Archives For behaviors

Corporate Culture – Your Family’s Values and Attitudes

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Last Monday I posted about creating a corporate culture for our family. I spent some time defining what a corporate culture is and I went through some of the benefits and how you might talk about and implement this in your home. In this post and the next, I will go into detail about how you can discover and define the different components that make up a corporate culture.

Let’s talk first about values. Values are the things that we hold most dear, that we treasure the most. In our home, values tend to be the mindsets, habits, and behaviors that we protect at all cost. In order to establish your set of values, think about the qualities that you want your family to aspire to. These might include things like respect, wisdom, love, generosity, persistence, excellence, fun, and others. Let your entire family participate in the discussion on family values. Begin with a set of questions like:

What makes it fun to be home?

What do others in the family do for you that you appreciate the most?

How do you want others outside of the family to think of you?

What things make you proud to be a member of this family?

Describe what would make things perfect in our family.

You might come up with a list of other questions as your family discusses this important topic. I recommend starting here because having the values defined really gives you a point of reference for working through the other components of a corporate culture.

As for attitudes, these can overlap with the values somewhat. Attitudes will encompass how we respond to others, what our general outlook on life is, and how we relate to adversity. Having these on a list gives us an important point of reference for correcting any disrespectful behavior. Your questions that will discover the important attitudes for your family might be:

When bad things happen, how should I respond?

What words do I use to show I have a good attitude?

Describe what a bad attitude looks like.

When things are going my way, what does a good attitude look like?

How do you feel when you talk to someone with a bad attitude?

Again, you might uncover additional questions as your family discusses attitudes. It is up to you as parents to guide the session and ensure that everyone participates. There are no right or wrong answers; all we want to do is create a predictable, comfortable culture in our home.

As for how to actually conduct these sessions, I highly recommend you do it as a family. This conveys the message that this is a very important activity. Have some fun with this and write their responses down. If possible, capture the responses on a whiteboard, chalkboard, or flip chart for everyone to see. Make sure everyone agrees with everything on the list, then come up with these one or two word phrases that describe the things that you hear. Make sure that all of your responses are consistent and do not contradict others on the list.

Another tip that you might consider is capturing these discussions on video. The words and interactions will be precious to you later on in life. You might also find that items on these lists overlap. If so, then you might want to get those that appear on multiple lists onto just one of your lists for clarity sake. Finally, I think the most important tip is to set the ground rules that everyone’s opinion counts. Just because someone says something contradictory to the way the rest of the family responds doesn’t mean that they’re wrong – they just see things differently.

This is an important bonding time with your family. Enjoy it and have fun!

Application Question – Would you feel comfortable talking through this with your family? What approaches can you take to undo some of the bad culture that might already be in place? Your comments are welcome below.

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The lifelong learner

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My oldest son is a natural learner. He is a curious type and just loves the process of learning something new. Some think he’s a walking Jeopardy game at some of the things that he knows. I love learning but sometimes I’m not so good at retaining. I like to read, to hear something, or experience something new that will add to my life’s journey. Some subjects are more attractive than others, but overall I like to learn new things.

One of the most valuable gifts you can give your child is to foster their natural curiosity through the learning process.  That’s a big fancy sentence to say that you should give your child an appetite, or maybe even a hunger, for learning. In today’s information age, those who know more will be those who win more. So what strategies can you use for your child, even if they don’t love school?

  1. Make learning fun. Kids and adults will do more of what is fun to them. So, naturally, to make children want to learn then you need to make it fun. Use games and other activities; there are all sorts of ideas on the internet for learning games so search and use some of those if you need ideas.
  2. Don’t use learning activities as punishment (study, writing sentences, reading, etc). Does anyone remember having to write 100 sentences like “I will not talk in class”? How did that make you feel about writing for the rest of the day? Or how about making you go read the Bible when you do something wrong? Why would we ever use something that we want our children to do (and repeat) as a punishment for something we didn’t want them to do?
  3. Capitalize on their learning style. As we mentioned earlier, identifying your child’s learning style (audio, visual, or kinesthetic) and creating an environment that plays to that style is critical to keeping them engaged and excited about learning.
  4. Reinforce them for discretionary learning activities. It’s refreshing to see children doing something other than Facebook, video games, watching TV or talking on a cell phone. If you catch them reading, studying, or creating because they want to and not because they have to, recognize and reward that activity.
  5. Dig in to their interests; you can figure out what things interest them by listening to them or watching them play. My daughter is the creative type. She makes things with paper, straws, skewers, popsicle sticks, construction paper, glue, crayons, markers, tape, and the like. She writes stories, she draws, and she explores. She has a decorative geode in her room and today just asked questions about where it came from, how it was made, what kind of rock, and so on. She made a broom out of skewers, straws, and tape. We just let her do it because it fuels her brain so much more than SpongeBob does.
  6. Celebrate their strengths. Don’t try to make them something that they are not.
  7. Be an example. Let your kids see you learning. Model the behavior for them through reading, continuing education, and so forth. We could all stand a break from the TV and computer screen.

Like it or not, learning is a lifelong process. The sooner our children figure that out, the better. Too many kids are running around, barely getting through school, thinking that once they finish high school they will never crack a book again. Technology changes too much for anyone to expect that they learned all they ever need to know in high school. In The Millionnaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley cites a statistic which says that the average millionnaire reads a non-fiction book a month. But another study shows that the average American spends 35 hours a week on TV and other media. Which average do you want your child to be part of?

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Rewards and punishments – it’s all a PIC/NIC

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Yesterday we talked about the A-B-C model of behavior management.  To review, Antecedents are the triggers to Behaviors which are followed by Consequences.  One way to think about effective consequences is to do what the folks at Aubrey Daniels International call a PIC/NIC analysis.  Consequences that have the greatest impact on the child are the most effective.  Doing this analysis will allow you to identify those consequences and may also reveal to you why a child might behave in a certain way, even if there are negative consequences involved.  The best part about this is that you don’t have to be trained in order to be effective at doing this – it just takes common sense and intentionality.

To do this analysis, think from the point of view of the child.  Consequences can be classified by their type, their timing, and the probability that the consequence will occur.  Think about type in terms of whether the consequence is positive or negative (P or N) to the child.  Timing has to do with immediacy – does the consequence happen immediately or is there any delay (I or F) of more than a few seconds.  Probability has to do with the likelihood of the consequence occurring – is it certain or uncertain (C or U) that the consequence follows the behavior.

Armed with this information, there are eight different classifications that a consequence can take.  These classifications take the form of a three-letter acronym that contains the type, timing, and probability.  Those types are as follows:

  • PIC – the consequence is Positive, it happens Immediately, and it is Certain
  • NIC – the consequence is Negative, it happens Immediately, and it is Certain
  • PIU – the consequence is Positive, it happens Immediately, and it is Uncertain
  • NIU – the consequence is Negative, it happens Immediately, and it is Uncertain
  • PFC – the consequence is Positive, it happens in the Future, and it is Certain
  • NFC – the consequence is Negative, it happens in the Future, and it is Certain
  • PFU – the consequence is Positive, it happens in the Future, and it is Uncertain
  • NFU – the consequence is Negative, it happens in the Future, and it is Uncertain

The order of the classifications listed above are shown from most powerful to least powerful.  In general, positive consequences outweigh negative ones; immediate consequences outweigh future consequences; certain consequences outweigh uncertain ones.  As an example, this is what reinforces the behavior of lying.  If a child (or adult) thinks that they can lie, then the know consequence will be negative if they are caught, it will certainly happen in the future, and it is uncertain to occur because they may never be caught in the first place.  On the other hand, we tell our children that telling the truth is always better than lying.  The only way to get that behavior is that the consequence for telling the truth has to be on the other end of the spectrum – that is, it needs to be Positive, Immediate, and Certain.  Sometimes, though, this is easier said than done.

Poor consequences spell the end of good school performance.  If a child is having homework problems, come up with the PICs that will reinforce the act of doing the homework and turning it in.  Whatever PICs you put in place must outweigh the PICs that come from not doing the homework, because they do exist.  Remember that the consequence must be as seen through the eyes of the child, not through your eyes.  This is why it is so important to figure out what things make them tick and where their likes, affinities, and desires truly lie. 

A quick story.  When my oldest child was about eight, he had a toy that he didn’t want to share with his younger brother.  Every time he played with that toy, his brother wanted it as well (that’s a scarcity mentality – more on that later) because it was obviously the only toy worth playing with.  We used this principle to break that habit.  Whenever my oldest didn’t want to share, we gave him the option of sharing with his brother; if he did not, we made him continue to play with that toy without putting it down for up to 30 minutes.  As you can imagine, at first this sounded good to my oldest because he didn’t have to share.  But since the attention span of an eight-year old is about seven minutes, it didn’t take long for that to grow old with him.  Within a week or so, the selfishness problem was fixed.  What at first seemed like a PIC for him turned out to be a more powerful NIC.  By sharing, he could move on to other toys and do what he wanted to do instead of what he was told to do.  Sneaky, huh?

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Parenting the Middle Schooler

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In my last posting, I talked about starting early on the road to college planning.  I believe that parents of middle-school students should begin planning for their student’s journey to college.  It may seem like years away, but those years will pass quickly.

In middle school, students often get their first taste of multiple teachers and changing classes.  No longer do they stay with one teacher and one classroom full of students all day; middle-schoolers must begin to learn how to manage the changes and pressures of a schedule, along with all of the other challenges of adolescence.

It is during these three years that middle-schoolers prepare for the transition to high school.  They must learn to study effectively, to organize their time, to manage relationships with multiple teachers, and to begin to keep track of due dates for projects, tests, and homework.  The degree to which they are prepared during the middle school years most often determines the academic success that they will ultimately enjoy in high school and college.

Parents play a vital role in a student’s transition to high school during these two or three years.  The best things that a parent can do are:

Ask your children questions.
Communicate with their teachers.
Help them with their homework – you can’t just tell them it’s important to you, they have to see it as well.
Trust but verify – follow up on what your student tells you.
Get involved in their life – know who their friends are.
Enlist the help of other parents and clergy to help a wayward child.
Talk to them about the importance of discipline and good grades.
Limit their time engaged in social media, video games, and other technologies.
Hold them accountable – don’t make excuses for them or their teachers.
Reward good behaviors and activities.
Treat all or your children as individuals; don’t compare them to one another.
Love them unconditionally.

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