Teaching children with ADHD to cooperate with their peers takes more than simply telling them to cooperate. When these children do not cooperate with their peers, how do others typically respond? They put them in timeout; they become annoyed with them; they punish them in some way, such as staying in from recess or not being permitted to attend extra-curricular activities.
What can you do to help your children to cooperate with their peers? You can use emotional intelligence to help them to cooperate. What is emotional intelligence?
“Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships” (Goleman, 1998, p. 317).
Here are some suggestions so that you can teach your child to cooperate by using emotional intelligence.
Cooperation with Peers: Using Emotional Intelligence
Has your child or student ever been asked:
How are you?
Are you okay?
Did something happen to you that upset you?
Arguably, children with ADHD and similar disorders are not asked these type of questions.
What Should You Do?
Read the students a story about a situation where neither they nor their peers cooperated successfully
Ask them questions that encourages a conversation about their feelings about what happened.
Story
Arthur and Sam were on a team. They were assigned to make cupcakes. Sam always made cupcakes with his mom, so he thought that he and only he knew the best way to prepare the recipe before baking the cupcakes. He also decided on the flavor of the icing beforehand. From the moment that Arthur and Sam began their project, they had problems cooperating.
They did not make a list of jobs before they began. When they started putting ingredients into the bowl, Sam argued with Arthur about which ingredient that each of them would put into the bowl first.
They also argued about who should mix the ingredients, who should pour the batter into the cupcake cups, and who should put the cupcakes in the oven. Arthur tried not to argue and to accept, begrudgingly, what Sam told him to do, until the cupcakes were done.
Sam started putting his choice of flavor for the icing, chocolate, on all of the cupcakes. Also, he didn’t even like chocolate icing! At this point, Arthur was almost in tears, because he was so frustrated with Sam’s behavior. Finally, Sam took two of the cupcakes for himself and walked away, eating one as he walked in the other direction! Arthur was so upset, that he took the rest of the cupcakes and threw them all over the floor, causing most of them to break apart in crumbs!
Questions to Ask the Children
What should Sam and Arthur have done before they began the project?
What was unfair about the way Sam behaved?
How did the way Sam behaved make Arthur feel?
What could Arthur have done to avoid the problems he experienced when baking cupcakes with Sam?
How should the teacher have responded to Arthur and to Sam as related to their behavior?
What did Arthur do when he saw Sam taking the cupcakes and eating them?What happened because the boys did not assign jobs to each other before they began preparing the recipe?
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