Posts Tagged negative feelings

Coercion and Feelings

On October 8, 2015 / Effectiveness, Relationships

Do you like when someone uses coercion or other approaches that prompt negative feelings in order to get you to do something? Of course not. So why, then, do so many adults use such approaches with young people?

The essence of the famed psychologist Jean Piaget’s hierarchy of cognitive development is that children’s brains develop at different ages but they—even infants—have similar feelings as adults. Young people experience negative feelings of pain, anger, and fear, all of which prompt resentment toward the person who prompted such feelings.

Sharing information and asking reflective questions, as outlined in the Discipline Without Stress methodology, do not carry the baggage of prompting negative emotions and resentments as coercion does.… >>>

Honesty and Discipline

On December 2, 2014 / Discipline, Effectiveness

My late mother-in-law used always to say, “Be careful of asking for someone’s opinion. The person may give it to you.”

Realize that if someone asks you for your opinion and if the person perceives that your comments are derogatory, there is a problem. It doesn’t matter if your opinion is based on fact and logic; all that matters is the other person’s perception of what you said. This is true whether interacting with an adult or a child.

Cognition and emotion go hand in hand, with the latter preceding the former. In other words, what we hear may prompt a negative feeling. Once a negative feeling has erupted, it doesn’t do any good to try to convince the person … >>>

Telling vs. Asking

On January 5, 2011 / Effectiveness, Parenting

No one likes to be TOLD what to do. Think of a time when someone told you what to do or told you that you had to do something. Notice how it conjures up a negative feeling.

I grew up with a friend who, when told what to do by a parent, would find an excuse NOT to do it. Even if it was something he wanted to do, such as going outside to play, he would find an excuse to stay indoors just because he was TOLD.

Depending upon the other person’s mental frame at the time, when we tell a person what to do—regardless of how admirable our intentions—the message is often PERCEIVED either as an attempt to … >>>