Skill 2: Remembering the behavior
The second skill that children need to master to be able to behave in the way we want is that they need to remember the behavior that is wanted or unwanted. It seems easy to us to remember to say excuse me after we burp or to not run around stores touching everything that looks nice, but that’s because we’ve learned these rules solidly. Children are still learning them and in addition, they don’t quite see the rationale behind them like we do. Children don’t notice the dirty looks by clerks in stores.
Most of the behaviors adults advocate don’t make direct sense to children. They think, “who cares if we line up before leaving the classroom or run screaming through the halls?” That’s stuff that matters to the people around them, especially the adults. The problem is that they need to learn many things before they actually care about the results.
Therefore, remembering the correct behavior is generally a matter of rote learning. As adults, we can explain as clearly as possible how these behaviors affect them and will help them, but still it’s adults’ priorities and the children need to just remember them.
It’s like grown-ups remembering what their co-workers or spouses like or don’t like as far as their take-out orders. It isn’t all that important to us. We don’t care so much if we have mayo or no mayo on our roast beef, but because we want to be respectful and nice to the people around us, we try to memorize this.
Children will forget often. It takes a great deal of reminding to help them truly master memorizing many of the behaviors we want. Some people believe that strong discipline will help a child prioritize remembering the behavior and sometimes it will, but at what cost? One clear result is that the child will become anxious and have less energy to do other things. The child will have to spend a great deal of energy working to remember something that is basically arbitrary for them, just to avoid punishment.
Instead of punishment, stay conscious of how many times a child will have to be reminded of the wanted behavior before he or she will really know it well. In educational settings, teachers are reminded that students often need to be taught something more than 70 times before they can truly call the information their own.
When a child does something unwanted first remind them what is wanted. Do it in a way that shows that you truly believe they may have forgotten. Perhaps they remembered a little bit, perhaps it’s one of the other skills they were having trouble with, but reminding in a supportive way can help some children to agree that they forgot and just go ahead and do what’s wanted.
