Stickers With Motivational Quotes

I'm not talking about faith in God, I'm talking about faith in Mark Watney

vast majority of challenging kids already know how we want them to behave. They know they’re supposed to do what they’re told. They know they’re not supposed to disrupt the learning of their classmates or run out of the school when they’re upset or embarrassed. And they know they’re not supposed to hit people, swear, or call out in class. So they don’t need us to put lots of effort into teaching them how we want them to behave. And while this may be hard to believe, most challenging kids already want to behave the right way. They don’t need us to continue giving them stickers, depriving them of recess, or suspending them from school; they’re already motivated. They need something else from us.

bumper sticker said “I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.

Top 10 ideas from No More Meltdowns: 1. Each day for several months, have your child imagine the sensations of anger and rehearse the calming strategy, such as: holding a squeeze ball, counting to 10, taking deep breaths, taking a walk and swinging on the swing set. He will be able to do the calming strategy without too much conscious effort (42) 2. Create a schedule of routines that involves visual reminders of their schedule to provide comfort in understanding what to expect next (40) 3. Praise their effort when they are working on a project or attempting a new activity. Those concentrating on their ability get frustrated more easily. In contrast, those attending their level of effort respond to frustration with more motivation and positive feelings. Praise their continued efforts rather than simply praise their current ability (28) 4. Avoid meltdowns by anticipating and preparing for triggering events. Use the Prevention Plan Form (20, 147) 5. Self-calming strategies: Getting a hug, swinging on the swing set, taking a walk, taking deep breaths, counting to 10, holding a favorite toy (a pup) and a squeeze ball. (42) When using humor, ask “Is it okay if I try to make you laugh to get your mind off of this?”(39) 6. Creating rules and consequences is an important starting point. Without rules and consequences, our lives would be chaotic (5) 7. Gradually expose your child to new foods by asking him first to just look at the foods. Next, ask him to smell them, taste them and eventually eat a small piece. Begin with sweet items (even candy) to allow your child to be open to trying new things. Exercise just prior to trying a new food can increase appetite (77, 78, 80) 8. A child’s passion can be the most effective distraction. Suggestions: Getting hugs, stuffed animals, favorite toys, books and looking out the window (38) 9. Give your child a sticker for each night he sleeps in his own bed. Most importantly, praise him so that he can take pride in his independence (143) 10. Set a time to do homework soon after school, before he gets too tired, and right after as snack, so he’s not hungry. Break down the homework into small steps and ask him to do one tiny part of it. Once started, he will likely be willing to do other parts as well (70) When children feel accepted and appreciated by us, they are more likely to listen to us (9)

QUESTION: What about natural consequences? ANSWER: Natural consequences aren’t all that different from adult-imposed consequences. Both adult-imposed consequences (e.g., stickers, time-outs, losing privileges) and natural consequences (e.g., if you don’t share your toys with your friend, he won’t want to play with you; if you touch the hot stove, you’ll get burned) are very powerful and very persuasive. Both types of consequences teach kids how you want them to behave and motivate them to behave adaptively. But if a kid is lacking skills rather than motivation, and if the kid already knows how you want him to behave, then neither type of consequence is going to get you very far. Again, the vast majority of kids with concerning behaviors I’ve worked with over the years had already endured more adult-imposed and natural consequences than most of us will experience in our lifetimes. If all those consequences were going to work, they would have worked a long time ago.

THE PRAISED GENERATION HITS THE WORKFORCE Are we going to have a problem finding leaders in the future? You can’t pick up a magazine or turn on the radio without hearing about the problem of praise in the workplace. We could have seen it coming. We’ve talked about all the well-meaning parents who’ve tried to boost their children’s self-esteem by telling them how smart and talented they are. And we’ve talked about all the negative effects of this kind of praise. Well, these children of praise have now entered the workforce, and sure enough, many can’t function without getting a sticker for their every move. Instead of yearly bonuses, some companies are giving quarterly or even monthly bonuses. Instead of employee of the month, it’s the employee of the day. Companies are calling in consultants to teach them how best to lavish rewards on this overpraised generation. We now have a workforce full of people who need constant reassurance and can’t take criticism. Not a recipe for success in business, where taking on challenges, showing persistence, and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential. Why are businesses perpetuating the problem? Why are they continuing the same misguided practices of the overpraising parents, and paying money to consultants to show them how to do it? Maybe we need to step back from this problem and take another perspective. If the wrong kinds of praise lead kids down the path of entitlement, dependence, and fragility, maybe the right kinds of praise can lead them down the path of hard work and greater hardiness. We have shown in our research that with the right kinds of feedback even adults can be motivated to choose challenging tasks and confront their mistakes. What would this feedback look or sound like in the workplace? Instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance, they would get praise for taking initiative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism. Maybe it could be praise for not needing constant praise! Through a skewed sense of how to love their children, many parents in the ’90s (and, unfortunately, many parents of the ’00s) abdicated their responsibility. Although corporations are not usually in the business of picking up where parents left off, they may need to this time. If businesses don’t play a role in developing a more mature and growth-minded workforce, where will the leaders of the future come from?

So she and Jim decided to check out the single small atheist group in Sandy Cliffs that met once a month in a back room of a public library. But it just wasn’t what Jim and June were looking for. As Jim explained, “The vibe was too negative. It was a lot of criticizing religion, and that’s not what we we’re about. There was a lot of ‘rage against the nativity scene’ stuff—there is a nativity scene in front of city hall, and they were against that. Or it was ‘rage against the bumper sticker’—someone had seen a religious bumper sticker on a city vehicle and they wanted it removed. You know, that sort of thing. And that’s just not what we were looking for. We wanted something positive. And it was also a lot of talking. But where was the doing? We wanted to be out doing things, being motivated by our humanist values. And we didn’t want to be in a group that was solely defined by its opposition to something. That feels too negative. We wanted to be for something, to be our own thing, and to find opportunities to be doing good.

Let’s think more about the goal of building internal drive in our students, which is part of our fourth goal. You may know that there has been a recent backlash against the practice of rewarding children for every good turn, and for the now-pervasive practice of giving every child a participation trophy. Motivation researchers have long found that offering rewards for a job well done (or just a job done at all) often has the ironic effect of decreasing students’ internal motivation to perform that job (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 2001). This is similar to what happens to professional athletes when they start making money to play, and they find that the passion and drive for the game that they felt in high school and college begin to melt away. When an individual gets rewarded for an action, that individual starts focusing more on the reward than on the natural pleasure that the action may bring them. Remove the reward, and they are actually less likely to perform the action than they would have been if they’d never been rewarded at all. In contrast, research (Ryan & Deci, 2000) has also found that there are three factors that foster sustained internal drive in us humans: competence (“I can do this”); autonomy (“I have control over what happens here”); and relatedness (“I am connected to people around me”). Plan A is not a particularly good recipe for fostering these factors, especially when Plan A comes in the form of sticker charts, points, and other systems of rewards and consequences that attempt to manipulate a student’s behavior through mechanisms of power and control—the opposite of building a sense of autonomy. Plan C doesn’t do a good job of this either, because while reducing expectations has advantages such as helping avoid challenging behavior, it does not leave the student with a sense of accomplishment and thus competence. We think you will come to find that Plan B provides a great recipe to foster internal drive, by helping students learn the skills (competence) to solve problems independently (autonomy) through an empathic interpersonal process (relatedness).