Parent Skillz – Adaptability
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Today we are talking about the Parent Skillz – Adaptability. Please join us at 12:30pm for Facebook Live – www.facebook.com/skillz4kidz
Adaptability is about how you respond to your child, especially when things do not go as planned. Your child will have a variety of great days, bad days, and everything in between.
Here are a few ways you can apply adaptability to your parenting and keep your child motivated:
Intrinsic Motivation:
Choices
What do you do if your child does not want to do something?
You can intrinsically motivate them by allowing them to make choices or small decisions. Start with small decisions like – which t-shirt would you like today – the Red One or the Blue One. Then move to age appropriate decisions like – let’s narrow your college search to 3 schools – tell me which aspects of colleges are most important to you.
If your child is a picky eater, try giving them choices about what you buy at the grocery store for dinner. Let them pick if they want chicken or steak, for instance. Then, pick out a couple of good options and let them pick again. Now they have a vested interest in the meal. Finally, get them involved in making dinner, emphasizing that they helped to pick out the food that is being served for dinner. Take it a step further and work on creating a recipe together.
Make it Exciting
Build up the excitement when you want or need your child to do something. If you tell a bunch of 7 to 9-year-old children to do push-ups, for example, do you think they will be excited? Instead, if you give them options and motivated instructions, they will excel.
Do you think they would rather do just a few push-ups or would they do more if you told them that they would become “one of the most awesome and strong students in class!” by doing a few more? Chances are that they will choose to become awesome and strong. This type of intrinsic motivation excites them to make an extra effort.
Compromise
Another form of adaptability through intrinsic motivation is compromising when responding to your child’s requests. If your child comes home from school and wants a treat, but you want him to wait for dinner first, they may throw a temper tantrum or get upset because they didn’t get their way.
Providing a compromise that doesn’t affect their appetite before dinner but allows them to get what they want keeps the situation in perspective. For example, let them know that they can have two gummy bears out of the bag now, and the rest after dinner. This is a way to adapt to their request and keeps within your rules about not eating snacks that will spoil their appetite for dinner.
Extrinsic Motivation
Kids Like to See You Suffer!
Sometimes you need to pull out the pain card! Kids like to see you suffer or pay the price in some way. You may use an extrinsic motivation such as, “If you can do this drill without any mistakes, I’ll do push-ups!” They want to see you suffer through the push-ups, and they will do whatever it takes to make you have to do them.
If your child thinks that he/she is the reason for you doing something “you don’t want to do” – It really motivates them to do the right thing, make the right choice, etc. Make it fun – have a good times with this making great memories with your child.
As you consider your level of adaptability today, ask yourself if you ever apply similar intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to your child. If not, consider adding them to your parenting tool kit. Your child’s behavior will change based on their mood, so the best way to parent is to adapt to their day as best as possible