Are You a Good Finder?
Hey parents and all of our fellow parent Ninja fans, Denny Strecker here with Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts, and we’re talking again about our discipline. Spending this month working on different skills and aspects for parents.
Today I want to talk about being the good finder. So by being a good finder, you’re looking for those good things that your kids do. Because, again, it’s all to natural for us to look for the negative and certainly we’re going to find what we look for. You’re always constantly disciplining your child or telling them what they did wrong or telling them to stop it to stop misbehaving.
What we do here at the karate school, if you ever watch any of our classes, is you’re going to notice that generally I ignore negative behavior. So if we’re lining up and everybody’s supposed to be standing at attention and one of our ninjas is spinning around or laying down on the floor, natural tendency that a lot of parents have would be to yell at that child and say, “Hey, stand up. Come on, pay attention.”
That does a couple of negative or bad things that we want to stay away from. Number one, it reinforces the behavior of that child. You’re giving them attention. So whenever they get attention by doing whatever it is they’re doing, they’re going to do more of that. So if misbehaving gets them attention, they’re likely to misbehave more.
Number two, it stops the entire class and it puts all of the attention right on that one ninja. So therefore, now all the other kids looking at the process are going to see that ninja laying down and saying, “Well, if they do it, why can’t I do it?” So now you have to address three or four other people at some point wanting to try the same thing. If I simply ignore the behavior and I don’t say anything to that particular ninja, what starts to work then is I’m looking for the person who’s standing right at attention.
Attention means hands tight at your sides, back straight, chin up, eyes forward. “Great. Ooh Jimmy, I love how that stance is, right?” I start spotlighting the specific child that is doing the behavior that I want. So I’m becoming the good finder. I want to find who’s got the best attention stance and then I challenge everybody to be better than that person and then I start spotlighting and highlighting other people.
Eventually that ninja that’s on the floor is going to get the message that if you want my attention and if you want to get a point from me or a high five, you need to do what I’m asking you to do. So instead of yelling and screaming or trying to fix that negative behavior, a lot of times at home if you just simply ignore it and let them do their thing, set guidelines with how you want their behavior to be, you’re going to see a lot better results in the long run, and more importantly, you’re going to be a lot less frustrated.
All parents come in and they’re just exhausted from the day. The kids have been acting up all day. I’ve had to yell at them time and time and time again for all the things that they shouldn’t do. Same process. Don’t look at all of the things that your kids did wrong in a particular circumstance or instance. Find the one thing that they did right and commend them and compliment them on that one thing, and again, you’re going to start to see lots of better results, right? Just think about it. If instead of sitting there and saying, “Well, you know you didn’t do this and you missed this and you forgot this.” After a while, you become Charlie Brown’s teacher. “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” And the kids are just going to tune you out.
Here at the karate school, what we talked to the parents about if they’d get frustrated and they’re like, “Alls they did was roll around on the floor. It was a waste of time coming here. They didn’t practice at all.”
I gently remind them at that point, I said, “Yeah, but did you see that one point where they stood perfectly still for those 10 seconds with the rest of the kids? That was spectacular.”
Suddenly they’re like, “Oh yeah, they did do that.”
But if you don’t spotlight that particular behavior, your child’s not likely to repeat it anytime soon. As soon as you spotlight it, now it’s fresh in their brain that, “Oh, okay. That’s how I’m going to make Mom and Dad proud.” Making you proud makes them feel good about themselves. So it becomes a very positive cycle.
And again, that’s what we’re all about here at Skillz Dynamic Martial Arts is finding the positive ways to reinforce your child so that they want to do the behaviors, that in the end we want them to do. But instead of ordering it and demanding it, we encourage them and guide them to that behavior in a great format.
Hopefully, you found this type of information useful. Again, we love talking to different parents in situations. We’re getting all kinds of suggestions and comments about future videos. So if you have any questions, if you’re worried about your particular ninja and a particular situation, feel free to message me or give this school a call. I’d love to help you out any way that I can. I hope you have an awesome day. I’m going to head off and teach some great classes tonight and keep learning myself. So have a great afternoon and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Take care.