A few years ago, I attended a seminar for teachers in the Provo school district. It was very interesting and I learned a lot; I even still have the duffle bag and use it often.
I was in charge of teaching letters and phonics to a bunch of little first graders and kindergartners at the time. Many of them were well-behaved, polite, easy going, and a whole bunch of other wonderful things all wrapped in curls and dinosaur shirts and sticky fingers. It didn't take me long before I fell in love with the lot of them.
I did teach a few students who were a little more difficult. Generally, they came from un-supportive homes. At the worst, they came from disgustingly abusive homes and were troubled in more ways than many people knew. These children broke my heart a million different ways for the way they coped. One child in particular had a multitude of emotional and developmental problems resulting from abuse which were only compounded by the reality that, at 8 years old, he was the oldest child in first grade. The fact that his little sister--a sweet, popular child--was also in first grade only made things worse. At his worst, he bit a teacher so badly (through heavy fabric, even) she bled; at his worst, he told lies so people would continue to treat him as inferior; at his worst, he was nearly impossible to teach.
At his best, Julian would let his guard down just enough so you could see glimmers of a normal boy. A boy who did his best to move on and forget how his father treated him so badly, his grandmother had to tell Julian he had died, just so he could have a few moments free of terror.
I think I loved this boy more than all the rest. I thought about him all the time. I wished that he could find a way to break free from all those wild emotions and those sticky, sticky labels, and really begin learning. His life would be better for it, and it was the best way way out of the pit he was in. I don't know if he has ever found solid footing. I hope he has.
I learned many things from trying to teach this boy; not the least of which was the power of positive reinforcement. However, one thing I learned at that conference I mentioned above really stuck with me. The instructor of one of the classes told us about the ten-second approach (I don't know if that is the real name or not) for working with children. When you request that a child does something, you are to address them, make sure they are listening to you, and ask. Then you wait ten seconds for the child to comply. If he has not begun to complete your request, you are to warn them and ask one more time. If he still has not made an attempt after ten more seconds, you are to move to discipline. The idea is that when we ask a fellow adult to do something, we understand that they might first want to take a moment to complete the task they are already doing, such as finishing the page of a book, or emptying the trash. Why couldn't children feel the same way? Also, it gives the child time to decide to obey.
I used this approach a lot in teaching those kids, and it really worked well. What I didn't realize was how well it would work in day-to-day life with my own kids. Often I feel like I have to ask Everett to do something several times before he will comply, but I have found that if I ask him and wait ten seconds, he usually moves to complete the task before I have to ask again. Of course, this doesn't work as well when I ask him to do something like Move Out Of The Street NOW, Buster. But it has dramatically increased the amount of good exchanges we have. The only problem I've come across is my lack of patience! I have a difficult time remembering to wait for him to obey me on his own.
When I attended that seminar, I never thought that what I learned would be useful for my children. But it has, and I wish I could remember more. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there are a host of books I could choose from if I wanted to. But right now we're working on just a few things: my patience, and that if Mom says something, you'd better listen. Wish us luck!
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