A quick load with some theory...
I already told I work with children with very bad behaviour problems. Mostly caused by a combination of factors within the child AND the parents AND the environment.
Our way of working with these children is based on cempetence-based methods. We start with the (little) things the child can do. We work with positive attempts of the child. And believe me! sometimes this positivim is very well hidden within the child
Most of these children are always told what the could NOT do, they had their share of negative critisism.
And it really makes a lot of sence when I tell the parents "just think about being a little child and the people surrounding you, always tell you what NOT to do and only point out the things you did WRONG, how on earth is this young child going to figure out what he SHOULD do if nobody tells him what that is!!!"
It sounds pretty logic but many people learned themselves to pay much more attention to all the things that are bad....
so how can anybody be happy when you only focus on the things that go wrong
So we work competence based, meaning that we start with positive things.
It also means that the balance between positive feedback and any correction should be about 80-20. So for every correction that is needed (as in hiting one another needs to be corrected because it's never acceptable) you need to give the child 4 praises.
It also means that we explain to a child why certain behaviour (kicking, shouting, running in the house) is not acceptable. If we tell a child it's better to sit straight on his chair (and not saying DON'T climb on your chair
) because he will get hurt if he falls off, the child is likely to obey because now he understands why he can't climb on the back of the chair.
It also means that the children get 2 learning-points with which they can earn a reward. These learning points are translated in a positive sentence, such as: whenever someone talks to me I stand still, I look at this person and I give a polite answer. This way children can learn positive behaviour in little steps (shaping!)
We also try to prevent misbehaviour to structure our situations as much as possible. If we know two children are going to fight when they are sitting next to each other while eating, we go and sit between them
And later when the child has learned to be polite to this other child we will let them sit next to each other. This way you save the child from a bad behaviour. Many of our children have a very low self-esteem, so preventing is better than expose them to another negative situation.
We also use a lot of humor. To let the children relax, create a nice sphere but also to let the children know that we do not hate them. Most children think everybody hates them
So making a laugh about some behaviour releaves the tension of the situation, so the child doesn't feel the need to be agressive or angry.
And of course we use structure, rules and clear consequences of they break or ignore the rules. Most of the children need this to feel safe, mentally safe.
I think competence based working is also my way of working with my horses
I start with positive behaviour, intentions!
I use rewards.
I set up rules, but only to keep myself and my horse safe (personal space, traffic)
I use humor
I let my horse know when he's on the right track, lots and lots of praise!
I teach them in small steps, little by little I shape their behaviour.
I think I should wright a book about competence based working with horses
I'm just joking, I think clcickertraining is equal in many ways to competence based work
This week I will try to read al your reply's, I'm in a bit of a hurry right now
Yvonne