My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
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Prompting Positive Responses
You and your child may have developed some ineffective ways of interacting around schoolwork. Try these approaches instead and be patient both with yourself and your child.- Praise the effort. Rather than punishing a child who screams "Noooooo" in response to a homework assignment, Curtis suggests saying something like this: "Honey, I understand this is difficult. I want you to learn to work through it." Start talking about how to stick with it. Offer encouragement and teach how to persist when things get hard.
Carol Dweck, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Stanford University has found through 20 years of research that children's mindsets can greatly affect their motivation to learn. Those who are praised for being smart come to believe that intelligence is fixed – a demoralizing belief for many people, not to mention those with disabilities. But Dweck says you can nurture a "growth mindset" with descriptive praise that emphasizes effort, process, and strategies tried. And, these are all things we can control, not the gray matter we inherited. - Role-play a better way. It's not enough to simply say, "Do the right thing." If your child is responding to challenges by tearing up paper and putting his head down, you can walk him through what you'd like him to do instead, says McIntyre. "If we're having problems with something, how do we ask for help? Instead of saying, 'I can't do this, I'm stupid,' we say, 'Wow, this is hard. I need to find the answer, or I need to ask for help." At first, engaging in this way may feel a bit forced, but it creates a new mental attitude way in your child for future similar situations.
Here's another way to model persistence. Pick an activity to do with your child, but one that neither of you feels confident about. (For a "Joe Pro jock kind of guy," says Curtis, maybe it's something like a cooking class.) Then you can practice persistence together. - Listen actively. Don't just listen to what your child is saying, but also to the feeling behind what your child is saying. What you "hear" can inform how you interact.
- Make a "criticism sandwich." If you need to offer criticism, says McIntyre, do it in a way that motivates, not deflates. How? Sandwich your suggestion with two positives. Start out with something positive: "I like the way you got to work right away and that you remembered the first three steps of this long division problem." Then offer constructive criticism. End on a positive note, saying, "Great, you're getting the front part of this. Now we just have to work on the back part."
- Avoid "word triggers." McIntyre suggests avoiding words like, "no," "don't," "stop, or "why" – especially when combined with "you." Words like these can prompt negative responses. Link back to positive experiences, not negative ones. Instead of, "Why do you always do this?" say, "Remember three weeks ago when you struggled with this? You figured it out. What did you do to solve it?"
- Offer hints and cues. Although that's a positive statement, it still might not be quite enough to help a kid who nailed it yesterday, but seems stumped today. Offering hints or cues, says McIntyre, can help prompt a response and prevent a meltdown. For a child learning to read, it might be something like this: "When two vowels go walking, what does the first vowel say? It says its name." Or: "What happens to the vowel before it when you've got a silent 'e' at the end of a word? Oh, it says its name, not its sound."
- Set behavioral goals. If you're trying to prompt a better response from your child, work up to the ultimate goal, says McIntyre. Maybe you want her to get right to work when you say, "Please sit down and do your schoolwork." Set a realistic goal. Perhaps at first this means that your child gets started with two or fewer reminders, or within 30 seconds. "Then you can start to pull in the reins a bit," says McIntyre, and expect your child to start within 15 seconds.
- Help your child "own" it. Over time, you want to help your child to set the goals, to develop inner control over his or her behavior. One way to do that, says Shaw, is with behavior charts. A child who's disorganized might use a chart to keep track of how well she's keeping her work area clean. This can help your child strengthen her inner direction.
- Make the new behavior beneficial. Punishment might stop a behavior in its tracks if it's strong enough, says McIntyre, but punishment does not teach new behaviors. And, if your child gets loads of attention for doing it the old way, what's the motivation for changing? If you're trying to replace undesirable behaviors with more positive ones, remember that there has to be something in it for your kid.
