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The blame game
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 534337" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>other really important point - look to his environment. We often use natural consequences with out difficult children, but for some kids these can morph into blaming. Think about what you (and other adult) say to difficult child. "Your dinner is cold because you took too long to come to the table." Or "Your toy broke because you left it lying on the floor and it got stepped on."</p><p></p><p>While these are natural consequences, especially with socially immature individuals this can become an easy way out of learning to find where to dump the blame when things don't work out. He wants to go swimming, but there is a storm. So it's the storm's fault. Or he runs out of time because the things he wanted to do took longer than he had planned. So it's got to be someone's fault.</p><p></p><p>What you need to do is really, really work at teaching him that sometimes bad things happen to good people and nobody is to blame. Life happens.</p><p></p><p>What can help, but go carefully - look at natural disasters. Ask him whose fault it was, that there was an earthquake or tsunami. Whose fault is it that the Fukoshima nuclear reactor was damaged? They had planned for what they thought would be the worst case scenario, and the tsunami that hit was even bigger than they thought could happen. Okay, there may have been some subsequent human error, but the outcome would have been much the same.</p><p></p><p>The next thing to teach him - "okay, this happened. What is the best way to handle this now?" Again, do not focus on blame. Just focus on what to do to prevent a recurrence. "How can we fix this? How can we make this better?"</p><p>With a broken toy, the focus is on, "Let's pick up that toy and see if we can fix it. And let's look to see if there's anything else in danger of being trodden on. It doesn't matter who left it there, if we pick it up we're preventing damage. And that is a good thing."</p><p></p><p>We need to teach positive intervention and also teach that this is a way to turn potential bad events into good ones. Identifying a hazard before it becomes reality, is a useful skill. A difficult child who is constantly angry and blaming, is being reactive. We need to learn ourselves, and teach our kids, to be proactive. It can be done.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 534337, member: 1991"] other really important point - look to his environment. We often use natural consequences with out difficult children, but for some kids these can morph into blaming. Think about what you (and other adult) say to difficult child. "Your dinner is cold because you took too long to come to the table." Or "Your toy broke because you left it lying on the floor and it got stepped on." While these are natural consequences, especially with socially immature individuals this can become an easy way out of learning to find where to dump the blame when things don't work out. He wants to go swimming, but there is a storm. So it's the storm's fault. Or he runs out of time because the things he wanted to do took longer than he had planned. So it's got to be someone's fault. What you need to do is really, really work at teaching him that sometimes bad things happen to good people and nobody is to blame. Life happens. What can help, but go carefully - look at natural disasters. Ask him whose fault it was, that there was an earthquake or tsunami. Whose fault is it that the Fukoshima nuclear reactor was damaged? They had planned for what they thought would be the worst case scenario, and the tsunami that hit was even bigger than they thought could happen. Okay, there may have been some subsequent human error, but the outcome would have been much the same. The next thing to teach him - "okay, this happened. What is the best way to handle this now?" Again, do not focus on blame. Just focus on what to do to prevent a recurrence. "How can we fix this? How can we make this better?" With a broken toy, the focus is on, "Let's pick up that toy and see if we can fix it. And let's look to see if there's anything else in danger of being trodden on. It doesn't matter who left it there, if we pick it up we're preventing damage. And that is a good thing." We need to teach positive intervention and also teach that this is a way to turn potential bad events into good ones. Identifying a hazard before it becomes reality, is a useful skill. A difficult child who is constantly angry and blaming, is being reactive. We need to learn ourselves, and teach our kids, to be proactive. It can be done. Marg [/QUOTE]
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