Caregiver Kickoff & Program Overview

Welcome to the Coping Power Program Caregiver Kickoff. In this video, we’ll discuss the details of the program occurring at your child’s school, its benefits for your child, and how you can support them at home. Your involvement in your child’s education is crucial, and we look forward to collaborating with you to nurture your child’s development into productive citizens and effective communicators.

Each week, you’ll receive a quick follow-up and overview of the content your child learned in a brief electronic or physical flyer, called the “weekly caregiver nudge.” This is also accompanied by a video series that provides you with a quick snippet of what your child is learning in their classroom.

You might be wondering what Coping Power actually is and why we’re making it such a big deal.

Coping Power is a prevention program for students in late elementary to early middle school. It is intended to support pre-adolescent mental health, behavior, social interactions, and more. It works to build social skills, self-regulation, coping skills, and the ability to resolve problems and conflicts.  Coping Power is a research-based strategy that has been shown to benefit school-aged children in the United States, particularly by reducing social, emotional, and behavioral problems that often align with poor academic performance and other negative outcomes.

The program is driven by six key competencies. Details will follow on each of these competencies, but to provide a brief overview, these vital skills enhance emotion control, social interaction, conflict resolution, and positive relationships with peers. These skills will help your child be more successful in recognizing and regulating their own emotions, and in interacting in various social situations, including conflicts and risky situations of peer pressure.

The first skill we focus on with your child is awareness and recognition of emotions, both in themselves and in others.

Self-awareness, a key component of Coping Power, means recognizing emotions accurately. We’ll teach nuanced emotional understanding, moving beyond basics like “happy,” “sad,” or “mad.” We delve into emotional intensity as well, for example, determining the difference between being calmly content versus wildly excited.

To help your child understand and visualize the different intensities of an emotion, we use a basic thermometer illustration. As an emotion gets more strong or intense, the reading on the thermometer rises. As they relax and the intensity of the emotion decreases, the temperature on the thermometer reduces. Your child will learn about the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviors, for example, how their thought patterns and self-talk impact their emotions. Strategies for recognizing and responding to negative self-talk, which is common at all ages, are addressed. We will teach your child to recognize these patterns and reframe them for resilience and growth.
The next core competency we target is perspective-taking, or stepping into someone else’s shoes to better understand their point of view. This doesn’t mean changing our own views or opinions, but rather being more aware of how others might feel in a given situation.

To help foster this skill, your child will reflect on their viewpoint and the viewpoints of others through games and debates like “this or that,” where they judge sport or candy preferences. Your child will practice expressing their views and considering the perspectives of opposing opinions. They will be asked to share their own thoughts on a given topic, as well as consider alternative points of view.

Next, we focus on emotion coping, which includes all of the various ways that your child can learn to manage difficult or intense emotions through self-instruction, distraction, and relaxation. The positive, helpful self-talk component we mentioned earlier plays a big role here as well.

Your child will learn thought-based coping and active coping methods. Active coping approaches involve walking, talking, dancing, crafting, playing, or petting beloved family pets or stuffed animals. Thought-based strategies help to identify unhelpful thoughts, automatic thoughts and reframe them. For example, your child will learn to take internal thoughts such as, “I’m no good at this!” and reshape those thoughts to sound more like, “This is really hard for me right now, but I’ll get better with practice!”

We’ll teach relaxation methods for instant calm and for sustained serenity, with the goal of giving your child the tools to both decrease the intensity of their emotions in-the-moment, and to reduce their day-to-day stress through positive self-care. Classroom-friendly meditation and deep breathing using familiar tools like Go Noodle provide your child with safe, comfortable demonstrations of some of these activities.

In addition to strategies that your child might use during down time, at home, or when they have more time to relax and cope, we’ll teach in-the-moment self-control strategies for challenging moments and situations. These strategies can help your child manage sudden stress or escalating emotions in a space where they might not be able to use some of their more active coping strategies like running, walking, talking, doing yoga, or even meditating. These strategies can help your child manage their emotions in the moment, by focusing on simple factors within their control to maintain a low emotional intensity. This is called “pressing pause,” and the goal is to help your child breathe and remain in-control of themselves until they later have the time to more actively process their emotions.

The next core competency in the program focuses more on your child's’ external environments, their social world. We focus on helping your child build effective communication skills, including speaking assertively rather than aggressively in a conflict, using active listening skills, and knowing when apologies are needed.

Your child will learn appropriate and effective ways to respond to peer conflict, enabling them to feel comfortable and confident expressing their feelings without causing harm to others. They will practice using assertive language to stand up for themselves and their opinions in a way that is appropriate, fair, and doesn’t accuse others. A specific strategy we teach to help with this is called “I-Messages.” I-Messages encourage your child to express how they are feeling about something without placing blame on someone else, by expressing simply how the speaker is feeling during a situation, and why they are feeling that way. This way, the speaker is able to get their point across and be sure their thoughts and opinions are heard, without escalating the argument, or saying something harmful.

In addition to effective speaking skills, we want to help your child become effective listeners. To do this, they’ll learn about and practice the active listening process, including reading body language, making appropriate facial expressions, making comments and questions to the speaker, making eye contact as appropriate, and more. Your child will learn the importance of paying attention when someone else is talking, trying to understand their perspective, and looking for points of compromise between what they and the other person have communicated.

Your child will be supported in using the information and perspectives learned to better communicate during conflicts and problem-solve challenging situations. It’s important for your child to feel comfortable engaging in effective compromise and making decisions that are healthy and appropriate for themselves and others.

This decision-making and problem-solving process is the crux of the Coping Power program. We use a model called PICC, which your child will reference almost every week of the curriculum to ensure they understand and can apply this problem-solving strategy across a variety of difficult situations. PICC stands for problem identification, choices, and consequences. In the PICC model, your child first learns to identify what the problem is that they are experiencing, including the details of the problem such as when, where, why, and how it occurs. Then, they’ll consider the choices they have to try to resolve the problem, and the consequences of each of those choices. They’ll analyze the positive and negative effects that each choice might have on themselves, their friendships, and the situation overall, and then they’ll determine which decision seems best.

Lastly, your child will begin to consider both the positive and negative influences that come from their peer groups and will explore ways to resist and refuse negative peer pressure, avoid bullying, and focus on developing strong, healthy friendships.

Your child will learn to recognize high-risk peer situations, meaning activities that could be potentially dangerous, unhealthy, or even illegal. They will experiment with a variety of refusal skills they can use to get out of these situations without seeming “uncool.” Some of the strategies even help students to discourage their friends from participating in these risky activities, thereby making your child a positive influence on those around them.

We also discuss the qualities of healthy friendships and how to develop them. Your child will learn strategies for starting conversations and meeting new people so that they can create new friendships that are healthy and meaningful for them.

These six competencies: accurate awareness of emotional distress, perspective-taking, emotion coping, social communication, social problem-solving and decision-making, and resistance to peer pressure and developing healthy relationships, can be very complicated for children who haven’t learned them before, so we break everything into simple, manageable steps. You can see that there are essentially three levels, or modules, of learning.

We start with several lessons related to problem identification, emotion identification, and general awareness of the self and others.

Next, during module two, which is lessons 4-7, your child will learn and practice coping strategies and assess the different choices they can make in a given situation. Finally, in the last set of lessons, or module three of the program, your child learns conflict resolution skills and communication strategies like those I-Messages, active listening, and assertive language techniques we explained earlier.

In total, your child will engage in 12 lessons with their whole class.

Your school has decided to use this curriculum to better support students’ growth mindsets, positive learning environments, and social and emotional experiences. All children will complete the 12 classroom lessons. These lessons provide universal prevention and support to your child with emotion regulation, self-management, and social skills. The skill areas addressed in these lessons are applicable to all pre-teens and teenagers, including anger and aggression, sadness, fear and anxiety, conflict, peer pressure, decision-making, and more.

In addition to the 12 classroom lessons, some children will complete an additional 12 lessons in a small group setting. Students will be selected for the small group based on recommendations from their teachers and guidance counselors. These supplemental lessons are intended to support children that might benefit from a little extra hands-on application and the opportunity to analyze and ask questions in a smaller group environment. The small group sessions are run by guidance counselors and/ or other trusted adults that we have trained specifically to provide the lessons and practice these skills. We expect that small group leaders will serve as another great resource to your child throughout their school-day.

It is important to note that your child is not selected for the small group based on academic performance. In addition, the small group is not punitive and is not expected to detract from any academic learning occurring in the classroom.

While all of these in-school components are great, the most important person your child will learn from is YOU! We are here to provide you with support and encouragement to help your child feel successful as they practice applying these skills both at school and at home.

There are several ways that you can specifically support your child’s growth within the Coping Power program. We encourage you to ask your child what they are learning in school and how they feel about it, regarding both the program, and the rest of their school day. Showing an interest in your child’s school life is incredibly valuable. Despite teenagers often acting too cool for us adults, they really do benefit from attention, support, and positive encouragement, and it is crucial for them to know that you are there for them.

We caution against a sense of “interrogating” your child with questions though; if they show signs of shutting down when you question them (like refusing to speak, leaving the room, or stating that they don’t want to talk), we recommend stepping away from direct questioning and toward engaging in an activity that you can both enjoy,  such as walking or playing a board game, where conversations can naturally emerge as your child is ready to talk. This is actually one of the positive parenting and caregiver strategies we’ll discuss in part two of this video! We have many suggestions in the second portion of this video, so please stay tuned.

Before we move into the second section, we do want to provide one last method for involvement specifically with the Coping Power program. Each week, you’ll receive a quick “nudge” message, either in the form of a paper flyer or an electronic message, from your child’s teacher or Coping Power leader that provides a brief overview of the skills your child is learning each week, as well as suggestions for ways to practice at home. These infographic flyers have also been adapted into a video format, so that you can view them online as well, much like this video!

We want to make sure that you are still in control of your child’s learning and that you can coach and support your children to become the best versions of themselves.

Of course, there are far too many ways that you can support your child’s growth for us to cover in one video, but in this next section, we’ll dive into a few research-based ways that you can engage with your child at home.

We’ll start off by discussing what behaviors are, what causes behaviors, and what you can do to support your child in making effective and helpful choices. Your child will be learning to do this in their classroom and small group session as well, as they learn to pick apart problems and consider their choices and consequences.

They’ll also be learning skills to better control their own behavior, cope with and understand their emotions, and interact more appropriately with peers and teachers even when they are feeling upset. These skills are based on social learning theory, a theory that considers behavior to be influenced by people’s surroundings and events that occur before and just after a particular behavior. For example, a child’s response to a request or prompt from their parent, caregiver, or other adult, is closely tied to both the prompt and how the adult reacts after they do or do not follow through with the requested behavior. As such, your behavior, home environment, and how you respond after your child’s behavior have significant influence over whether your child will choose to display a behavior again in the future. Although it may not always feel like it, there are many strategies you can employ to help guide and encourage your child’s behavior using reinforcement and creating a more helpful, organized, and positive learning environment.

Let’s go over the definition of behavior that we are using to guide these recommendations. Behavior is defined as something observable someone does. It is something that you can actually see. For example, someone might be walking, screaming, arguing, hitting, washing the dishes, playing a game, etc. These are all behaviors that you can specifically see someone doing.

Some behaviors might be more desirable than others, but it’s important to understand that all behavior is communication. Different behaviors are displayed because people are trying to meet specific needs or communicate their needs in the best way they know how. They might be walking because they need to get a drink of water, or they might be yelling because they don’t feel like anyone is listening to them. Children and teenagers are often still learning what their emotions and needs are, and it can be really frustrating and challenging for them as they navigate the world and try to communicate these needs or feelings with others. A lot of times, this is why we see children at this stage yelling, talking back, or otherwise acting in ways that we as their caregivers don’t prefer.

Behavior is not an attribute or a personality characteristic— It is not stubbornness or laziness, even if it can sometimes feel that way. But when it comes to guiding a child’s behavior, it is most effective to stick to describing the actual, observable action rather than the person.

Behavior can be changed if the unmet need is understood, and the environment is modified to meet that need in an acceptable manner. It is fundamental to understand the function of a behavior, or why the behavior is ‘working.’ For example, perhaps your child isn’t doing their chores because they know they’ll get attention from you, even if your attention is a lecture or nagging for them to go clean their room or take out the trash. Once you recognize that your child is behaving a certain way in order to get something (in this example, attention), you and your child can find alternative ways to meet that need. When we approach behavior from this mindset, it starts to make sense why we need to clearly describe the behavior in question, as well as the context or situation in which it occurs.

If you look at this flow chart, you’ll see that the “B,” which stands for behavior, is right in the middle of the flow chart. There is an “A” that comes before it, which stands for “antecedents” and a “C” that comes at the end, which refers to “Consequences.” Antecedents are events that happen just before a behavior, and consequences are events that happen immediately after a behavior. We’ll dive into each of these a bit more now.

What happens right before and right after a behavior has a lot to do with the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. Understanding the antecedents and consequences surrounding a behavior can help you to guide your child’s behavior more effectively.

The antecedent is anything that occurs before the behavior. Some antecedents can set children up to make helpful or desired behavior choices, and other antecedents can result in more problematic or undesired behaviors, or cause a decrease in the desired behavior that you as the caregiver were hoping to see.

Before we discuss specific ways that you as a caregiver can build awareness of and intention behind the antecedents, or predecessors, to your child's behaviors, we want to give you a moment to reflect and practice applying this ABC flow chart. Please take a moment now to consider a time when you were incredibly frustrated, angry, or otherwise upset… Once you've thought of a time that you were incredibly upset, think about your actions. Feel free to pause this video to take more time to reflect and write down your responses. Take a moment to think about the situation leading up to when you became upset. What happened (specific event or action) just before that motivated you to become upset in the first place?

You may see a clear situation that led to you becoming upset, and how the feeling of being upset impacted your actions. Your actions might have then led to even more negative experiences or some other negative consequence. ABC experiences are normal for everyone, regardless of age. But it is particularly challenging for children to go through this path, as they are still learning to manage their emotions and behaviors. As adults, we likely still have moments when we lash out, but because our brains are fully developed, we have a stronger ability to remain in control and make effective behavior choices, despite our emotions. While our children are learning to recognize and manage their emotions, it is important that we support them by building awareness of situations that could promote negative emotions. If adults give ineffective or confusing directions to a child, or if the child is in a confusing, disorganized, or even upsetting environment, it is more likely that the child will not comply, be unsure what success looks like, or choose a different undesired behavior.

The reflection activity you just completed is very similar to the weekly power practice that we’ll be sending home each week for you to review with your child.

The ways that we facilitate positive and predictable environments for our children are very simple.

Children often lack control over the environment or situation they are in, but we as caregivers can create and support helpful, healthy environments. We can set the stage so that our children are able to effectively regulate their emotions and comply with our requests by working to make them feel seen, heard, and supported in predictable home environments.

One specific way that we can better control and regulate our child’s environment is through direct, clear, and specific directions. Good directions are crucial for our children’s success in completing desired tasks and behaviors. There are a number of considerations that you must keep in mind before prompting a behavior or giving directions to your child.

First, caregivers can plan out their most important prompts or directions before saying those directions aloud to their child. Consider whether the direction is something that you have determined your child must comply with, and whether you are willing and able to follow through with a consequence. The consequence could be reinforcement, like providing praise for a job well done, or punishment, like taking away a privilege until the requested task is completed. If the direction is not important enough for you to observe and praise, consider whether the behavior prompt should be given attention in the first place.

For added impact, you might also consider the timing of the direction. Interrupting your child in the middle of an activity that you have given them to do, or that they enjoy doing, like watching TV or playing outside, may be perceived as unfair by your child, thereby reducing the likelihood of their success in following your directions. We know that a lack of warning prior to transitioning away from a fun or enjoyable activity can decrease the likelihood that a child will follow your directions on the first ask and increase the likelihood of a disagreement between caregiver and child. When possible, we recommend waiting to provide a prompt or new direction until near the end of the activity or allotted play time. If you will be giving a direction at the end of an activity your child is currently enjoying, it's best to give your child a heads-up as to how much time they have left doing that fun activity. This might be as simple as a two- or five-minute warning so your child knows how long they can keep playing, watching TV, etc., before they’ll be asked to move on. You can even give them multiple reminders as their time runs out. Some kids will need assistance in determining a good stopping point from an activity they enjoy. Giving them regular reminders as they are nearing the end of time, and helping them recognize a clear end point (like scoring a basket, finishing a level of a video game, or the end of a TV episode) can help them to better recognize and transition independently away from preferred activities in the future.

When you and your child are ready for the new direction, keep in mind that your goal is to set your child up for success by giving them the clearest, most helpful direction you can.  Situating yourself close to them and ensuring you have their attention, possibly placing a hand on their shoulder, is very important. You should also try speaking in a neutral or pleasant tone of voice, using low volume and including the word “please”. We want to convey respect to our children, even as we are providing specific prompts that we expect them to comply with.

Effective directions are specific, clear, and developmentally appropriate. If you’re struggling to gauge what is developmentally appropriate for your child, consider whether you’ve seen your child successfully do the task or something of similar difficulty level before. State the prompt or direction only one time. Then, wait 20 seconds to see if your child begins to the desired behavior you asked for. This feels like a long time, but it gives your child time to process what you have asked for and think about any questions or concerns they might have related to the requested behavior. There is no need to rationalize the request or negotiate in these instances. You don’t need to explain yourself in detail or why you’re requesting the behavior.

Now that we've learned the steps to an effective prompt, let's talk a bit more about directions that don't work, and that might even cause noncompliance, frustration, or back talking from your child. Everyone gives unclear directions at times, and it can become a helpful experience if you recognize that you are giving a bad direction and apologize to your child for not being clear, and then edit or restate a clear direction. There is no need to be hard on yourself if you occasionally use an ineffective direction; we want to model for our children that mistakes are a normal human experience that we can learn and grow from!

The first type of poor directions is varied directions. This involves too much talking or explaining after giving a direction. Directions should be followed by 10 seconds of silence so that children have time to process and begin following the behavior or asking questions.

Next are change directions, which pull together too many directions at one time period for example, if you ask your child to do 5 different things, like feed the dog, take out the trash, empty the dishwasher, do their homework, and call their grandma, it is likely that they will either forget a step or become frustrated and not even try.

Directions that are stated as questions are also problematic because technically your child has the right to say no since you are making a request rather than telling them that they need to do something.

Repeated directions occur when you say the same thing over and over again. This is pretty similar to the varied directions that we already talked about, so keep in mind that you should make one statement and then wait to see how your child responds.

Vague directions can also be challenging because they don't state exactly what you want from your child and are not specific.

“Let’s” Directions begin with the word “let’s,” which makes the child think that you're going to help them and they may become angry if you do not.

Lastly, distant directions are challenging as children may not hear us clearly or have the option to pretend that they didn't hear us. Avoid yelling directions from a distance or another room. Try to move into the same room or space that your child is in to ensure that they can hear you clearly and understand what you have told them to do.

Directions are specific prompts that we give to our child at the specific point in time where we want them to engage in a behavior. But there are some behaviors that we just want our children to do all the time, like being respectful, being kind, and being responsible. This is where rules and expectations come in.

Rules and expectations do not need to be restated each time you want to see a behavior, although you may want to periodically remind your child or revisit the rules and expectations for your household. These rules and expectations are agreed upon, known behaviors that you want to see your child engaging in on a regular basis.

Rules and expectations are slightly different concepts, so let’s break down what they each mean. Behavior rules are established through repeated practice. These are routine behaviors that caregivers want their children to engage in on a reoccurring basis. Examples of behavior rules might include: keeping hands to ourselves, using appropriate language, respecting property, and requesting permission before leaving the house. It is beneficial to frame these rules in a positive manner, so that children know specifically what we do want them to engage in, as opposed to what they shouldn’t do, like “no hitting,” “no cursing,” or “no breaking people’s belongings or property.”

When behavior rules are violated, caregivers don’t need to warn or threaten their child that they will be disciplined if they do not stop. Instead, the more effective response is to provide an immediate and expected consequence for the behavior. We’ll explain what consequences might look like momentarily. Please keep in mind that the behavior rule must have been taught prior to providing a consequence, and that the child should already have a clear understanding of both the rule itself and the consequence they can expect if they violate the rule. It can be helpful to practice the expected behaviors together before setting the consequence in place to ensure your child understands the rule and is developmentally able to do what you’ve asked.

Now that we have a better understanding of behavior rules, let’s go over expectations. Expectations should also be clearly laid out for your child in advance, and should  be age-appropriate. These expectations can then increase and expand as your child gets older and is capable of doing more and taking on more household responsibilities. include daily tasks, like making the bed, cleaning the bathroom, setting the table, doing homework before watching TV, , and more. Regularly meeting age-appropriate expectations will build your child’s effective behaviors, self-esteem, and contribute to the warm and supportive relationship you have with your child.

Let’s come back to that ABC flowchart we discussed earlier. We now have a strong understanding of the antecedents, or context and events leading up to the behavior. Remember that antecedents include where the child is, what you and your child are doing, what specific directions, rules, and expectations are in place for the given setting, and whether the environment is calm and quiet enough for them to hear your directions. With all of these supports in place, we are then watching for the behavior, or B in our flowchart. The behavior is the specific, observable thing that your child does, whether that is walking, talking, cleaning, etc.

Now that we have a strong understanding of A and B, antecedents and behavior, let’s move on to part C, consequences.

Before we get into the specifics of consequences that you might provide for your child’s behavior, let’s take a moment to reflect on consequences you might have used or experienced in the past. If you can, grab a sheet of paper and a pencil to jot down a few thoughts. Think about one undesirable behavior your child engaged in recently and how you responded.

Let’s take a look at that undesirable behavior that you wrote down. What was the behavior your child engaged in? What was happening right before the behavior? What was the consequence that either you or someone else responded with? Now, imagine that you are your child. To the best of your ability, consider the situation from their point of view. What might have been their experience, and why might they have acted that way? What need might they have been trying to meet, or communicate?  Take a moment to reflect before continuing with this video.

Now, think about one desired, positive, or helpful behavior your child recently engaged in and how you responded. Again, feel free to pause this video to take more time to reflect and write down your responses. Consider what the behavior was, and what was happening immediately before the behavior. What was happening around your child? Imagine, again, that you are your child. What might have motivated you to act in this way? Was there a need or desire to be fulfilled? What was the antecedent, and what was the consequence that followed? Would you be motivated to engage in that behavior again?

Again, all of these reflections and self-examination activities that we’re doing in this video are similar to the ones that we’ll ask of you and your child each week in our caregiver nudges. We hope you’ll find value in having these conversations with your child and beginning to better understand their needs and perspectives!

You might have noticed when you were brainstorming that it was easier to come up with examples of undesirable behaviors than it was to come up with examples of desirable behaviors. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for us as humans to recognize the things that are going wrong, or the things that are bothering us, more than the things that are going well or making us happy. This is completely normal and natural, but in recognizing it, we can also actively work to recognize and encourage children to engage in desired behaviors more often.

You might also have noticed that your reactions, or consequences, to your child's undesired behaviors were much stronger than consequences to your child's desired behaviors. For example, you might have sent your child to their room for talking back but might have just smiled at them or felt gratitude when they took out the trash when you asked. Thinking about the important role that consequences play in guiding behaviors, you can begin to see how important it is to really attend to providing positive consequences when your child is choosing helpful and desired behaviors. The goal is to catch children choosing effective and desired behaviors as often as we can and mostly recognizing their efforts, even if they are not perfectly meeting your expectations.

In the next few slides, we're going to talk more specifically about the different consequences that caregivers can employ that will likely decrease the number of unwanted behaviors, increase the number of desired behaviors, and hopefully decrease the amount of time you spend correcting your child and help you continue to build a more positive relationship.

Consequences are the events that occur after something happens. Every action has a consequence, even if we aren’t aware of it. These consequences can be big or small, intentional or unintentional. By using consequences intentionally in response to your child’s actions, you can support your child in modifying their behavior to be more helpful, positive, and in line with your expectation. Research has shown that if children and adolescents receive positive consequences, such as genuine praise and acknowledgement, for desired behavior, they are more likely to choose that behavior again in the future. In fact, this is true for all humans! You are also probably more likely to do something again if a friend, coworker, or family member acknowledges your effort and shows appreciation for what you’ve done for them.

The most powerful positive consequences occur immediately after the behavior. When consequences come immediately after a behavior occurs, it’s easier for your child to link the two in their brain. They are more likely to recognize that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between whatever they just did and the consequence they are receiving.

Take a moment to consider some positive consequences that you might use at home. Some examples could include positive attention, choosing dinner or dessert, watching a preferred movie, screen time, accessing a special privilege, or anything else that your child might enjoy and be motivated by. Oftentimes, simply noticing and praising your child for ‘doing the right thing’ is enough. Praise is crucial to building your relationship with your child and improving their behaviors.

The best part about praise is that it’s fast, it’s free, and it’s such a meaningful way to connect with your child. In addition, praise has a more positive impact on your child's self-esteem than almost any other reward you could provide. It helps focus your attention on the good things happening, rather than spending more time and energy using corrections or criticism—which could, in turn, hurt the relationship and build unpleasant feelings between you and your child.

Praise sets your child up to continue making desired choices in the future. The more specific you can be in your praise, the clearer you are in communicating to your child specifically what behavior you would like to see again. We call this, “labeled praise.” Labeled praise identifies exactly what it was that the child did that resulted in the praise. For example, “I like the way you completed your homework before dinner” is an example of labeled praise. Unlabeled praise, on the other hand, indicates to the child that they did something well, but doesn't say exactly what was done well. For example, just saying “good job” or “thank you.” Labeled praise is a much more effective way to convey to your child specifically what behavior you would like to see them engage in more regularly in the future.

Ideally, we also want to offer praise immediately after your child does the desired behavior. However, this isn’t always possible. Maybe you are at work when your child gets home from school, but the expectation is that they begin their homework before you return home. In this case, it is still beneficial to praise the child later in the evening, when you return home from work and see that they are actively working on their assignments or have finished all of their homework. As long as you provide the specific label so your child knows what you are praising, the praise can still be very effective. When we can use immediate praise, this is best, but it just isn’t always possible in our busy lives. Immediate praise is more effective, but delayed praise is still beneficial. All praise functions as a way for you to clearly communicate that you appreciate your child’s efforts to engage in more desirable behaviors!

One caution to providing praise to your child is to avoid pairing the praise with a criticism. The power of praise is completely lost if it is followed by a “but” statement. For example, “you are doing better with your schoolwork but I'm getting tired of having to remind you about your chores everyday,” or, “thanks for making your bed this morning, but I just don't understand why you can't do a simple thing like that every day.” This negates the compliment or praise you’ve provided, as it becomes overshadowed by criticism.

Another consideration in praising kids is that the praise needs to be sincere and realistic. Telling a child that they are the “smartest person in the world” or “always helpful” can trigger the child to think of times when they did not act in a manner that was smart or helpful. They might start to grow worried that they can’t always meet your expectation for perfection, or they might think that you are lying. These broad statements also don’t define a specific behavior they can perform again – they aren’t labeled praise. Some children and teenagers might even experience this as manipulation rather than praise, thinking that their caregiver is only saying those positive things because their that adult wants to control them or make them to act in a certain way. This can backfire and cause your child to act in a manner opposite to what you expected or wanted. Because of this, specific, labeled praise is better for increasing your child’s feeling of value and motivation to choose behaviors that are beneficial.

At this point, we've talked a lot about how to provide praise and positive reinforcement to your child when they perform the behaviors that you would like to see more of. While we hope that your children will always make helpful choices and demonstrate desired and appropriate behaviors, this unfortunately isn't the case us. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes, when children engage in an undesired behavior, caregivers will respond with a punishment in hopes that it will motivate their child to make a better behavior choice in the future. However, we know that punishment does not teach new behaviors, it only has the potential to stop what is occurring in the moment. Punishment can be useful and appropriate in certain situations, particularly if the adolescent is engaging in something that is unsafe. Dangerous behaviors cannot and should not be ignored. These actions include physically fighting with siblings or peers, fire setting, stealing, and property destruction.

However, a lot of the more minor behaviors that children engage in, things that are annoying or irritating, don't always need to be directly addressed or punished. These behaviors push our buttons and cause us to overreact by yelling or punishing our children. However, using this punitive, negative discipline for small misbehaviors on our child’s part isn’t effective at teaching new skills, and can even have the opposite effect. When you overreact, you are no longer in control of your emotions or your behavior. Planned ignoring or redirecting is a helpful behavior technique that can be difficult to master, but can be more effective in reducing irritating, undesired behaviors that your child is engaging in regularly, such as repeatedly asking the same question. Behavioral research indicates that engaging with a child immediately after they display an undesired behavior may reward the behavior through attention, which means they are more likely to choose it again in the future. This includes reprimanding and scolding too. While this may not make sense at first glance, your child’s behavior may be reinforced through attention, whether that attention is warm or punitive. In order to stop your child from engaging in these behaviors, we would encourage you to ignore non-dangerous behavior rather than respond to them. What this means is that you ignore or cut off all communication with your child while the behavior is occurring—or perhaps go to another room if possible. This means not speaking to them or looking in their direction while the behavior lasts. Do not do anything that indicates to your child that you are paying attention to them. What this says to your child is that they cannot control the situation nor your attention. They cannot cause you to lose control of yourself and your emotions. When you first try this, be aware that the behavior may ‘get worse before getting better’ and your child may get creative trying to get your attention. For example, they might go from whining to yelling. If this occurs, you might re-state the expectations by saying something like, “I would love to discuss this with you when you are calm,” and then leave the room. Your child may continue to yell for a moment, but should then realize that you have set a boundary and an expectation. When they meet that expectation, provide positive attention by acknowledging their effort to engage in a better, more effective behavior.

If you’ve never done this before with your child, we encourage you to discuss what you’ve learned with your child, so that they know what they can expect from you moving forward. We don’t want to surprise our children with a new set of behaviors, but we can explain to them what our new expectations are, and how we are going to react when those expectations are or are not met.

We encourage you to phrase this shift more as a change in catching your child displaying desired behaviors and an ignoring of behaviors that are less desirable. Punitive practices, like yelling back at our children, taking away privileges immediately, etc. without understanding the root cause or giving the child a chance to try a better behavior can hurt relationships and damage trust. Focusing  more positive behaviors and consequences, meanwhile, promises better results for everyone, including better relationships and communication, positive self-esteem, and independenc

We hope that this video has provided you with some new ideas and insights into your child's behavior and how to continue supporting them in becoming kind, helpful, and confident young people. Thank you for watching the Coping Power kick off video session! We are looking forward to the opportunity to bring this program to your child’s school, and we hope you are excited[CN24]  as well. If you have any additional questions, or if something in this video sparked your interest or attention, we encourage you to reach out to your school’s Coping Power lead for more information!

Thanks for watching our initial caregiver kickoff video. We are so grateful that you’ve stuck around to learn more about the important skills and strategies your child is learning, as well as the specific strategies you can use at home to reinforce these positive, healthy behaviors. We encourage you to continue tuning throughout the program for our weekly “caregiver nudges,” which will provide you with a quick snippet of the content your child is learning each week.

Thanks so much, and we’ll see you soon!