We all know the dangers of feeding our children junk food on a daily basis, yet may of us unwittingly serve up heaping helpings of the emotional equivalent without a second thought.
Junk foods are loaded with calories that don’t help our children grow strong, healthy bodies. Emotional junk food is loaded with general praise that doesn’t help our children grow strong, healthy spirits.
The biggest emotional junk food offender is “good job.” Runners up are “thank you,” and “that’s great.”
Those overused phrases sound positive, attentive and, at the very least, harmless. But perhaps only in the same way that burgers, fries and shakes have a sliver of nutrition masking the fat, salt and sugar that make our bodies vulnerable to disease.
“A challenging child can receive a tremendous amount of general praise and still be literally starving emotionally,” explains Howard Glasser, greatness consultant and six-time author, including a best-selling book on ADHD for the past decade, “Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach.(TM). “We even found that some children don’t sleep well because their intense hunger for emotional nutrition isn’t being met. Just as it’s hard to fall asleep when you’re hungry for food, it’s hard to fall asleep when you’re hungry for emotional nutrition.”
To help people get a feel for what he means, Glasser opens up the “emotional junk food” segment of his seminars with a question, to which he replies to the responders with, “Good job. That was just great. Thank you.”
Then he asks the audience, filled with educators and therapists, ‘What did you do that was good? What did you say that was great? What do you think I am thankful for? It’s soon clear that nobody knows for sure. The comments are just too general to actually say anything that has much meaning to the hearers.
Contrast that general, generic praise with our conventional model for commenting on a child who has broken a rule or is acting out in some manner. We can typically describe it at some length, giving specific details of the entire unfolding of the event, complete with reciting words, tone of voice, actions, explaining why it was bad and delineating all of the rules, values and feelings that were trodden over as a result of the poor choice.
Glasser’s approach advocates a 180-degree shift from the conventional parenting, teaching and therapy models. In the case of feeding children emotionally nutritious food, that means applying that same intense level of detail, emotion and energy that’s usually reserved for what’s gone wrong into describing what the child does right, at the moment the child does something right or doesn’t do something wrong.
“Appreciative comments like “thank you” or “good job” are simply not specific enough to provide any emotional nutrition,” Glasser says. “Recognition and appreciation are most powerful when they are detailed and based on observable behavior. The child experiences trust and success through the detail of really feeling seen. It is far more powerful and emotionally nurturing to describe exactly why you are saying “good job” and exactly why you are being “thankful.”
Family EatingHere are three tips to switch from emotional junk food to a nutrient rich emotional diet:
1. Talk your way out of it: Spouting general, generic praise is a habit that will take time to break. If you catch yourself saying, “good job” or “thank you,” just keep going, adding on the details to turn it into an emotionally nutritious sentence. “Thank you, son…I noticed that you were really interested in that TV show, but you turned it off anyway and you’re starting to get ready to go. I really appreciate your immediate response.” Eventually the details will come first and you won’t be relying on the empty-calorie prelude to the main dish.
2. Beef up your vocabulary. Create a list of the values and character traits that are important to you: respect, honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, loyalty, teamwork, compassion, leadership, friendliness, perseverance, self control and the like. That way the whole array of delicious details of greatness will be top of mind for you. That means your eyes will be more likely to see it and your mouth more likely to say it. “You didn’t interrupt even though I can tell you’re bursting with news. You could have blurted it out but you didn’t. You kept the rule of not interrupting and I really admire your respect for us and the self control you used to wait for your turn to talk!”
3. Reverse the energy flow. Observe your own energy output for a few days. For example, how much emotion, volume and intense relationship would you put into correcting your child for showing disrespect? And how much for respect? If you’re like most adults, the voltage for negative behavior is about triple the output for positive, expected behaviors. Challenge yourself to reverse the flow. Switch the higher level of intensity to energizing your child’s positive behavior and pull the plug on energizing the negative. Rewire your emotional fare to that extent, and in every sense of the word, your kids will be shocked.
Perhaps providing an emotionally nutritious diet that builds childrens’ spirits will in turn cause them to prefer healthier food to nourish their bodies too.