Compliments can threaten children with RAD. Well, actually it doesn’t threaten the child, it threatens their deeply held beliefs that they are bad, unlovable and only capable of bad things and that you are an evil ogre.
When you threaten core beliefs, you threaten a person’s life as they know it.
Compliments threaten life as the child knows it. Compliments threaten to kill off the belief that they are bad. If the compliment is true, feels good, or builds up the child in ANY way, well that threatens the idea that YOU are bad! Essentially the child’s subconscious has to reject your kindness or else it can’t keep thinking that you’re evil and keep you at arm’s length.
What to do?
If you stop giving good things, then you’ve given up hope for healing. So that’s not an option. Positive attention, affection, and approval are absolutely necessary for healing. They are not optional to this process.
So what can you do? Be sneaky.
It’s kind of like hiding your dog’s pill in a glob of peanut butter. If we put the right package on a compliment, often times they’ll swallow it without too much fuss.
You can use the techniques whenever your child does ANYTHING that you’d like repeated. Do not think this just for that magically day when your child does something significant. No, no, no.
Praise is for every little thing that you’d like repeated.
For instance, let’s say the child actually brushed their teeth or put their dishes in the dishwasher or wore appropriate clothing for the weather. Would you like them to do that again? Then praise it using one of these methods.
It doesn’t even need to be a new or unusual behavior you’re praising. Maybe your kid brushes his teeth on his own daily. You can give it a small praise just to put one more positive comment in his day. And since it’s really hard to make positives outnumber negatives in the child’s day, we end up having to take all the opportunities we can.
Sneaky Compliments
1. Assign the child to find the good.
For this technique, use a very matter-of-fact voice, not a “super happy and proud of you” tone. The point is to get the child to have a positive thought about their own work. And isn’t that the goal of compliments anyway?
Ask the child, “What did you do well?”
If the child won’t come up with a reasonable answer, wait them out by saying, “That’s ok, I’ll wait.” Or don’t wait and just say, “That’s ok. I noticed it, and it’s ok if you don’t.” That’s really sneaky. Since kids often don’t believe that adults see/know anything, they can easily reject this compliment while the possibility that mom/dad sees good in them may very well linger in their mind at a low level that can build slowly.
If they give an answer that’s true but not what you were noticing, say, “Yes, that’s true. I also noticed that you...”
After this very brief interaction simply move on with life, ideally as if nothing happened.
As with everything this is a skill and it may take some practice to figure out how to best use it in a way that matches you and your child. Start looking for opportunities to try it out and be willing to learn and grown.
Come back Sunday for 3 more ways to give sneaky compliments!