focus on the need for belonging and significance within your family. 11 of 17

12 Parents Helping Parents Problem Solving Steps Each of the 6 sessions in the full Parenting the Positive Discipline Way includes a section called Parents Helping Parents Problem Solving Steps. We are going to do a quick demonstration for you today. Each participant will need a copy of the Mistaken Goals Chart or a copy can be provided for each group or table. Ask for a volunteer Invite the volunteer to sit next to you and explain what the Parents Helping Parents Problem-Solving Steps are. (And how he or she is now a co-teacher with you to help others.) Ask for a scribe to write the volunteer s name, spouse s name, and the names and ages of all the children and other household members on a flip chart. Ask the volunteer to give a newspaper type headline of the concern (just a few words). Ask the group for a show of hands of those who have had a similar concern or felt the same. (This is encouraging to the volunteer and you can point out how many people he/she will be helping.) Ask the volunteer to describe the last time the problem happened, in enough detail, so the group can get an idea for how to role-play the problem. To help the volunteer focus on specifics, ask, What did you do and say? What did the child (or others) do and say? And then what happened? Ask the volunteer, How did you feel? If he/she has trouble finding a feeling (or says, frustrated ), show the Feelings column on the Mistaken Goal Chart and ask him/her to choose the feeling that comes closest. Ask the group, How many of you have felt the same? The volunteer and the group can now find the mistaken goal in Column One and the belief behind the behavior in Column Five. Point out that this is just a working hypothesis and move quickly to the next step. Ask the volunteer, Are you willing to try something new that may be more effective? Set up a role-play. Invite the volunteer to role-play the child (or, in some cases, offer the choice to watch). Ask for volunteers to play each part, starting with the lines they heard during the description of the problem. Advise that they be the part instead of acting the part. (Include volunteers to play people who might have been in another room.) Stop the role-play as soon as you think they have had time to experience feelings and decisions (usually less than a minute). Process by asking the role players, starting with the child, what they were thinking, feeling, and deciding (to do) as the people they were role- playing. Ask the group to brainstorm suggestions the volunteer could try. Be sure suggestions are addressed to the scribe at the flipchart, not to the volunteer, so the scribe can record all suggestions. For ideas, invite the group to refer to the last column of the Mistaken Goal Chart, and/or the Positive Discipline Tool cards, or suggestions from their personal wisdom. 12 of 17

13 Ask the volunteer to choose one suggestion to try (even if he/she claims to have tried all). Bring back the volunteers to role-play the suggestion the volunteer chose, with the volunteer playing him/herself (so he or she can practice) or playing the child if a punitive suggestion is chosen (so he/she can experience the child s reaction). At the end of the roleplay, process the thoughts, feelings and decisions of each role player, starting with the child. Ask for a verbal commitment from the volunteer to try the suggestion for one week and report back to the group. Ask the group for appreciations for the volunteer. (What help did you get for yourself by watching this? What did you see that you appreciate about the volunteer? What ideas did you see that you could use?) CLOSING Thank the group and the volunteers for participating. It is never easy to get in front of a group and role play or speak honestly about something as personal as our parenting. We are hoping that you will want to continue this journey of learning additional parenting techniques, and learning from other parents, caregivers, and foster parents in our community. Let participants know we have the 15 hour class, they can register online. 13 of 17

14 ASKING PARENTS (B) vs TELLING PARENTS (A) 1-A Go brush your teeth or you ll have a mouth full of cavities. 1-B What do you need to do so your teeth will feel squeaky clean? 2-A Don t forget your coat. 2-B What will you take so you won t be cold outside? 3-A Go to bed now! 3-B What is next on your bedtime routine chart? 4-A Do your homework now. 4-B What is your plan for doing your homework? 14 of 17

15 5-A Stop fighting with your brother (or friend). 5-B How can you and your brother (or friend) solve this problem? 6-A Put your dishes in the dishwasher. 6-B What did we decide, at our family meeting, to do with our dishes when we have finished eating? 7-A Hurry up and get dressed or you ll miss the bus. 7-B What is your plan for catching the bus on time? 8-A Stop whining. You are driving me crazy. 8-B How can you talk so I can hear you? Draft Curriculum Template 15 of 17

16 9-A Pick up your toys or I ll give them to children who don t have any toys. 9-B What is your responsibility when you are finished playing with your toys? Draft Curriculum Template 16 of 17

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