A Prize or a Bribe?
Aruna Sankaranarayanan

Parents often use the lure of rewards to get children to obey.  “If you keep your room neat this whole term, I will buy you the toy you want.”  “If you complete your homework before 6 O’clock, you can watch TV for half an hour.”  However, some parents have reservations about rewarding children for expected behaviours.  Their concerns range from indulging materialistic tendencies in children to making them dependent on rewards to perform.

According to psychologists Cathy Creswell and Lucy Willetts, it is wrong to use rewards to make children do things that benefit the parents but not the child.  But they argue that rewards may be used to motivate children “to do something specifically because it will benefit him or her in the future.”  We are giving the child a reward only because she finds a particular behaviour difficult.  Once the behaviour becomes easy for the child, the reward will not be necessary as the child will not put up resistance to do it anymore.  Rewards can then be used for other goals.

Behaviour modification programs attest to the effectiveness of rewards, provided they are given in the correct manner.  Typically, the reward has to be in proportion to the expected behaviour.  For more expensive rewards, a child can earn a token each time he demonstrates the expected behaviour.  He has to then collect a predetermined number of token before receiving the reward.  As far as possible, rewards work best when given immediately after the child exhibits the desired behaviour.

Yes, parents have to be cautious and judicious in how they reward children.  Knowing that Sarala really wants an iPad, does not mean that her parents buy it for her the moment she complies to their demands.  Further, parents may use activities like going to a restaurant, having a sleepover with friends or baking a cake as rewards.

Reference:

Creswell, C. & Willetts, L. (2007)  Overcoming your child’s feats & worries.  London:  constable & Robinson Ltd.

(The author is Director, PRAYATNA.)

The Gratifying Effects of Gratitude

Aruna Sankaranarayanan

            Working with children or raising them can indeed be extremely taxing and overwhelming at times.  When a child refuses to comply, throws tantrums or exhibits aggression, we adults, naturally, get affected.  However, in these trying circumstances, it is best if we are able to maintain an even keel and not lose control of our own emotions.  How can we help a child regain composure if we ourselves get mired in negative feelings?

Further, our own stresses, be they domestic issues, marital problems or office politics, can bog us down.  How can we calm ourselves down when life’s stressors raise their ugly heads?  How can we display a positive frame of mind to children when we are combating the odds of negativity?

In his book, Authentic Happiness, psychologist Martin Seligman describes a simple but potentially energizing exercise.  He describes a study (unpublished) conducted by Robert Emmons and Mike McCullough.

Two groups of people were asked to maintain a diary or journal daily for two weeks.  One group had to simply write down everyday happenings while the other group was asked to comment on happenings that they were grateful for.  At the end of two weeks, the gratitude group reported greater happiness and life satisfaction.  Seligman says, “The reason gratitude works to increase life satisfaction is that it amplifies good memories about the past: their intensity, their frequency and the tag lines the memories have.”

Just jotting down five things we are grateful for is a very benign activity.  At the least, it can do no harm (make sure you keep your jottings confidential though!).  And, if the exercise lifts your mood, it will help you deal with life’s stresses more positively.  Thus, it may be well worth the small amount of effort it takes.  Try it!

Reference:

Seligman, M.E.P. (2002)  Authentic happiness.  London:  Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

(The author is Director, PRAYATNA.)

Compassion Unlimited

Aruna Sankaranarayanan

Despite being the cradle of Buddhism historically, India is not known for its compassion.  The manner in which we treat differently-abled peopled is shocking to say the least.  Unabashed stares, crude comments, intrusive questions, outright hostility and a cold indifference characterize our treatment of people we think are “less fortunate.”  The lack of disabled-friendly architecture and amenities is a further reflection of our brazen attitude.  Our inflexible educational system also makes it hard for those with learning disabilities to cope in the mainstream.

While attitudes cannot be changed overnight, every parent and teacher has a responsibility to sensitize children so that they learn to accept differences positively and openly.  But adults have to practice compassion, not just lecture on it.  We have to learn to embrace ‘disability’ as just another form of difference and not shy away from those who are crippled, blind, deaf, autistic or intellectually-challenged.  Further, we should stop viewing people solely from the lens of their disability and start seeing them first and foremost as people just like anyone else.  Instead of harping on a person’s weaknesses, we should try and find their strengths.

Empathy involves taking another person’s perspective and viewing a situation through a lens other than our own.  Thus, we may ask ourselves how we would feel if we lost a limb or were suddenly deprived of our sight.  How would we cope?  How would we feel if others treated us disparagingly?  How would we want to be treated?  Likewise, we can ask children to imagine how they would feel if they were made fun of, excluded from activities, treated with pity or shunned by friends?  Engaging in such exercises not only promotes compassion but deepens our understanding of our own minds.

As Synder and Lopez write, “Compassion asks people to think outside themselves and to connect with others.  Additionally, as the person comes to understand others, she or he comes closer to self-understanding.”

References:

Snyder, C. R. & Lopez, S.J. (2007)  Positive psychology: The scientific and practical explorations of human strengths.  New Delhi: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd.

(The author is Director, PRAYATNA.)

Truly Bilingual

Aruna Sankaranarayanan

Despite India being home to several hundred languages, why do many children struggle to learn languages taught at school?  Children easily acquire languages spoken at home and with peers.  However, for languages taught at school, many children fail to become conversant in them.  Of course, our students pass language exams and may even score very well, but many of them falter when asked to frame their own sentences, either orally or in writing.  Thus, a tenth-grader, who scores reasonably on his Hindi exam, may not even possess the fluency of a five-year old, whose mother-tongue is Hindi.

A main reason for this lack of proficiency is that our schools emphasise reading and writing and do not focus on building children’s speaking and listening skills.  Further, we embrace a very narrow, mechanistic view of literacy, where children are adept at reading a script and answering questions verbatim from memory.  However, many children do not understand what they read at a deep level.

Language learning involves the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.  Children must receive practice in all four skills in order to become fluent in a language.  A teacher-directed classroom, where the instructor does most of the talking, is not ideally suited to develop children’s speaking skills.  Teachers may incorporate activities like role plays, skits, debates, jingle writing and dumb charades to promote students’ oral language skills.  Further, learning a language also involves imbibing aspects of a culture.  In addition to singing songs and watching movies in a language, students may sample cuisines, learn about fashion, customs and traditions.

In order to prevent children from developing only pockets of competence in a language, language instructors must ensure that children feel empowered by being able to understand, speak, read and write in a language.  As ours is a multilingual nation, this should not be hard to achieve.

(The author is Director, PRAYATNA.)

Is Right ‘Right’ & Left ‘Wrong’?

By Anagha Bharat

We are in the 21^st century and considered to be an influential nation.  But when you look at attitudes and beliefs, I don’t think there is much change in the people’s view of others.  Today, despite having the benefits of higher education, majority of the people are still unable to understand and accept left-handers for being so.

I work as a special educator and conduct assessments of children with learning difficulties.  In an unusual case, a parent refused to accept the conclusion of my report.  She complained to my director that “The examiner wrote with her left hand and held the pen in a weird way”.  This left me appalled to say the least and quite astounded to see that regressive beliefs are still prevalent in our society.

It is shocking to see that people believe that the left hand is inauspicious when left handedness is an individual preference based on the genetic development of the foetus.  Strong cultural influences make us view the left as inappropriate for activities such as writing and eating.  For example, in Japan less than 2% of the population use their left hand for the above-mentioned activities, whereas the actual number of left-handers are many more.  In India, it is unacceptable to extend the left-hand as a greeting or even handing over money.  It is a frustrating experience for left-handers to be constantly reminded by others not to use their left hand.  What is also alarming is how these negative attitudes get passed on through generations.  Recently, while I was working with an eight-ear old child at the centre, he looked up at me and asked why I used my left hand to write.  When I asked him what was wrong with writing with my left hand, he very convincingly said, “My teacher has said if anyone writes with their left, their speed will be slow.”

I see many parents and teachers coercing left-handers to defy their natural tendency stating reasons such as ‘being clumsy, disorganized and dirty’.  In fact most children whose handedness has been forcefully changed tend to become clumsy and develop difficulties in fine-motor activities.  And in most of these cases the child ends up losing many months or even years of learning as he would have expended so much energy into overcoming his natural instinct.

There is abundant literature to suggest that left-handed people have certain cognitive abilities which are associated with superior verbal fluency, memory, creativity and musical talent.  Thus, it comes as no surprise that some high achievers in every field are left-handed.  Barack Obama, Amitabh Bacchan, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Leornado Da Vinci, Allan Border…the list goes on.  When we are able to praise and worship these left-handed achievers, why do we become so narrow minded, skeptical and unaccepting of our own children?  The world is quite unfriendly to left-handed people with most things designed to be used for right-handed people.  Under such circumstances, why not make it easier for our left-handed children by allowing them to follow their natural proclivity?

References:

Llaurens, V., et al., 2009. Why are some people left-handed? An evolutionary perspective, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, (online). Retrieved from: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1519/881.full.pdf+html

Shimizu &Endo, (1983) in Llaurens, V., et al., 2009. Why are some people left-handed? An evolutionary perspective, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, (online).  Retrieved from: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1519/881.full.pdf+html

(Anagha Bharat is a Special Educator at PRAYATNA.)

Senses and Sensibilities

By Kushal Talgeri

Psycho-educational assessment reports often mention statements such as ‘The child is a visual learner’ or ‘The child is an auditory learner’; however, these statements are rarely supported with what they imply or how they may be translated into teaching practices.  Consequently, they are interpreted to mean that this child would benefit if he is taught using visual or auditory media as the case may be; however, research has shown that though children may differ in their abilities in different modalities, teaching the child in his best modality doesn’t affect his individual achievement.  Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia, explains why this may be the case.

According to Professor Willingham, research findings have revealed that memory is usually stored in terms of meaning and is not dependent on a particular sensory modality.  Further, memories are stored in a number of different formats.  Hence, a single experience may have more than one representation.  For example, after watching a movie, one may not remember the actual visual frames of each scene, but may recall the gist of the movie and maybe some dialogues.  Moreover, different memory representations store different types of information.  For example, visual representations by themselves may not be effective in providing meaning as they may have more than one interpretation.  For instance, a picture of a girl crying can draw up so many interpretations as to why she is crying.  Also, not all concepts can be visually presented-for e.g., ‘foolishness’ or ‘unanimous’.

Besides the above mentioned factors, it is also difficult to tease apart each sensory modality for the purpose of measurement and say with certainty what each individual’s preferred modality is.  Thus, Professor Willingham suggests that instead of searching in vain for a student’s best modality, it would be more beneficial to teach children in the modality that is best suited for the content being taught. This would ensure that the child extracts and stores the meaning of what is taught, thereby forming stronger memories and subsequently enhancing achievement.  For example, in biology, concepts are best explained using diagrams whereas while teaching history, it may help to use an audio-visual approach.  If a child has to learn pottery, the only way he will is by doing it himself.  Diagrams or videos depicting the process may not guarantee success when it comes to actually making it himself.  Math is best understood when explained using a concrete to representational and then abstract approach.  For example, while teaching numbers, a child may be shown six blocks, followed by six tally marks to represent each of the blocks and then the number ‘6’ may be introduced to the child.  Similarly, if a child has to learn reading as a skill, no amount of visual presentations or listening to audio tapes can teach her the skill.  Systematic instruction in phonics, regular exposure to sight words and daily practice in reading connected text are better determiners in enhancing reading as a skill.

Thus, as teachers, it is essential while teaching that we use methods that will be most useful in making what is taught meaningful to children.  If a concept lends itself to more than one modality, then it is best to teach it through multiple media.  This will ensure that students retain concepts and perform better.

(Kushal Talgeri is a Special Educator at PRAYATNA.)

Reference:  http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2005/willingham.cfm

Retrieved on 21 April 2012

Confidence

Aruna Sankaranarayanan

Psychologist Sam Cartwright-Hatton lists “Seven Confident Thoughts” that characterize the thinking of happy, confident children.  These are:

• The world is a pretty safe place
• I can cope with most things
• Bad things don’t usually happen to me
• Bad things don’t pop up out of the blue
• I have some control over the things that happen to me
• People are pretty nice really
• Other people respect me

As parents and teachers, we need to model a worldview that reflects these thoughts.  On the contrary, if we believe that the world is a dangerous place and most people are out to get us, then we present a bleak and pessimistic view to our children, who are likely to internalize our views.

If we feel that a child is overly pessimistic or anxious, then we should try and change his worldview by talking to him about his fears and frustrations.  Thus, if a child feels that nobody in school likes her, we should ask the child why she thinks that way.  Next, we can ask the child to think about two instances when her peers were kind to her.  While some children may not like the child, it is unlikely that all her classmates dislike her.  Further, we can get the child to ask herself why she thinks others may not like her.  Perhaps, the child is outspoken and hurts others without meaning to.  Or, she might be more aggressive in her tone without being aware of how she is coming across.  As adults, we need to inculcate a flexible style of thinking in children.

Every now and then, we can browse through the “Seven Confident Thoughts” to see if a child needs help with any one of them.  If a child does not believe in most of them, it might be advisable to seek the help of a counselor before the child sinks further into an abyss of negativity.

Reference:

Cartwright-Hatton, S.  (2007).  Coping with an anxious or depressed child.  Oxford:  Oneworld Publications

(Aruna Sankaranarayanan is Director, PRAYATNA.)

IS SEEING BELIEVING?

Posted by Anagha Bharat

As a small number of book club members strolled into the room for this month’s book club at PRAYATNA, Chennai, they seemed rather confused about what they saw on the board.  ‘Is Seeing Believing?’ was the puzzling question thrown open our members.  As we together tried making sense of it, “The Spectacular Spectacle Man’ by Vishakha Chanchani was read out.

This led to the discussion of questions, some of which were based on the book and some which got the kids to wonder about how they see the world.  The most interesting questions were whether they wanted to see the world bigger or smaller than it actually is.  Strangely, none of them wanted to see it exactly the way it is; while some wanted to tower over everything and be giants, others wanted to see the world through a midget’s eyes.  Another point the book brought out was whether miracles exist.  Surprisingly, a few even doubted their existence.  But their disbelief was soon challenged as four miraculous phenomena and concepts were taken up for discussion.  The concepts were mirage, camouflage, illusion and ambigram.  Most kids had seen a mirage and were fascinated to learn the explanation behind it.  As they learnt about the popular Ponzo’s illusion and the Muller-Lyer illusion, they were intrigued to discover that the length of the two lines were in fact the same although one of them looked longer.  Examples of chameleons and army men in khaki uniform were cited for camouflage and a couple of examples were displayed for ambigram (words when written in a particular style can be read in more than one way).  Children were even made to write the ambigram ‘mom’ which also reads as ‘wow when the paper is turned upside down.

This was followed by an activity where the children had to stick three incomplete circles at three points on a paper and saw a white triangle emerge on the paper.  Thus, even without actually sticking a triangle, they saw one.  Is it not spectacular that our mind sees wholes rather than parts and hence completes the incomplete circles by superimposing a triangle on them?  Hence, we see what we want to see.  Further, we cannot always trust our eyes.  At the end. children were left to ponder over the mind boggling question- ‘Is seeing believing or is believing seeing?’

(Anagha Bharat is a Special Educator at PRAYATNA.)

A Big Imagination

Karuna Davis

“Sorry I’m late, Miss. I set off really early but on the way to school I was captured by a squid.  I wriggled and I struggled till a turtle came and rescued me.” 

Tiddler the tiny fish told tall tales of why he was late to school everyday.  One day it was a sea horse he was riding, another day he was trapped in treasure chest and a mermaid rescued him.  Julia Donaldson’s Tiddler, The Story Telling Fish, was this month’s read at the book club in Bangalore.

Just in case you’re wondering, our aim was not to promote dishonesty.  However, a big imagination is what we were hoping to encourage in the context of story making.  We all love a good story and one that’s cleverly written can be especially engaging.  Story making and telling help build a multitude of skills including communication, language, problem-solving, reasoning and creativity.

While most other skills are given fair attention, we don’t always exercise our creative muscles.  Story making is an excellent exercise to practice using our imagination.  All you need is characters, a setting, a plot, dialogue and action, pictures and of course a generous helping of sounds, tastes, sights, smells and textures.  The experience is rewarding and refreshing.  As with anything, the more we practice the better we get at it.  Write a story for your children and hopefully they will be inspired to write one themselves!

(Karuna Davis is a Special Educator at PRAYATNA)

Thought Catching

R. Saraswathi

Third-grader Nishant failed to copy the Science test portions and date in his school diary.  His mother realized this after seeing her child’s poor performance on the test.  Nishant’s mother, who was unaware that her son had done a test, was furious and yelled at the child for not having copied the details from the board.  Is the mother’s actions justified?  Let us take a closer look at what happened here.

Situation:  Nishant failed his Science test.

What was going on in his mother’s mind?  What was she thinking?

Was ‘yelling’ the best response in this situation?  Are there other ways of reacting?  Primarily, what caused her to yell?  Her thought that, “Nishant is an irresponsible child”, made her feel angry and resulted in yelling.  It also prevented her from finding out what exactly happened at school and why Nishant had not copied the details.  Usually there are umpteen reasons for a situation like this.  Perhaps the child was tired or was practicing for Sports Day on the field.  Or, was he distracted because he was unwell that week?  There are numerous possible interpretations.

So it is not the event per se that causes a behaviour, but our thoughts about the event that evokes our reaction.  We rarely discern our thoughts, feelings and behaviour, but by consciously doing so, we can get a better insight into why we are acting the way we do.  So the next time we encounter a challenging situation, we can stop for a moment, identify our thoughts about the situation and thereby our feelings, which will enable us to resort to helpful behaviours.

Had Nishant’s mother refrained from reacting immediately, become aware of her emotions and physiological changes, tried to calm her self down, recognized the thoughts running in her mind and thought of other possibilities, she’d have been able to stop herself from yelling at her child.  Thus, for any situation, there are alternate ways of looking at it and myriad ways of reacting. Catching our first thoughts before reacting gives us an opportunity to analyze and evaluate our thoughts before jumping to conclusions.

“Thought catching,” a technique practiced in cognitive behavior therapy, can be applied in all aspects of life and in our day to day communication thereby preventing us from reacting impulsively.  By doing so, we can foster healthy relationships with our children, friends and colleagues.

References:

http://www.montrealcbtpsychologist.com/userfiles/373150/file/Change_Your_Negative_Thinking.pdf; Retrieved on 17 March 2012

(R. Saraswathi is a Special Educator at PRAYATNA)