You say nice things –I like you!

You’re fun to be around!

You think I’m good-you like me!

I’ll be good for you and try hard!

You just say ugly things to me!

You think I’m bad and dumb—then I’ll be bad and dumb!

Simple statements: The more positive you are with a child, the more they will like you, respect you, and work to please you, because they will feel better about themselves when they are with you. What we and others say to them forms their self image. We tell them who they are.

Good quality positive feedback develops positive attitudes, good self-image, and it motivates. Providing quality feedback is not necessarily easy nor does it come naturally to many of us. Please see my article Feedback Part 1 to get a better picture of what good quality feedback needs to be.

The more problems and issues a child has, the fewer obvious opportunities there may be to give them positive feedback; but the more problems and issues they have, the more they need positive feedback.

Most children who are high functioning and doing well receive lots of positive feedback. Every good grade on a test provides positive feedback; if they made a basket or scored a goal, they receive positive feedback; if they look nice, they receive positive feedback; if they have friends, they receive positive feedback. High functioning children tend to do well socially and have friends and positive social relationships—all things that provide positive feedback and, in turn, motivate and encourage the child to try more and do more. If you do a lot of things well, you receive a lot of positive feedback, generally feel pretty good about yourself, and on the occasion when you receive criticism, you accept it, learn from it, and are better for it.

Children who do not do well academically or in sports or socially tend to receive very little positive feedback. Their life is often filled with poor grades and failures in many, if not most, of the things they do. On the occasion when they receive positive feedback, they don’t believe it; and when they receive negative feedback/attention, it’s an affirmation that they are “dumb” or “bad” or whatever.

The children who receive the least positive feedback are the ones who need it the most.

Who children think they are is primarily a reflection of the feedback they receive. The feedback they receive determines how they define themselves.

Giving children real, true, and positive feedback is imperative.

One very important way to help every child is to create a positive environment for them. A positive environment helps motivate them, helps them develop a positive self-image, and it provides you the parent, caregiver, coach, or teacher with power to influence them in a positive way.

I define a positive environment as one that has a ratio of four positives to every one negative. The ratio of 4:1 is strong enough on the positive side to provide all the benefits of a positive environment, but also provides the opportunity for constructive criticism or feedback to extinguish unwanted behaviors and make corrections.

Think of a common scenario involving a child with a developmental, learning, or behavior problem or combination of all three. Typically such a child may live in a world where they receive only one positive to every four negatives. The sad reality is that for many such children that ratio is 1:10 or more, much more. Imagine their life–they are doing math and they hear, “That one is wrong. So is this one and that one and…”

When they are reading, for every word missed they hear, “Wrong!” and every word read correctly gets ignored. They play appropriately by themselves and get ignored. Then they poke their sister, who squeals, and they get a quick sharp, intense response from Mom. This is their day. Do something right—minimal or no feedback; do something wrong, and you are “bad” and “dumb” at math, reading, and even playing, or simply just “bad” and ”dumb.”

When balanced, negative comments and reactions generally have a significantly stronger impact on us than do most positives. Also, most negative responses are delivered with greater intensity than positives, thus the need for the ratio of 4:1 positives to negatives to create a good positive environment.

Parents, caregivers, and teachers need to learn how to find the opportunities for positive feedback. Mark and comment on everything that is right; don’t emphasize what is wrong, comment and emphasize what is right. Take note of those things that are wrong and come back and teach them. For children with behavior issues, catch them being good and let them know it. Perceive the struggling child as a child with the potential to do well, and work to help them develop that new perception.

We change the brain through the neuroplasticity fundamentals of frequency, intensity, and duration. It’s important to understand that neuroplasticity is how the brain changes and develops. Consistent positive input/feedback helps produce positive outcomes–motivation, good intentions, good self-image, and happy children. Consistent negative input/feedback creates negative self-image, poor attitudes, and unhappy children and helps produce negative outcomes. Negatives impact the brain, and if delivered with sufficient frequency, intensity, and duration, we do change the brain, building negative perceptions and making the brain more receptive to interpreting even positive comments as negatives.

Creating a positive world for your child goes a long way toward gaining their attention and cooperation and toward developing the strengths and abilities that you want to foster.

Your goal: four positives to every negative.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 3, 2020 ©NACD

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by Bob Doman

Was that right or wrong?

Did I do well or not?

Was that important or not?

Does getting it right matter, and if so how much?

Should I care—do I care?

Is it fun?

Do I like this and want to do it again?

Am I good at this?

Am I smart or dumb?

Most children’s answers to these questions are based on the feedback they receive. It’s not the actual performance at the moment that counts; it’s the response they get from it.

Your children, regardless of level of function, are reacting, changing, and developing based on how targeted the input, the frequency, intensity, and duration of the input, and the feedback they receive or not. Most children’s direction and rate of development can be significantly, if not dramatically, altered based on the feedback they receive.

At NACD we are fortunate to have a Portal upon which our families post videos that show how children’s programs are being implemented, and also how the children are functioning. One of the things we watch for on these videos is the feedback that the children receive and the general tone of the session. Inevitably we see a correlation between the quality and consistency of feedback and the rate of development of the child.

One glaring area where the feedback, or lack of, is easily seen is when we see a video of family or caregiver doing an activity that is repetitious. A common activity is working on sequential processing in which a child listens to or sees a sequence of items, then says or demonstrates in some way what they saw or heard. The feedback we observe varies from negative, to nothing, to fair/poor, to good, up to spectacular. We can fairly accurately predict the child’s rate of progress, or lack of, based on the feedback they are receiving. Let’s look at examples of each:

Negative Feedback

Essentially here we are seeing correct responses ignored and errors acknowledged. If the only attention the child receives, even if negative, comes when they make an error, you are actually increasing the odds of getting incorrect responses.

No Feedback

This is perhaps the most frustrating interaction to observe. Regardless of whether the response was correct or incorrect, the response is to simply give the child another sequence. If they don’t know if their answer is correct or incorrect, that is essentially communicating that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. So who cares and why try? The message is, “Let’s just get this over with.”

Fair/Poor Feedback

In these instances the child receives a relatively neutral response, such as “good” to every response whether it was correct or not. Or the child receives a low intensity “right” or “wrong” or “yes” or “no” response, or the equivalent. The reality of these responses is that the negative “wrong” or “no” has a greater impact on the child than do the affirmative responses. This makes the entire experience negative. These responses have low intensity and essentially communicate that it’s not really a big deal if you get this right or wrong, so why put yourself out. It also says, “This really isn’t fun, and I stink at it.”

Good Feedback

In giving good feedback, there is strong acknowledgement of correct answers: “Super!” “Great—you got it!” “Wow- you got another one!” And in response to incorrect answers, there is encouragement: “Almost, you’re going to get the next one,” “Oh, close—come on, let’s get the next one!” With good feedback the child should be feeling good, the emphasis is on their success, there should be smiles from both the caregiver and the child, and the child should be motivated to try hard and welcome the next session.

Excellent Feedback

Excellent feedback requires attention and preparation. The caregiver needs to observe the child and determine if it’s a good time to do the activity. Is the child wide awake? In a reasonably good mood? Are you making sure you’re not pulling them away from something fun? Part of the preparation is also getting yourself pumped so that you can start the activity with energy and the intention that you are going to be successful. And in some cases, part of the preparation is setting up some kind of reward system. The excellent feedback doesn’t need to sound significantly different than the “good feedback,” but the energy level is higher, the intention acknowledged before the activity is even started, and if needed some kind of reward system beyond the social/verbal acknowledgement is employed. What this additional reward system is would be very child specific. For young, lower processing children, that reward would need to be immediate and could range from a little food reward, to physically picking the child up and dancing around the room, to them engaging in one of their very favorite activities. For older, higher processing children, some form of a positive token economy system is often effective and appropriate. If you value the results you are trying to achieve, then give value to the results.

Whenever possible you want to teach your child to love whatever it is that you want them to do and do well. Simply put, if they love it they are going to do the activity with a lot of positive intention and intensity and do well. You really have the power to do this with virtually anything. One of the things I hate to hear from parents and caregivers is that Johnny is bored with the reading, math, processing activity, or whatever. In any activity that you are engaged in with the child, you are the one in control of how much fun it is, how much positive intensity there is, and ultimately how much the child loves the activity and thus their success.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 1, 2020 ©NACD

The post Feedback and Its Impact on Behavior, Learning, Development, and More – Part 1 appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

by Bob Doman

I’m good at reading!

I love to read!

I stink at reading—I hate it!

I’m great at soccer!

I really like playing soccer; let’s play some more!

I’m lousy at soccer—I hate it, I quit!

Simple statement: You like what you think you’re good at. The ramifications of this simple truth are tremendous.

If you feel you are doing well at something, you are motivated to do it more. You approach each new event with a positive attitude. You approach each new event with intensity, and you want to keep doing it, and you want to do it again. The key to triggering neuroplasticity is providing specific targeted input with the necessary frequency, intensity, and duration. Learning is changing the brain—physically changing the brain by growing connections and building networks. The process is what it is—the components are written in our DNA; we can’t escape it. We need to understand it and use it to the child’s advantage.

For fifty years I have been preaching that the first thing, the first goal when trying to teach a child anything is to first teach them to love it. Whether we are hoping to teach a child to crawl, walk, run, read, do math, or do chores, we need to teach them to love it or at the very least, like it.

“You can’t teach a child to love cleaning a toilet!” I beg to differ. If you know your child, you should be able to use that knowledge to create a fun, motivating environment around teaching them how to do it; and once learned, give them a lot of real and positive feedback. You can teach them to love cleaning a toilet.

One of the first things I often have to encourage parents and caregivers to do before starting to teach a child anything is to remember school. Odds are fairly good that if you replicate a lot, if not most, of what you remember school being like, you’re doing it wrong. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Learning can be and should be fun.

Back at the beginning of my career, I was a special education teacher. I worked hard to teach the eighteen children in my class, who all had serious learning challenges and labels like Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and autism, to love reading and math. Randomly throughout the day I would have class question sessions and would throw out questions to a few of the kids in each session. I knew the kids and knew what they knew, so I would call out a child’s name and ask them a question that I felt confident that they could answer correctly; and when they did, I would wing a poker chip at them that they would have to scramble for. The token bought them time at the reward table at the back of the room. I taught the group to cheer at every correct answer, and the lucky child would grab his poker chip and go back to the reward table, where there were math papers with their names on them and books with their names as well. The kids loved doing math and reading and loved earning the reward of doing more math and reading. The tone, the environment, and the feedback can make most anything fun and positive. If the child likes whatever is to be taught and feels they do it well, they are going to approach the session with intensity and are going to want to do it frequently and to continue to do it (duration).

Another thing I did as a teacher was to mark only what was right/correct on a paper. I could give a child ten math problems, and if they only got one right, that gave me the opportunity to say things like, “Wow, you got that tough one right,” “See? You’re getting it—you got that one!” “Great, I bet next time you’re going to get more of them.” Why do schools always mark what’s wrong not what’s right? Typically if a child is given ten problems or questions, and if they got nine correct and one wrong, there is a big red mark on the one they got wrong. This essentially communicates to the child that you don’t care what they know, the emphasis is on what they don’t know.

We aren’t going to change what is happening in school very soon. I’ve spent fifty years trying to do it, with minimal success. But we can change how we do things at home.

I have spoken to groups of parents who have opted to keep their children home rather then send them to school, and I have actually encouraged them to refer to what they are doing as “home education,” not “home school,” because so many homeschoolers work very hard to replicate just what they do at school. We can do so much better.

You have the power to create fun, positive environments around teaching most everything. And you have the power to control the feedback and to make it positive. If your children approach what you are doing with positive intention and intensity, you are going to see them progress well, and you and they are going to enjoy doing it.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 2, 2020 ©NACD

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I wrote a paper on this topic some decades ago for a graduate school paper. I entitled it, “Does Remediation Mean Failure?” and based it on quite a few definitive studies. Needless to say, those studies are long outdated and the paper, which was not very popular with my fellow educators, is no longer current. Sadly, though, the outcomes are the same as they were “back in the day.” And weirdly, there are not a lot of longitudinal studies of what happens to students who receive remedial courses in elementary, middle, and high school. I find this odd, considering how much time and energy goes into it and the high degree to which parents trust it.

Many, many children who come to NACD are involved in remedial coursework or some other type of remedial school-based strategy, frequently in math and reading. I’m sure that we can all agree that students need to be successful in math and reading in order to be successful when they graduate from high school. There are studies showing that students are less likely to drop out of school if they are struggling and remediation of some kind is given. That may be where the good news ends if we look at how high school students are faring today.

The majority of middle school students intend to go to college when they graduate. Only 44% of high school graduates actually enroll in college, and only 26% of them actually graduate from a four year college (Conley, 2012). Out of all the students taking the ACT, only 25% of them were ready to do college work (ACT, 2012). Out of students taking the SAT, only 43% of them were considered prepared to be successful in college (College Board, 2012).

So, you may say, not everyone is going to college nor is everyone going to be successful in college. There are certainly other very lucrative career paths. This is absolutely true. Unfortunately, even those training programs often require pre-admission testing such as the COMPASS test, which is not the SAT but is certainly not a simple test.

There has been a very sharp increase in the number of students who are enrolled in college and taking remedial non-credit courses. According to University Business magazine, somewhere around two thirds of the students entering community colleges are required to take remedial courses. These non-credit courses may be designed to pave the way to credit courses, but many students do not make it through the remedial courses themselves, let alone progress to credit courses and graduation.

Long-term positive outcomes are what every parent wants for every one of their children. Short-term success resulting in long-term problems and low income are not the outcomes any parent or student has in mind. So what would the solution be if there is, in fact, a solution?

Gearing education to a student’s current processing level makes educational strategies more efficient and effective. Fixing neurological inefficiencies that are causing poor educational performance is essential. The failure of educators and curriculum developers to understand that every child does not process at the same level has led to curriculum strategies and remediation strategies that may be varied but are “Johnny One-Notes,” in that they all assume that students have processing levels of 7 or above, working memory capacities that are intact, and a normal or close to normal rate of development of language and conceptual thinking.

This thinking results in the general strategy being simply to slow down the rate of input and put some visual underpinnings in place to help stabilize information being input that is conceptual. Although short-term that approach may look as if it is helping, without addressing the underlying neurological issues, it will not result in sustained progress or higher level conceptual thinking, working memory capacity, or executive function and allow the child to catch up and stay caught up.

There are students with whom I have worked in the past who were failing in school due to stressful home environments or the absence of consistent parenting. For those students with no significant neurological inefficiencies, remediation, which often involves increased one-to-one attention that may be positive and supportive, may lead to positive outcomes that are more sustainable. These are not the majority of students receiving remedial services, however.

We can all talk about the dire straits of the U.S. educational system; but the real issue is what is happening to your child today and next week, next year and ten years from now. In order to make those outcomes the most positive possible, we must work together to improve each child’s ability to take information in, store it, process, and utilize it. We also need to educate your child successfully, making what is being taught relevant, interesting, and able to be understood and utilized. Fortunately, we can do this by working together. Parents and NACD are the right combination to produce success.

References

ACT. (2012). The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2012. Iowa City, IA: http://media.act.org/documents/CCCR12-NationalReadinessRpt.pdf

College Board (2012) SAT Report: Only 43 Percent of 2012 College-Bound Seniors Are College Ready. http://press.collegeboard.org/releases/2012/sat-report-only-43-percent-2012-college-bound-seniors-college-ready

Conley, D.T. (2012). College and Career Reading: Helping All Students Succeed Beyond High School. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 27 No. 1, 2014 ©NACD

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