Many adult assumptions and practices related to children take for granted that when kids misbehave, the reason is that they’re not sufficiently motivated to follow the rules. The solution, therefore, seems obvious: Ramp up the incentives or consequences tied to the desired behavior.
The child psychologist Ross Greene upends this conventional wisdom. He disputes the notion that, as he puts it, “Kids do well if they wanna.” Instead, he maintains: “Kids do well if they can.” When adults see a misbehaving child, they should, he suggests, look for a problem in the environment or with the child’s skills that is thwarting the expected behavior. This simple but dramatic shift in mindset underpins the discipline model that he developed in child psychiatric wards, moved into the juvenile-justice system, and implemented in schools. In each setting, his model dramatically reduced both discipline problems and punishments for the most challenging children and adolescents.
[For more of this story, written by Katherine Reynolds Lewis, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...d-discipline/502667/]
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