What is the difference between a warning and a choice?

A warning tells of upcoming danger. It is an implied threat, exerting one’s power over another. Here are some examples of warnings.

- “Sit down or I am calling your mother!”
- “If that happens again you’re not going on the field trip!”
- “Knock it off or I am going to send you to the back of the room!”
- “I have told you six times either quit blurting out or you are going to the Time Out Room!”

WARNINGS are usually delivered out of anger or frustration. They direct the child to do something or else they are in big trouble! Although they may work for some kids, they fail for others. They often cause feelings of defensiveness and create power struggles because they encourage to children to REACT instead of THINK. They often evoke thoughts of “You can’t make me!”

Offering CHOICES recognizes the right or power of an individual to freely use her/his own judgment. They avoid setting up power struggles between the adult and child. They cause people to THINK instead of REACT. They help teach children responsibility. Here are some examples of choices.

- “You can either sit with your friend and do your work, or if you continue to talk you will have to sit over here. You decide.”
- “I am having trouble teaching. Your choice is either to participate in the discussion and listen to others or if you continue to make noises you will have to go to the Time Out Room. I hope you decide to stay.”
- “Your choice is either to do your work now when I can help you or do it during recess time. You decide.”
- “You have a choice to keep this a small problem or make it a big one. I hope you can keep it small.”

Learning how to offer choices takes a lot of practice and rehearsal.

Conflict is an inevitable part of teaching, whether it’s an elementary school classroom, a high school classroom or even at the college level. Why? People see things from different points of view and advocate for themselves in many different ways. Teachers need to become more comfortable with managing conflicts in ways that are helpful to students while still maintaining appropriate limits and boundaries.  

So how do we do this delicate dance?

Send us your ideas…and stay tuned!

We find that parents and teachers often share the same dilemmas though from different perspectives. This week a teacher confided to us that she often leaves school asking herself, “What am I doing wrong?” Parents have also expressed a similar sentiment.

As parents and teachers we definitely have very trying jobs. We’re often exhausted and discouraged. But we wonder about the helpfulness of her question, “What am I doing wrong?” This reflection seems to judge, to pre-assign blame to herself. It suggests that WE are the problem.

A more helpful question might be, “What could have been done differently?” or “What could be done in the future?” These questions don’t cast blame. They simply ask us to view the situation from another perspective, almost as a third person or a researcher might do.

How wonderful if every teacher and parent continually evaluated their interactions with children in order to strive to be the best they can be. We think it’s so important to be open to change AND to be nice to yourself.

We’ve just returned from a wonderful afternoon with the teachers at Lake Superior Elementary School. It was an exhilarating session with a group of very committed teachers and staff working hard to meet the needs of their students. They brought up some new questions that we had not heard before. We are also excited at the prospect of some of them registering for our graduate independent study video course of MORE TIME TO TEACH. We’re eager to join them in delving further into classroom management ideas. In the meantime, we invited the faculty and staff to post other questions here, at our ChildSense blog, so we can offer responses as well as others who might have ideas on related topics. We hope to be hearing from many of you.

Last night we had an opportunity to present to a group of parents in the Twin Cities. The topic was setting limits and boundaries for children. It was an exciting evening as we once again experienced the wisdom of parents and the challenge of parenting.

People noted the importance of parenting, while lamenting the lack of training they receive. It was stated that for many of us, the only training we receive is to recall how we were parented and that in many ways parenting is different than when we were growing up. Some of the differences sited this evening were technology, issues of safety, information overload, media, and over scheduling. 

Another difference discussed was how families are less autocratic than they used to be and how kids today are not being told to do whatever adults tell them to do. We think it’s a good thing that kids are being taught that they can be part of family decisions and that they should not do whatever any adult tells them to do. However, this does create some changes in how kids need to be parented these days. If we’re going to teach kids to question adults, guess who they are going to practice on? 

That’s right–US!! So as parents we need to be ready to respond to their questioning and boundary pushing. For many of us, knowing that kids are practicing these life skills on us, in the safety of our homes, we can step back a bit, emotionally, and not always assume our kids are trying to create problems. Author Robert Mackenzie describes this as children doing their “research.” More about this in another posting.

Thank you to those parents who were so generous with their comments last night. As usual, we learned a lot from them.

Over the years one of our most popular parenting talks has been SETTING LIMITS & BOUNDARIES: HOW TO SAY “NO” TO YOUR KIDS. Audiences seemed to identify with the message of the need and difficulty of staying firm. When we act out the skit about a son being late for his spaghetti dinner, parents recognize the challenge of holding to the arranged agreement in the face of escalating responses designed to change parents’ minds.

We embarked on a new journey several years ago to turn this popular presentation into a video for parents so they could review the concepts of staying firm at their leisure. Knowing nothing about this process we enlisted Tom Lieberman (who has gone on to producing the popular movie SWEET LAND) to direct our first video product, SETTING LIMITS & BOUNDARIES: HOW TO SAY “NO” TO YOUR KIDS. The VHS and DVD versions of this video has been warmly received by parents and positively reviewed by publications such as BOOKLIST, LIBRARY JOURNAL and VIDEO LIBRARIAN.

Now we’re beginning the next leg of this journey: on-line training. In conjunction with www.learningindemand.com we have completed converting this parent training video into a parent training web course. Parents can sign up to take this course on-line and receive a certificate of completion after completing the various sessions. We think it’s a wonderful way to bring this important message to parents and those who work with parents.

Jeff and I have been working together since we taught at the same elementary school. We realized that we both had an interest in presenting our ideas and experiences to interested parents and ChildSense was born. Over two decades later we have expanded our interests to include educators. We have had the opportunity to present to groups of people all over the country. Several years ago we tried to turn some of our material into a book but realized that our strengths seemed to be in live presentations rather than the written word. From that realization we began working on creating a video for parents on the topic of setting limits for children, one of our more popular presentations. Building on the positive reviews and success of that project we began working on our next project, a video kit for teachers. We now have expanded ChildSense to include these several products, a website, this blog while continuing to offer seminars and other presentations to parents and educators across the country. Watch this space for more postings from and about ChildSense. Please let us know what you think of it and what you would like to see here.

Jon Halpern, co-founder of ChildSense, has worked in the fields of psychology and education for as long as he can remember. As a product of Minneapolis public schools, he began working for the Mpls. Park Board and tutored children while in high school. Professionally he served as a psychometrist for the Washburn Child Guidance Center (where he met his wife, Sally), an intern for Park-Nicollet Mental Health department, and a consultant for Community Intervention, Inc. Jon was also an elementary school teacher for 15 years in public and private schools and currently serves as the Lower School Counselor for The Blake School. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Hamline and Saint Mary’s Universities. Jon is extremely proud of his two grown children who have begun their careers in similar helping professions.

Jeff Fink, the other co-founder of ChildSense, has a passion for travel. His most interesting travels have taken him to the Philippines, the birth place of his wife, Alex. Jeff has been an educator for over 30 years. He has served as a regular and special education teacher as well as a Behavioral Consultant. Jeff currently teaches courses and supervises student teachers at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has written a manual which was published by Diane Gossen. He also provides seminars and produces videos for parents and educators with Jon Halpern through ChildSense. He is looking forward to sharing his thoughts with you through a blog.