Adler's Eight Basic Concepts: Give you the attitudes and methods necessary to practice positive discipline

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler (born 7 February 1870, died 28 May 1937) was an Austrian psychiatrist. A pioneer of humanistic psychology and the founder of individual psychology, he followed Freud on the problem of neuroses, but was also the first psychologist within the psychoanalytic school to oppose Freud's system of psychology.

He is the author of "Inferiority and Transcendence", "The Study of Human Nature", "Theory and Practice of Individual Psychology", "Inferiority and Life", etc., after he further accepted Schopenhauer's will to life and Nietzsche's will to power, he transformed Freud's theory, and transformed psychoanalysis from the biologically oriented self to the social and cultural orientation of self psychology, which is of great significance to the later development of Western psychology.

The basic concept of Adler

The following 8 basic concepts of Adler provide us with a foundation that helps us understand human behavior and develop the attitudes and methods necessary to practice positive discipline. These methods will help us learn the right attitudes and techniques to help children develop the various life skills and good character they need to step into society.

First, children are social people

People's behavior depends on the social environment in which they live. How children perceive themselves and how they act is based on how they see their relationships with others and how they think others see them. Remember, children are making decisions anytime, anywhere, and forming beliefs about themselves, the world, and what they should do to survive or grow. When they "thrive," they develop "seven important perceptual and skill" (see Chapter 1). And when they're in a state of "survival" (struggling to figure out how to get a sense of belonging and worth), adults often see it as bad behavior. When you can think of bad behavior as a "survival mode" for children, do you think differently about bad behavior?

Second, the behavior is purpose-oriented

Behavior is based on the purpose that is sought in a certain social environment. The primary purpose is belonging. The child does not have a clear awareness of the purpose he wants to achieve. Sometimes, their ideas about how to achieve their goals are wrong, and the results of their behavior are often contrary to their goals. For example, they want to get a sense of belonging, but their efforts to achieve this goal are clumsy, and their behavior will be annoying. This becomes a vicious circle. The more annoying or angry their behavior becomes, the more urgently they will pursue a sense of belonging, and therefore the more annoying it becomes.

Drakes explains: "Children are very perceptive, but their ability to explain is very poor. "Children are not the only group with this problem. The following scenario is a good example of how this situation can begin.

When Adele's (2-year-old) mother returned home from the hospital with her newborn little brother, Adele found that her mother paid a lot of attention to the baby. Worse, Adele explained this to mean that mom loves her baby more than she loves her. This is not true; but Adele's opinion is more important than the fact. Her actions will depend on the facts she believes, not on the real facts. Adele's goal is to regain her special place in her mother's heart, and she mistakenly believes that the way to do this is to act like a baby, so she may need a bottle, pull the stink into her pants, and cry. As a result, she backfired, and mom was frustrated and bored with it, rather than loving and kind.

Third, the primary purpose of the child is to pursue a sense of belonging and value

When we see that the purpose of all behaviors is to pursue a sense of belonging and value in a certain social environment, we know that the primary purpose of children is to pursue a sense of belonging and value. As the above examples demonstrate, a child's misconduct is based on a false idea of how to achieve a sense of belonging and worth.

A child who misbehaves is a child who has lost faith

A misbehaving child is trying to tell us, "I don't feel belonging or self-worth, and I have the wrong idea of how to get them." "When a child's behavior is annoying, it's easy to understand why it's hard for most adults not to care about the child's bad behavior, and it's hard to remember the true meaning and message behind it — "I just want to belong." Understanding this concept is the first step for adults to help misbehaving children more effectively. This helps you become a "codebreaker". When a child behaves inappropriately, please think of the wrong behavior as a password and ask yourself, "What is she really trying to tell me?" "Remember, while your child is not acutely aware of her password information, when you deal with her implicit thoughts rather than just reacting to her bad behavior, your child can feel deeply understood. If you can remember that behind bad behavior is a child who simply wants to belong and doesn't know how to do it in an appropriate and effective way, you will feel differently about bad behavior. And it would also help to take a closer look at whether your actions have caused your child to believe that they have nothing to belong to or worthless. The first four concepts are discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.

Fifth, a sense of social responsibility or community

Another important contribution of Alfred Adler was the concept of "Gemeinschaftsgefuhl", a beautiful German word coined by Adler. There was no proper word for it in English, and Adler chose the word "social interest" (and I used "social responsibility"). It refers to a person who genuinely cares about his peers and sincerely wants to contribute to society. The following story is a good expression of what "social responsibility" means.

Once upon a time, two brothers shared a farm. The gravel soil and drought made life very difficult for the brothers, but they always shared the harvest equally. One of the two of them had a wife and five children; the other was a bachelor. One night, the brother who had become a family member couldn't sleep, and when he remembered how unfair the arrangement between the two men was, he tossed and turned all night. He thought, "My brother didn't have a family or children, and when he was old, no one took care of him." He really needed more than half. Tomorrow I will offer to give him two-thirds of the harvest. That's fairer that way. That night, the other brother couldn't sleep either because he also thought the equal harvest was unfair. He thought, "My brother has a wife and five children to support. They also put in more labor on the farm than I do. My brother deserves more than half. Tomorrow I will offer to give him two-thirds of the harvest. The next day, the two brothers met and each spoke out what they thought was fairer. This is an example of a sense of social responsibility at work.

Adler has a program he calls the "14-day cure plan." He declared that he would be able to cure anyone with a mental illness within 14 days if he did exactly what he asked. One day, an extremely depressed woman came to Adler. He told her, "If you follow my advice, I can cure your depression in 14 days." ”

She asked grimly, "What do you want me to do?" ”

Adler replied, "If you do one thing a day for someone else and stick to it for 14 days, then your depression will be gone." ”

She objected, "Why should I do things for others?" No one ever did anything for me. ”

Adler quipped, "Gee, it could take you 21 days." He added: "If you really can't think of something you'd like to do for someone else, think about what you can do if you're in the mood to do it." Adler knew that even if she just thought about what she could do for others, she was already on the path to improvement.

It is extremely important to cultivate a sense of social responsibility in children. If young people do not learn to become useful members of society, what is the use of learning knowledge? Drakes used to say, "Don't do anything for your child that she can do on her own." "The reason for this is that if we do too much for our children, we deprive them of the opportunity to develop a belief in their abilities through their own experiences." Instead, they will think they need to be cared for by others, or that they "deserve" special services.

The first step in cultivating a sense of social responsibility is to teach the child to rely on himself. They can then be prepared to help others and feel particularly competent when they help others. When adults play "super moms" or "super teachers," children learn to expect the world to serve them, not them to serve the world. It is these children who, if they don't get what they want, will think it's unfair. When others refuse to serve them, they feel sorry for themselves or seek revenge for some hurtful or destructive behavior. When they seek revenge, they often do themselves the same harm they do to others, even more than they hurt others.

At the other extreme, some parents and teachers are too busy to teach their children social and life skills to develop good character. It is precisely these adults who are annoyed that their children are not "obedient". I don't understand where they think children can learn the right behavior. Too many adults are "blittle" their children for their bad behavior, rather than taking on their own responsibilities.

Positive discipline can help adults and children out of this vicious circle by promoting a sense of social responsibility. Parents and teachers often don't know that many of the things they do for their children are something that the children themselves could have done. They don't spend time teaching children how to contribute to families and classes. Let's make a list. Teachers, how much of what you do in your class can be done by the children themselves? Parents, how much do you do for your children, just to save time, rather than to help children feel empowered by doing it themselves?

In my co-authored Book, Positive Discipline in the Classroom, we talk about the importance of engaging students in brainstorming and discussing everything that needs to be done in the classroom. While teachers can participate in this kind of brainstorming, the amount of things they can come up with once they get kids to do so is simply amazing. After making a list of things the kids can do, find a volunteer for each job. Teachers want to make sure that every student has a task, and even a "supervisor." It's important to establish a job rotation system (with the participation of students) so that no one will do something less tempting for too long. It is very clear that sharing tasks reinforces children's sense of belonging, teaches them life skills, and gives children a sense of social responsibility.

6. Equality

Few people now feel troubled by the concept of equality, but it is different with children. When it comes to children, there will be a lot of objections. They will ask, "How can children be equal to us without the same experience, knowledge or responsibility as us?" ”

As emphasized in Chapter 1, equality does not mean "exactly the same", and Adler's equality means that all human beings have equal demands for "dignity" and "respect". Most adults are able to accept that children are of equal value as adults. This is one of the reasons why positive discipline abandons humiliation. Humiliation runs counter to the concepts of "equality" and "respect".

Seventh, making mistakes is a good time to learn

We are taught from an early age to be ashamed of our mistakes. In fact, we are not perfect. What we need to achieve is to have the courage to change our belief in "imperfection." This is one of the most inspiring ideas and one of the most difficult to achieve in our society. There are no perfect people in the world, but everyone is demanding this from themselves and others– especially children.

Close your eyes and think about the messages you got from your parents and teachers when you made mistakes as a child. What's that message? You may want to write them down. When you make a mistake, is the message you get stupid, incompetent, badass, unproductive, wooden man? Close your eyes again and think about one of the reprimands you received for making a mistake. What did you think of yourself at the time? What do you want to do in the future? Remember, you didn't know what decisions you made at the time; but when you look back, your decisions are usually clear. Some people decide they are incompetent or that they are badass; others are humiliated for fear of not doing a perfect job and decide not to take any more risks. As mentioned above, too many children decide to become "pleasers" and please adults at the cost of their self-esteem. There are also children who decide to cover up their mistakes and do everything they can to avoid getting caught. Is this a message and decision that encourages children to develop valuable life skills? Of course not.

When parents and teachers convey negative information to their children about their children's mistakes, they are often well-intentioned. They are trying to motivate children to do better "for their own good." They don't take the time to think about the long-term effects of their approach. There are so many parenting methods and educational methods that are based on "making children afraid". Adults worry that if they don't "make" their children do better, they're not doing their job. Too many people worry about what their neighbors will think, not what the child will learn from it. Others worry that if they don't fill their children with fear and humiliation, their children will never do better. Most people worry because they don't know what else to do – and worry that if they don't let their children be blamed, humiliated, and miserable, they're spoiling them. Adults tend to hide their worries with more control over their children.

In fact, there are other ways – not pampering, and not at the expense of reducing a child's sense of self-worth – that can really motivate the child to do better. That is, we ourselves have to learn, and we have to teach our children to learn to make mistakes as an exciting learning opportunity. How nice it would be if we could hear an adult say something to a child: "You made a mistake, that's great!" What can we learn from this? I'm really talking about "we." Of the most mistakes children make, we can't blame them. A lot of mistakes in kids are because we don't take the time to train and encourage them. We often provoke children's rebellion rather than encouraging progress. We need to be an example of being brave enough to accept "imperfections" so that children see from us that making mistakes is indeed a good opportunity to learn.

Children learn and practice how to see mistakes as opportunities to learn at family meetings and class meetings (see chapters 8 and 9). Many families find it helpful to have everyone say a mistake they made that day and what they learned from it at dinnertime. Some teachers find time at a class meeting (once a day) once a week for each student to speak out about the mistakes they made and what they learned from them. Children need to see every day the value of making mistakes – and learn from them in a friendly environment.

The most important theme of this book—one you'll see over and over again—is learning how to use the challenges of discipline as an opportunity for you to learn. However, adults first need to change any negative perceptions of making mistakes so that they can do so that they can be a victim of Rudolf. What Drakes calls "imperfection" sets an example. The "three Rs for correcting mistakes" below are an excellent way to set an example of "courage to be imperfect."

Correct the three R's of the error

1． Recognize – "Aha! I made a mistake! ”

2． Reconcile — "I apologize to you." ”

3． Resolve – "Let's solve the problem together." ”

When we see making mistakes as a learning opportunity rather than something bad, it becomes much easier to take responsibility for our own mistakes. If we see making mistakes as a bad thing, we tend to feel incompetent, discouraged, and likely to defend ourselves, prevaricate, lightly judge, or criticize—both to others and to ourselves. On the other hand, when mistakes are seen as a learning opportunity, acknowledging mistakes seems to turn into an exciting exploration, "I want to know what I can learn from it." Self-forgiveness is an important factor in the first of the "three Rs for correcting mistakes" (i.e., acknowledgment).

Have you noticed how good children are at forgiving us when we are willing to apologize? Have you ever said "I'm sorry" to your child? If you said, how did the child respond? I've asked this question many times during my lectures around the world, and the audience's responses were consistent. When adults sincerely apologize, children almost always say, "It's okay, Mommy (or Daddy, or Teacher)." The child may be angry and resentful of the adult's disrespectful behavior a minute ago (and it is likely that the adult deserves it), and once the adult says "I'm sorry," the child forgives completely.

The first two of the "three Rs for Correcting Mistakes"—acknowledgment and reconciliation—create a positive atmosphere for the third R (problem solving). Trying to solve problems in an atmosphere of hostility will never work well.

Like most adults and children, even though I know exactly what to do, sometimes I don't always have to. As a human being, we are easily swayed by emotions and lose our normal sanity (regressing to the control of the "reptile brain"). At this point, we react without thinking, rather than acting deliberately. One of the reasons I love the principle of positive discipline is that no matter how many mistakes I make, and no matter how many troubles my mistakes cause, I can always return to the principles of positive discipline, learn from my mistakes, clean up the troubles I have caused, and make things better than before I made them.

Because I've made so many mistakes, "three Rs to correct mistakes" became one of my favorite concepts. I have a case of "signs" myself. At one point, I said to my daughter, who was only 8 years old at the time, "Mary, you're a spoiled mischievous person. (Does this sound like kindness, firmness, dignity, and respect?) ）

Mary, who was already familiar with the "three Rs for correcting errors," retorted to me, "Well, don't say you're sorry later." ”

I replied, out of complete reaction, "You don't have to worry, because I certainly won't." ”

Mary ran back to her room and slammed the door. I quickly returned to the state of a rational brain, became aware of my actions, and went to her room to apologize. She was still angry and wasn't ready to accept my apologies. She was holding an early version of Frontal Discipline and was busy drawing underlines on the book with a large black marker. I looked over her shoulder and saw that she had scrawled two big words on the white of the book: "Liar."

As I left her room, I thought, "Oh my God, maybe one day there's another bestseller of My Dearest Mommy[1]. "I know, I made a big mistake.

About five minutes later, Mary came up to me, hugged me timidly, and said, "Mom, I'm sorry." ”

I said, "Baby, I'm sorry for you too." In fact, when I say you're spoiled mischievous, I'm myself. I'm angry that you can't control your behavior, but I don't control my behavior myself, and I'm really sorry. ”

Mary said, "Nothing, Mom, I just acted like a mischievous ghost. ”

I said, "Well, I know it was my actions that angered you and made you do that." ”

Mary said, "Well, I know what I did. ”

I've seen things like this happen again and again. When adults take responsibility for conflicts caused by their actions (and, at least between two people), children are often willing to follow the example of adults and take responsibility for themselves. When children have an example of responsibility, they learn to take responsibility.

A few days later, I overheard Mary saying to her friend on the phone, "Oh, Debbie, how can you be so stupid!" Mary immediately realized what she had said and hurriedly said, "I'm sorry, Debbie. When I say you're stupid, it means I'm stupid. ”

Mary really absorbed the "three R's" principle of correcting mistakes, and learned that making mistakes is actually a good learning opportunity.

Make sure the message of love is delivered to the past

Mrs. Smith, a single mother, had a problem with her daughter Maria and called me for help. Mrs. Smith feared that Maria might have taken drugs. She found a box of six cans of beer under Maria's closet. She walked up to Maria with the six cans of beer and asked, "What is this?" ”

Mrs. Smith's tone made it clear that she wasn't really interested in the answers to her own questions. It's just a snare issue to induce her to confess and humiliate her. Such problems immediately create distance and hostility.

Maria replied sarcastically, "I think that looks like six cans of beer, Mom." ”

The battle escalated. Mrs. Smith said, "Don't play tricks with me, miss. Tell me what's going on. ”

Maria said innocently, "Mom, I don't know what you're talking about!" ”

Mrs. Smith felt it was time to put the sleeve away: "I've found these six cans of beer in your closet, mademoiselle, and you'd better explain it." ”

Maria thought quickly and said, "Oh, I forgot about it. I helped a friend hide it for me. ”

Mrs. Smith said sarcastically, "Oh, yes! Do you think I'll believe it? ”

Maria replied angrily, "I don't care if you believe it or not!" Then, ran back to her own room and slammed the door.

I wanted to help Mrs. Smith understand the key to the "message of love" by asking her, "Why does finding those beers make you angry?" ”

I could hear that she must have thought the question was stupid, because she replied angrily, "Because I don't want her to get in trouble." ”

"Why don't you want her to get in trouble?" I asked again.

I could feel that Mrs. Smith had regretted calling me because she was completely annoyed: "Because I don't want her to ruin herself!" ”

Since she still hadn't discovered her key message, I asked again, "Why don't you want her to ruin herself?" ”

She finally woke up and shouted, "Because I love her!" ”

The last question was a gentle one: "Do you think she got this message?" ”

When Mrs. Smith realized that she had not passed on the message of love to Maria at all, she felt remorse.

A week later, Mrs. Smith called to tell me how she combined the "three Rs to correct the error" with the "four steps to winning the collaboration." The night after the incident, when Maria came home, Mrs. Smith greeted her at the door and asked in a loving tone, "Maria, can we talk?" ”

Maria replied defiantly, "What are you talking about?" (It's important to note that it takes some time for children to listen and believe in changes in adult attitudes.) ）

Mrs. Smith understood this. Instead of reacting to the provocation, she went into Maria's inner world and speculated on her feelings: "I'm sure when I shouted to you last night for those six cans of beer, you probably thought I didn't care about you at all. ”

Maria felt so well understood that she began to cry. She said in a trembling voice with condemnation, "That's right. I felt as if I was nothing but annoying you! Only my friends really care about me. ”

Mrs Smith said, "I can understand why you think that. How can you possibly feel other ways when I come to you with my fear and anger instead of my love? ”

Maria clearly eased her defiant attitude. Her mother's loving attitude finally touched her. When Mrs. Smith saw this change, she continued, "I'm really sorry for throwing a tantrum at you like yesterday. ”

Distance and hostility have been transformed into intimacy and trust. Maria responded, "It's okay, Mom. I really helped a friend hide. ”

Mrs. Smith then said, "Maria, I really love you. Sometimes, I'm afraid you might do something to hurt yourself. I was engulfed in my own worries and forgot to tell you that it was only because I loved you. Mrs. Smith put her arms around Maria and said, "Will you give me another chance?" Can we start talking and solve problems together with love and concern for each other? ”

Maria: "Of course, Mom. I think that's a good suggestion. ”

Mrs. Smith told me they had started a family meeting that night. Her heart was filled with gratitude, because the formation of an atmosphere of love and cooperation had completely changed the relationship between mother and daughter.

As you must have noticed, the examples in this chapter are all about how bad behavior in adults (due to lack of knowledge and skills) contributes to bad behavior in children. When adults change their behavior, so do children. And, in each case, when adults remember to make sure to pass on the message of love, they will not only be able to achieve positive results, but also experience more happiness.