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by Randall Grayson, Ph.D.
- Mike and Diaz are arguing about who is going to play goalie on
the soccer team.
- Cody takes Logan’s ball glove without asking.
- Elizabeth continues to use inappropriate language although you’ve
repeatedly asked her to stop.
How would you handle these situations? Your response
tells a lot about your approach to counseling and getting the desired
behavior from your campers. Behavior management is more than getting campers
to comply with your requests and camp rules, however. Behavior management
includes helping campers develop social skills and emotional intelligence.
It is about helping them understand their emotions and behavior and learning
better ways to get their needs met.
Let’s take a look at five styles of counseling and then
focus on the method recommended by psychologists and other experts in
child development, success counseling. As you read, keep in mind these
important points.
- People often have a preference for a particular
style, but they sometimes use other approaches depending on the situation.
- All of the methods are effective at controlling
behavior, but only success counseling is effective in developing pro-social
children.
- The predominant approaches utilized by new
counselors are punishment, guilt, and the buddy method.
Punishment
Anger, criticism, humiliation, and corporal punishment
are all forms of punishment. Doing pushups, running laps, yelling, and
the arbitrary removal of privileges and rewards are common examples. Exasperated
staff and those under a time crunch are particularly prone to using this
approach. In the short term, it is very effective and fairly easy; however,
there are problems that make this approach inadvisable.
- Campers usually learn only that the behavior resulted in punishment;
they do not learn how to change the behavior in order to still get
their needs and objectives met.
- Compliance will only happen when there is sufficient strength enforcing
it.
- Compliance because of anything external is ultimately ineffective.
The individual’s psychological reaction is usually resistance, secret
defiance, or surface compliance so that he can retain some sense of
control and dignity. Children’s focus is often on anger instead of
reflecting on what they did. Sometimes they just think about how to
avoid getting caught the next time.
- Campers may internalize that they are bad people, which degrades
self-esteem. While high self-esteem isn’t everything, a low to moderate
self-esteem is certainly unhealthy.
- Punishment closes the communication door and makes it difficult
for people to take responsibility and be honest.
Guilt
Inducing guilt can take many forms. Silence with a look
of disapproval, a sigh, and a slow shaking of the head are nonverbal methods.
Common phrases may include "You know better" and "I’m really
disappointed in you."
Guilt can be more effective than punishment, because
the authority preventing the action rests in the camper instead of some
external power. Guilt is instilled, internalized punishment. Guilt is
the reference to the rule or norm and the implied or stated fact that
the child is bad for not adhering to it. While a child may feel guilty,
the choices are to accept that he is really bad, to reject the norm and
try not to get caught the next time, or ideally, to make some restitution
and learn how to behave differently in the future. As with punishment,
guilt does not teach the camper how to replace the behavior that resulted
in guilt, while still having his needs and objectives met.
The Buddy Approach
Like S’mores, this is a camp staple. The counselor attempts
to control campers with friendship and humor. "Come on, guys!"
and "I’m nice to you, you be nice to me!" are common refrains.
This method is popular because it works well on several levels.
- Campers will like their counselors and will often comply because
they like them and don’t want to disappoint them.
- Campers know that their counselor must comply with the camp’s rules.
Therefore, when those rules force their counselor buddies to be the
bad guys, campers don’t blame them since "it’s just the system."
As with sugar, there are down sides.
- When authority is blamed, campers don’t learn to behave because
it is the right thing to do. They behave because they must or be punished.
Their compliance is gained, and their conversion lost.
- The buddy approach can lead to dependency. Behavior should not depend
on liking a person in authority. The ability to develop an internal
focus of control is hampered and responsibility is often not taken.
- When a counselor must eventually correct or punish a camper, the
camper will be confused and wonder, "But aren’t you my buddy?"
- Campers may also take advantage of the friendship by essentially
blackmailing the counselor into allowing them (implicitly or explicitly)
to do what they want. Buddy adults occasionally bend or break rules
in favor of the kids, teaching campers that they can get away with
their behavior without the ultimate authority figures finding out.
Adults can be nice and chummy with campers, but they
need to remain adults. When campers need a gentle reminder of lessons
they’ve already learned, this approach is often quick and effective when
coming from a liked and respected counselor. Even when problems arise
that don’t have to be addressed, counselors should utilize them as teaching
tools that can help children solve their problems and deal with their
emotions in better ways.
The Monitor Approach
In essence, this approach uses natural and logical consequences.
There are three important distinctions to make when speaking of consequences.
- A natural consequence is one that arises as a result of the behavior
without any outside intervention. For example, if a child is rough
with a toy and it breaks, one hopes that the child learns not to be
so rough with his or her toys.
- A logical consequence is related to the behavior, but it is imposed
by someone with power. For example, if campers write graffiti on a
wall, they must restore the surface to its original condition.
- Artificial consequences are unrelated to the behavior problem. For
example, because a child did not make his bed, he can’t have dessert.
This is not the monitor approach; it is punishment.
Although the monitor approach is effective and offers
restitution, there are several problems and pitfalls.
- Campers may accept logical consequences, but the consequences may
not inspire them to make permanent changes in behavior.
- Consequences can be taken too far and turn into punishment.
- Campers are often left alone and do not receive guidance to process
their behavior and emotions. A camper may not be willing to work with
the counselor; nevertheless, a gentle lecture from the standpoint
of genuine concern and care is far better than just letting the consequences
do the teaching.
- Behavior is adjusted because of rules and limits, which are
imposed and monitored by an authoritative power.
When campers are unwilling to work on their behavior,
the monitor approach is the preferable fallback method, but staff should
always use the success counselor method (see below) first. Of course,
if the counselor starts the monitor approach and campers decide that they
would prefer the success counselor method of accepting responsibility
and working on self-control, that door should be left open.
The Success Counselor
Okay, so what is the preferred method? Specialists in
child and human development understand that self-control through internalized
values and morality is both preferable and ultimately more effective than
methods that involve external control. All the other methods described
focus on changing behavior and hoping that a change in mind will ensue.
The aim of a success counselor is just the opposite: to change campers’
minds, which will change their behavior.
The central premise is that people use behaviors to help
them get what they want and need. At their core, those needs are power
or control; affection, love, and attention; self-respect, self-worth,
and self-esteem; fun; belonging and connection to others; and safety and
survival.
Success counseling attempts to help campers meet their
needs while keeping in mind the needs of others (including the community).
In essence, the counselor tries to help the camper understand the need
behind the behavior and figure out a more pro-social way to meet that
need. Campers are walked through the problem-solving process so that they
understand how their emotions, needs, and behavior are all linked to the
present outcome, as well as a more desirable one. The counselor’s goal
is not to solve campers’ problems, but rather to give them information
and support to create their own solutions.
This is done by asking pointed, guiding questions. For
example: What happened? How did that make you feel? What did you want?
What did you do to get it? How did that work? What were/are some other
choices you could have made? What is the best choice? That sounds like
a good plan, so let’s check back with each other to see how it works,
okay? When the camper has accepted their responsibility, a conversation
about appropriate restitution usually follows easily.
As Diane C. Gossen aptly states in Restitution,
"When [campers] understand that the goal of discipline is to strengthen
them and to teach them, they will no longer be afraid to face their mistakes."
When campers take responsibility, they decide when freedom is withdrawn
and when privileges will be restored.
No discipline system will work well if it is geared toward
getting campers to do what you want without also helping them get their
needs met. Campers want the same things we all do; sometimes they just
need help in learning the best way to go about getting those needs met.
Resources
"Success Counseling" by D. Barnes Boffey and David M. Boffey,
Camping Magazine, November/December 1993
Punishment by Rewards by
Alfie Kohn (Houghton Mifflin, Co., 1999)
Restitution by Diane C.
Gossen (New View Publications, 1996)
Originally published in the 2001 May/June issue
of Camping Magazine. |
