Kids Beyond Limits: The Anat Baniel Method for Awakening the Brain and Transforming the Life of Your Child with Special Needs by Anat Baniel

Author:Anat Baniel [Baniel, Anat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101561188
Publisher: A Perigee Book
Published: 2012-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Please, No Applause!

It’s important to not confuse Enthusiasm with what is often called positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is praising or rewarding your child for something you have been trying to teach him or perhaps for ceasing to do something you’ve wanted him to stop. We often clap our hands enthusiastically at such times. Or we reward our child with a treat or a gift.

Nearly every parent uses positive reinforcement, intentionally or instinctively, to encourage a child to learn and improve. And often this is an empowering and positive experience for the child.

Enthusiasm, as I am speaking of it here, is not about your child earning external rewards or praise. In fact, it is the opposite. One of the first things we teach parents is to not clap their hands or make loud and excited exclamations when their child has just done something for the first time, such as taking his first steps, saying his first word, or interacting socially with another child. Instead, we ask parents to act as if whatever their child is doing were perfectly normal, as if he had been doing it forever. We do, however, encourage the parent to quietly and fully feel their own delight and excitement, relief and joy—to internally experience their emotions. Why is that? Because we want the child’s change or achievement—small or big—to be felt by the child. We want it to be the child’s own experience. Applause and external rewards will distract the child and shift his attention, taking the brain away from the process it’s engaged in. We don’t want the child’s attention to be shifted to our feelings and reactions. Nor do we want to try to reinforce his new accomplishments at such times. It is extremely important that your child stays attuned to what he himself is feeling and experiencing as he figures something out for the first time. His experience itself is the reinforcement. This is especially important when a child has special needs; the child needs the time and space to feel himself and stay immersed in his own process of self-discovery. That doesn’t mean you should be stoic. Understand that your internal Enthusiasm, while allowing your child to have his own experience without interruption or distraction, is your best way of supporting your child at such moments. When all is said and done, it is up to your child’s brain to figure out how to move, think, and act. We want the child to feel, to perceive differences, to notice and focus on his own experience as it unfolds. It is all new for her. Neither your child nor you, the parent, can know what will happen in the next second. Enthusiasm felt and experienced in the way I’ve described supports this internal process, this unfolding in the child, and allows your child her own process of discovery.

We want the child to feel, to perceive differences, to notice and focus on his own experience as it unfolds.

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