"It is human nature to focus on the negative. Maybe it is our survival instinct to hyperfocus on the negative, out of fear and anxiety. As a behavior specialist, one of the principles I learned over the years is we tend to inadvertently promote what we focus on; that which we throw our attention at. This is very evident with our children who display challenging behaviors. The challenging behaviors bring out the emotion in us, and we react with high intensity. What we often do not realize is the more we react and give attention to the negative, the more “value” we give to it. The more we focus on it, the more we see it. The behavior and the emotions tend to spiral out of control, with all parties getting frustrated and angry.
This principle applies to everyone. Whether it is marriage conflicts, employee/ employer relationships, parent/child conflicts, etc. When we focus on the negative, throw our attention at it and intensively react to it, it tends to increase. When we hyperfocus on the negative, we spotlight and highlight it, and inadvertently foster it. As the vicious cycle continues, both the adults and children become more frustrated, angry, and controlling. Unfortunately for all, the problem often escalates.
What people often do not realize is the “attention” and “emotion” given to a behavior will often reinforce it to occur more frequently. This is often evident with giving praise for good behavior, but also for giving negative reactions to challenging behavior. Whether the child likes the negative attention or not, the attention often increases the frequency of the challenging behavior. Either the child feels the control they see in the emotional reactions of others, enjoys manipulating what he wants by creating such attention, or hates the negative reactions and acts out more out of frustration. Regardless of the reasons for the challenging behavior, our attention to it often fosters it.
Another concept in psychology is we tend to identify with what others highlight in us. If others tend to spotlight and highlight our negative qualities we tend to identify ourselves with those qualities. If we are labeled and treated like a bad, lazy, oppositional, inadequate person, we will become that person. Our self identities tend to mirror what others project on us. When we label a child a bully, we focus on his bad behavior, expect it out of him, and he identifies with those expectations. If we expect the child to act out when working with him, we will look for the behavior, are quick to interpret all behavior in a negative light, expect it to occur, and then give added attention to it when it happens. The child begins to see himself as “being that way”, because that is him.
Often when meeting with parents, teachers, administrators, and professionals , about 90% of the discussion is centered around the child’s challenging behaviors (why is it occurring, what are the triggers, what consequences will reduce it, etc.) as if these behaviors define the child. I can get caught up in this myself. After listening to this discussion for some time I usually have to interrupt the discussion and ask “what does the child do right?” What are his positive behaviors and attributes? When he is not acting out, what positive things does he do, say, and engage in. We are often so focused on the negative behavior we fail to notice the positive. We start to define the child as a problem. This is because of our natural instinct is to reaction to the negative. It colors our vision, and directs our focus.
In behavioral language we often “baseline” the negative behavior (document how often it occurs, for how long it occurs, and how intense it is). We immediately start looking for it, expecting it, and sometimes inadvertently creating it. I find that it is often better to have parents and teachers first start with documenting what the child is doing right! What his good attributes are, when he is being good, and under what conditions is he at his best. “Catch him being good, attend to it, and document it.
People are at first annoyed by this, because of their hyperfocus on reducing the negative behavior. They want to turn the attention back to the negative behavior, as if that will somehow stop it. However, if they take a few weeks to simply focus on the good behavior, making an emphasis to praise and attend to it, and learn to create conditions for the good behavior to occur, not only does the good behavior start to occur more frequently, but the negative behavior starts to decrease significantly. When we tend to change our focus to “spotlighting and highlighting” the positive in the child, we actually become less reactive to the negative, stop hyperfocusing on it, and reduce the expectation for it to occur. When our attention is turned to the positive, what the child is doing right, there is little time, energy, or need for the negative behavior"