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 Parentown
LEARNWITHSHAMU.COM Helps Parents With Child-rearing Challenges
There's a new resource for parents who are looking for training techniques to help with child-rearing challenges. SeaWorld is reaching out to parents with LearnWithShamu.com, a new Web site that teaches techniques for parents. In fact, these are the same techniques used to train the killer whales, like Shamu, at SeaWorld!
SeaWorld marine mammal trainers who are also parents have long employed the strategies they use with whales, dolphins and sea lions to the challenges of raising their own
children. Like all parents, marine mammal trainers pick up parenting ideas from all around, including friends at work. SeaWorld trainer Laura Suroviks co-workers just happen to be killer whales!
While they don't recommend that you reward your toddler with a bucketful of herring for cleaning his room, the Web site will give you tips about rewarding desired behavior, which is how SeaWorld trains its marine mammals.
"The first thing trainers must do is establish a relationship with an animal in which they understand what things are rewarding for it," Surovik said. "A handful of herring might be highly reinforcing to one whale, but a second might prefer a big chunk of gelatin to play with or a rubdown or a toy. That's something I found very early on with my own kids: Each has different things that they find rewarding and reinforcing."
At SeaWorld, they embrace a simple philosophy to help build positive relationships and behavior. Known as the ABC philosophy, it focuses on three main steps. A is for Activator: This is basically the request from the parent. B is for Behavior. This is what your child does after the request. This may or may not be the desired behavior. C is the Consequence. This is how the parent reacts to the behavior, and it's the most important part.
Rewarding positive actions and behaviors is central to SeaWorld's marine mammal-training philosophy. But the principles of positive reinforcement, if not the fishy rewards themselves, can be effective in other types of relationships, too. The techniques have been understood, if not universally applied, by parents throughout human history.
Child development experts, however, caution against focusing entirely on the consequences of behavior and stress the importance of two-way communications in helping parents deal with behavior challenges in their kids.
Naturally, there's a huge difference between training a whale and raising a child, said Dr. Shalom Fisch, president of MediaKidz Research & Consulting. But even in the most unlikely places, it's always fun to find unexpected reminders of the sorts of things we all know but sometimes don't stop to think about. Praising successes, not expecting perfection the first time around all of these are just as important with kids as with killer whales.
Reaching out to parents of young children is just one part of an early childhood initiative recently launched by SeaWorld. The centerpiece of the campaign, the Web site www.LearnWithShamu.com, features parent-focused Webisodes about common challenges like sharing and trying new foods. The five-minute segments feature
SeaWorld trainers, whales and animation. The Webisodes provide insights on behavior and training gathered over years spent perfecting training techniques for marine mammals and other animals in SeaWorld parks. The Web site also features progress charts to reinforce the lessons, as well as other parenting tools.
While the parenting Webisodes featured on the site will help kick off this initiative, additional resources, such as young child-friendly interactive games, hands-on activities and expertly developed classroom curriculum, are soon to follow.
The initiative is intended to increase awareness of wildlife and environmental concepts and connections, to encourage a simple conservation ethic among small children and to equip parents with the tools to shape their child's behavior through positive reinforcement.
Sheila Voss, Director of Education for SeaWorlds parent company, Busch Entertainment Corporation, explained the expanded educational initiative. "SeaWorld has always been a destination and resource for kids of all ages," Voss said. "But 'Learn with Shamu' has been created with focus on the youngest of our guests those inquisitive and wondrous people ages 1 to 5. By sharing stories of positive relationships between animals and people, 'Learn with Shamu' aims to transform a child's natural fascination with animals into a desire to connect with, and care for, all creatures, human and otherwise, in their lives."
For more information, visit www.LearnWithShamu.com.
Top: A trainer demonstrates how the simple ABC philosophy can result in the desired action, like cleaning up toys. Bottom: At a recent media tour, Shamu trainer Laura Surovik explained the new Web site and how techniques used to train killer whales can also be
applied to children.
Photos: Kirk Kirkpatrick
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