Is your baby procrastinating?
Not only children, but also ourselves sometimes have procrastination.
Most of the time, There is only one reason why we procrastinate, that is, what we have to do is what we don’t like to do. No matter adults or children, when faced with one annoying thing, they always think in their hearts: “Even if I finish this annoying thing, there is still another annoying thing waiting for me, so why do I rush to finish this thing in front of me?” ]
In fact, from the perspective of those who do things efficiently, Everyone will encounter things they don’t like to do, No one in the world can be exempted from these annoying responsibilities, and the secret of their ability to finish annoying things without delay is that when they finish one thing they feel annoying, they will not immediately proceed to the next annoying thing, but will first pause and give themselves a reward.
Establish a reward mechanism so that children can learn [do it immediately]
Set up a mutually acceptable reward mechanism with your children, and then implement it together.
1. Establish incentive rules
Establishing reward rules is a good way to encourage children to quit procrastination. The first principle of this rule is to encourage children to do it immediately, whether it is something they like or hate. At the same time, it is also necessary to help children establish the concept of “doing things before enjoying”. For example, tidy up the room before playing computer.
In addition, we are the best role models for children. Therefore, if we can get rid of our procrastination habits first, children will also learn our attitude towards doing things. As long as we provide some rewards to encourage them, they will gradually develop good habits and become effective activists in doing things.
If you want to arouse your child’s enthusiasm for action, it is best that the reward content can cover what your child cherishes.
2. Develop a list of awards
After providing the reward system and establishing the rules of “doing things first and enjoying later”, what you need to do next is to make a reward list with your children.
Brainstorm with him and come up with a series of reward methods. All reward methods do not need you to provide, because the child will naturally tell the prizes he likes or hopes to get.
In this way, when a child wants to get these prizes, he has to try his best to finish his part in order to get them as he wishes.
In fact, the process of discussing rewards with your child often turns out to be a happy gathering time, and you will know your child better. Maybe you think you know what kind of rewards he likes, but in the process of this discussion, you may feel several unexpected gains and surprises.
When making the reward list, pay attention to the following four points:
(1) Rewards must be timely.
The younger the child, the more he needs to be rewarded immediately when he completes things.
(2) Rewards must be reasonable and practical.
Small things get small rewards and big things get big rewards. If he is just tidying up his room, you don’t need to exaggerate and take him abroad to travel.
(3) Never encourage children with [completing things is the greatest reward in itself].
This sentence cannot be established at all. It is the same for children and adults. If this sentence really works, why do children and even adults procrastinate from the beginning when they encounter annoying things?
(4) When the way of reward involves money, you must consider its rationality.
Money is an excellent incentive for some children, but the amount that can drive them to do things is definitely far from the reasonable amount in parents’ minds. However, reasonable financial rewards are sometimes a good choice. For example, the following example is a good illustration.
For example:
Five-year-old Xiao Qi knew that after getting up in the morning, he had to brush his teeth, wash his face, change clothes, pick up his shoes after breakfast so that his mother could help him put them on, and then go to school. If he finished these things before a certain time, he could be rewarded.
He loves Transformers, and he has saved half of his money for the next one. If he can clean up his toys after playing with them, he will get more rewards. He loves this reward method and enjoys watching his money accumulate.
3. When positive encouragement fails, try [stress encouragement]
Sometimes we think that rewards are invalid for children. Even if we make the reward list together with children, when they fail to complete the task as required and we refuse to give them rewards, we will find that they may not care.
In this case, We can change the way [pressure excitation] is used, Let them pay for the consequences-[If you don’t do it immediately, you won’t be allowed to do it again… (what he loves to do).] Many children don’t value or care about extra rewards, but when they know that procrastination will make them lose what they love, they must make a choice, and usually he will choose [to do it immediately].
For those children who don’t want extra rewards, [stress motivation] can hit their key.
Sometimes, parents will complain that they cannot be ruthless in enforcing the rules: [When a child has to stay at home and cannot go out because he has not tidied up his room, I will also be very sad to see him disappointed and sad, so I can’t help giving in to him.]
It is difficult to enforce the rules, Especially when children have to be punished for violating regulations, Your heart will also suffer. But remember that if you let your child’s behavior go unchecked, you will be furious until you can’t bear it, nagging and yelling, causing both sides to quarrel and the child to cry bitterly. This result must not be what you want to see, because instead of helping him, you have hurt him.
4. The most effective reward method: Let the child overhear you praise him.
The child walks around you every day and will overhear everything you say. This is the least laborious and most effective way for you to reward the child: let him overhear your affirmation and praise for him.
Whether speaking to a child’s companion or other adults, Be sure to let your child hear your praise for his behavior change. For example, you said to others in a positive and happy tone: “It’s really great that he will act immediately on what I asked him to do this week.” [Recently, he has always done what he should do on time, and I’m really happy.]
For children, hearing your affirmation or praise is far more encouraging than giving him any valuable material.
How to ensure the smooth operation of the reward and punishment mechanism?
In addition to establishing an effective reward and punishment mechanism, in order to ensure its smooth operation, we must also pay attention to the following two points:
1. When children take the rules seriously, parents should also learn to abide by them.
In the early days of establishing the rules, children do not always take them seriously. They will have some doubts and even test their authenticity, because they do not think their parents will really follow the rules.
When a child violates the rules once, twice or three times, but his parents do not punish him, the child will come to a conclusion: [Those rules are not true at all, why should I abide by them foolishly? ]
However, once children believe that the rules really exist and their parents will really implement them, they will learn to abide by them.
2. Tell your child how to overcome procrastination
A friend of mine who is in the late stage of procrastination mentioned that she had such troubles since she was a child when she talked about her procrastination. To her regret, no one taught her how to overcome the problem of procrastination when she was a child.
From primary school to secondary school, the biggest problem I encountered in my study was to delay all my homework until the last second.
This [wait until the last second] way of doing things makes me feel very dissatisfied with my schoolwork, and the scores are always very ugly. Finally, I give myself a very poor evaluation and feel that I am incomplete. Moreover, unfortunately, some of these problems still haunt me today.
I didn’t mean to blame my parents, but I would think that if they had urged and guided me how to read and do my homework, perhaps these problems would have been solved long ago.
Due to lack of guidance and supervision, I have never seriously studied or spent time on my homework. As a result of the delay, every time I saw my horrible test results, my parents would repeat to me: “We know you are not stupid, you should be able to do better.”
The next time you don’t score above 60, You can’t go …] At that moment, this kind of punishment seemed reasonable. The problem is that no one taught me how to absorb my lessons bit by bit, and no one ever taught me how to plan the reading time of each subject, so this kind of punishment became meaningless…
This is the biggest problem when parents help their children overcome procrastination: they only tell their children not to procrastinate, but they do not teach them how not to procrastinate. Parents should guide their children to do the details of things so as to pave the way for their future life to succeed, instead of just ordering them to do this and that.
No one likes to procrastinate, and so do children. Therefore, as parents, do you want to help them find a different way to do things and get rid of the bad habit of procrastination?