(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Before I go any further, I need to emphasize that I have the best parents on earth, and my father did — is doing — a great job.
That said, this post is about a parenting event. 😉 Sorry, Dad!
Sunday nights used to be a fast food night in our family, often with friends. One night we stopped with a group, and Mom and I went to set up tables for our group while Dad waited to order. Before I went to help Mom, though, I gave Dad my order. “I’d like Chicken McNuggets, please.”
“They don’t have those here,” Dad answered.
I was puzzled. “Yes, they do.”
“No, they don’t. What would you like?”
“Chicken McNuggets. With sweet and sour sauce.”
“They don’t have those here.”
“Yes, they do!” I could see them on the menu.
Dad shook his head.
“Fine. Get me a cheeseburger, please.” I went away to our table, confused. I ate the cheeseburger, and it was tasty and all, but it was a couple of hours before I realized — Dad was right. They don’t serve Chicken McNuggets at Wendy’s.
We’re going to skip any potential commentary on media saturation and the fact that a little kid automatically called small boneless pieces of fried chicken “McNuggets.” I did, somewhere, know that “McNuggets” referenced McDonald’s and was a brand-specific thing. But I was in the habit of saying McNuggets, and I unconsciously included the extra syllable in my Wendy’s order.
Clients ask frequently, “But don’t I have to tell the dog he’s doing the wrong thing? How will he know if I don’t say anything?” I often reply, “Don’t you think he realizes that you’ve stopped praising and feeding him?” The answer is, of course, yes, the dog has absolutely noticed (if we are training properly) that the reinforcement has stopped! and is actively trying to figure out how to restart it. Tell him that he’s not doing the right thing is superfluous information and can only frustrate him.
Let me tell you, I knew I wasn’t making progress in my order. I knew that Dad just wasn’t getting it. “But then,” one might ask, “shouldn’t he have told you that the ‘mc’ prefix was wrong?”
Maybe, maybe not. Both my parents are professional writers and words are important in our family. If he wanted me to learn to consider accuracy, it might have been more effective to let me figure it out on my own rather than to blithely hand me the fix. But (in Dad’s defense, against his expectations) I hit the frustration point before I happened upon the right answer — I shut down — and walked away.
A clicker teacher might have marked as correct other parts of my request, forcing me to consider it not as a whole order (“I can see chicken nuggets on the wall, I know they’re here!”) but as individual parts, even down to syllables. When I realized that chicken, please, and nuggets all got positive responses, but mc did not, it would an easy short step for me to consider “McNugget” and realize I needed to revise my word choice. (This is in fact the route I took while tutoring for spelling and pronunciation.)
Getting it wrong frustrated me, but didn’t help me get the right answer. Breaking down the task, simple as it was, into many small correct building blocks would have helped me to see where the problem lay and to fix it myself.
If you doubt that telling someone the obvious “that’s not working for you” is a bad idea, let me end with one of my favorite stories about childbirth. The wife, screaming after a particularly painful effort, fell back upon the pillow. Her husband leaned close and said, “Honey, the baby’s not out yet.”
He said he received a look which made him very glad she was on her back and giving birth, too occupied to deal with him as he deserved.
If we’re in a conducive learning environment, we know when what we’re doing isn’t working. What we need to know is what is working, so we can evaluate what remains. Happy training!
