THE MAGIC OF THINKING BIG by David J Schwartz

• Success is determined not so much by the size of one’s brain as it is by the size of one’s thinking.
• There is magic in thinking big.
• Being interested in success is a wonderful quality.
• In building anything—automobiles, bridges, missiles—we need tools. Many people, in their attempt to build a successful life, forget there are tools to help them.
• Think Big and you’ll live big.
• Every human being wants success. Everybody wants the best this life can deliver. Nobody enjoys crawling, living in mediocrity. No one likes feeling second-class and feeling forced to go that way.
• You can win success by believing you can succeed.
• Belief, strong belief, triggers the mind to figure ways and means and how-to. And believing you can succeed makes others place confidence in you.
• Those who believe they can move mountains, do. Those who believe they can’t, cannot. Belief triggers the power to do.
• A person is a product of his own thoughts.
• Believe in yourself, and good things do start happening.
• Your mind is a “thought factory.” It’s a busy factory, producing countless thoughts in one day.
• The majority of folks still plug along in mediocrity despite the record opportunity of the last two decades.
• Think success, don’t think failure. At work, in your home, substitute success thinking for failure thinking.
• Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are.
• Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do.
• Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.
• People—as you think yourself to success, that’s what you will study, people. You will study people very carefully to discover, then apply, success-rewarding principles to your life. And you want to begin right away.
• Go deep into your study of people, and you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis. Every failure has this disease in its advanced form. And most “average” persons have at least a mild case of it.
• You will find that the more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses.
• Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition.
• Procedure One, then, in your individual program of thinking yourself to success, must be to vaccinate yourself against excusitis, the disease of the failures.
• Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are health excusitis, intelligence excusitis, age excusitis, and luck excusitis.
• Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good” to the more specific “I’ve got such-and-such wrong with me.”
• My physician and surgeon friends tell me the perfect specimen of adult life is nonexistent. There is something physically wrong with everybody.
• Looking and looking and looking for an illness often actually produces illness.
• Every minute a person spends worrying about dying is just one minute that fellow might as well have been dead.”
• The best vaccine against health excusitis consists of these four doses:
• 1. Refuse to talk about your health.
• Talking about bad health is like putting fertilizer on weeds.
• 2. Refuse to worry about your health.
• 3. Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is.
• 4. Remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.”
• Life is yours to enjoy. Don’t waste it.
• Intelligence excusitis, or “I lack brains,” is common. In fact, it’s so common that perhaps as many as 95 percent of the people around us have it in varying degrees. Unlike most other types of excusitis, people suffering from this particular type of the malady suffer in silence.
• Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence:
• 1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
• 2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.
• What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have.
• Let me repeat, for this is vitally important: the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
• Interest, enthusiasm, is the critical factor even in science!
• Sour, negative, pessimistic, depreciating attitudes rather than insufficient intelligence hold back thousands of young executives.
• We can’t do much to change the amount of native ability, but we can certainly change the way we use what we have.
• Knowledge is power—when you use it constructively.
• Closely allied to intelligence excusitis is some incorrect thinking about knowledge. We often hear that knowledge is power. But this statement is only a half-truth. Knowledge is only potential power. Knowledge is power only when put to use—and then only when the use made of it is constructive.
• He knew what every major executive knows: that the ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.
• Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:
• 1. Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.
• Don’t sell yourself short. Concentrate on your assets. Discover your superior talents.
• 2. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.
• Develop an “I’m winning” attitude.
• 3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.
• Age excusitis, the failure disease of never being the right age, comes in two easily identifiable forms: the “I’m too old” variety and the “I’m too young” brand.
• Curing yourself of age excusitis often opens doors to opportunities that you thought were locked tight.
• When you lick age excusitis, the natural result is to gain the optimism of youth and feel of youth. When you beat down your fears of age limitations, you add years to your life as well as success.
• Get used to having older persons working for you. Leaders in all fields soon find they are younger than many of the people they supervise. So get used to having older men work for you.
• Youth is a liability only when the youth thinks it is.
• What really matters is how well you know your job. If you know your job and understand people, you’re sufficiently mature to handle it. Age has no real relation to ability, unless you convince yourself that years alone will give you the stuff you need to make your mark.
• Demonstrate that you have ability and positive attitudes and your youthfulness will be considered an advantage.
• In quick recap, the cure for age excusitis is:
• 1. Look at your present age positively. Think, “I’m still young,” not “I’m already old.”
• 2. Compute how much productive time you have left. Remember, a person age thirty still has 80 percent of his productive life ahead of him.
• Life is actually longer than most people think!
• 3. Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. It’s too late only when you let your mind go negative and think it’s too late.
• People who rise to the top in any occupation—business management, selling, law, engineering, acting, or what have you—get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work.
• Conquer Luck Excusitis in Two Ways
• 1. Accept the law of cause and effect. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “good luck.” You’ll find that not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking preceded his good fortune. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “bad luck.” Look, and you’ll discover certain specific reasons. Mr. Success receives a setback; he learns and profits. But when Mr. Mediocre loses, he fails to learn.
• 2. Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success. Don’t count on luck for promotions, victories, the good things in life. Luck simply isn’t designed to deliver these good things. Instead, just concentrate on developing those qualities in yourself that will make you a winner.
• Yes, fear is real. And we must recognize it exists before we can conquer it.
• Most fear today is psychological. Worry, tension, embarrassment, panic all stem from mismanaged, negative imagination.
• Fear is real. Fear is success enemy number one.
• Action cures fear.
• Next time you experience big fear or little fear, steady yourself. Then search for an answer to this question: What kind of action can I take to conquer my fear?
• Isolate your fear. Then take appropriate action.
• Use this two-step procedure to cure fear and win confidence:
• 1. Isolate your fear. Pin it down. Determine exactly what you are afraid of.
• 2. Then take action. There is some kind of action for any kind of fear. And remember, hesitation only enlarges, magnifies the fear. Take action promptly. Be decisive.
• Much lack of self-confidence can be traced directly to a mismanaged memory.
• Your memory, then, is the basic supplier of raw material for your new thought.
• Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank.
• Successful people specialize in putting positive thoughts into their memory bank.
• Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank.
• When you remember situations of any kind, concentrate on the good part of the experience; forget the bad.
• Get a balanced view of the other fellow. Keep these two points in mind when dealing with people: first, the other fellow is important. Emphatically, he is important. Every human being is. But remember this, also: You are important, too.
• Develop an understanding attitude.
• “Underneath he’s probably a very nice guy. Most folks are.” Remember those two short sentences next time someone declares war on you. Hold your fire. The way to win in situations like this is to let the other fellow blow his stack and then forget it.
• There is within each of us a desire to be right, think right, and act right. When we go against that desire, we put a cancer in our conscience.
• Doing what’s right keeps your conscience satisfied. And this builds self-confidence.
• When we do what is known to be wrong, two negative things happen. First, we feel guilt and this guilt eats away confidence. Second, other people sooner or later find out and lose confidence in us.
• To think confidently, act confidently.
• Psychologists tell us we can change our attitudes by changing our physical actions.
• Confident action produces confident thinking.
• Be a front seater.
• Sitting up front builds confidence. Practice it. From now on make it a rule to sit as close to the front as you can.
• Practice making eye contact.
• Walk 25 percent faster.
• Use the walk-25-percent-faster technique to help build self-confidence. Throw your shoulders back, lift up your head, move ahead just a little faster, and feel self-confidence grow. Just try and see.
• Practice speaking up.
• But on the positive side, the more you speak up, the more you add to your confidence, and the easier it is to speak up the next time. Speak up. It’s a confidence-building vitamin.
• Make it a rule to speak up at every open meeting you attend.
• Try to be the icebreaker, the first one in with a comment.
• Smile big.
• Another person simply can’t be angry with you if you give him a big, sincere smile.
• Harness the power of smiling.
• PUT THESE FIVE PROCEDURES TO WORK FOR YOU
• 1. Action cures fear. Isolate your fear and then take constructive action. Inaction—doing nothing about a situation—strengthens fear and destroys confidence.
• 2. Make a supreme effort to put only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Don’t let negative, self-deprecatory thoughts grow into mental monsters. Simply refuse to recall unpleasant events or situations.
• 3. Put people in proper perspective. Remember, people are more alike, much more alike, than they are different. Get a balanced view of the other fellow. He is just another human being. And develop an understanding attitude. Many people will bark, but it’s a rare one who bites.
• 4. Practice doing what your conscience tells you is right. This prevents a poisonous guilt complex from developing. Doing what’s right is a very practical rule for success.
• 5. Make everything about you say, “I’m confident, really confident.” Practice these little techniques in your day-to-day activities: Be a front seater. Make eye contact. Walk 25 percent faster. Speak up. Smile big.
• The tendency for so many people to think small means there is much less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.
• Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches or pounds or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking.
• How big we think determines the size of our accomplishments.
• Probably the greatest human weakness is self-deprecation—that is, selling oneself short. Self-deprecation shows through in countless ways.
• Most self-evaluation consists of making long mental lists of one’s faults, shortcomings, inadequacies.
• Think as big as you really are! Never, never, never sell yourself short!
• People who use difficult, high-sounding words and phrases that most folks have to strain themselves to understand are inclined to be overbearing and stuffed shirts. And stuffed shirts are usually small thinkers.
• The important measure of a person’s vocabulary is not the size or the number of words he uses. Rather, the thing that counts, the only thing that counts about one’s vocabulary, is the effect his words and phrases have on his own and others’ thinking.
• Here is something very basic: We do not think in words and phrases. We think only in pictures and/or images. Words are the raw materials of thought. When spoken or read, that amazing instrument, the mind, automatically converts words and phrases into mind pictures. Each word, each phrase, creates a slightly different mind picture.
• The point is this: Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive, forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others. To think big, we must use words and phrases that produce big, positive mental images.
• Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel.
• Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people.
• Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity.
• Use positive words to outline plans to others.
• The moral is this: Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.
• It’s repeat business that makes the profit. Often, there’s no profit at all on the first several sales. Look at the potential expenditures of the customers, not just what they buy today.
• Putting a big value on customers is what converts them into big, regular patrons. Attaching little value to customers sends them elsewhere.
• He’s mastered this basic success principle: It isn’t what one has that’s important. Rather, it’s how much one is planning to get that counts.
• The price tag the world puts on us is just about identical to the one we put on ourselves.
• Practice adding value to things.
• Look for ideas to make things worth more.
• Practice adding value to people.
• As you move higher and higher in the world of success, more and more of your job becomes “people development.”
• Remember, to bring out the best in a person, you must first visualize his best.
• Practice adding value to yourself.
• Visualize yourself not as you are but as you can be. Then specific ways for attaining your potential value will suggest themselves.
• Practice being a big thinker. See the company’s interest as identical with your own. Probably only a very few persons working in large companies have a sincere, unselfish interest in their company. But after all, only a relatively few persons qualify as big thinkers. And these few are the ones eventually rewarded with the most responsible, best-paying jobs.
• Many, many potentially powerful people let petty, small, insignificant things block their way to achievement.
• Most folks are lousy public speakers. Why? The reason is simple: most people concentrate on the small, trivial things of speaking at the expense of the big, important things.
• The real test of a speaker is not did he stand straight or did he make any mistakes in grammar, but rather did the audience get the points he wanted to put across.
• Don’t let concern with trivia keep you from speaking successfully in public.
• Here’s a technique that works: before complaining or accusing or reprimanding someone or launching a counterattack in self-defense, ask yourself, “Is it really important?” In most cases, it isn’t and you avoid conflict.
• Small thinking about unimportant things like seeing your name last on the department route sheet or getting the fourth carbon of an office memo can hurt you. Think big, and none of these little things can hold you back.
• Even a speech impairment in a talker’s profession is a triviality if the person has the big qualities.
• Keep your eyes focused on the big objective.
• Paraphrasing some military lingo, it is much better to lose a battle and win the war than to win a battle and lose the war.
• Ask “Is it really important?”
• At least 90 percent of quarrels and feuds would never take place if we just faced troublesome situations with “Is this really important?”
• Don’t fall into the triviality trap. In making speeches, solving problems, counseling employees, think of those things that really matter, things that make the difference. Don’t become submerged under surface issues. Concentrate on important things.
• REMEMBER, IT PAYS IN EVERY WAY TO THINK BIG!
• 1. Don’t sell yourself short. Conquer the crime of self-deprecation. Concentrate on your assets. You’re better than you think you are.
• 2. Use the big thinker’s vocabulary. Use big, bright, cheerful words. Use words that promise victory, hope, happiness, pleasure; avoid words that create unpleasant images of failure, defeat, grief.
• 3. Stretch your vision. See what can be, not just what is. Practice adding value to things, to people, and to yourself.
• 4. Get the big view of your job. Think, really think your present job is important. That next promotion depends mostly on how you think toward your present job.
• 5. Think above trivial things. Focus your attention on big objectives. Before getting involved in a petty matter, ask yourself, “Is it really important?” Grow big by thinking big!
• Creative thinking is simply finding new, improved ways to do anything.
• Believe it can be done. Here is a basic truth: To do anything, we must first believe it can be done. Believing something can be done sets the mind in motion to find a way to do it.
• WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.
• When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you find the ways to do it.
• Believing something can be done paves the way for creative solutions. Believing something can’t be done is destructive thinking. This point applies to all situations, little and big.
• Your mind will create a way if you let it.
• Eliminate the word impossible from your thinking and speaking vocabularies. Impossible is a failure word.
• The traditional thinker’s mind is paralyzed. He reasons, “It’s been this way for a hundred years. Therefore, it must be good and must stay this way. Why risk a change?”
• “Average” people have always resented progress.
• In truth, there is no one best way to do anything.
• There are as many best ways as there are creative minds.
• Traditional thinking is personal enemy number one for the person who is interested in a creative personal success program.
• Become receptive to ideas. Welcome new ideas. Destroy these thought repellents: “Won’t work,” “Can’t be done,” “It’s useless,” and “It’s stupid.”
• Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines.
• Be progressive, not regressive.
• Absolute perfection in all human undertakings from building missiles to rearing children is unattainable. This means there is endless room for improvement. Successful people know this, and they are always searching for a better way.
• It isn’t so much what you know when you start that matters. It’s what you learn and put to use after you open your doors that counts most.”
• Big success calls for persons who continually set higher standards for themselves and others, persons who are searching for ways to increase efficiency, to get more output at lower cost, do more with less effort. Top success is reserved for the I-can-do-it-better kind of person.
• Each day before you begin work, devote ten minutes to thinking “How can I do a better job today?”
• Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do.
• Capacity is indeed a state of mind.
• In business, in the home, in the community, the success combination is do what you do better (improve the quality of your output) and do more of what you do (increase the quantity of your output).
• Eagerly accept the opportunity to do more. It’s a compliment to be asked to take on a new responsibility.
• Next, concentrate on “How can I do more?”
• Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking.
• A leader is a decision-making human machine.
• The procedure for developing successful products is to get as much opinion as you can, listen to the people who will buy the product, and then design the product and its promotion to please these people.
• Your ears are your intake valves. They feed your mind raw materials that can be converted into creative power. We learn nothing from telling. But there is no limit to what we can learn by asking and listening.
• Encourage others to talk, and you win a double-barreled victory: your mind soaks up raw material that you can use to produce creative thought, and you win friends. There is no surer way to get people to like you than to encourage them to talk to you.
• Test your own views in the form of questions. Let other people help you smooth and polish your ideas.
• Concentrate on what the other person says. Listening is more than just keeping your own mouth shut. Listening means letting what’s said penetrate your mind.
• Concentrate on what the other person says. Evaluate it. That’s how you collect mind food.
• First, join and meet regularly with at least one professional group that provides stimulation in your own occupational area. Rub shoulders—and minds—with other success-oriented people.
• Stimulation from others is excellent mind food.
• Second, join and participate in at least one group outside your occupational interests. Association with people who have different job interests broadens your thinking and helps you to see the big picture. You’ll be surprised how mixing regularly with people outside your occupational area will stimulate your on-the-job thinking.
• Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they’ve got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.
• Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down.
• Memory is a weak slave when it comes to preserving and nurturing brand-new ideas. Carry a notebook or some small cards with you. When you get an idea, write it down.
• But build a file and then examine your storehouse of ideas regularly. As you go over your ideas, some may, for very good reasons, have no value at all. Get rid of them. But so long as the idea has any promise, keep it.
• Cultivate and fertilize your idea. Now make your idea grow. Think about it. Tie the idea to related ideas. Read anything you can find that is in any way akin to your idea. Investigate all angles. Then, when the time is ripe, put it to work for yourself, your job, your future.
• An idea written or in some sort of picture or diagram form has many times more selling power than the idea presented only in oral form.
• USE THESE TOOLS AND THINK CREATIVELY
• 1. Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution. Eliminate “impossible,” “won’t work,” “can’t do,” “no use trying” from your thinking and speaking vocabularies.
• 2. Don’t let tradition paralyze your mind. Be receptive to new ideas. Be experimental. Try new approaches. Be progressive in everything you do.
• 3. Ask yourself daily, “How can I do better?” There is no limit to self-improvement. When you ask yourself, “How can I do better?” sound answers will appear. Try it and see.
• 4. Ask yourself, “How can I do more?” Capacity is a state of mind. Asking yourself this question puts your mind to work to find intelligent shortcuts. The success combination in business is: Do what you do better (improve the quality of your output), and: Do more of what you do (increase the quantity of your output).
• 5. Practice asking and listening. Ask and listen, and you’ll obtain raw material for reaching sound decisions. Remember: Big people monopolize the listening; small people monopolize the talking.
• 6. Stretch your mind. Get stimulated. Associate with people who can help you think of new ideas, new ways of doing things. Mix with people of different occupational and social interests.
• Thinking does make it so. Others see in us what we see in ourselves. We receive the kind of treatment we think we deserve.
• To be important, we must think we are important, really think so; then others will think so too.
• To gain the respect of others, you must first think you deserve respect. And the more respect you have for yourself, the more respect others will have for you.
• Self-respect shows through in everything we do.
• Rule: Remember, your appearance “talks.” Be sure it says positive things about you. Never leave home without feeling certain you look like the kind of person you want to be.
• Use clothing as a tool to lift your spirits, build confidence.
• Your appearance talks to you; but it also talks to others. It helps determine what others think of you.
• Your appearance is the first basis for evaluation other people have. And first impressions last, out of all proportion to the time it takes to form them.
• The point is: the better you are packaged, the more public acceptance you will receive.
• Pay twice as much and buy half as many. Commit this answer to memory. Then practice it. Apply it to hats, suits, shoes, socks, coats—everything you wear. Insofar as appearance is concerned, quality is far more important than quantity.
• Remember: Your appearance talks to you and it talks to others. Make certain it says, “Here is a person who has self-respect. He’s important. Treat him that way.”
• You owe it to others—but, more important, you owe it to yourself—to look your best.
• Job thinking tells a lot about a person and his potential for larger responsibility.
• Like your appearance, the way you think toward your work says things about you to your superiors, associates, and subordinates—in fact, to everyone with whom you come in contact.
• This is concrete evidence that you are what you think you are, what your thought power directs you to become. Think you’re weak, think you lack what it takes, think you will lose, think you are second-class—think this way, and you are doomed to mediocrity. But think instead, I am important. I do have what it takes. I am a first-class performer. My work is important. Think this way, and you’re headed straight to success.
• The key to winning what you want lies in thinking positively toward yourself. The only real basis other people have for judging your abilities is your actions. And your actions are controlled by your thoughts.
• You are what you think you are.
• People continue to imitate others throughout life. And they imitate their leaders and supervisors; their thoughts and actions are influenced by these people.
• The point is this: The way we think toward our jobs determines how our subordinates think toward their jobs.
• The job attitudes of our subordinates are direct reflections of our own job attitudes. It’s well to remember that our points of superiority—and weakness—show up in the behavior of those who report to us, just as a child reflects the attitudes of his parents.
• But how does one develop enthusiasm? The basic step is simple: Think enthusiastically. Build in yourself an optimistic, progressive glow, a feeling that “this is great and I’m 100 percent for it.”
• You are what you think. Think enthusiasm and you’ll be enthusiastic. To get high-quality work, be enthusiastic about the job you want done. Others will catch the enthusiasm you generate and you’ll get first-class performance.
• The moral: Practice uplifting self-praise. Don’t practice belittling self-punishment. You are what you think you are. Think more of yourself and there is more of you.
• Every day you and I see half-alive people who are no longer sold on themselves. They lack self-respect for their most important product—themselves. These folks are indifferent. They feel small. They feel like nobodies, and because they feel that way, that’s what they are. The half-alive person needs to be resold on himself. He needs to realize that he’s a first-class person. He needs honest, sincere belief in himself.
• Don’t accept the judgment of average people. You are not average.
• Upgrading your thinking upgrades your actions, and this produces success.
• In a nutshell, remember:
• 1. Look important; it helps you think important. Your appearance talks to you. Be sure it lifts your spirits and builds your confidence. Your appearance talks to others. Make certain it says, “Here is an important person: intelligent, prosperous, and dependable.”
• 2. Think your work is important. Think this way, and you will receive mental signals on how to do your job better. Think your work is important, and your subordinates will think their work is important too.
• 3. Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial. Remind yourself at every opportunity that you’re a first-class person.
• 4. In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?” Then obey the answer.
• Physical stamina, resistance to disease, body size, even how long we live are all closely related to what we eat.
• The body is what the body is fed. By the same token, the mind is what the mind is fed.
• Mind food is your environment—all the countless things that influence your conscious and subconscious thought. The kind of mind food we consume determines our habits, attitudes, personality.
• The mind reflects what its environment feeds it just as surely as the body reflects the food you feed it.
• Environment shapes us, makes us think the way we do.
• More important, the size of your thinking, your goals, your attitudes, your very personality is formed by your environment.
• Prolonged association with negative people makes us think negatively; close contact with petty individuals develops petty habits in us. On the bright side, companionship with people with big ideas raises the level of our thinking; close contact with ambitious people gives us ambition.
• Remember: People who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment. The opinions of these people can be poison.
• Develop a defense against people who want to convince you that you can’t do it. Accept negative advice only as a challenge to prove that you can do it.
• Be extra, extra cautious about this: don’t let negative-thinking people—“negators”—destroy your plan to think yourself to success. Negators are everywhere, and they seem to delight in sabotaging the positive progress of others.
• Negators are everywhere.
• Make no mistake about it. You are judged by the company you keep. Birds of a feather do flock together. Fellow workers are not all alike. Some are negative, others positive.
• How we think is directly affected by the group we’re in. Be sure you’re in the flock that thinks right.
• Don’t let negative thinkers pull you down to their level. Let them slide by, like the water from the proverbial duck’s back. Cling to people who think progressively. Move upward with them.
• There’s a lot of incorrect thinking that successful people are inaccessible. The plain truth is that they are not. As a rule, it’s the more successful people who are the most humble and ready to help.
• It’s the “would-be-big” people who are most often the most abrupt and hard to get to know.
• Seeking advice from a failure is like consulting a quack on how to cure cancer.
• Do circulate in new groups. Restricting your social environment to the same small group produces boredom, dullness, dissatisfaction; equally important, remember that your success-building program requires that you become an expert in understanding people. Trying to learn all there is to know about people by studying one small group is like trying to master mathematics by reading one short book.
• Do select friends who have views different from your own. In this modern age, the narrow individual hasn’t much future. Responsibility and positions of importance gravitate to the person who is able to see both sides.
• Do select friends who stand above petty, unimportant things.
• Thought poison is subtle, but it accomplishes “big” things. It reduces the size of our thinking by forcing us to concentrate on petty, unimportant things. It warps and twists our thinking about people because it is based on a distortion of facts, and it creates a guilt feeling in us that shows through when we meet the person we’ve gossiped about. Thought poison is 0 percent right thinking: it is 100 percent wrong thinking.
• Conversation is a big part of our psychological environment. Some conversation is healthy. It encourages you. It makes you feel like you’re taking a walk in the warm sunshine of a spring day. Some conversation makes you feel like a winner. But other conversation is more like walking through a poisonous, radioactive cloud. It chokes you. It makes you feel ill. It turns you into a loser.
• Gossip is just negative conversation about people, and the victim of thought poison begins to think he enjoys it. He seems to get a form of poisoned joy from talking negatively about others, not knowing that to successful people he is becoming increasingly unlikable, and unreliable.
• Go first class: that is an excellent rule to follow in everything you do, including the goods and services you buy.
• Of course, I’ve heard the argument many times “but I can’t afford to go first class.” The simplest answer is: you cannot afford to go any other way. Certainly in the long run, going first class actually costs you less than going second class. Then, too, it’s better to have fewer things and have quality than to have many things and have junk. It’s better, for example, to have one really good pair of shoes than to have three pairs of second-class shoes.
• People rate you for quality, often subconsciously perhaps. Develop an instinct for quality. It pays. And it costs no more, often costs less, than second class.
• MAKE YOUR ENVIRONMENT MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL
• 1. Be environment-conscious. Just as body diet makes the body, mind diet makes the mind.
• 2. Make your environment work for you, not against you. Don’t let suppressive forces—the negative, you-can’t-do-it people—make you think defeat.
• 3. Don’t let small-thinking people hold you back. Jealous people want to see you stumble. Don’t give them that satisfaction.
• 4. Get your advice from successful people. Your future is important. Never risk it with freelance advisors who are living failures.
• 5. Get plenty of psychological sunshine. Circulate in new groups. Discover new and stimulating things to do.
• 6. Throw thought poison out of your environment. Avoid gossip. Talk about people, but stay on the positive side.
• 7. Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to go any other way.
• We read attitudes through expressions and voice tones and inflections.
• Attitudes do make the difference.
• Right attitudes make you effective in dealing with people, enable you to develop as a leader. Right attitudes win for you in every situation.
• Grow these three attitudes. Make them your allies in everything you do.
• 1. Grow the attitude of I’m activated.
• 2. Grow the attitude of You are important.
• 3. Grow the attitude of Service first.
• To activate others, you must first activate yourself.
• To activate others, to get them to be enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself.
• A man who lacks enthusiasm never develops it in another. But a person who is enthusiastic soon has enthusiastic followers.
• Enthusiasm can make things 1,100 percent better.
• Dig into it deeper.
• To get enthusiastic, learn more about the thing you are not enthusiastic about.
• Use the dig-into-it-deeper technique to develop enthusiasm toward other people. Find out all you can about another person—what he does, his family, his background, his ideas and ambitions—and you’ll find your interest in and enthusiasm about him mounting. Keep digging, and you’re certain to find some common interests. Keep digging, and you’ll eventually discover a fascinating person.
• To get enthusiasm about anything—people, places, things—dig into it deeper.
• Just dig in deeper and you dig up interest.
• In everything you do, life it up. Enthusiasm, or lack of it, shows through in everything you do and say.
• Broadcast good news.
• Good news does more than get attention; good news pleases people. Good news develops enthusiasm.
• No one ever won a friend, no one ever made money, no one ever accomplished anything by broadcasting bad news.
• Be an “I-feel-great” person. Just say “I feel great” at every possible opportunity, and you will feel better.
• Good news gets good results. Broadcast it.
• This is a fact of paramount significance: Each human being, whether he lives in India or Indianapolis, whether he’s ignorant or brilliant, civilized or uncivilized, young or old, has this desire: He wants to feel important.
• The desire to be important is man’s strongest, most compelling nonbiological hunger.
• people do more for you when you make them feel important.
• It pays to make “little” people feel like big people.
• Make someone feel important, and he cares about you. And when he cares about you, he does more for you.
• It pays to make “big” people feel even bigger. The big thinker always adds value to people by visualizing them at their best. Because he thinks big about people, he gets their best out of them.
• When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too.
• Let’s not kid ourselves. People who do not have a deep-down feeling of self-importance are slated for mediocrity. Again and again this point must be driven home: You must feel important to succeed. Helping others to feel important rewards you because it makes you feel more important. Try it and see.
• Practice appreciation. Make it a rule to let others know you appreciate what they do for you. Never, never let anyone feel he is taken for granted.
• Practice appreciation with honest, personalized compliments. People thrive on compliments—whether two or twenty, nine or ninety, a person craves praise.
• Practice calling people by their names.
• People like to be called by name. It gives everyone a boost to be addressed by name.
• Pronounce the name correctly, and spell it correctly. If you mispronounce or misspell someone’s name, that person feels that you feel he is unimportant.
• Don’t hog glory, invest it instead.
• Remember, praise is power. Invest the praise you receive from your superior. Pass praise on down to your subordinates, where it will encourage still greater performance. When you share praise, your subordinates know you sincerely appreciate their value.
• Do something special for your family often.
• Get the family on your team. Give them planned attention.
• It’s perfectly natural—in fact, it’s highly desirable—to want to make money and accumulate wealth. Money is power to give your family and yourself the standard of living they deserve. Money is power to help the unfortunate. Money is one of the means to living life fully.
• The person who says he wants to be poor usually suffers from a guilt complex or a feeling of inadequacy.
• And the seed of money is service. That’s why “put service first” is an attitude that creates wealth. Put service first, and money takes care of itself.
• Put service first, and money takes care of itself—always.
• You don’t get a raise on the promise of better performance; you get a raise only by demonstrating better performance. You can’t harvest money unless you plant the seeds that grow money. And the seed of money is service.
• Always give people more than they expect to get. Each little extra something you do for others is a money seed.
• In quick recap, grow attitudes that will carry you forward to success.
• 1. Grow the “I’m activated” attitude. Results come in proportion to the enthusiasm invested. Three things to do to activate yourself are: Dig into it deeper. When you find yourself uninterested in something, dig in and learn more about it. This sets off enthusiasm. Life up everything about you: your smile, your handshake, your talk, even your walk. Act alive. Broadcast good news. No one ever accomplished anything positive telling bad news. 
• 2. Grow the “You are important” attitude. People do more for you when you make them feel important. Remember to do these things: Show appreciation at every opportunity. Make people feel important. Call people by name.
• 3. Grow the “Service first” attitude, and watch money take care of itself. Make it a rule in everything you do: give people more than they expect to get.
• Success depends on the support of other people. The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.
• A person is not pulled up to a higher-level job. Rather, he is lifted up. In this day and age nobody has time or patience to pull another up the job ladder, degree by painful degree. The individual is chosen whose record makes him stand higher than the rest.
• Every friend you make lifts you just one notch higher. And being likable makes you lighter to lift.
• Successful people follow a plan for liking people.
• His rules, which even a casual observer of the president can see are practiced in everything he does, are quoted directly:
• 1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing.
• 2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe kind of individual.
• 3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.
• 4. Don’t be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all.
• 5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.
• 6. Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
• 7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances.
• 8. Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.
• 9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
• 10. Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you.
• But don’t try to buy friendship; it’s not for sale. Giving gifts is a wonderful practice if the gift is backed up with genuine sincerity, a liking to give and liking for the person to whom it is given. But without real sincerity, the gift is often regarded as nothing more than a payoff or a bribe.
• Friendship can’t be bought. And when we try, we lose in two ways:
• 1. We waste money.
• 2. We create contempt.
• Take the initiative in building friendships—leaders always do. It’s easy and natural for us to tell ourselves, “Let him make the first move.” “Let them call us.” “Let her speak first.” It’s easy, too, virtually to ignore other people.
• If you follow the rule of letting the other person build the foundation for friendship, you may not have many friends.
• Actually, it’s a mark of real leadership to take the lead in getting to know people. Next time you are in a large group, observe something very significant: the most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.
• When you make a pleasant remark to a stranger, you make him feel one degree better.
• Here are six ways to win friends by exercising just a little initiative:
• 1. Introduce yourself to others at every possible opportunity—at parties, meetings, on airplanes, at work, everywhere.
• 2. Be sure the other person gets your name straight.
• 3. Be sure you can pronounce the other person’s name the way he pronounces it.
• 4. Write down the other person’s name, and be mighty sure you have it spelled correctly; people have a fetish about the correct spelling of their own names! If possible, get his address and phone number, also.
• 5. Drop a personal note or make a phone call to the new friends you feel you want to know better. This is an important point. Most successful people follow through on new friends with a letter or a phone call.
• 6. And last but not least, say pleasant things to strangers. It warms you up and gets you ready for the task ahead.
• Take the initiative. Be like the successful. Go out of your way to meet people. And don’t be timid. Don’t be afraid to be unusual. Find out who the other person is, and be sure he knows who you are.
• Recognize the fact that no person is perfect. Some people are more nearly perfect than others, but no man is absolutely perfect. The most human quality about human beings is that they make mistakes, all kinds of them.
• Recognize the fact that the other fellow has a right to be different. Never play God about anything. Never dislike people because their habits are different from your own or because they prefer different clothes, religion, parties, or automobiles. You don’t have to approve of what another fellow does, but you must not dislike him for doing it.
• Don’t be a reformer. Put a little more “live and let live” into your philosophy. Most people intensely dislike being told “you’re wrong.” You have a right to your own opinion, but sometimes it’s better to keep it to yourself.
• Note this simple but key fact: No person is all good and no person is all bad. The perfect person just doesn’t exist.
• Thoughts breed like thoughts. There is real danger that if you listen to negative comments about another person, you too will go negative toward that person. In fact, if you are not on guard, you may actually find yourself adding fuel to the fire with “Yes, and that’s not all. Did you hear . . .” type of comment.
• Once you’ve mastered the technique of thinking only good thoughts about people, greater success is guaranteed.
• Give first-class treatment to your employees, and you get first-class cooperation, first-class output. Think first class about everyone around you, and you’ll receive first-class results in return.
• The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person. Almost without exception, the more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems.
• Conversation generosity paves the way to greater success in two important ways:
• 1. Conversation generosity wins friends.
• 2. Conversation generosity helps you learn more about people.
• Remember this: the average person would rather talk about himself than anything else in this world. When you give him the chance, he likes you for it. Conversation generosity is the easiest, simplest, and surest way there is to win a friend.
• Don’t be a conversation hog. Listen, win friends, and learn.
• When you boil it all down, the big cause of stress is negative feelings toward other people. So think positive toward people and discover how wonderful, really wonderful this world is.
• Remember this: how you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
• IN A CAPSULE, PUT THESE PRINCIPLES TO WORK
• 1. Make yourself lighter to lift. Be likable. Practice being the kind of person people like. This wins their support and puts fuel in your success-building program.
• 2. Take the initiative in building friendships. Introduce yourself to others at every opportunity. Make sure you get the other person’s name straight, and make certain he gets your name straight too. Drop a personal note to your new friends you want to get to know better.
• 3. Accept human differences and limitations. Don’t expect anyone to be perfect. Remember, the other person has a right to be different. And don’t be a reformer.
• 4. Tune in Channel P, the Good Thoughts Station. Find qualities to like and admire in a person, not things to dislike. And don’t let others prejudice your thinking about a third person. Think positive thoughts towards people—and get positive results.
• 5. Practice conversation generosity. Be like successful people. Encourage others to talk. Let the other person talk to you about his views, his opinions, his accomplishments.
• 6. Practice courtesy all the time. It makes other people feel better. It makes you feel better too.
• 7. Don’t blame others when you receive a setback. Remember, how you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
• Here’s something leaders in every field agree on: There is a shortage of top-flight, expertly qualified persons to fill key positions. There really is, as the saying goes, plenty of room at the top. As one executive explained, there are many almost-qualified people, but there is one success ingredient often missing. That is the ability to get things done, to get results.
• Every big job—whether it be operating a business, high-level selling, in science, the military, or the government—requires a man who thinks action.
• Excellent ideas are not enough. An only fair idea acted upon, and developed, is 100 percent better than a terrific idea that dies because it isn’t followed up.
• Perfection is highly desirable. But nothing man-made or man-designed is, or can be, absolutely perfect. So to wait for the perfect set of conditions is to wait forever.
• The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It’s still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them.
• In every big decision, the mind battles with itself—to act or not to act, to do or not to do.
• Expect future obstacles and difficulties. Every venture presents risks, problems, and uncertainties.
• Meet problems and obstacles as they arise. The test of a successful person is not the ability to eliminate all problems before he takes action, but rather the ability to find solutions to difficulties when he encounters them.
• Make up your mind to do something about your ideas.
• Ideas are important. Let’s make no mistake about that. We must have ideas to create and improve anything. Success shuns the man who lacks ideas.
• But let’s make no mistakes about this point either. Ideas in themselves are not enough. That idea for getting more business, for simplifying work procedures, is of value only when it is acted upon.
• Every day thousands of people bury good ideas because they are afraid to act on them. And afterward, the ghosts of those ideas come back to haunt them.
• Put these two thoughts deep in your mind. First, give your ideas value by acting on them. Regardless of how good the idea, unless you do something with it, you gain nothing. Second, act on your ideas and gain mind tranquillity. Someone once said that the saddest words of tongue or pen are these: it might have been.
• A good idea if not acted upon produces terrible psychological pain. But a good idea acted upon brings enormous mental satisfaction. Got a good idea? Then do something about it.
• Use action to cure fear and gain confidence. Here’s something to remember. Action feeds and strengthens confidence; inaction in all forms feeds fear. To fight fear, act. To increase fear—wait, put off, postpone.
• Action cures fear.
• Build confidence. Destroy fear through action.
• The point is clear. People who get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them; they move the spirit.
• Rather than wait for the spirit to move you, sit down and move your spirit.
• With a pencil and paper you can tie your mind to a problem.
• Be an activationist and crusade.

ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder

• 1. Do not obey in advance.
• 2. Defend institutions.
• 3. Beware the one-party state.
• 4. Take responsibility for the face of the world.
• 5. Remember professional ethics.
• 6. Be wary of paramilitaries.
• 7. Be reflective if you must be armed.
• 8. Stand out.
• 9. Be kind to our language.
• 10. Believe in truth.
• 11 . Investigate.
• 12. Make eye contact and small talk.
• 13. Practice corporeal politics.
• 14. Establish a private life.
• 15. Contribute to good causes.
• 16. Learn from peers in other countries.
• 17. Listen for dangerous words.
• 18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
• 19. Be a patriot.
• 20. Be as courageous as you can.
• History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
• In founding a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the ancient philosophers, called tyranny. They had in mind the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit.
• The good news is that we can draw upon more recent and relevant examples than ancient Greece and Rome. The bad news is that the history of modern democracy is also one of decline and fall.
• The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands.
• Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people. They put a face on globalization, arguing that its complex challenges were the result of a conspiracy against the nation.
• Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
• Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
• Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.
• Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.
• We tend to assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks.
• The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.
• Revolutionaries sometimes do intend to destroy institutions all at once.
• Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.
• Thomas Jefferson probably never said that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” but other Americans of his era certainly did.
• But the sense of the saying was entirely different: that human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.
• The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that.
• Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.
• The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens.
• We believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses.
• Much needs to be done to fix the gerrymandered system so that each citizen has one equal vote, and so that each vote can be simply counted by a fellow citizen.
• We need paper ballots, because they cannot be tampered with remotely and can always be recounted.
• Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
• Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.
• You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them.
• What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion.
• Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.
• Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.”
• Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.
• Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible.
• It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics.
• Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it.
• The SS began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law.
• Because the American federal government uses mercenaries in warfare and American state governments pay corporations to run prisons, the use of violence in the United States is already highly privatized.
• For violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards.
• Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.
• Authoritarian regimes usually include a special riot police force whose task is to disperse citizens who seek to protest, and a secret state police force whose assignments include the murder of dissenters or others designated as enemies.
• But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible.
• Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
• Each story on televised news is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

HOW TO TALK SO LITTLE KIDS WILL LISTEN by Joanna Faber and Julie King

• Sometimes simple survival is a good goal.
• The problem is, there’s just no good shortcut to getting a cooperative kid.
• The point is that we can’t behave right when we don’t feel right. And kids can’t behave right when they don’t feel right. If we don’t take care of their feelings first, we have little chance of engaging their cooperation.
• My guess is that some of your misery would be soothed if someone simply acknowledged and accepted your feelings.
• When their feelings are acknowledged, people feel relieved:
• TOOL #1: Acknowledge Feelings with Words
• The next time your kid says something negative and inflammatory, follow these steps:
• 1. Grit your teeth and resist the urge to immediately contradict him!
• 2. Think about the emotion he is feeling
• 3. Name the emotion and put it in a sentence
• Good feelings can’t come in until the bad feelings are let out. If you try to stuff those bad feelings back in, they will marinate and become more potent.
• You are giving your child a crucial vocabulary of feelings that he can resort to in times of need.
• All feelings can be accepted. Some actions must be limited!
• Often a simple acknowledgment of the feeling is enough to defuse a potential meltdown.
• But a child’s emotions are just as real and important to him as our grown-up emotions are to us. The best way to help a child “get over it” is to help him go through it.
• The good thing about being a parent is that if you blow it the first time, you almost always get another chance.
• We do these things automatically—protect against sad emotions, dismiss what we see as trivial emotions, and discourage angry emotions.
• Without having their own feelings acknowledged first, children will be deaf to our finest explanations and most passionate entreaties.
• Children depend on us to name their feelings so that they can find out who they are.
• Children need us to validate their feelings so they can become grown-ups who know who they are and what they feel.
• Sit on those “buts.”
• It is so very tempting to follow up a perfectly lovely statement accepting a feeling with the word BUT.
• “But” takes away the gift you’ve just given.
• If you feel a but bubbling up, you can replace it with this handy sentence starter: The problem is . . .
• The problem is suggests that there is a problem that can be solved without sweeping away the feelings.
• Even though you know . . .
• Even though you know is not off-putting because it gives your child credit for understanding the problem, while at the same time letting him know that you empathize with how strongly he feels.
• TOOL #2: Acknowledge Feelings with Writing
• Seeing their feelings and desires written down in black and white can be very powerful, even for prereaders.
• It is satisfying to a kid to have a physical list of her desires.
• Writing down wishes is a different way to avoid a tantrum, without spoiling your child. Think of it as an opportunity to accept feelings while limiting actions.”
• Having their feelings acknowledged actually helps children accept that they can’t always get what they want.
• TOOL #3: Acknowledge Feelings with Art
• Sometimes words, written or spoken, are not enough to express a strong feeling. If you are feeling creative, try art. You don’t have to be Rembrandt—stick figures will do.
• Match the emotion. Be dramatic!
• There is nothing so infuriating as being told to calm down when you’re angry.”
• It’s important to be genuine when you acknowledge feelings. Nobody likes to feel manipulated. Reach inside and find that emotion. Be real!
• TOOL #4: Give in Fantasy What You Cannot Give in Reality
• Sometimes a child wants something that it is impossible to provide. Your first impulse is usually to explain why she cannot, or should not, or must not have her heart’s desire. That’s the rational approach.
• A child in emotional distress is unlikely to be soothed by well-reasoned discourse.
• A terrific tool for moments like these is to give a child in fantasy what you can’t give in reality.
• Resist the urge to ask questions of a distressed child.
• Even gentle questions can feel like an interrogation when a child is in distress. He may not know why he is upset. He may not be able to express it clearly in words.
• By making a statement instead of asking a question, we accept the feelings without requiring any justification.
• TOOL #5: Acknowledge Feelings with (Almost) Silent Attention (Don’t just say something. Sit there!)
• The important thing is to give them our full attention and trust them to work it out.
• REMINDER: Tools for Handling Emotions
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings with Words “You were looking forward to that playdate. How disappointing!” “It can be so frustrating when train tracks fall apart.”
• 2. Acknowledge Feelings with Writing “Oh no! We don’t have the ingredients we need! Let’s make a shopping list.” “You really want that underwater Lego set. Let’s write that down on your wish list.”
• 3. Acknowledge Feelings with Art “You seem so sad.” (Draw a stick figure with big tears, or simply hand over a crayon or pencil.) “You are this angry!” (Make angry lines or rip and crumple paper.)
• 4. Give in Fantasy What You Cannot Give in Reality “I wish we had a million billion more hours to play.”
• 5. Acknowledge Feelings with (Almost) Silent Attention “Ugh!” “Mmm.” “Ooh.” “Huh.”
• All feelings can be accepted. Some actions must be limited!
• Sit on those “buts.” Substitute: “The problem is . . .” or “Even though you know . . .”
• Match the emotion. Be dramatic!
• Resist the urge to ask questions of a distressed child.
• Endless reminding, nagging, cajoling, demanding. That’s the reality of being a parent.
• So our kids get told what to do. All day long. That’s the reality of being a kid.
• The problem is, nobody likes to be ordered around.
• We resist being told what to do. Direct orders provoke direct opposition.
• The problem with a threat is that it can come awfully close to sounding like a dare.
• The threat has become an irresistible challenge.
• TOOL #1: Be Playful
• The first tool I have for you is not one that can be used in all weather. You have to feel at least partly sunny. Even though it’s a part-time tool, I’m offering it to you as a first resort because of its unusually powerful effect. Let’s call it the art of being playful.
• One technique, sure to be a hit with the seven and under set, is to make an inanimate object talk.
• Another playful technique is to turn a boring task into a challenge or a game.
• TOOL #2: Offer a Choice
• The second tool for engaging cooperation is to substitute a choice for a command.
• I’m not suggesting that you make uncomfortable compromises or that you put a three-year-old in charge of the whole show. I’m just saying that human beings, including small ones, like to have some input and control over their lives. There are plenty of options we can offer our children, short of handing over the car keys and the credit card.
• And every time your child makes a small decision, she’s getting valuable practice for some of the bigger decisions she’ll be making down the road.
• Don’t turn a choice into a threat.
• When giving a choice, it’s important that both options are pleasant!
• TOOL #3: Put the Child in Charge
• Whenever you can put your child in charge of his own behavior, you come out ahead.
• Human beings of all ages yearn for autonomy and independence.
• As a parent you can define the job that needs to get done, but let your child be in charge of the details.
• Time is such a difficult concept for children to grasp.
• TOOL #4: Give Information
• You don’t always need elaborate preparation to put your child in the driver’s seat. Often it’s enough to give her simple information instead of an order. Here’s how it works. You give your child information. Then she has a chance to figure out for herself what to do.
• TOOL #5: Say It with a Word (or a Gesture)
• TOOL #6: Describe What You See
• Appreciate progress before describing what’s left to do.
• Describe the progress that you see before pointing out what’s left to be done.
• TOOL #7: Describe How You Feel
• It can be helpful for a child to know what another person is feeling. Kids need to know when their parents or teachers are frightened, frustrated, or angry. It’s hard for them to figure out what’s going on when our words don’t match our emotions.
• When you describe how you feel, you’re not only giving children important information, you’re also modeling a vocabulary of emotions that they can use when they are frustrated, upset, or scared.
• When expressing anger or frustration, use the word I, avoid the word you.
• When expressing annoyance, irritation, or anger, it’s important to banish the word you. The you is accusatory. As soon as a child hears you, he feels defensive.
• Kids often respond well when we give them the words they can use to get what they want.
• Express strong anger sparingly. It can feel like an attack.
• Even if you use the perfect wording, it’s difficult for a young child to handle strong negative emotions from an adult.
• Save your outrage for those times when it is unavoidable.
• TOOL #8: Write a Note
• When you find yourself repeating the same plea again and again until you’re sick of your own voice, it may be time to write a note.
• TOOL #9: Take Action Without Insult
• None of these tools will work for every child in every situation. You’re still in charge of the zoo, and you do what you have to do to keep it afloat.
• Kids are exhausting. Little kids are exceptionally exhausting.
• Study after study has found that young children who are not constantly ordered around are much more likely to cooperate with simple requests from a parent—for example, cleaning up toys when asked—than children who are micromanaged and controlled much of the time. They’re also more likely to cooperate with another adult, such as a teacher, and more likely to follow rules when no adults are present to control them.
• Self-control can only be developed by practice, not by force!
• 1. Be Playful
• Make it a game. “Can we get all the cars into the box before the timer beeps? Ready . . . set . . . go!”
• Make inanimate objects talk. “I’m an empty sock. I need a foot in me!” • Use silly voices and accents. “I . . . am . . . your . . . robot . . . Must . . . buckle . . . seat . . . belt . . . now.”
• Pretend! “We need to climb this slippery mountain into the carseat.”
• Play the incompetent fool. “Oh dear, where does this sleeve go? Over your head? No? On the arm? This is so confusing! Thank you for helping me!”
• 2. Offer a Choice “Do you want to hop to the tub like a bunny, or crawl to the tub like a crab?”
• 3. Put the Child in Charge “Johnny, would you set the timer and let us know when it’s time to leave?”
• 4. Give Information “Tissues go in the trash.”
• 5. Say It with a Word (or a Gesture) “Trash!”
• 6. Describe What You See “I see most of the blocks put away in the toy box. There are only a few blocks left to go.”
• 7. Describe How You Feel “I don’t like food thrown on the floor.”
• 8. Write a Note “Put me on your head before riding. Love, your bike helmet.”
• 9. Take Action Without Insult “I’m putting the paint away for now. I can’t let you splatter the other kids.”
• Don’t turn a choice into a threat. Make sure both options are acceptable to you and your child.
• Appreciate progress before describing what’s left to do.
• When expressing anger or frustration, use the word I, avoid the word you.
• Express strong anger sparingly. It can feel like an attack.
• When you’ve committed yourself to using punishment to solve a conflict and the punishment isn’t harsh enough to be effective, you’re in a dangerous position. You may find yourself locked in to using harsher and harsher punishments.
• Often a strong-willed child who is punished becomes more determined to defy authority.
• It is kind of stunning how much our kids really do want to emulate us. And how much they focus on our overall strategy. It’s a tired old phrase but true: children will do as you do, not as you say.
• TOOL #1: Express Your Feelings . . . Strongly!
• TOOL #2: Show Your Child How to Make Amends
• The quickest way to change a child’s behavior and attitude is to get him involved in fixing his mistake. The best way to inspire a child to do better in the future is to give him an opportunity to do better in the present. A punishment makes him feel bad about himself. Making amends helps him feel good about himself, and helps him to see himself as a person who can do good.
• TOOL #3: Offer a Choice
• Sometimes a youngster needs help to redirect his energy. A choice can help him move on to a more acceptable activity.
• TOOL #4: Take Action Without Insult
• We focus on safety and peace of mind for the present, and solutions for the future.
• Taking action to protect yourself and those around you is an essential life skill for adults and a powerful way to model for our children how to deal with conflict.
• TOOL #5: Try Problem-Solving
• One of the keys to successful problem solving is to wait for a time when the mood is right. It can’t be done in the midst of frustration and anger.
• The first step of problem-solving is to acknowledge your child’s feelings.
• The second step is to describe the problem.
• The third step is to ask for ideas.
• The fourth step is to decide which ideas you both like and cross out the ones that neither of you like.
• The last step is to try out your solutions.
• The beauty of problem-solving is that, unlike punishment, it offers endless possibilities. If you’re committed to punishment and your child continues to misbehave, all you can do is punish more severely.
• If nothing is working, you may have to reconsider your basic expectations.
• When children are not ready to behave in a way that is safe for themselves and others, we default to managing the environment.
• Show respect for the conflict. Don’t minimize the problem.
• Avoid the temptation to solve their problem for them.
• Remove the disputed object temporarily.
• A reward is offered with an implied threat: If you don’t do what I say, you’ll miss out on something good.
• You don’t have to wait for a problem to occur in order to use problem-solving. When possible, plan ahead!
• Creating a family atmosphere of seeking solutions rather than inventing punishments will still stand you in good stead in the long run.
• There’s no telling what solution kids will come up with when a problem is put in their hands. When the solution is their own, it will usually work for them.
• As children become more independent it becomes harder to enforce punishments.
• When your children are out in the world you won’t be able to keep them safe by force. The most powerful tool you can wield is their sense of connection to you. The fact that you are willing to consider their feelings and solicit their opinions will keep their hearts and minds open to your feelings and opinions.
• REMINDER: Tools for Resolving Conflict
• 1. Express Your Feelings . . . Strongly! “HEY, I don’t like to see people being pushed!”
• 2. Show Your Child How to Make Amends “Your sister got scared on the top of the slide. Let’s do something to make her feel better. Do you want to offer her some pretzels? Do you think she’d like to play with your sand bucket?”
• 3. Offer a Choice “We’re going to give the slide a rest for now. I can see you’re in no mood to wait for a turn. You can swing on the swings or you can play in the sandbox. You decide.”
• 4. Take Action Without Insult “We’re heading home. We’ll try the playground another day. I’m too worried about children getting hurt right now.”
• 5. Try Problem-Solving
• Step One: Acknowledge your child’s feelings “I can see that you don’t like your hand held in the parking lot. It makes your fingers feel squeezed.”
• Step Two: Describe the problem “The problem is, I worry about cars hitting children in the parking lot.”
• Step Three: Ask for ideas “We need some ideas so we can go back to the park and have a good time without people getting mad or scared. What can we do?”
• Step Four: Decide which ideas you both like “So you like the idea of holding on to my sleeve and leading me to the playground. Let’s circle that one.”
• Step Five: Try out your solutions “Here we are at the parking lot. Grab my sleeve and show me which way to go!”
• If nothing is working, you may have to reconsider your basic expectations.
• Show respect for the conflict. Don’t minimize the problem.
• Remove the disputed object temporarily.
• You don’t have to wait for a problem to occur in order to use problem-solving. When possible, plan ahead!
• Sorry to say, praise can be complicated. Research and observation suggest that it’s not a matter of how much praise we dole out, but the way we praise that makes the difference.
• The first rule of praise is that it’s not always appropriate to praise.
• TOOL #1: Describe What You See
• A more useful way to praise is to resist the impulse to evaluate and instead to simply describe what you see (or hear or notice with any of your five senses).
• Consider asking questions or starting a conversation instead of praising.
• TOOL #2: Describe the Effect on Others
• TOOL #3 Describe Effort
• It’s no surprise that children who are told they are smart and talented often fall apart when they encounter their first real challenges.
• TOOL #4: Describe Progress
• One advantage of descriptive praise is that you can use it even when things aren’t going particularly well, by pointing out what has been achieved so far.
• Often pointing out one positive thing is more effective than pointing out ten negatives.
• Sometimes we do need to point out what’s wrong. Kids don’t always notice on their own. In a case like this it’s important to appreciate the positive first. If you want a criticism to be accepted graciously, a good rule to follow is to notice three positive things before mentioning the negative. And even then it’s most useful to put your criticism in positive terms. Talk about what “needs to be done” rather than what is still wrong.
• Sometimes acknowledging feelings can be more helpful than praise.
• Time to switch gears and acknowledge feelings. When kids are unhappy, we don’t have to prop them up with frantic praise.
• Give a child a new picture of himself.
• Another way to give a child a new picture of himself is to give him opportunities to demonstrate his competence.
• Resist the urge to praise by comparison.
• REMINDER: Tools for Praise and Appreciation
• 1. Describe What You See “I see green lines that are zooming up and down the page. And look how they connect all these red shapes!”
• 2. Describe the Effect on Others “The baby loves it when you make those funny sounds. I see a big smile on her face.”
• 3. Describe Effort “You kept working on that button until you got it into that little buttonhole.”
• 4. Describe Progress “You sounded out each of the letters and you put them together. You read a whole sentence!”
• Consider asking questions or starting a conversation instead of praising.
• Sometimes acknowledging feelings can be more helpful than praise.
• Give a child a new picture of himself.
• Resist the urge to praise by comparison.
• All kids want to connect, all kids want to be understood, all kids want a say in what they do and how they do it. The challenge for those of us with differently wired kids is to figure out how to achieve all these noble goals without getting mired in frustration, or blaming our kids, when they are . . . well . . . different.
• Before we can hope to acknowledge feelings or engage cooperation or solve problems, we need to connect.
• TOOL #1: Join Them in Their World
• The next time your child seems to be in her own world, uninterested in relating to you or anyone else, and you have a little extra energy to spare, try getting down on the floor (or wherever your child happens to be) and joining her in her world.
• TOOL #2: Take Time to Imagine What Your Child Is Experiencing
• There is value to giving a child the experience that he can handle frustration, with your sympathy and support.
• TOOL #3: Put into Words What Kids Want to Say
• When kids feel understood they also feel more calm, connected, and able to tolerate frustration.
• TOOL #4: Adjust Expectations: Manage the Environment Instead of the Child
• Don’t expect new skills to be used consistently.
• Just because your kid did something yesterday doesn’t mean he can do it today. Just because he can do something in the morning when he’s fresh, doesn’t mean he can do it in the afternoon when he’s tired. Kids aren’t consistent in their use of new skills. It makes having realistic expectations even harder for parents and teachers. But who ever said it was going to be easy?
• TOOL #5: Use Alternatives to the Spoken Word: Write a Note, Use a Gesture, Draw a Picture, Sing
• Kids who are wired differently often have more difficulty making sense of what we say to them. They benefit from multiple ways to process information.
• TOOL #6: Tell Them What They Can Do, Instead of What They Can’t
• Even when children understand our individual words, they may fail to grasp what we’re trying to say. This is especially true of children who are on the autism spectrum or have other developmental delays. They tend to interpret words literally, which can lead to misunderstandings.
• TOOL #7: Be Playful!
• Kids on the autism spectrum take longer than neurotypical kids to move from the stage of literal thinking to imaginative play.
• REMINDER: Tools for Kids Who Are Differently Wired
• 1. Join Them in Their World “Can I play the Bubble Game with you? Will you show me how?”
• 2. Take Time to Imagine What Your Child Is Experiencing “So to you, the seams of the socks are very irritating!”
• 3. Put into Words What Kids Want to Say “You bad old rain! You took away Johnny’s recess!”
• 4. Adjust Expectations: Manage the Environment Instead of the Child “Let’s take a diaper vacation. We need some time to relax and not worry about peeing in the potty.”
• 5. Use Alternatives to the Spoken Word: Notes, Checklists, Pictures, Songs, Gestures
• 6. Tell Them What They Can Do, Instead of What They Can’t “You can throw your stuffed animals.”
• 7. Be Playful! “It’s time to put away the blocks. I need help from the human wheelbarrow!”
• Don’t expect new skills to be used consistently.
• We need to meet basic needs before any communication tools will work for us.
• The first two basics of everyday parenting are food and sleep. If your child is overtired or hungry, it’s likely that none of the communication tools in the previous chapters will work for you.
• Little kids aren’t always aware that they’re feeling bad because they’re tired or hungry. It’s up to us to keep those possibilities in mind and to offer sustenance and slumber when those two vital ingredients might be lacking.
• One of the best things we can do for children in times of stress is to give them time to recover from the physical changes of anger, fear, and frustration. Don’t expect a child to be able to “snap out of it” immediately.
• We need to be aware of when a child is nearing his breaking point so we don’t add that last seemingly harmless straw.
• Finally, we need to match our expectations to the child’s stage of development and level of experience.
• When things are going badly it may be helpful to ask yourself, Am I expecting my child to behave in a way that is beyond his current level of ability?
• For three-year-olds, an exciting vacation would be a trip to a new playground for an hour, another thirty minutes to muck about in a muddy stream, then a nice snack, and home to sleep in their own bed. Keep your plans simple and humble when your kids are small, and you will have simple (and less expensive) disappointments.
• Kids aren’t good at splitting their attention and tend to become absorbed in the moment, especially when the moment involves computer games.
• REMINDER: The Basics–Conditions Under Which the Tools Won’t Work
• Lack of food
• Lack of sleep
• Need for recovery time
• Feeling overwhelmed (the last straw syndrome)
• Lack of developmental or experiential readiness
• REMINDER: Food Fights Resist the urge to . . . . . . insist that your child clean his or her plate, eat a specific food, or eat a predetermined amount. . . . offer dessert as a reward for eating healthy food, or withhold it as a punishment for not eating. . . . be a short-order cook. . . . label your child a picky eater. . . . make food a battleground! Instead you can . . .
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings “Even though you usually like chicken, you’re not in the mood for it tonight.”
• 2. Offer Choices
• Put an empty plate in front of your child and let him serve himself, or ask for what he wants if he’s too young to serve himself.
• Serve some of the meal as simple separates so kids can make choices about what they put on their plates.
• Offer a simple alternative if kids don’t want the “grown-up” food—peanut butter sandwich, bread and cheese, hard-boiled egg, raw carrots, red pepper.
• 3. Manage the Environment Keep sweets and sugary drinks out of sight. Make it easy to avoid temptation!
• 4. Put the Child in Charge Let kids have as much involvement as possible in planning, shopping, as well as preparing the meal, if you can tolerate some food landing on the floor. (Your dog will thank you!)
• 5. Give Information Let kids know that “tastes change,” so they don’t feel stuck with their limited palate. Tell them, “You might want to give this a try when you’re ready.”
• REMINDER: Morning Madness
• 1. Be Playful (Shoe talking.) “I don’t want that foot in me. Nooooo!” (Parent talking.) “You’d better get on Luke’s foot right now. You’re making him late!”
• 2. Offer a Choice “Do you want to walk to the car the regular way or backward?”
• 3. Put the Child in Charge “Can you set the timer? I need you to let me know when it’s time to go out the door.”
• 4. Try Problem-Solving “It’s not easy to remember all the things we have to do in the morning. What do you think about making a chart?”
• 5. Acknowledge Feelings “It isn’t easy to get out of a warm, cozy bed. It’s nice to snuggle for a few more minutes!”
• REMINDER: Sibling Rivalry
• 1. Accept Feelings “It can be frustrating to have a baby sister!”
• 2. Give Wishes in Fantasy: Let the older child pretend to be a baby “Come sit on my lap and be my super baby.”
• 3. Describe What You See: Notice and appreciate the positive interactions between siblings “You figured out how to cheer up your sister when she was crying.”
• 4. Put the Child in Charge so that he has an opportunity to see himself differently “Can you pick a board book for the baby? She likes it when you read to her.”
• 5. Reconnect With Your Child
• Plan for Special One-on-One Time “Would you like to make cookies when the baby takes her nap? Or snuggle up and read your pop-up truck book?”
• Tell the Older Child Stories About his Baby Days “I remember when you . . .”
• 6. Take Action Without Insult: Avoid casting a child in the role of aggressor “We need to separate. I don’t want anyone getting hurt!”
• 7. Try Problem-Solving: Resist the urge to take sides and don’t minimize the problem! “Jamie wants to build by himself and Kara wants to touch the blocks. This is a tough problem. We need ideas.”
• REMINDER: Shopping with Children
• 1. Put the Child in Charge Have him help make a shopping list and gather groceries to put in the cart. Give her an allowance: “You can bring your dollar to the grocery store in case you see something you want to buy for yourself.”
• 2. Offer a Choice “Should we get the spiral pasta or the elbow pasta? You pick!”
• 3. Acknowledge Feelings with a Wish List Thomas’s Wish List: Star Wars jumbo Lego set
• 4. Give Information—Let Children Know What to Expect “We’re going shopping for Elena’s birthday present today. Let’s bring the wish list in case you see something you’d like for yourself.”
• REMINDER: Lies
• 1. Describe What You See: Instead of asking or accusing, state the obvious. “I see chocolate on your face.”
• 2. Describe How You Feel “I’m upset that the cake was eaten! I was going to serve it for dessert when our friends come for dinner tonight!”
• 3. Acknowledge Feelings “It’s not easy to resist cake. I bet you wish you hadn’t eaten it.”
• 4. Try Problem-Solving: Make a plan for the future “Next time you’re tempted, let me know. I’m sure we can find a way to help you wait.”
• 5. Adjust Expectations: Manage the environment instead of the child Think to yourself, The next time I buy chocolate cake, I’ll put it out of sight until it’s time for dessert so it’s not so tempting.
• 6. Help the Child Make Amends “We’re going to need something for dessert when our friends come over. Can you get out some cookies and arrange them nicely on a plate?”
• REMINDER: Parents Have Feelings, Too!
• 1. Express Your Feelings . . . Strongly Instead of, “You’re being rude!” Try, “I don’t like being told I’m mean. It makes me mad.”
• 2. Tell Them What They Can Do, Instead of What They Can’t “You can tell me, ‘Mommy, I’m disappointed! I wanted to go!’ ”
• 3. Don’t Forget the Basics—Give Yourself and Your Child Time to Recover “I’ll talk to you about it after dinner. Right now I’m too upset.”
• REMINDER: Tattling
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings “Jenna didn’t like being poked. That hurt!”
• 2. Help the Child Make Amends (without scolding) “Let’s get a broom and sweep up the mess.”
• 3. Try Problem-Solving “How will we remember not to touch the stove dials? We need ideas.”
• REMINDER: Cleanup
• 1. Be Playful (Shoes talking.) “Pretty please, put me in the closet with my friends.” “How many minutes will it take to toss all the Legos into the bucket? You can set the timer. Ready . . . set . . . GO!”
• 2. Offer a Choice “Do you want to be in charge of putting away the books or the cars?”
• 3. Write a Note “Please hang me on the hook. Love, Your Coat.”
• 4. Describe What You See “I see orange peels on the floor.”
• 5. Give Information “Peels belong in the compost.”
• 6. Say It with a Word “Coat!” “Peels!” “Shoes!”
• 7. Describe Progress “You got that whole pile of dirty laundry in the basket! All that’s left to put away are the cars and books.”
• 8. Describe What You See with Appreciation “Wow, look at this big cleanup you did. The floor was covered with dirty laundry and train tracks, and now it’s a pleasure to walk on!”
• REMINDER: Doctor’s Orders
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings Instead of, “Come on, it’s not that bad. Just let her do it, and it’ll be over.” Try, “It can be scary to think about someone sticking a needle in your arm.” Instead of, “Don’t cry. You’re a big boy.” Try, “That hurt! You didn’t like that!”
• 2. Offer in Fantasy What You Can’t Give in Reality “I wish they could put the medicine inside a lollipop. You’d eat one a day for a week and then you’d never get sick.”
• 3. Offer a Choice “Do you want the shot in your left arm or your right?” “Do you want to sit next to me, or on my lap?”
• 4. Give Information “The shots are quick. They’re over in the time it takes to clap twice. Like this (Clap! Clap!).” “The shots put tiny little fighters in your blood, called antibodies. They fight against tiny germs so you don’t get sick.”
• 5. Try Problem-Solving Parent: What would make it easier to get through these injections? Would it help to have something to look forward to when you’re done? Kid: Can we get peanut M&M’s? I could eat a green one as soon as the shot is over. Parent: Let’s do that!
• 6. Be Playful “I can see the medicine going down your throat into your stomach. And now it’s heading down your leg to your toes!”
• 7. Take Action Without Insult “I’m going to hold you on my lap while the doctor gives you the injection. I know you don’t like this.”
• REMINDER: Shy Kids
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings “It can be hard to walk into a new house filled with relatives. Lots of people want to say hello to you. That can feel scary.”
• 2. Adjust Expectations: Give a child something to do instead of pressuring him to be social. “You can carry in the chips and put them in the bowl for people to eat.”
• 3. Offer a Choice “Do you want to sit on the couch and watch the kids set up the trains? Or do you want to have a snack with the grown-ups first?”
• 4. Be Playful (Sock puppet talking.) “Hi there! Would you like a corn chip?”
• 5. Put the Child in Charge “Jamie will join you when he’s ready.”
• REMINDER: Little Runaways
• 1. Adjust Expectations: Manage the Environment Instead of the Child Avoid outings that seem like fun but will be more stress than pleasure with a small child. There will be plenty of opportunities to see holiday decorations at the mall or enjoy an outdoor concert by the river when your child is a little bit older.
• 2. Acknowledge Your Child’s Feelings “You don’t like it when your hand is squeezed. You want to be free to look around.”
• 3. Describe Your Own Feelings “I worry that drivers backing out of parking spaces can’t see children.”
• 4. Offer a Choice “You can ride in the cart or you can help push.”
• 5. Be Playful “We need to stick close together. It’s a jungle out there. I think I just saw the tail of a lion behind that car!”
• 6. Try Problem-Solving “Let’s think of a secret signal we can use that means we have to get to each other as fast as possible.”
• 7. Take Action Without Insult Grab your kid and go home. “We can’t stay here. I have to watch the baby and I’m too worried about losing sight of you by the river.”
• The first priority, of course, is to protect. Take action to prevent injury! This may involve grabbing a child. The words that accompany this action are important. We need alternatives to “bad boy” or “how could you hurt the baby like that?” or “don’t be mean!” We need words that state your values without attacking the child.
• The next priority is to attend to the victim.
• What can a parent do to make a kid feel more kindly toward a sibling and less likely to attack in the future? We can help him make amends:
• And finally we can acknowledge feelings and problem-solve for next time:
• We tell our children not to hit, but sometimes we forget to acknowledge what a challenge that is for a youngster. It can be a great relief to a child to know that he is engaged in one of the great aspirations of civilization—figuring out alternatives to violence!
• REMINDER: Hitting, Pinching, Poking, Punching, Pushing
• 1. Take Action Without Insult
• Make everybody safe “We need to separate!”
• Attend to injuries “Let me kiss that bump. Do you want a piece of ice for your head?”
• 2. Express Your Feelings Strongly “I don’t like seeing Isabel hurt!” “That makes me very upset!”
• 3. Help the Child Make Amends “Isabel needs something to make her feel better. Can you find her a toy? Or do you think she’d like a strawberry?”
• 4. Acknowledge Feelings “It can be very frustrating to have a little sister grabbing your things.” “It’s not easy to resist hitting or pushing when you’re mad!”
• 5. Give Information “No pushing allowed in this house. Daddy is not allowed to push me. You are not allowed to push your sister, and she is not allowed to push you. And I am not allowed to push either of you—unless you need a push on a swing!”
• 6. Try Problem-Solving “Sometimes your little sister can drive you crazy! What can a person do when his sister is bothering him? We need ideas.”
• REMINDER: Sleep
• 1. Acknowledge Feelings “Sometimes it isn’t easy to fall asleep. It can be scary to lie in bed in the dark.”
• 2. Be Playful “I need to smooth out these terrible lumps in your bed!” (Press down on legs and arms of child.)
• 3. Try Problem-Solving “Let’s see what ideas we can come up with for staying in your bed at night. A special night-light? A picture book by your bed? A recording of songs or stories?”
• 4. Take Action Without Insult “Mommy and Daddy need to sleep! I’m putting you back in your bed. We’ll play in the morning.”
• REMINDER: When Parents Get Angry!
• A. In the moment, if you must yell, use your tools . . . LOUDLY!
• 1. Say It in a Word “CAR!!!”
• 2. Give Information “BROTHERS ARE NOT FOR KICKING!!”
• 3. Describe How You Feel “I GET VERY UPSET WHEN I SEE A BABY BEING PINCHED!!”
• 4. Describe What You See “I SEE PEOPLE GETTING HURT!!”
• 5. Take Action without Insult “I can’t allow sand throwing! WE ARE LEAVING!!”
• B. When the moment has passed and everyone’s safe, take care of yourself. Do whatever works best for you: run around the block; take deep breaths; take a time-out for yourself (lock yourself in another room); call a friend and vent; email a friend; write in a journal; hug a dog; turn on your favorite music; attend to your own basic needs—sleep and food. . . .
• C. Reconnect and try problem-solving. “That was no fun. You didn’t like getting yelled at. And I was really mad about being late. What can we do next time?”
• D. Seek help if you feel the anger is too much.
• REMINDER: Troubleshooting
• 1. When a child is too upset to cooperate, go back to Acknowledging Feelings “You don’t even want to think about visiting your friend another time. You were looking forward to going today!”
• Make sure your tone of voice matches the emotion “That’s so disappointing!”
• Try a grunt instead of words “UGH!” “Mmph!”
• Put your child’s thoughts into words “Stupid Legos! They should stick together and stay together!”
• Tell the story of what happened “You worked for a long time on that spaceship. You used blue bricks for the base, and red bricks for the lights, and it was almost ready to launch! All it needed was the fins on the rockets. . . .”
• 2. Give your child Time to Recover (and give yourself a break!) “I can see how sad you are. I’ll be in the kitchen making dinner. Come join me when you’re ready.”
• 3. Help a child climb out of the pit of despair by Acknowledging Feelings, Giving Information, and Offering Choices “Oh no, the skin got ripped! That hurts! Good thing skin knows how to repair itself. It’s getting busy right now growing more skin cells to cover that poor knee and make it as good as new. How many days do you think it will take? What kind of Band-Aid should we cover it with?”
• 4. Take Action and stick to your values; if you regularly cave in to whining and complaints, the tools won’t work “You wish we could have candy for breakfast! I’m putting it out of sight. The choices are cereal or eggs.”
• 5. Check on “The Basics” Is your child lacking food or sleep, or feeling overwhelmed? Is your child developmentally ready to do what you’re expecting?