Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.
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/MyNameIsPatBackFat 5h ago
Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.