Katz – insight into behavior
For example, a child who’s very shy, it’s not much use to say “Why don’t you go over there and play with them?” it doesn’t work very well, but you could say to that child, “If you want to go over and play with those others, I can help you, just let me know.” So the child takes initiative, and that’s an important part of early social development, which kind of reminds me, on one occasion I was working at a, in a lab school in a different country, and in the mornings the teacher of the four year old class would go around at ten thirty with a tray with crackers to give to the children, now, nothing unusual about that. This happened to be in February so the children had been in that, four year old children had been in that group since September.
But there was one little girl in the group who had never, ever spoken in school. All the evidence was she spoke perfectly normally at home, and in the neighbourhood, and with her cousins and her brothers and sisters, but in school, not a word. And I was watching the teacher and she would go around offering the children, with the tray, offering them a cracker, and when she got to that little girl she said, “You can’t have a cracker unless you use your words.” And what did the girl do? Walked away. And so I talked to the teacher and I said “You know, try this, see if this helps, say to her, ‘You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but if you change your mind, I’ll be over there’”. And within a week she was talking. Now, I’ve often wondered about this, how, is that, why didn’t that teacher think of that? And it’s what we call insight. It’s not technical; it’s not a technique to use. It’s an understanding of what might be causing the behavior which in her case is she dug in her heels no matter what, she was probably a very stubborn kid, and once she dug in her heels, she wasn’t going to un-dig them for somebody, by somebody else’s command, she was going to do it when she thought. And it worked fine, and in many situations like that.
