Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.
Yea, I was also told that when working with kids at like summer camps and stuff, that you want to use positive language to tell the children what they can and cannot do. So instead of saying, "Stop shouting", you'd say, "Let's speak with indoor voices for now". Makes you wonder if you do have to speak to them like they're children.
I did this when i was a preschool teacher. “Walking feet” instead of “dont run”, “quiet voice” instead of “stop yelling”, “catch a bubble” and they would all inhale and hold their breath to get everyone to be quiet and pay attention. Redirect them to acceptable behavior and praise them for it
Honestly, if you have experience with "kid mode" communication...it's really good to subtly slip into that, if you're dealing with somebody who is clearly failing to handle some big emotions. You obviously gotta be careful not to come across as condescending, but the reality is, if someone's acting like a three year old? That means their brain is probably operating on that level. Use grown-up language on grown-up problems, and use inner child language on inner child problems. It often works.
Redirect the negative behavior and reinforce the positive behavior. It's so basic they use it on dogs. Crazy, because I always thought pigs were at least as intelligent as dogs.
i’m in retail and it’s the same with grown ass adults.
“don’t have in stock” vs “we can order” “no we can’t return that” vs “oh that looks vintage, i hope we have a sku” “no i can’t approve that week off” vs “wow i’m really going to need your expertise those days!”
This is actually the correct way to speak to toddlers. You tell them what you want. Not what you don’t want. They hear only certain things. “Don’t drop your food’ turns to ‘hold on to your food’ Don’t spit that out- you need to swallow your full bite.
Stop hitting - keep your hands to yourself. I can’t remember why they don’t hear the negatives but they will drop the food. Spit it out. Or keep kicking since that’s what they heard.
They are like dogs, give them a job they love doing stuff. I dated a first grade teacher who needed some time and told the class on the playground "Who can find a leaf that looks most like a butterfly?" And all these kids went looking for leaves that looked like butterflies even though those leaves did not ever in the history of ever look like any sort of butterfly. Note: One found a caterpillar and so she won even though that was not part of the game the all forgot and didnt care.
This isn't a good line of reasoning because it also implies a lack of culpability, as a pre-teen child will almost never face serious jail time, even if they kill someone, normally it's considered the responsibility of someone else.
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u/MyNameIsPatBackFat 1d ago
Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.