Last month I attended an agile conference in Bangalore. One of the interesting sessions was on applying psychology in the (work)life while dealing with people. The speaker spoke a lot about our mind, how we store and process the information.
What stuck with me was this psychological experiment that he mentioned. It was an experiment with 2 kids hanging on to the branches of the trees. One of them was repeatedly told "don't fall" and the other one was repeatedly told "hold on". As you might have guessed, the latter could hold on for more time than the former.
The speaker went on detailing how the mind ignores the no and don't keywords and only captures the "fall" keyword. I was already lost in my thoughts by then on how many times do I use the negative connotations when I talk to my kids.
Ever since they knew the meaning of word 'No' and it's synonyms, I think I have used it so many times while talking to them. It ranges from healthy stuff like don't eat a lot of junk food to safety measures like Don't talk to strangers. As a parent I think it's pretty easy to stress the importance of a point in a negative manner, stating more things as "don'ts" than "do's". It's easy to identify things that kids should not do than the ones kids should do.
I came back with the thought of talking to kids in more "do's" than "don't". It sounded pretty logical, but alas it was not easy! After all knowing is not everything, the real impact is when we do something about it.
Just few examples
Changing "don't just sit and watch TV" to "come let's play carom"
Changing "don't keep playing that mobile game" to "let's play Antakhshari of names of places"
Changing "don't eat junk food" to "let's limit the junk quota to once a week for what we eat becomes our blood"
I am trying, and hopefully will do better in coming days, but one thing is for sure that the visual of the boy falling when the parent said don't fall will be etched on my mind for a long time.
How about you? Do you buy into this argument?
What stuck with me was this psychological experiment that he mentioned. It was an experiment with 2 kids hanging on to the branches of the trees. One of them was repeatedly told "don't fall" and the other one was repeatedly told "hold on". As you might have guessed, the latter could hold on for more time than the former.
The speaker went on detailing how the mind ignores the no and don't keywords and only captures the "fall" keyword. I was already lost in my thoughts by then on how many times do I use the negative connotations when I talk to my kids.
Ever since they knew the meaning of word 'No' and it's synonyms, I think I have used it so many times while talking to them. It ranges from healthy stuff like don't eat a lot of junk food to safety measures like Don't talk to strangers. As a parent I think it's pretty easy to stress the importance of a point in a negative manner, stating more things as "don'ts" than "do's". It's easy to identify things that kids should not do than the ones kids should do.
I came back with the thought of talking to kids in more "do's" than "don't". It sounded pretty logical, but alas it was not easy! After all knowing is not everything, the real impact is when we do something about it.
Just few examples
Changing "don't just sit and watch TV" to "come let's play carom"
Changing "don't keep playing that mobile game" to "let's play Antakhshari of names of places"
Changing "don't eat junk food" to "let's limit the junk quota to once a week for what we eat becomes our blood"
I am trying, and hopefully will do better in coming days, but one thing is for sure that the visual of the boy falling when the parent said don't fall will be etched on my mind for a long time.
How about you? Do you buy into this argument?
It's so very true Yash. The Book "The Scret" by Rhonda Byrne, emphasised on the same "NO" connotation and told the same thing, unknowingly how our mind focusses on the NO part every time we use the negative connotation and tend to do that thing more.
ReplyDeleteLoved the article :)