Helping Children Learn to Self-Evaluate and Make Responsible Choices
*All people are born with the same emotional and physical needs ie. survival (physical), fun,
worth, love and belonging and freedom.
*All behavior is purposeful. Any behavior is an individual’s best effort at that time and in that
place to meet one or more of their basic human needs.
*All behaviors are learned. Therefore, behavior can be taught.
*We are constantly evaluating and comparing our picture of what we want with our perception
of what we have.
*When there is an imbalance (when our needs are not being met) we feel that as a frustration
signal which is interpreted as an urge to behave.
*Behavior is total and consists of thinking, doing, feeling, and physiology.
*Thinking and doing behaviors are directly controllable.
*Feeling and physiology are controlled indirectly by controlling thinking and doing behaviors.
*The analogy of a Behavior Car is often helpful in teaching students about total behavior and
their ability to control their behavior.
*We are the only one that can drive our personal “behavior car”.
* The engine is our desire to meet our needs and powers our car. When we receive that
frustration signal the engine speeds up – runs faster. We gotta go somewhere – do something!
*The front two wheels are thinking and doing behaviors. We steer our car with the front
wheels. That in turn affects the rear wheels which are feeling (emotions) and physiology.
*If we “pop the clutch” our front wheels loose contact with the ground and we allow emotion
and physiology to control our behavior.
*When that happens we most often “crash and burn” or behave in a way that is not
responsible.
*Our job is to teach children to keep their front wheels in contact with the ground and allow
thinking and doing to control feeling and physiology. Or in other words, use the thinking portion
of their brain to drive their car rather than the feeling portion.
*Helpful questions:
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“What are you doing?” Allow the child to describe their behavior.
“What do you want?”
“If you continue to do what you are doing do you think you will get what you want?”
“If you continue to do what you are doing might you get something you don’t want ie,
hurt yourself, hurt someone else, have to leave the room, miss recess etc.”
If the answers to the previous two questions are No and Yes respectively we have the
opportunity to help the child identify a different behavior that is more responsible.
It isn’t enough to tell a child to stop doing something. We should help them identify, and
have the opportunity to choose, a different behavior. Stopping the behavior doesn’t
meet the need that the original behavior was intended to meet. This is our opportunity
to teach children.