Don’t Say Don’t
I’m sure you’ve heard this before. That those of us who live with young children should avoid saying the word don’t. Instead of saying what not to do, we should be telling our kids what they should do. So, we say things like, “hands off” instead of “don’t touch”. But do you know why this way of communication is recommended?
Last Wednesday, I went to a parenting workshop on Positive Discipline, and the presenter gave a very good reason why we should avoid the word don’t. She, like me, had always thought that it was just better, more positive, to tell a young child what he should do instead of what he shouldn’t. But then she read a study (not listed in her handouts, and I cannot remember who she cited) that concluded that young children actually don’t hear the word don’t. So when we say, “don’t touch” they hear “touch”. That being the case, it’s no wonder that they do exactly what we’ve just said not to.
Sitting in the workshop, I noted this bit of information as interesting, but didn’t think much about it until a few days later when I was coaching Buba on what to say to get Tiny to stop messing with him. It went something like this:
Me: Buba, if you don’t like what Tiny is doing you have to say, “No! No!”
Buba: No! No!
Me: Tell her, “I don’t like it!”
Buba: I like it!
Me: No, say, “I don’t like it!”
Buba: I like it!
And that’s when that bit from the workshop really clicked for me. I wish I could find that study (perhaps a Google search will turn up something), because I’m so curious to know how it was conducted and how old the subjects were. But for now, I’ve been trying to avoid the “don’t commands” as much as I can. It’s a bit harder than I thought it would be, as saying don’t seems to come more naturally, and of course, is a much faster way to say what I want to say. But I’ll keep trying, because it seems to be working a bit better.
Why would they not hear the word “don’t”? I don’t get it. If you say “don’t touch”, are they ignoring the first word? If so, then “hands off” they would only hear “off”. And, if they are not understanding the word, why would we assume they would understand ANY word.
My feeling is that they understand the word don’t just fine and are CHOOSING to ignore it.
While I believe in positive parenting, I want my kids to live in the real world. Most people are not going to talk to my kids this way.
Merri Ann, it comes down to linguistic processing. The way that child language development works, they learn first single words, then two words together, then three word combinations, and finally sentences. This is evidenced by the way in which all neurotypical children develop productive language (i.e. what they say, over time).
Kids learn nouns and verbs first, because those are the most salient (“deictic”) to their experience. Modifiers, like adjectives, adverbs and the word “not”, come later. My linguistics specialty is comparative syntax, but I suspect that my first language acquisition colleagues would argue that when we teach our early speakers colour words, they’re learning them as nouns.
Again, this isn’t my specialty, but I can see that their could be a simple neurological explanation for all this. For a crash course in the generalities of language and language learning, I’d recommend Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct.
Its so funny you bring this up. I have been meaning to write a post about this for some time, just from my own, humbling experiences. It’s like magic for me – when I tell them not to do something, its useless. When I tell them what to do instead (ie: put the spoon on the table instead of don’t throw the spoon on the floor) I get much better results. Nothing with toddlers is 100% but using “positives” seems to help them understand what I want.
Interesting!! Thanks for that!
xoxo
That’s really interesting. I’ll have to try to remember this!