Monday, October 12, 2015

Resilient Questions

Long-term learning happens in positive situations. Success is sticky and draws us back for more. Failure scares us away. We shrink from failure and we grow from success. 

Growing up is all about making mistakes and learning from them for next time. But, to help our kids learn quickly and effectively, we need to change those negatives into positives as quickly as possible. Using questions is a great way.

With toddlers and early primary school students, mistakes often come in two areas: Time and Place. Helping them realise this is the wrong time or place for a particular activity gives them the understanding to choose when and where to do it next time. Using positive questions to deal with wrong actions allows children to understand what it is they are doing wrong and why.

Positive question sets (three examples):

“Is this the right place to be drawing with crayons?”
“Where is the right place?”
“Before we go to that place, how will you clean this?”

“Is this the right time to be eating cake?”
“When is the right time?”
“If you are hungry, what is ok to eat right now?”

“Is this the right time or place to be tackling people?”
“When and where is rough play ok?”
“What could you do with your energy now?”

Each one of these examples takes the child from the negative behaviour to positive behaviour while also giving them questions to think through their actions. Next time, they will have some tools to use in considering whether they should draw on the walls, eat cake for breakfast or tackle their sibling on the way into the school grounds.

We create resilient kids by teaching them positive questions to use in reviewing mistakes and planning for success next time.


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For more parenting pondering, 
see the "Parently" section of this blog.




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