Robert: How often do you catch your children when they’re doing the right thing? Do you notice it? Do you reinforce it or do you just tend to go about your business? Only get involved when the behaviors start to turn negative. If this is you, trust me, you’re not alone. But we are going to learn the reasons why only focusing on the negative is a habit that you really need to break. Today on just seven steps. 

Intro: Welcome to the Just Seven Steps podcast with Robert Schramm, a board-certified behavior analyst, educator, author and developer of the Seven Steps to Successful Parenting. For more than 20 years, Robert has been teaching parents and professionals how to support children and developing the values and priorities necessary to live a successful life. In this podcast, you’ll hear from some of the biggest experts in the fields of education, parenting and behavior analysis. So buckle in and get ready for a wild ride where you’ll learn to be your best in just seven steps. 

Robert: Hi, I’m Robert Schramm, a behavior analyst, education specialist, author and dad. And I’m also the developer of the Seven Steps to Instruction and Motivation. Each week, I provide you with helpful information based on the Just Seven Steps approach. So if you haven’t already subscribe to my YouTube channel, take a second, do it now. You’ll be glad you did. In today’s episode, I will be discussing the dangers of focusing on the negatives. They say focusing on the negative is the quickest way to win happiness. Well, this is as true for your kids as it is for you. Focusing only on the negative behavior is a habit that’s really easy to fall into when you have challenging children and also something that’s a tough one to break, but you need to work hard to see the positives in your kids behavior every single day. And here’s why. It’s helping your child to use new skills and positive behavior choices is a process of building. You’re creating something new, and to build, you need to increase behaviors that you want to see more of. Focusing on the negatives does not build anything new or teach a child what new skills will benefit them. It only reminds the child of what behaviors they’re supposed to stop or avoid. And because education is this process of building skills, it’s always about giving people reasons to make these new positive behavior choices over the older, less desirable ones. You’re going to need to be good at identifying when you’re seeing positive behavior and increased effort from your child and give that behavior a reason to continue. 

Robert: Many parents get into the habit of using their child’s positive behavior as arrested or a chance to relax and focus on other things. They then only focus back on their parenting goals when they see the negative or frustrating behavior that they want to change. This is this is not only a slippery slope, this is a slip and slide on the wrong side of a mountain. If you want your child to use better behavior, you have to reinforce better behavior. And you can’t possibly reinforce better behavior on a regular basis when you’re only noticing the behavior you want to change is a good example that can help to illustrate the type of situation I’m talking about. And I hope by sharing this that it’ll give you a good idea of exactly what we talk about, what we say, focusing on the negative. I was working with Sienna, a mom of Jacob and Ruby in Great Britain. Sienna explained that her kids behavior was always the most challenging for her. After school, she felt like there were always they were always fighting, and they had no understanding or concern for how busy she was at that time of day. So I spent a few afternoons observing them during this after school or more problematic time. What I found was quite telling of the main mistake that Sienna was making is this Sienna always had a lot of work to do in the afternoons, and when her kids would come home, they would put their things away, get themselves something to eat, answer a couple of questions about their day, and then go off and play in their rooms, just as Sienna would request. But because this is all expected behavior, I saw no effort by Sienna to put into reinforcing it. There was little to no positive praise or added attention and likely no additional access to anything of value that would cause these behaviors to continue to be more likely to be repeated in the future. Then, after about an hour or two of mostly positive behavior, the kids would naturally start to roughhouse or argue about something. They seemed to get bored with the toys in their rooms. They can’t watch TV because of house rules, and they instead start to find their own source of stimulation and reinforcement and usually in the form of play that’s distracting and potentially dangerous to them or the furniture. At first, Sienna would ignore this, hoping it would go away. But the fun that kids are now having makes them more likely to continue this behavior and even increase some of the danger. 

Robert: At some point when Sienna can handle it no more, she would yell out or get up and start to engage with them in ways she hoped would stop the behavior both now and in the future. And maybe she would yell, maybe she would get into an argument with them, and often that argument would actually serve to escalate their behavior. In attempts to get her point across and win the argument with the kids, Sienna would start to notice and complain about other things that she saw. They they may have forgotten to do, such as, I don’t know, putting their shoes in the right place or leaving the lunch meat on the table or some mess that they may have made in their rooms. Another time she was so busy that she gave in on her own rules and let them watch TV just to keep them quiet so that she could get her work done in the moment. Now, a lot of this probably sounds familiar and one aspect or another, because it is such a common experience for families. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with giving the kids an opportunity to watch TV during the day. However, the way that this was done was actively worsening the situation that Sienna was trying to avoid. She was not allowing the preferred activity TV to occur while the kids were behaving appropriately and only made it available when their behavior became more problematic or a problem that problematic enough that she couldn’t take it any longer. So I’m sure you can see how repetitions of this would motivate and reinforce even more problematic behavior, as this was the only thing proving capable of earning TV. Let’s look at what just happened in this example. First, the kids made several mostly positive choices and even followed the directions to go play in their room. They played appropriately for most of 2 hours, and all of this went mostly unsupported by any reinforcement. And then when they had to run out of positive things to do on their own, the kids began to find trouble. This negative behavior is what then caught moms attention and evoked some form of attempted intervention on her part. The problem is that any intervention at this point is no longer focused on building positive skills, but instead is just trying to stop or prevent negative ones. And trust me, there there really is no limit to the number of negative behaviors your kids could find and use. And therefore, there’s no limit to the number of behaviors you would have to try to stop or prevent. It ends up being a never ending game that you can’t possibly win. Additionally, in the process of trying to reduce these negative behaviors, you become cast as the role of a punisher. From the child’s perspective, the only time they can count on their parents to address them with guidance is when they’re being reprimanded or corrected. The feeling that develops is that mom or dad just sees the worst in them. Something sometimes can lead to feelings of not being liked or even loved when of course, this is the furthest thing from the truth. 

Robert: In this type of situation, the parent can begin to get a completely distorted perspective on their child’s behavior. I mean, even though during the 3 hours between school and dinner, 70 to maybe 80% of the child’s children’s behavior was quite positive. By only focusing on the negative, Sienna was only able to see and think about the fact that the kids were roughhousing, that they didn’t put their shoes away, that they left the lunch meat out, and that they argued and fought against her when she questioned them. So if your goal is to actually increase the 70 to 80% of the positive behavior you’re already seeing from your child or children, then you have to learn how to increase that behavior by noticing it, focusing on it, and most importantly, choosing to positively reinforce it. Now, I’m guessing many of you right now are saying, Well, duh, Robert, and maybe you’re thinking, of course my life would be better if I could just focus on the positive. And I’ve tried. Well, maybe you feel like you’re constantly being worn down, and all you eventually can see is the disrespect and the complaining. I mean, you know quite well what you’re supposed to do, but it just doesn’t really help because these individual bits of advice by themselves never seem to be enough to fully work for you. And if you feel this way, I get it. You’re not wrong. That is the unfortunate truth of following any one or even two or three important rules. It’s often not enough to reset the relationship and get your kids to start listening without raising your voice or nagging them. But that’s the real amazing value of the seven steps approach. I’ve worked in behavioral education, training parents and professionals working with some of the most severely behaviorally challenging students. And through that work, I have identified absolutely everything that is successful and necessary to making immediate, meaningful change and cooperation levels and rapport building. And the good news is, it truly is all possible by learning and focusing on just seven steps, by focusing on the ins and outs of the seven steps to instructional motivation with your kids. You’ll have a complete blueprint on how to completely change the way they see your instructions and how they choose to engage with you and your goals for them. You can stop the yelling, the fighting and the constant upset. You can set up the home environment in a way that it becomes more motivating and reinforcing to the better behavior choices you want to see. And your kids will want to make these positive choices because it is what is proving to be best for them as they will always see the benefits of doing so. 

Robert: Let’s be honest if your kids are making better choices and you can trust them to continue to do so, it’s going to free you up to handle a lot of things that are currently just too much to deal with for many parents. Now, any time I see a family who is struggling with the behavior of their children, I can literally just watch them for a very short time and I can begin to quickly see exactly which of these seven steps they’re not following and therefore exactly why their kids are not behaving as they otherwise would. So whether they are currently failing to regularly meet the expectations of several steps or even just one, this is most likely the cause of the problems they’re having. And by learning all seven steps and making sure you’re meeting the goals of each of these steps in your daily interactions, you will have a blueprint to the relationship you’ve always wanted. So there’s a ton more I can say about this advice to not focus on the negative. And I do cover this exact topic and more as part of my free online workshop at WWW dot Just 7 Steps dot com backslash workshop. The workshop is called How to Get Your Kids to Listen Without Raising Your Voice or Nagging. But for now, just remember that the more you can focus on positively reinforcing the good behavior you see, the less you will fall into the bad habit of focusing on your kids behavior. Only when it turns problematic by focusing on the positive rather than the negative, your children will begin to see you as a positive light in their life, guiding them towards better behavior and good times. Instead of someone who is only looking to punish them when they make mistakes. 

Robert: So to recap today’s episode, we discussed all of the dangers that come with only focusing on the negative behavior of your children, the fact that education is about building skills and behavior and not about abolishing it. I gave you an example of a family who struggled with this issue but was able to make great strides. Once it was pointed out to them as an important goal. And then we brought it all back to the seven steps and how they will help you break the habit of focusing on the negative when you instead keep your focus on the positive building of skills and behavior that you want to see. Your children will begin to engage in that behavior on a more regular basis. Thank you for taking the time to join me today on the Just Seven Steps podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please take just a moment to leave me a comment. Give a thumbs up. Share the video with others and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you won’t miss out on any of our Just Seven Steps videos designed to help parents of children with challenges. Find your family’s path to progress. See you right here next week.