David's Daily Diversions

This week in Parenting 101,

This week in Parenting 101, the course I am taking for the next couple of decades, we have been learning about praise.

Now it’s not like I never knew that people like praise. I have used it in various supervisory roles, from school teaching to retail management. Not enough, but I have used it. In those situations, I have been dealing with people who have been praised before – hopefully anyway. They have the concept of being praised and understanding what it means.

For Aidan, however, this is a new concept. Mrs Holford and I have used it since he first began to respond to any sort of external impulse, whether getting him to eat for the first time, sit up, crawl, pick up an object, or whatever. It appears to be the natural instinct for a parent to praise, even when the recipient has no idea what is being said.

Some time ago, Aidan began to understand encouragement. He realised that a particular behaviour made us happy and he was motivated to do it again. But that’s not what we have seen over the past couple of weeks. Now he seeks the praise itself.

For ages we had been trying to teach him to clap his hands. Occasionally he would mimic our action. Now he claps all the time because he knows it is the response to obedience. When we tell him to do something and he responds we the correct action, without thinking we have clapped our hands and said “Good boy!” The chief of these instructions has been to close the door to the living room, so he wouldn’t wander throughout the flat. Everything we would tell him, “Close the door,” he would push it shut, and we would clap and say, “Good boy!”

Then the light came on in his little head. He started shutting doors without being asked. He would then turn around and start clapping, already anticipating the “Good boy!” Now he has move on to the next level. He has started looking for other things about which we praise him. He will even pick up things he is not supposed to touch, just so we can watch him put them down, like he is supposed to do, and then start clapping.

I wonder how much this is like out own spiritual behaviour sometimes. Do we do the things we are supposed to be doing and turn around, looking to see if God is clapping for us? Or do we start clapping for ourselves – for our own good behaviour?

Actions that are impressive in a toddler are not necessarily so impressive in an adult. Have we put away childish things?