In this chapter, Mc Cready talks mostly about ENCOURAGEMENT. Before that, she mentioned the below:-

Discouragement:-

1. Name labelling: Names such as "the shy one", "the more helpful one", etc
2. Jumping in to help your child with a task that he can handle, you are undermining his capabilities and feelings of significance
3. Overprotect: Often use words like "Be careful!", "Don't go too fast" at the playground shows you are lack of confidence in them
4. Expect perfection of your child

And a surprising discouragement is....

5. Rewards and Praise
 Rewards may work for a short period of time but your child may want more reward once he feels the current reward is not enough. If he does not get it, he will not obey anymore. In Mc Cready's words this is called "Discouraging towards future positive behaviour"

Praise works until your child fails. Example: Your child goes to a soccer game and first thing you say "How is my little champ?". Your child replies "Great! I am going to score 2 or more goals today". But she does not even at first half and you say "Don't worry, you are a star player, remember?" and the coach say "You are going to land a goal for me today right Super Star"? And in the end, he does not. You say "You were awesome. The other team got lucky. You are still the super star" and he will say "No. I am not. I did not score a goal even. I hate soccer"

Or another example which is typical is when your child brings home and A for History and you praise him "Great job. It just goes to show you are the smartest kid in the class". The week after came and his Math scored a B. He will feel ashamed to bring this result home because now he isn't the smartest anymore and it will disappoint his parents.

Rewards however can be given if a chore at home is a special or rare chore and not a daily chore. Example to wipe the windows is a not a daily chore but to clean up the dinner table is a daily chore and should not be given any reward.

ENCOURAGING GOOD BEHAVIOUR

Everything positive and negative our kids do is based on MOTIVATION. Motivations comes in two forms: external and internal. External means by praise or rewards and those who are motivated externally are hoping for something tangible or gain esteem from someone else. However when someone in motivated "internally", they look within for their reward (pride in a job well done, a feeling of accomplishment, personal enjoyment, etc)

If you only have a pre-schooler, you may think that external motivation is much easier and works well. But if your pre-schooler grows up to be a teenager and you are not with him for long period of times, you will not be able to monitor his behaviour. If his peers offers good "rewards" to him, he may take it. But if we build the motivation internally, they can then make their own good decisions and be more confident in themselves when they grow older.

In part 2, I will summarize Mc Cready's Toolbox Solution No.3: How to Use Encouraging Phrases and also example on how to approach both situation stated above (one on the child at the soccer game and one more at his History and Math results)