1  | 

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

As a freelancer, I focus my writing on public safety topics. I subscribe to news services that tell me, on a daily, semiweekly, or weekly basis about the latest headlines in the police world.

A few months ago, I found this: "Cops give weaker commands in violent encounters, ground-breaking new studies reveal." The article told me that officers in nonviolent situations used clear, easy-to-interpret "alpha" commands like "Stop talking," but once threatened, they unconsciously switched to "beta" commands, such as "Knock it off," that required the subject to interpret their meaning. The researchers' recommendation? Train officers to maintain situational control through their words.

The first thought that came to my mind was, "I bet this would work on Hamlet!" Because, you know, 3-year-olds have so much in common with drug addicts and the mentally ill. (Actually, the researcher did work with autistic children and their teachers in classroom environments. And how many times do we tell our children, "Use your words"?)

Anyway, I tried it the next day. And it works. While we don't have "lethal" encounters with our preschoolers, they can be stressful, and our verbal instructions do deteriorate as we try to talk around screeching and twirling and climbing. "Pay attention" never works as well as "Look where your foot is going." As for "Stop fooling around," well, that works as well for me as it did for the officers in the study, no matter how accurate the word "fooling" might be. Better: "Stand still and let me zip your jacket."

It may seem odd and even insulting, but honestly, I'm for any technique that forestalls a loss of patience, sharp tones, tantrums, time-outs--all that make us both feel bad. Using alpha commands/requests ("Please" is good add-on), I can get Hamlet to do what I need him to and still accommodate his need to be silly: "Help me get your pants on and then you can run around." I'd like to think, furthermore, that setting these kinds of limits now can head off trouble in the future--the kind where he might hear this language from the law after all.