While we continue working on great new behavior tracking features – including a Classroom Edition of Smiles & Frowns – we thought we’d share some positive parenting articles that we find interesting and inspiring. And if you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll get a monthly round-up with all these links!
Category: Positive Parenting News
Think of this one as a trail head from the Child Mind Institute. And it leads to the notion of improving behavior by trying to create more, positive interactions with your kids. (Which is exactly what our app is meant to help you do.)
Parents Guide to Problem Behavior
When children struggle with their behavior, it can have a negative impact on everyone in the family. Parents know they need to respond, but they often aren’t sure what’s the best strategy, especially if a child is frequently acting out and nothing seems to work. This guide offers parents a comprehensive look at problem behavior. It covers a variety of topics, including what may be triggering problem behavior, how to improve the parent-child relationship when it becomes strained, what to do if kids are struggling with behavior in school and how to get professional help if you need it.
childmind.org
We’re not the best at following the royals, but we do have a decent nose for positive parenting tips. Thanks to People for bringing us 4 great BTS ideas from none other Meghan Markle! Number 4 – a daily Rose and Thorn – is particularly sweet:)
We thought we’d just keep rolling with BTS-style positive behavior news this week. This article has some great management tips to help parents tackle the new year, including prioritizing self care. Good stuff, parents.com!
And here’s a follow up (that you may read first) from TOI with some back-to-school techniques to help your kids overcome testing stress. See what you think and maybe work with them to see what works for them.
From the wide world of positive parenting and schoolwork comes some really gems (and possible new Smiles) that could help your kids get past the study stall. Hats off to the Times of India for highlighting these supportive approaches as the school year gets going over here.
This is a link back to an older collection, but who doesn’t like a roundup of advice, and The Week has a nice selection for you. We especially love #3, which explains the difference between punishment, natural consquences and logical consequences. Read it up!
We love this article from HuffPo, and the whole idea of ending the night, the week, the month… all of it… on a positive note. It’s a huge part of why our review section of the app is there… so you can replay their good behaviors to create your own rituals built around positive feelings. Thanks for the good advice, HuffPo!
Positive Parenting – 8 Tips to Discipline The Happy Way – Parenting For Brain
Positive parenting a parenting and disciplinary philosophy that emphasizes mutual respect and utilizes positive instructions
www.parentingforbrain.com
As we’ve mentioned, we want Smiles & Frowns to be more that just another rewards chart. We want it to be the best tool out there for making good behavior a great conversation and collaboration between you and your kids. That’s why we talk about the 5Cs of Positive Behavior, and why we also thought you might be interested in some of these positive parenting tips from Parenting for Brain.
At the heart of Smiles & Frowns is a simple formula that matters a lot: Smiles – Frowns = Reward-buying power. To tell you why it matters, I have to back up a bit.
When it was time for us to start working on behavior with our kids, we instinctively wanted to take a “positive” approach. Most parents do, right? So we started out by simply trying to encourage the good behaviors, givingSmiles that could earn rewards.
But something was definitely missing. What about those things – like burping the alphabet at 110 decibels at the dinner table night after night – that you just can’t ignore? You want to do something to recognize that moment, but you still don’t want to be negative.
Well, that’s when we decided to make it so kids could earn both Smiles and Frowns, and we’d let the difference between the two become their reward-buying power. Suddenly, something clicked. Suddenly, the kids really started wanting those Smiles and worked hard to get them.
Why? Because we had unknowingly created an economy of behavior, which really changed everything.
Now, Smiles and Frowns were working together to create an actual, predictable value across all of their behavior. A real consequence was now being tied to their all of their actions in a way that added up, so they started owning them more.
(We’ll take more about Consequence, which is one of our 5 Cs, in later posts.)
Smiles & Frowns also became a game kids could easily understand. They realized that their behavior could make spending power that can go up or down, and quickly started maximizing their Smiles and minimizing Frowns to get more rewards.
And now, we had a way to mark bad behaviors, but still keep everything in the land of positive reinforcement. Nothing was ever taken from them (a negative reinforcement thing) unless they took it from themselves. The power was all theirs.
And so they set to it. They simply began to do more of the good things and less of the bad things, so they could earn more rewards, which then positively reinforced… doing more of the good things and less of the bad things. How about it?
Smiles – Frowns = Reward-buying power. It’s a simple formula that means a lot.
Install Smiles & Frowns and see what you think.