The first thing we need to do to ensure human wellbeing is minimize biologically and psychologically toxic elements in people’s environments. In each of the roles in your life—parent, spouse, worker, policy maker, friend, neighbor—if you minimize your own and other people’s exposure to toxic events, you will be laying the groundwork for a more peaceful, productive society with much less crime, drug abuse, depression, and conflict. (more…)
Archive for February, 2009
Minimize Toxic Environments
Friday, February 13th, 2009Georgia Teaches Self-Regulation
Friday, February 13th, 2009Despite all that we have learned about human behavior in the last fifty years, it is surprising how much the process of reinforcement is still overlooked. For example, developmental psychologists like Mary Rothbart have been making enormous progress on understanding the development of self-regulation.
But developmentalists still tend to think more in terms of some sort of natural emergence of a behavior than in terms of the way that the environment shapes behavior. I think that makes it harder to see the practical steps we can take help children learn self-regulation. So here is a description of the shaping of self-regulation behaviors through reinforcement.
Georgia Layton, is the Director of the Early Education Preschool, which provides classrooms for children with developmental disabilities as well as typically developing children. (She is also my wife!)
I recently asked her to explain to me how she helps children develop the behaviors that developmental psychologists like Mary Rothbart have come to call effortful control, and more generally, self-regulation. The patience, subtlety, and precision of the process makes me fearful that I cannot describe it clearly. But here goes.
Teach Your Children Well
Friday, February 13th, 2009Yes, it is a song by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. For the longest time, I thought of it in terms of teaching all the cognitive and motor skills a child needs to succeed. But recently I have become convinced that the first and most important thing that we need to teach our children is about emotions and values. It is only when children learn to manage their emotions and come to value others’ wellbeing that they can succeed in learning the social and academic skills they need to lead happy and productive lives.
My wife, Georgia, directs a preschool. She is a highly skilled teacher, trained in direct instruction, with years of experience in teaching concepts. However, only recently have she and I gotten into teaching about feelings. Her preschool adopted the PATHS Preschool Program which was developed by Celene Domitrovich and Mark Greenberg and have been introducing emotion coaching techniques that John Gottman has written about. They are teaching children about their emotions and ways to deal with their own and others’ emotions.
When children become upset, it’s an opportunity to help them learn about their emotions. Rather than trying to quell the emotion, teachers label it in a warm and empathetic way that matches the emotion of the child: “Oh, you are feeling angry because he took your truck!” Often this sympathetic approach helps calm the child. At the same time that it teaches them about what they are feeling. Rather than learning that it is bad to feel bad, they learn that it is normal to feel bad. Then teachers help children figure out what they are going to do next. In the process they learn that noticing their feelings can be information that guides them to take effective action. (more…)