Prepare for Success (Talk-Throughs)

The Importance of Success

Successful children are more confident, more motivated, more co-operative, and more willing to take on new challenges. This, of course, makes our own lives calmer, easier and happier. How can we help our children experience success, not just at school, but also with everyday tasks?

There are two mainpoints we need to remember:-

• Our expectations need to be realistic. If we ask a child to do something that is too difficult for him, he is likely to fail, and then be even less willing to try the next time. Also, we need to allow enough time for the child to complete the tasks.
• Children find it much easier to succeed when they are prepared, even if what we want them to do is different from what they want to do.

If we, as adults, invest in preparing our child in advance, he is much more likely to do the right thing. Succeeding, and getting the praise for it, will make him feel proud of himself and pleased with us.

Example Situation

Even before we ask ourselves questions like:

“What should I do when my child screams in the supermarket, demanding sweets?”

Preparation

We can ask:

“How can I plan the trip to the supermarket so that my child is less likely to scream?”

It is far more effective to take the time to prepare in advance, rather then have to react when things go wrong.

One of the best ways to prepare for success is to talk through what is likely to happen, what we want the child to do, what he might find difficult, how he might feel, etc.

You might be surprised to learn that you do not actually need to explain that much to your child! Often, all you need to do is ask questions and require the child to come up with the explanations. Try this “talk through”,and you will be surprised how much he already knows about how he should behave.

Let’s look at a detailed example to see how this can be done.

Example Situation

You know your child might throw a tantrum when it is time to leave his friend’s house. It has happened before, and both of you got very upset.

Preparation

Before you go (even days before if you know about it in advance), have a conversation with your child about what needs to happen when it’s time to leave his friend’s house.

You can start by saying:

“Tomorrow we are going to go to Michael’s house. We will need to leave hishouse at 6 o’clock and come back home. What do you think I want you to do when I say it’s time to go?”

At this point, your child might respond in one of several ways:-

• He might give the right answer: “You want me to come with you”. You then praise him for getting it right, and being brave enough to say it even if this is not what he wants to do.
• He might say something you believe he knows isn’t right. He might say, “You go home and I stay”. You can then say, “You wish this is what you could do. What do I really want you to do?”
• He might give the wrong answer because he really doesn’t know the right thing to do. This response is very unlikely, but if it happens, you then praise the child for being brave enough to answer your question. You can then either tell him the right answer or give him clues so that he can guess it himself. Say, “You tried to guess what I want, and that is very brave of you, as no one can really read someone’s mind! Actually, what I want is….”.
• He might not reply at all, or he might say “I don’t know”. You then need to require the child to take a guess, mentioning that it is not easy to take guesses, but he needs to try at least once.

Keep going until your child answers the original question correctly. As soon as he gets the answer to your first question right, you can ask some, or all, of the following questions:-

• “Is it going to be very difficult for you to leave Michael’s house when I say so?”
• “How might you feel when I say we need to go?”
• “What can we do to make it easier for you to come with me?”
• “What might I do if you don’t come when I call you?”

Praise EVERY Answer

It is important to praise something about every answer, even if it is not what you wanted to hear. Praise his courage, knowledge, understanding, honesty, etc. If the child has any sensible ideas as to what can make it easier for him to do the right thing, try to put them in place. You can offer your own ideas as well (in our example, maybe give a five-minute warning, then a one-minute warning).

To complete the preparation conversation (the talk-through), say that you are very proud of your child for knowing the right thing to do, and that you hope he will do it when the time comes.

Every day, find opportunities to revisit this conversation again and again, in a positive manner. This will keep alive in your child’s memory exactly what he should do. He will get used to the idea.

When the time comes to do what you prepared for, there is a much higher chance that the child will do the right thing. Unfortunately, there are times when he won’t. Either way, you need to praise him, either for a complete success or for anything he did improve on, even if it is not all you wanted.

There are two reasons why we ask all those questions, rather than just telling the child what we want:-

• Answering questions makes the child think for himself. When we just tell the child what we want, he might not listen carefully.
• He is much more likely to do things right once he himself has said what he needs to do, in his own words.

Preparing for success might look to you like hard work!

Yes, talking through issues is not easy when you are a beginner at these skills. However,if you do make the effort, you will soon see results. You might think you don’t have the time to put all this into practice. Actually, prevention takes less time than trying to get the situation back on track after your child has already misbehaved. Think how much time parents spend telling off, repeating, reminding, pleading, threatening and shouting, which leaves both the child and the parent feeling upset and unconfident.

Preparing for success is not just about talking through issues. It includes everything we can do to make it easier for children to succeed and co-operate, from putting pegs for clothes where they can reach them, to arranging the environment so that an older child can concentrate properly on his homework. We see preparing for success as our most important skill. Give it a go!

Of course, it is easier to prepare for success when there are established Rules and Routines in place.