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CONDITIONAL PERFORMANCE STROKES
While unconditional positive strokes are by far the most
valuable kind of strokes a parent can provide to his, or her, children,
most mothers and fathers give their kids unconditional positive strokes
far less frequently than they give them other kinds of positive
strokes. More often than not, typical, modern-day parents are inclined
to give their kids conditional positive strokes (where a young
person must first do something in order to receive them).
Conditional Performance Strokes
Conditional Performance Strokes are strokes that are given after a
youngster has performed a certain feat, achieved a certain goal, or
attained a certain level of competence that his mother and father view
as important. Such strokes draw their power from the fact that mothers
and fathers withhold them, in order to be able to later bestow them upon
a youngster as a reward. Their granting of such strokes is
conditioned upon a young persons’ first performing in a specifically
“approved” way – like, doing a “good job”. Since a youngster’s search
for strokes is his most important quest early in life, the process of
withholding strokes from him, and then granting them later under certain
carefully defined circumstances, can provide a powerful incentive for
him to do whatever is necessary to obtain them as a reward. It can also
be extremely effective in shaping his personality.
Such strokes can be given to a youngster by offering cash
rewards to him for making good grades in school, by openly bragging to
other grownups about his achievements, by providing him with a weekend
at Disneyland when he wins some big contest, or by simply offering quiet
smiles and nods of acceptance whenever he performs well at some
worthwhile endeavor. Whatever their form, these strokes are meant to
produce a warm, comfortable glow inside the youngster as he
reflects on his recent success or achievement. They are meant to
provide, inside him, a feeling of self-satisfaction, or of
self-confidence, and they are meant to bolster his self-esteem with the
knowledge that people who are important to him think he can perform
certain tasks well.
In modern
society, where one’s ability to enjoy life is often based on one’s
ability to perform certain tasks well, and to make enough money or
develop enough other economic resources to move smoothly and comfortably
within our broader environment, familiarity with this kind of stroking
can be instrumental in helping a youngster achieve success later in
life. By employing them carefully, and by mixing them with positive
unconditional strokes just for being, mothers and fathers can
teach their kids how to set reachable personal goals for themselves, as
well as how to work to achieve the goals they have set. They can teach
their kids that the best way to approach distant goals is to break them
down into small steps, and they can stroke their kids for the small
successes they achieve as they learn the process of slowly working
towards their more distant goals.
The danger that performance strokes represent comes when
they are used not as a supplement to unconditional positive strokes, but
rather as a youngster’s dominant, or perhaps sole, form of stroking
– when they are given by parents who withhold nearly all strokes
until their sons and daughters perform to their liking. The danger
comes, also, when these strokes are given by the stern Parent in a
mother or father to the Adapted Child in their sons and daughters (which
is what normally happens), and are combined not with unconditional
positive strokes, but with negative strokes when the young person
performs poorly by his parents’ “standards.” This combination provides
“positive reinforcement” (rewards) for “approved” behavior, “negative
reinforcement” (punishment) for “unacceptable behavior,” and can lock a
young person into an extremely dysfunctional Parent/Adapted Child loop
for the rest of his life. (This practice of alternating “positive
reinforcement” with “negative reinforcement” may help mice find their
way through a maze, and may help dictators keep their subjects fearful
and docile, but it can be devastating to the psychological health of a
normal human being – and possibly to that of a mouse, also.)
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