Positive reinforcement

What is the use? Or is there a use?

As studies have shown positive reinforcement is, like praise, rewards and other stuff like that an external motivator and with that not giving the child much intrinsic motivation, which is in general the best motivator a person can have. Intrinsic motivation will keep a person doing what they do (learning) and trying to become better at it. When there is praise, grades or whatever used, the child will work for the praise, grade or whatever, but not for the fun of it learning. What you can see is when a child is interested in something they will keep at it and learn more and just dig into it.
When a child is getting praise, they will not go for the topic, but for the praise and with that the topic becomes uninteresting.
Children love please their parents and teachers, therefore they will do what is necessary to please them, i.e. get a good grade, but do they remember anything from what they learned afterwards?
I do remember getting great grades for things, but don't remember much of what I learned in school in order to get those grades. I do remember being totally fascinated about a topic, which was not taught in school, so I went to the library and dug and dug, I was 12 and still remember the photographs.
Okay, I know.... this sounds like only unschooling is good. I wont say that, coz some kids love it in school so there is no need to meddle with that. But make sure that the children know that its not about the grades, that you as a parent are not interested in the grades, but in what they learned. You can do that by ignoring good and bad grades, but asking about what they learned and what they liked about it and all that stuff. Just by showing interest.

And this goes for other parts of parenting as well. Why would it be a good job if yr child makes a drawing, its not necessarily a good job. It can also be a crappy scribble job, but there is no need to say good or bad. Just say that you see scribbles in red and blue. Ask about the feelings or motivation that made your child make that drawing.

When I go to the playground I heard a load of "Well done" 's all the time for nothing.
When a child goes into a playground, what is the use in saying "Well done" when they go on the swing and swing. Isn't that normal for a child to want to do and have fun?
Or climb into a climbing rack? Isn't that just fun and stuff?

Hitting

Recently there was a thread on one of the forums I participate in. There were questions on how to handle hitting of a child that was not even 1 year old yet.

This was my reply:

Infants and young children basically have no clue what the consequences are from their actions. They have no clue when they hurt you or not.
So its the parents job to let the child know when things hurt, whether they hurt the parent or another child or a pet. But as humans have much more complex brains as animals its obviously not as simple as to train a dog into certain behaviour. Even though with my dog I am sensitive and look at her cues whether she even gets the point - but that is an entirely different topic

So how can we do this with little humans with complicated brains. First of all think of how you would want to be treated in case you ended up in a culture where you had no clue what they were saying and they had totally different idea's on what's normal and what not.
Young children / infants don't fully understand every word we say, but they are on a level of understanding emotions and sounds. Therefore show them it hurts and use the right words and sounds with it. Also explain how it can be done differently and what you would like her to do. Just keep talking, showing and redirecting. Its not going to happen overnight, but it will happen.
Simply keep respecting your child as a fellow human being and not put them on a secondary place, which is unfortunately quite common in the western world.

Example: My 9 mos old has no clue when she hurts the dog by pulling the dogs hair. So I stay with her when she is within reach of the dog, often she goes there. Both the dog (10y) and I are very patient with her. The dog usually keeps laying there - when I am not around she disappears - and when she grabs a hand full of hair I gently loosen her hand and tell her that that will hurt the dog and show her that the dog loves being stroked.
Slowly but carefully her grip has become less hard on the dogs hair.

She also head butts us, pretty normal for young children. My partner sometimes has a hard time handling it because it can really really hurt, so he hands her to me, while he regroups himself, but we keep being gentle with her.I have also handed her to him at times. And then we simply explain to her that it really really hurts.

Another thing to realize with things like pulling hair is that the hair grabbing is a rudimentary left-over from our evolution (no offence meant to the creationists here). In those times our babies had to hold on to us on our furs, like with the apes. Therefore they still keep grabbing our hair, but as we don't have a lot of body hair left its usually our heads and some kids also hold on to the ears or nose, not to hurt, simply to feel safe.

So, back to the topic hitting. It is al right to not feel happy about it. The trick is to handle it gently and keep repeating and redirecting.
You may have to repeat it a LOT of times, she is still a baby you know.

Basically in my whole parenting thoughts I start with how I would like to be treated if I didn't get that and with that I realize that a lot of parenting ideas out there, are in my view mistreatment as its not very respectful to the child.

Other than that, I think, that basically you don't really have to do anything more than say OUCH or what ever, coz sooner or later they will get the point that OUCH means that you really don't like it and somewhat older children hate doing things that are not right, they really want to be part of the group / family they live in and really do not want to be odd. So just simply by not hitting your partner and letting her know you don't like it it will stop, but it could last a bit.

My grandson...

.... is one year old now and needs to go to a daycare centre now because he needs to be socialized, he is old enough now.

Ugh..... has he been living alone then since birth? No social contacts at all?

Those type of comments always make me wonder how people think. Why would a child have to be put in an environment they are not used to in order to socialize? Don't they have parents to socialize with, no siblings, cousins, grandparents, etc.?
How about the people in the neighbourhood?
Why put a child into an artificial environment like day care or school with children of the same age group when real life doesn't do that. You don't learn socializing with older people or younger people that way, or just dealing with normal life situations.
I keep being surprised about those odd comments.

Quick soup recipes

Today I read about a tomato soup recipe that was quick and healthy. So I followed the link and indeed a great healthy recipe.

Here it is : Quick creamy tomato soup

Have fun making it.

Last years conversation

Last year at Halloween there was a party organised here, which I attended. I was pregnant at the time and this resulted in a couple of interesting conversations.

One of the topics was co-sleeping. I was told that it was not good to do that as one of people the at the party had done that with her youngest son and now he was not able to live alone, so when he had to go to another country with the military he took his girlfriend alone.
After a bit of talking I realized that this whole issue had nothing to do with the co-sleeping. The mother of this child had worked full-time as she was a single mother and the little boy only had his mother at night. Therefore it was the best thing she could have done for him considering the circumstances. This had made him to be quite a stable and healthy adult. The only thing was that he preferred not being alone, which is not that strange, as humans aren't made to be alone, they are supposed to live in groups anyway. So definitely this could not have been attributed to co-sleeping and considered unhealthy. Unfortunately his mother did not agree with me.

The other topic was dummies and blankies. I do not want my children to be attached to a dummy or a blanky, as these are substitutes for a non-present mother. I want my children to be attached to me. The reasons for that are that I want them to be able to build up healthy relationships with humans and not have them have relationships with plastic or fabric, as we are humans, so the most healthy relationship is to have one with a human.

The next topic was carrying my baby and the way I parent. I could not continue doing that I was told, I wondered why. Well.... a young baby needs to have a room of its own and sleep on its own and needs silence to sleep and stuff.
Well... not my baby, my baby is going to be part of our family. My baby can sleep in a carrier or on the bed or in the livingroom or so. Wherever we are. There is no need to all of a sudden send my children to school because there is new baby or so. I was very very surprised by the thought that I would have to all of a sudden change my parenting style, just because there is a 4th coming, when I have managed with 1, 2 and 3 children I surely can manage to keep doing what works for us with 4 :-)

And to be honest, it has worked out very well.

Waiting till the next meal.....

we don't do that either. Gives too much stress in the house because the low blood sugar gets the emotions into high. Useless.

So what do we do instead?

We always have finger foods ready. Fruit, veg., bread, pieces of cheese. Stuff like that. We keep it on the lower shelf of the fridge and whenever someone wants something they take something without restrictions.

I do announce when I start making lunch or dinner, so that they can choose to hold out a bit until that is ready, or just take a few bites so that they can hold out until the meal is ready.

If you don't finish...

... your meal, you will not get any dessert!

So what is wrong with this statement?
Everything!
Dessert is used as a reward, which means that getting no desert is a punishment. Useless & respectless.
Why force a child to eat more than the child feels comfortable with in the first place, that in itself can breed obesity, which I doubt any parent wants that.
Besides, what's the beef anyway?
Why not take dessert for starters?
Why not make dessert the most important meal?
If you make sure dessert is about as healthy as the meal there is no issue with it at all.
I refuse to use that. My children eat from each course what they want, sometimes they skip dessert as they prefer the starter or the main course.
We don't need that type of stress at our dining table.

Sceptical? Why not try it for a few weeks and see if they still feel dessert is the most important?

That actually only happens when its used as a reward, then the focus goes to the dessert, not the rest, it all of a sudden makes the rest of the meal totally uninteresting, while when there is no stress about it, the whole meal is interesting. Really, just give it a try.

Have fun!