How sweet it is...really!
What’s the matter with you?” you ask. “How can a vaccination be ‘sweet’?”
Tucked behind the pain of vaccinations is a very meaningful principle: even though a medicine is injected at one place, the whole body benefits.
And, what does the “Vaccination Principle” have to do with discipline?
When correcting children, we tend to go straight to generalizations like, “Be nice,” or “Vegetables make you strong.”
However, while both ideas are worthwhile, they will probably have little influence on your child. Why? Because you are attempting to teach from general to specific. In contrast, the Vaccination Principle goes from specific to general – naturally!
Wouldn’t you rather have your child be “nice” because of courteous habits rather than just “Because mommy said so!”?
We first noticed this principle when we began asking children to use “please” in the middle of their requests, as in, “Would you please tie my shoes?”
As children got used to doing that with us, we noticed them using “please in the middle” among themselves. Eventually, children who used “please” in the middle of their requests became “nicer” than children who said, “Can I...”
Today we no longer talk to children about being “nice”. Instead, we help them consistently use a few simple tools that spread into the rest of their lives. Now we have a bunch of really “nice” kids, but it’s not because we have said, “Be nice”. Instead, they have gotten there by using specific courtesies.
Likewise, it’s very hard to teach children to eat something they don’t like just because it’s good for them. They don’t care about that. They care about how it tastes.
Therefore, we ask children to taste the “smallest little bite” of everything on their plates. In that way, a small but consistent specific practice teaches them to eat their vegetables. How? By helping them discover that they actually do like vegetables – the result of moving from a specific practice to a general attitude.
So, stop and listen to yourself as you guide and correct. Do you hear the language of the Vaccination Principle? It takes some extra effort, but it is definitely a “sweet” thing in the long run.
