Positive Psychology and the words "No" and Stop

Spoke to teacher, she asked about positive psychology – not allowed to use the word no or stop – as they are negative.

First – words aren’t negative. They are just arbitrary sounds. How you respond can be positive, negative or neutral.

Second, if you positively reinforce a word – it becomes positive, not negative.

Third, Stop and No – should be used as deltas and positively reinforced when the child or person responds positively to it – that’s how you create a positive association with the word instead of a negative one.

Fourth – you may not be able to totally do this – as others probably do use these words as negatives and negatively reinforce them.

Regardless – you do need delta’s and bridges. You just aren’t supposed to respond to a positive response to a delta using a negative response. You want to positively respond to the correct behavior once a delta is issued. All a delta is – is – that wasn’t correct – stop and reset.

Basically focusing on the words and not whether you are positively or negatively  responding to them – IS the problem.

Finally – this isn’t “new” – behavioralists have been studying this forever. Every time I come across a positive parenting or positive psychology person – it’s like – they just discovered behavioral psychology – read up on it and don’t fully understand it – but they start teaching it anyway.

I was apprenticed in this and it’s frustrating to listen to teachers who have been through a positive psychology training – a person with a background in clinical psychology a) not have been exposed to behavioral psychology at all and b) not be taught behavioral psychology properly!  It underpins everything. Seriously. It does.