One Minute Parenting

Side note: It seems very odd to me that tweenage boys' idea of a fun playdate is a beautiful Saturday afternoon spent sitting in the family room, each one staring raptly at his own Kindle Fire.  But they appear to be enjoying themselves and the company (they are chatting while they do it, at least), so clearly I am just getting old.  Sigh.

Anyway, thinking today about positive reinforcement and how it applies to parenting.  Yes, there was a train of thought there--I skipped over quite a few cars.  It started on the soccer field this morning.

A company for which I used to work had what they considered to be a culture of excellence, in the sense that they hired what they considered to be only the best people (don't take that as me blowing my own horn, please), expected them to perform well, and completely took it for granted when they did.  The only real feedback we ever received was negative, since success, good ideas, hard work, perseverance, etc were simply the baseline expectation and anything less was a disappointment to the management.  As it happened, my position was one in transition and I had the right skills to move with it, so I did well there, but that was not the typical experience.  Especially in my department, which was run by a very small man with a very big Napoleon complex who had a regrettable tendency to throw his underlings under the bus.  The fact that I left his department (and the company) still on good terms with him was borderline miraculous.

By contrast, the company for which Himself works takes a totally different approach.  They reward their high achievers with periodic bonuses--cash or stock.  At the end of special projects, or after a particular job well done, he might also receive a small token of appreciation: a gift card to a special area restaurant, for example.  Each of these rewards, large or small, comes with a letter of recognition and commendation.  They have made it abundantly clear that they value his contribution to the company and want him to stay there long-term.

My father worked for a major American company in various international offices (mostly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East) for my entire childhood bar the first few years.  An accountant by training, he was a country manager by the time I was old enough to start scoping out the bookshelves in his home office for reading material.  (I was a precocious reader, and he figured that his business books wouldn't hurt me any.)

At any rate, the message of one of those books has stuck with me through all the (many) intervening years--this must have been the mid-1980s.  The book is called "The One Minute Manager", and it was written by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson (had to go look that part up.)  The recommended system, in a very oversimplified nutshell, is as follows:

1) One Minute Goals
These should fit on one page and be readable within one minute.  The idea is that goals and expectations are spelled out in a clear and simple manner from the outset.

2) One Minute Praisings
This step involves the manager actively catching the employee doing something right and praising them for it immediately.  Think about the difference between this and managers who only give feedback when something is done wrong.  The idea is the the manager is proactive about finding things that have been done right to praise, with the goal of encouraging the employees to continue to do a good job and improve.

3) One Minute Reprimands
These are given as soon as something is done wrong.  They make clear what was done wrong and  how the manager feels about it, and are followed by an affirmation of the employee himself (i.e., the critique is of the work, not the worker.)  And once it's over, it's over.

My husband's company (unlike my former one) has a corporate culture of actively seeking people who have done something right and praising them.  Wonder if somebody there read this book.

This philosophy also makes a lot of sense from a parenting perspective.  (I just did a quick Google search, and it seems that Dr. Johnson has adapted these principles to parenting already, so this little epiphany of mine was about 30 years late in coming.  But at least I got there!)

Having not (yet) read that book, I would adapt the rules to parenting in the following way:

1) Set clear goals and expectations with (as opposed to for) your child.

2) Actively seek to catch your child doing something right (i.e., acting in accordance with the joint goals and expectations) and praise them for those specific behaviors or achievements when you do see them.

3) Be consistent, immediate and fair with reprimands for behavior that is not consistent with the joint goals and expectations.  And once the reprimand conversation is over, it's over and must be let go unless the problem recurs.

As a parent, I could do better on all of these.  I especially need to work on number two...positive reinforcement works really well on influencing behavior in my house.  It just requires that I pay more attention to good behavior and take the time to compliment the kids on it when I see it (instead of just getting on their cases when they misbehave as I so often do.)  Maybe I should buy the One Minute Mother book, now I know that it exists.

And I guess I owe my dad another thank-you for not objecting to the raids on his library way back when.