Do you have a child who has trouble accepting compliments! Here are 3 more strategies to practice!
1. Compliment a choice, not the final product.
Easiest method: simply replace “good boy/girl” with “good choice”.
You can vary it from there: “good effort”, “good problem-solving” (walking around the back of the dog when you couldn’t squeeze past her head), “good waiting” ... “good choice.”
This technique is useful even when the child didn’t succeed at something. The point is to draw more attention to choices than outcomes. Become an expert at noticing and crediting even the smallest good choice in a given moment.
Let’s say the child was scrubbing a pot but didn’t manage to remove the entire stain. Using a matter-of-fact tone of voice, you can say, “I noticed you tried scrubbing it with both the sponge and the scraper. Good job trying a couple tools to remove the spot.” This compliment helps the child’s anxiety decrease so that you can then successfully teach them how to proceed. Wouldn’t that be nice?
2. Disbelief
(please ignore this change in font as it is unintentional)
This one can be particularly good for parents with sarcastic personalities. You can perform this method with a dry tone or a melodramatic one. The point is to surprise the child so they have to think twice about what’s going on.
You notice that your child’s assigned ask is complete, so you say, “Uh, ya, there’s no way you did this. It was probably the Easter Bunny.” Drawing a ridiculous conclusion helps keep this comment light and may sometimes even make your kid smile, heaven forbid!
Children with RAD love to argue, so you can even have a silly argument about it.
Kid: “It wasn’t the Easter Bunny! You said the Easter Bunny isn’t even real!!”
Adult: “Well, it just had to be. Maybe the dog did it.”
Kid: “I DID IT!”
Adult: “WHAT? Ok, whatever. I guess it wasn’t the Easter Bunny.”
Then slip in a quick smile and move on.
3. The Parental Heart Attack
This is the crowd favorite amongst children with RAD and requires definite drama. Go on, mom, be as dramatic as your child is!!
It’s just a variant of Disbelief, but it’s so popular it deserves its own category.
You look at the child’s work and you drop dead of a heart attack. You don’t have to drop dead all the way. You can just grab your chest and stumble around gasping at how good the work is.
I think this strategy is so popular because it’s a perfect win-win. The parent gets to praise good work, which then is more likely to get repeated, and the child gets to kill off their parent. Ha.
What could be better than that? ;)