Contents
Description of the situation
My middle son Sasha is 6 years old. He is a very smart and developed boy. He likes to spin around me, help, do something together. At the same time, it is very difficult for him to maintain order on his own. We have a list of morning and evening tasks, in which we mark completed tasks with stars. He appreciates these stars, he wants to get more of them, but he does not put effort into this.
He can easily do these things on his own, but he does not. I have to remind him — and then he turns on the «Durik» mode, as if he does not understand anything. The look is absent-minded, absent, the movements are slow, the look is bored (he often has such a state, in response to some of my requests). Even a simple request (for example, to pick up a stub thrown on the carpet) he fulfills only after a few reminders. My instructions work very poorly, I have to switch to shouting in order to achieve at least some result. I must say that Sasha behaves differently with dad — he obeys from the first word.
The older brother copes with the same to-do list on his own without any reminders and scandals.
At the same time, Sasha also has another state — active, adult, conscious. It arises in some random way, and then he can, at his own request, do a general cleaning of the apartment, while responding to any request and offering help himself.
How can I learn to put it into this active state? How to achieve independent performance of elementary affairs?
Recommendations
The main request of the client is to achieve obedience, i.e. so that the child fulfills his duties and the instructions of the mother. The means for this (intermediate result) is the active, concentrated state of the child (live eyes, general body tone, clear movements).
This question can be approached from different angles. Firstly, there is a psychological solution, and there is a business one. Secondly, there is a solution to today’s problem, but there is a solution for the future.
Psychological decision is to accept the situation as a given. This is work with the feelings of the mother and her attitude to the situation: to unfinished business, to a lazy child, to the mess in the apartment. In the current moment, the Good and Quiet Presence exercises will be useful. In the future, you need to work with the beliefs and levels of Dilts.
business decision is a result-oriented decision. It can be achieved with four styles: as Enforcer, Ducky, Tactician or Manipulator.
Security man’s style — this is a direct look, restriction of freedom and a commanding voice that cannot be disobeyed. First of all, you need to establish eye contact — the child’s attention to the mother’s words will immediately increase. If necessary, the child can be hugged tightly, so that he does not run away. After that, in a firm voice that does not allow for objections, voice the demand.
To train the voice, it is useful to do the “Haaa” exercise several times a day: inhale with the stomach, then exhale sharply with the muscles of the diaphragm, while the sound is loud, directed upwards, to the top of the head.
Silovik’s style also involves the application of sanctions for non-compliance or disobedience. (It is better that the sanctions are useful, such as exercise).
In the future, you need to think about the question, should the son obey his mother in other matters more complex than the performance of his duties? What tasks, besides cleaning, should mom pay attention to? Is it acceptable to give the son the freedom to make decisions in some matters? In which? How will this affect the son’s performance of his duties?
Dushka Style — make routine things interesting. In the current moment, this means doing things with him, turning it into a game. You can come up with a story about a dragon who, with his fiery breath, will burn all the toys that are on the floor … or drag a naughty child to the top step of the stairs … or about microbes that crawl out of the cores to get to a person and eat him …
It is important not to get carried away here, because in the future it will be difficult for the son to perform uninteresting tasks, even if they are necessary.
Style Tactics — to use auxiliary means for raising a son. Transfer the function of reminder and control to the older brother: appoint him as the main and responsible for Sasha’s results.
In the case when you need to collect the attention of your son right now, gymnastics for the eyes is suitable: ask the child to follow the movements of his mother’s hand or marker with his eyes.
In the future, in order to develop concentration and discipline, Sasha should be given to sports, preferably martial arts, where the coach will be a strong and significant figure.
Manipulator Style combines all of the above methods used implicitly. In addition, you can intensely praise your son for completed tasks, exclude conflictogens from your speech, use Plus-help-plus, positive suggestions, and increase the amount of bodily contact with your mother.
Experience with the above recommendations
The first thing I did was to increase the amount of physical contact with the child. Every morning, when he wakes up (and has not had time to mess up yet), I not only greet him, but hug him, stroke him, and say kind words. When I want to convey something to a child (to ask or make a comment), I first hug him (fix), stroke his head, and then gently and firmly say, looking into his eyes. This immediately produced results — more obedience, less conflict, less irritation on my part.
Command voice began to train. At the moment it is a big area of growth.
It often happens that I say something to a child, but he does not hear. Even a simple question, potentially pleasant and beneficial for him, can be perceived absently. To concentrate, I tried to move my hand in front of the child’s eyes so that he would follow. Works! Now I use this method regularly, both with Sasha and with my eldest son.
During the dinner. Sasha wanted to eat buckwheat with milk, and I gave him a small plate. He is outraged. I lean towards him and in a firm, slightly joking voice ask, “I’ll put it in a deep plate for you, okay?” He continues to be indignant that the plate is not the same. Doesn’t answer the question. I snap my fingers and move my hand in front of his face, «Follow my hand with your eyes.» He watches, not understanding what his mother is up to. After half a minute of exercise, I repeat the question again: “I’ll put it in a deep plate for you, ok?” Sasha doesn’t answer, whines a little. I continue the exercise for another half a minute, and another, and another … Suddenly an epiphany comes, he answers, “Coming!” and smiles.
In addition, to resolve the issue, I have established sanctions for failure to fulfill their duties. For each unfulfilled task — 2 minutes of standing in the corner in a state of calm presence. For special offenses (deliberately throwing garbage) — 5 minutes. All agreements are fixed on paper.
She put her older brother in charge of everything. Sasha does not do it, I punish the elder Andrei, and he punishes Sasha.
On the very first evening, everyone accumulated 8 minutes of penalty. I put them in different places, one outside the door, the other in the middle of the room. I recorded the time on the stopwatch and watched them stand by myself. At first, I had to correct a lot: my arms and legs twitch, my body strives to fall to the floor, my tongue constantly speaks, my face grimaces. It was very difficult for Sasha to stand upright, he resisted with all his might. I had to add penalty minutes — then things went better.
A week later, I noticed that for the eldest son, a calm presence is too easy, I will try more difficult exercises: push-ups or a chair against the wall. For Sasha, this task is quite difficult, he is very indignant, especially with the addition of penalty minutes, we will work on it.
In addition to these methods, I used suggestions to the fullest: both suggestions to perform some kind of action, and positive suggestions about the qualities of character.
“When you do your morning chores, don’t come up to me so that I kiss you …” — “Why?” — “Because you won’t have time, because you still have a lot of things to do …” (things were done in 1 minute instead of the usual 15).
A couple of days ago, I tried another way: to assign part of the responsibility for the younger sister to Sasha: he was assigned to make sure that Yulia brushes her teeth in the morning and in the evening. The first results are encouraging: Yulia brushes her teeth more often, Sasha reminds Yulia (at first, gu.e., and then, when she bursts into tears, he calms her down and explains calmly).
The described point methods have already given good results:
- My attention shifted from being annoyed to solving specific problems.
- Sasha does more things than before.
- Both sons do regular exercise.
- I have freed up time that used to take to supervise the children.
In the future, I plan to work more closely on the format. Now there are different situations and they need different formats of communication with children, up to different formats on different days of the week. In order not to get confused in this myself, and to convey to the children, I will think over the formats for specific tasks and write them down on paper.
Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov
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