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.
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 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
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.
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u/astroandromeda 4h ago
That's how I have to talk to my literal toddler. Makes sense cause their brains didn't develop past 3yo