November 13th, 2009 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Humor, Opinion
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What’s the deal with hospital stickers these days? I found this sticker laying around in Happy’s emergency department the other day. Should we be encouraging children to come to the emergency room and feeling happy and excited about the sticker they get? I’m not sure putting a happy robot on a sticker and proclaiming ones exciting visit to the emergency is the best public health policy. Perhaps we need to take a different course of action before another entire generation of citizens feel obliged to use the emergency department as their sole source of medical care. Perhaps instead of a hospital sticker, children in the emergency room would all get a saline injection in their shoulder. Now that’s the kind of memory you want kids to have of their emergency room visit. They should fear the hospital and do everything in their power to stay healthy as adults. Not feel giddy about happy robots on hospital stickers.
Do children get hospital stickers at your facility?
*This blog post was originally published at A Happy Hospitalist*
October 7th, 2009 by Nancy Brown, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion
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Conditional love is finally getting the press it deserves – and it is all bad! Sorry Dr. Phil and Supernanny, many of us do not believe that what children need or want (specifically approval or love) should be offered contingently or doled out as rewards or withheld until they behave according to our wishes. Praising children for doing something right or punishing if they do something wrong – are both conditional and counterproductive.
Research completed in 2004 (Assor & Roth) with adults and recently replicated with ninth graders (Deci) suggests that children who received conditional approval were in fact more likely to do what a parent wanted, but as adults, the children tend to not like their parents much, feel internal pressure to do things versus a sense of choice or control, and they often felt guilty or ashamed of their behavior. In addition, children who reported feeling more loved when they lived up to their parents’ expectations feel less worthy as adults. Read more »
This post, The Long-Term Consequences Of Conditional Love, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Nancy Brown, Ph.D..
