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"What's The Magic Word?"

I was recently doing a presentation for parents at a preschool and was asked by several of the parents how to help their children learn to remember to say please and thank you. What does not work, in the long term, is to prompt your child when he forgets by saying, for example, "Say that nicely, please" or "What's the magic word?" These prompts don't help your child's long term memory to get the message that polite requests are important. In fact, the prompts just mean that your child has got you into the habit of reminding him. A more useful response is:

"You didn't say 'please' so the answer is no. You can ask me again after dinner (or in five minutes), and I'm sure you'll remember to say 'please'."

" That wasn't your friendly voice (or polite or respectful, or whatever term you use in your family) so the answer is no. In a few minutes you can try again. Probably you won't whinge the next time."

And if your child does not yet know how long it takes for a certain number of minutes to elapse, using a timer is really helpful.

As for "thank you", two strategies are effective. One is to hang on to whatever you are handing your child until he says "thank you", and then Descriptively Praise him for remembering to say it. The other strategy is to reply to a request with, "No, because the last time I said yes (or the last time I gave you a cookie, etc) you didn't say "thank you ". This response will definitely motivate him to take you seriously.

Suzanne Ferera (see profile below)
Vancouver, Canada


Posted by Bian at 08.57, Add Comment
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How Much Should You Give to "Please?"


A mother I know posed the following to her fellow Facebooking mommies:

3 year old son: I wanna watch da monkey.

Dada: We’re eating lunch, Buba. We’ll watch it later.

3 year old son: I wanna watch it now, please.

Dada: After we eat breakfast.

3 year old son: I said “please”...

You: Should he get to watch it (NOW!) or not?

The replying mommies spotted the potential power play right away and offered great advice. These wise women advised against popping in the video lest mom and dad be held hostage by every please ever uttered – from “One more cookie, please!” to “Three more cups of water before bedtime, please!”

Still, if you’ve been working on saying "please" in your home, it is hard to pass up the opportunity to reward the deliberate use of the word. The supportive mommies were hot on that trail, too. They advised thanking the child for saying please, but to following through with what was said the first time. No monkey until after breakfast.

Thanking a child for using the word "please" is certainly an appropriate response and may encourage him to do it again. However, if parents are really interested in motivating their children, a response using Descriptive Praise is the most effective encouragement. Descriptive Praise explains why saying the word is delightful and necessary.

Some parents feel Descriptive Praise is over the top or unnecessary. Children should simply do what is right because they are told. However, those of us who make Descriptive Praise a practice know it is a powerful tool in encouraging good behavior and is significantly less draining than demanding, enforcing, and reminding our children to cooperate.

A Descriptive Praise response in this scenario from Dada to his three year old son might be: “I noticed you said "please". You remembered!” This would be affirming the child for remembering the family is working on saying "please". Or, Dada could say, “Saying 'please' is very polite when you ask for something. You did the right thing.” In this case, this Descriptive Praise encourages polite manners without making "please" the child's all powerful key to getting what they want. There is no need to repeat the fact that there will be no monkey before its time.

Amanda Deverich (see profile below)
Williamsburg, VA
Posted by Bian at 14.15, Add Comment
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Got eye-contact? "Greet Expectations"

One of my favorite pearls of wisdom from Noël Janis-Norton's CEHP seminars is this: "If there is something your child is regularly doing that is bothering you, you probably don't have a rule for it."

So it's been bothering me for awhile that my pre-teen needs a "manners upgrade" when it comes to greeting people. The usual scenario is that as soon as he shakes anyone's hand, his body makes an abrupt turn away to the left and his eyes quickly dart away. Now I grew up in Kansas, which I think might be the friendly capital of the world. Whether I was introduced to strangers or greeted guests or was an invited guest, we were expected to smile, look people in the eye and answer politely while continuing eye-contact.

We've certainly talked about "greeting expectations" with our son before, but what we weren't doing was "Preparing for Success", which is one of the core skills of CEHP. In this case, Preparing for Success is about being proactive and talking through the expectations before any greeting situations. It's so easy to wait until things go wrong and then to react with criticism, but unfortunately it's not effective at changing behavior.

So today I had to take my son with me to meet a client. Before we left, we prepared for success and did the CEHP "talk-through" strategy, where I asked him questions about what he should do when he met my client. He said "Look him in the eye and shake hands." I praised him and said, "That's right, and how many seconds should you hold eye-contact?" He said, "Five seconds". We both agreed that might be too long, but that it was definitely more polite than half a second. We decided that three seconds was about right. I also asked him what he would do if he was asked another question about his age or interests, and he said, "look at him". I agreed, "Yeah, and you might want to look at me when you answer because it's more comfortable, but who will you need to look at?" He replied, "At your client."

Here's what happened. My son shook my client's hand, smiled and maintained eye-contact for three seconds, and he even answered questions politely while looking at him. When we got home, I descriptively praised him and said, "Even though you might have felt uncomfortable, you looked my client in the eye and were very polite. I was proud of your manners." He smiled.

Now the key thing for us to do is to keep preparing for success with"talk-throughs" about greeting expectations and rehearsing these situations. Pretty soon he'll be ready for Kansas.

Laura Runnels Fleming (see profile below)
Pasadena, CA
Posted by Bian at 17.31, Add Comment
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