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. Read More »
Georgia Teaches Self-Regulation
Despite 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
Yes, 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. Read More »
January 25, 2009
Richly Reinforce Behavior!
We can create the warm, nurturing world we want by richly reinforcing prosocial behavior. We need families, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods filled with praise, recognition, rewards, hugs, attention, laughter, caring, and interest. If we do that we will increase all kinds of cooperation, caring, and effort.
After nearly forty years in the behavioral sciences, doing empirical research and publishing papers in important (harrumph, harrumph) journals, I have a reaction to writing this: that it will seem so loose and unscientific. All you need is love! Sure. Right. That song was written forty years ago, but the world doesn’t seem a whole lot better.
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January 19, 2009
Well Being
Americans feel less sense of well being, according to a recent Gallup poll. You can see the poll results.
The report notes that the Life Evaluation sub-index fell 14.3 points from a high of 47.4 in February to a low of 33.1 in November. The Life Evaluation Index categorizes respondents as either “thriving”, “struggling”, or “suffering”, in accordance with how they rate their current lives as well as their expectation of where they will be in five years using a “ladder” scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where “0″ indicates the worst possible life and “10″ the best possible life. Beginning in April, the number of struggling Americans outnumbered those who are thriving. A key finding from the poll is that regardless of age, gender, income, or marital status, every group experienced a drop in their Well-Being Index score from January to December of 2008.
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January 13, 2009
Acceptance and Healthy Lives
Acceptance is a key to healthy living and loving relationships. While I could cite the science of this to the nth degree, I think illustration is useful.
As I write this I am waiting at the Arizona Cancer Center; it is my 15 month checkup, after the amputation of my right ring finger for what is called, subungual melanoma—a very rare cancer under the fingernail. The Center has only had five cases, and this
is one of the world-class places for the treatment of melanoma.
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Psychological Flexibility
Nurturing environments foster psychological flexibility. People are not rigidly attached to their beliefs and so are tolerant of the things other people do. They are clear about their values and act in the service of those values, even when doing so feels difficult or frustrating. They tend not to criticize or complain about other people’s behavior. Because they are less judgmental, they are less likely to punish or hurt others and more likely to praise, support, attend to, and care for others.
The best example I can think of is the patient mothering of an infant. I watch my daughter-in-law Jen with her five month old infant, Ashlyn. Ashlyn cries frequently and lately has been hard to get to sleep. Jen certainly feels frustration at times. But although she sometimes feels impatient, she continues to be soothing. Thanks to her patient teaching, every day Ashlyn develops new behaviors that are alternatives to being distressed.
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January 6, 2009
Helping Oregonians in a Time of Need
The following was published recently in the Eugene Register Guard.
The severe economic downturn that Oregon is experiencing will affect the psychological wellbeing of many Oregon families. These effects are just as real as the job loss and foreclosures that will result from the downturn. Their impact will be detrimental both to the economically distressed families and to their communities.
Job loss and economic difficulties have well established effects on marital relations and parenting. Oregonians who lose a job will naturally worry and feel sad and anxious. Indeed, these losses change brain chemistry and the immune system for the worse. Many may feel shame and a sense of loss of status. Husbands and wives will become more irritable and conflict will rise. For many families, the result will be divorce, which will further worsen families’ economic wellbeing and their children’s wellbeing. Children of divorce have more conduct problems, psychological difficulties, and academic failure. Many continue to have problems as adults.
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January 3, 2009
Speaking of NON-nurturing Environments
Yesterday’s New York Times has an article about high rates of violence among soldiers returning from Iraq. The article states that “Nine current or former members of Fort Carson’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq.” In an article last January, the Times identified 121 instances in which returning veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan had committed murder. Numerous other instances of assault and rape have occurred.
After much prodding from Senator Ken Salazar, the Army is investigating the problem.
Major General Mark Graham, who is the commader of For Carson said they are “looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming.”
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December 27, 2008
Terrorism, Nurturing Environments, and the Latest Violence in Gaza
Cnn.com reports that at least 160 people were killed in a retaliotory attack by the Israeli’s against Hamas in Gaza.
Dennis Embry and I published the following several weeks ago in the Eugene Register Guard. We will not put an end to such violence until we make use of behavioral science knowledge about why such exchanges occur.
Prevailing views about the “war” on terror are directly contrary to scientific understanding of human behavior. Human beings who are traumatized by attack become highly motivated to counterattack. Yet government leaders in the U.S. pursue a military strategy that pays little attention to these effects. Scientific understanding of human behavior confirms the bumper sticker that says: “We are making terrorists faster than we can kill them.”
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