Reason #45709 why parenting is very hard for me.
Skipper is at a weird point right now. She is pretty comfortable in her school and aftercare. She has friends and an active social life at recess. This is all great, of course, and it means she's working through some of the selective mutism, and actually expressing herself sometimes. However, a new problem is developing. What she's is expressing at aftercare is mostly her manic goofball show-off side, and she combines the selective mutism with the manic show-off in a way that comes off to older kids and adults as rude and weird. (Like silently making weird faces at her teacher when greeted and then ostentatiously turning away from her.) Her aftercare teacher, who is kind but strict, does not tolerate rudeness. This is problematic, because any kind of correction is enormously painful to Skipper, and just pushes her back into herself.
In our experience, the only way to correct Skipper's behavior effectively is through descriptive praise. (This technique entails describing every positive thing that the kid is doing, no matter how ridiculous. As in "I see that you did not hit your sister, even though you wanted to, when she walked past you while you were screaming and writhing on the floor. That took a lot of self-control." It's really hard to do this when what you actually want to do is leave the house and spend the next few hours in a dark quiet bar. It does, however, work.) Punishment is useless, or worse than useless, because it just sends her directly into a world of despair and self-loathing, and she learns nothing except that the world is so painful and she is failing. She BELIEVES that she is awful and bad when she is behaving badly, and she seizes on any evidence that supports her belief. Offering her instead a narrative that identifies (honestly) places where she is making good choices gives her a chance to be a person who makes good choices.
I find it extremely difficult to take this approach, even though I both understand it and see that it works where punishment does not. It feels really unfair to me, and to Duchess, who sees that her sister is treated differently than she is. (We should, of course, use the same approach on Duchess, because it's a solid approach for everyone, but it's so hard that we almost always take the easier route with her. Because we can.) Duchess and I are both people who like things to be FAIR.
Anyway, it's not an easy thing to explain to an aftercare teacher, and it's not easy to ask her to do. It would be pretty tough for her to implement, even if she was totally on board, as she has a bajillion rowdy kids she'd have to treat the same way, for the sake of fairness. I'm not sure how hard to push this.
In our experience, the only way to correct Skipper's behavior effectively is through descriptive praise. (This technique entails describing every positive thing that the kid is doing, no matter how ridiculous. As in "I see that you did not hit your sister, even though you wanted to, when she walked past you while you were screaming and writhing on the floor. That took a lot of self-control." It's really hard to do this when what you actually want to do is leave the house and spend the next few hours in a dark quiet bar. It does, however, work.) Punishment is useless, or worse than useless, because it just sends her directly into a world of despair and self-loathing, and she learns nothing except that the world is so painful and she is failing. She BELIEVES that she is awful and bad when she is behaving badly, and she seizes on any evidence that supports her belief. Offering her instead a narrative that identifies (honestly) places where she is making good choices gives her a chance to be a person who makes good choices.
I find it extremely difficult to take this approach, even though I both understand it and see that it works where punishment does not. It feels really unfair to me, and to Duchess, who sees that her sister is treated differently than she is. (We should, of course, use the same approach on Duchess, because it's a solid approach for everyone, but it's so hard that we almost always take the easier route with her. Because we can.) Duchess and I are both people who like things to be FAIR.
Anyway, it's not an easy thing to explain to an aftercare teacher, and it's not easy to ask her to do. It would be pretty tough for her to implement, even if she was totally on board, as she has a bajillion rowdy kids she'd have to treat the same way, for the sake of fairness. I'm not sure how hard to push this.
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