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Today we are speaking with the friend of the show and bestselling author, Barbara Coloroso. We are speaking with Barbara about bribes and threats, why they don’t work, and how you can build a child's internal sense of self to make them behave anyways. So I should also mention that there is a handout associated with this topic that you can find the link to in our description. You can also learn more about Barbara's work by going to kidsarworthet.com. This was a fascinating conversation.
I really enjoyed it. You will too. Check it out. I understand you're saying when I do this I get that, but what other messages are you giving kids when you use bribes and threats? Bribes and threats and rewards and punishments. They begin to feel like they don’t have the power in their own lives to make those decisions. That's one very important thing. They also, often if they’t praise dependent and reward dependent, will look to the adult for approval of what they are doing.
And with mistakes, they are fearful of making mistakes, fearful of admitting a mistake, or fearful of trying something in which there might be a mistake, because they don’t want to disappoint you. I want them to develop that strong sense of self, but that self is in relation to other human beings. And that's why I want to teach them very young. I guess the allowance, but to care about other human beings, share generously of the talents and gifts and finances they have, and to help willingly.
And that feeds back into, okay, chores. Not all chores are attached to extra money. But children get allowance for one reason to learn to handle money. And with the bribes and threats, the big question is, well, what do I do instead? I mean, it's been so ingrained in our culture.
So instead of bribes and threats and rewards and punishments, I look at encouragement, feedback, and a sense of deep caring where children know that we care deeply about them when they make mistakes, we care deeply about them when they take a risk, we care deeply about them when they are successful. So you say in your book, though, you're against praise. So what's the difference between praise and encouragement? Okay, encouragement is those six critical life messages. I believe in you.
I trust in you. I know you can handle this. You're listened to cared for. Very important to me. That's what we say, whether they've accomplished something or they've made a mistake or they failed at something. Failure is not a bad thing if they can pick themselves up and move on. A child learning to write a bicecall without the training wheels touching. I can bribe them and say if you make it all the way down the hill without the training wheels touching, you can have an ice cream at Eric Queen.
Now what happens if they don't make it down the hill? We have punished them because they don't get an ice cream. It's that subtle, the same thing, bribes and threats, that's how they fit together. However. If they don't make it down the hill and they touch, very often you'll see a child who's praise dependent, throw their bike down and say this is stupid. By the way, I didn't want an ice cream anyway.
What you do when the child falls down or the training wheels touch, say, come on, you can do it. I know you can do it. That's those six critical life messages. Try it again. You can do it. I know you can do it. There hasn't been a Derek Queen attached. Can you ever go to Derek Queen? There are days when a child comes home having had one heck of a day at school. Things did not go well in lots of different ways. And you say, you know what? This seems like an ice cream kind of day.
And then you can have the time to sit down. It's not a reward for, oh, you got an A on your report card. No, it's just that sometimes in the good times and the bad times, an ice cream feels good. So it's not attached to it. And I want the child to know that this is a skill I believe you can do. And I want you to believe you can do. And it means you're going to fail sometimes. The wheels are going to touch down and you will get it.
So encouragement is that belief that when they make mistakes, when they fail at something, they can pick themselves up and keep going because we're there to support them through it. They also need feedback. So important. And feedback comes in three C's. Compliments, comments and constructive criticism. Complement. Best compliment you can give your child is thank you. Thank you for walking the dog. He's been inside all day. Look how happy he is to be outside. Thank you for watering that plant.
It was really wilted. Now it's standing strong. Thank you for inviting that child to come to your birthday party. He's brand new and now he feels like he can belong to a group. You stroke the deed, not the kid. Be very specific to the deed and let the child know what his or her behavior has done for someone else or an animal or a plant. It said thank you. Can you ever get excited though? Yes. Three year old wants you to wave by by to the mouth movement in the toilet.
You wave by by to that mouth movement. The five year old makes it down the hill. He's leaping for joy. You get excited about his excitement. Your 16 year old makes it around the parking lot without popping the clutch. You did it. You're excited there excited, but you're excited about their excitement. They aren't looking to you and say, do you like this? Is this okay? Did I do it all right? Or be so self-critical? Well, I was kind of wobbly or I didn't know. You did it.
And you're excited about their excitement. With praise dependent kids, they need your approval to take a risk. They need your approval that this is a beautiful piece of art. I don't want children to feel that way. So they need that compliment and they need comments. Good solid instruction. Here's how you add. Here's how you subtract. Here's how you diagram a sentence which will date me. Here's how to load the dishwasher, by the way, there's several ways to load the dishwasher.
But this is what I have found to be helpful. Here's how you meet other kids. Here's how you can assess in a group when you should go in or get out. We need to teach them about their bodies, about their relationship with other human beings, and how safe they can feel around other human beings and what to do if they don't feel safe. So good solid instruction in all areas of their lives. Then the other C is constructive criticism, which in a praise oriented culture we're so afraid to give.
I don't say that's wrong to a child, but I say that's not right. And I say that for two reasons. That's not right as bigger than wrong and right. And it invites a kid to fix it. When I read grade papers as a teacher, I used a green pen. I checked everything that was correct. And said to the kid, you got all of these correct. I know you can do these others or believe me, I wouldn't have given them to you. Do you need help on them? Do you need something to explain? I know you can do it.
And constructive criticism, talk them some with an A plus. If you go, I am so proud of you. Chances of him coming home with less than an A plus will be very much diminished. They'll be afraid to tell you. They'll stick those papers in the desk and you go to back to school night and find all those papers in the desk that he was afraid to tell you about. There's a lot of implications for being afraid, dependent, reward dependent.
For instance, a more serious situation is when the high status socially says to the other girls, I don't like the new girl. You want to be in my group, which is a bribe. To throw that sandwich to the same coin, then don't sit with her. I want your daughter to say that's mean and have the courage to go sit next to the new girl. Praise the dependent, reward dependent kids will not do that. It seems like you're talking about an internalized sense of self worth.
You can feel like, oh, I made my parents happy. I'm good. But that only lasts a minute. This good thing happened, I'm doing good or this bad thing happened. I'm a horrible person. But when you have that solid core, that's what makes the difference through life. It's important to establish that. It absolutely is. It absolutely is. That sense of, I like myself. I can think for myself, there's no problem. So great, it can't be solved.
Comes from being able to try new things and make mistakes and fail at something and be willing to get up and do it again. Praise the dependent children are more fearful of doing that. Kids who have been punished with threats and punishment are also fearful. They're watching their every mood or they're trying to hide when they have failed or when they've made a mistake because they're not sure of how their parent will treat them. And I want to get away from that.
I want kids to understand there are natural consequences, as you mentioned. There are also reasonable, simple, valuable and practical consequences that happen based on the situation, not, okay, you're grounded for six months, which is foolish. Who wants to get home for six months? And I had a parent who did that to one of my friends, grounded her teenager for six months, including senior prom. She said, but I said it. And I've always said, if you say it, mean it, follow through with it.
I said, but what you said was not wise, fix it. That was foolish of me. I just did it off the top of my head. I didn't know what to do. Let's talk about what you did and how you're going to fix what you did. Consequences need to be reasonable, simple, valuable and practical, which is RSVP, Ripandisi Vukle, the French term. It means please respond. Consequences need to be more work for the child than they are for you. And so if you've made a mistake and we all make them as parents, we lose it.
We say things like you're never ever going to the grocery store with me ever again, you're grounded for six months. You can always pull back and say, I blew that one. And then they realize they can come to you and say, I blew this one too. And this is how I want to fix it. So that sense of self that you talk about is so important. And they can't develop that strong core within themselves. If everything is responded to from the outside.
It also seems like with rewards and bribes, you're manipulating your child to do what you want. But you're also teaching them to be manipulative. Like if they do something wrong, like how can I hide it better and make sure which is a message you want to send, I'm sure. Well, exactly. And also with the bribes, I don't want kids saying what's in it for me. Because if a child is going to stand up and speak out and step in, they're not asking what's in it for me.
They're saying that very last thing is that deep caring. The must relieve somebody else's suffering and wishing them well, willing to go sit next to the new girl in the lunchroom, willing in the locker room to say to the kid who's bullying another kid back off, leave them alone. They both do that at cost. They'll probably get almost goody to shoes or G. You're just like him, kind of think. And if they have a strong sense of self, they will know what they've done is the right thing.
It's that goodness that they feel doing the right thing for someone else. It was powerful to me. There is a man who rescued children. I believe it's from Czechoslovakia. Never told anybody. And his wife came across the 600 children he had put on trains and found families for in England during World War II because they were Jewish children. And he was asked about making a movie when he was alive. He let us daughter write a biography of it. And he said, you know what?
The people that need to know that I did that already know. He didn't need any accommodations or recognition. He did the right thing. What they did do is they had a party and most of the people in that audience have either been rescued by him or were people who brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins of the people that he had rescued. But that comment that he made, the people that need to know already know.
And that's the child who you go sit next to who is so grateful for you sitting next to them. No. And it isn't catch and be and go towards a school which make me crazy because bullies are great at doing the right thing in front of adults. And then sneakily harm somebody after they've gotten the catch and be and go to award. So I'm not into that. I want children to be able to say what I did was the right thing to do.
Sometimes though your kids can mess up big or you're really angry at your child or they crash your car or responsibly or something. And you talk about reconcilatory justice. What is that idea? I'm glad you brought that up because that's the big. That's not a mistake. They didn't accidentally back into a post. If they did that, they own it, fix it, learn from it, move on. It wasn't mischief that they caused.
And in that case, you show them what they've done wrong, give them ownership, give them ways, solve it, leave their dignity intact. If they intentionally caused harm or drunk driving would be an example where they made out of planter, somebody but what they did before would should have risen in their brain to I can cause more serious damage. That's where restorative practices come in.
When a child does something like that or let's say you had your child had a party at your house when you were in home and one of the kids got very drunk and carved in the Duncan Five Table that's a family heirloom. You would be very upset. What they have to do is restitution, own and fix what they did. That table needs to be repaired. And then you could have a solution, figure out how they're going to keep it from happening again.
And one of those might be dealing with the drinking problem and how they behave when they're drunk. That has nothing to do with what you're going to do with your son or daughter who had that party that their drunk and friend came to, but restitution resolution reconciliation. You're going to take a while. And sometimes when it's a more serious offense, but carving in a Duncan Five is repairable.
But seriously, carving somebody destroying their sense of self worth through ugly things online and the like, that last stage is harder to do, to heal with the person you've harmed. After the kid has had the table repaired, they figured out how they're going to keep it from happening again. Then by that time you have probably calmed down a bit just through that process. And you can welcome them to come talk to you about it or they might come to you and you need to be open to them.
Again, if they've caused serious harm, it may take a longer time. But a heal with the person you've harmed is saying, you know, I did this. This is how I fixed it. This is how I'm going to keep it from happening again. And I'd like to start over. I'd like to have the opportunity to come over to your home and not be drunk and to have a dinner with you. That kind of thing. Now the parent can say, that sounds good to me. But if the harm is still hurtful, you can say I'm not ready yet.
It's always fair. I want our kids. We have modeled for our children what to do when there's been that kind of harm. It sounds like the table story might be a real life example. I miss. I wrote about that in one of the books. And that same table had a tick-tock go on it that my husband had done when he was very young. And we look at that. And when I refinished the table, I still left that indenture there. What a great metaphor for. We all make mistakes when we're young, you know?
Yeah. Mistakes and mischief. But if you can divide those three mistakes, Mr. Fenmey, based on the harm they've caused and the intention, somebody accidentally writing on a pad with a ballpoint pen can go through wood. And that was not intentional. Another tick-tock is very intentional. Writing another kid's name in a gross term on it is mayhem and needs to be dealt with with the three Rs. Do you see how all of that takes away from bribes and threats? They're not needed.
There's so many deeper layers we could go into this. Disappointed Ron, such a time limit, but this has been a great conversation. Well, thank you, Bobby. I've enjoyed it. There's a handout that everyone can have access to that looks at. Is your child reward dependent? Is your child responsible resourceful resilient? Not to judge, but to say, oh, we need to work on this. And what again are the alternatives? We know encouragement, feedback, compliments, comments, and constructive criticism.
That's not right in binding. You can fix it. And then that sense of deep caring that I am here for you in the good times and the bad that I will be there. You might have to show up after your child's gotten into trouble, put your armor on and say, we love you. You're in trouble. We know you can handle it. Here's the list of lawyers. We think might take your case good luck. But you're there for them for them to solve it. Not for us to rush in and solve it or punish them ground and for life.
None of that. It's that we're here because we care. We love you deeply. A great message to end on. Thank you, Barbra. Thank you, Bobby. It's been a joy. Thank you, Barbara. Kids are worth it. Don't forget to check out the link in the description and follow all of Barbara's work because she's been doing some incredible work for the last 44 years. This has been the parental compass. Happy 2024. I'm Bobby Williams. See you guys.