Raising children like in dog training?
That's what “Train your Baby like a Dog” is about.
RTL has broadcast the pilot of the new format.
The outrage is great.
RTL has broadcast the pilot episode of the new format “Train your Baby like a Dog”.
In the show, dog trainer Aurea Verebes helps desperate parents with educational issues - with techniques from dog training.
Educators and dog trainers protest against "Train your Baby like a Dog".
How many animals are there in us humans?
“Our mammalian brain always functions in the same way,” says Aurea Verebes.
The 38-year-old, who lives near Stuttgart, is a dog trainer, mother of three - and the face of the new documentary format
“Train your Baby like a Dog”
, the pilot episode of which RTL aired on Sunday evening.
"Train your baby like a dog" works with "positive reinforcement"
The idea of the show is as simple as it is bizarre: Verebes trains children as she does with four-legged friends - through “positive reinforcement”.
In dog training, a clicker is used to get the animal to show the desired behavior.
The click sound is the promise of a reward, for example a treat.
In this way, the four-legged friend learns to do what masters expect.
The aim is to reinforce the desired behavior instead of punishing undesirable behavior.
Aurea Verebes also uses this method with children; for example, she has helped her son learn vocabulary through clicker training.
For RTL, the dog trainer visits Pia and her family in Chemnitz, among others.
The two-year-old has a great dislike of brushing her teeth, but especially of sleeping in her own bed.
Her parents Kristin and Sascha are desperate because they haven't had an evening for two in a long time.
Aurea Verebes is planning a “ceiling training” for two-year-old Pia
On Verebes' "training plan" for Pia it says "ceiling training".
She also got this from her work with four-legged friends - like animals, the girl should "positively" link the blanket.
For this, every contact with the piece of fabric is clicked and rewarded.
With dogs, for example, with treats;
Pia, on the other hand, prefers pieces of apple.
"It's like this with children: if I have a good list of rewards, things are at least as fast as with dogs," explains the animal trainer.
With the help of the blanket, Pia should later fall asleep relaxed in her bed.
In the second case presented by RTL, the dog woman also works with “positive reinforcement”.
Ayla from Berlin is four and “pushes the whole family to their limits”, as they say: “She doesn't hear, bucks around.” A behavior that Verebes knows - “you have almost the same body language as a dog”.
She therefore exercises a “reorientation signal” with the mother to enable a “short, real encounter” with the daughter, “followed by a reward”.
In dog training, this word or sound signal is used so that the animal can orient itself away from environmental stimuli and towards the owner.
A child and adolescent psychotherapist accompanies "Train your Baby like a Dog"
In order to attract Ayla's attention, her mother says "Teddy bear", clicks and rewards the child when they look into her eyes.
The dog trainer hopes to interrupt the "escalation ladder" that exists in both four-legged and two-legged friends.
This is "nothing more than a board game," explains child and youth psychotherapist Niko Hüllemann, who accompanies the program.
"My children aren't dogs," says Ayla's mother Stefanie at one point in the almost 60-minute format.
And in fact, there were massive protests - from both educators and dog trainers - even before the broadcast.
By Monday afternoon, more than 27,000 people had signed a petition against “Train your Baby like a Dog” on the Internet.
The educationalist Katharina Saalfrank, who worked for RTL as “Supernanny” from 2004 to 2011, is shocked by the production.
On Facebook she wrote the day before the broadcast: "It seems as if we have fallen back decades and thus at least to the year 2004 - because what is to be shown here is black pedagogy."
RTL: It's about the "best interests of the child"
Online RTL makes it clear that Verebes wants to use “their animal-assisted method” to help “find a way out of the negative spiral towards positive reinforcement, the conscious perception of the deep needs of the child and the marking of positive behavior”.
After all, it is "about the best interests of the child".
It remains to be seen why it is not a child psychologist trained for such cases that helps the families, but a dog trainer.
Many educators and dog trainers are appalled by the RTL format
Kiran Deuretzbacher is also shocked by the format of the Cologne private broadcaster.
“We don't want our children to be dependent - not even on our praise,” the parent, family and couple counselor explains in an interview with our newspaper.
“We want them to be able to lead a satisfied, independent life.” It is pointless to stimulate existential aspects such as sleeping or eating through praise.
“Parents should always strengthen their children's self-regulation,” recommends the 36-year-old.
“A child learns from within.
We need neither praise nor punishment - we need authentic relationships. ”In addition, there is no question that children want to cooperate - as best they can at the moment:“ We don't need to 'function'.
That breaks people. "
Veterinarian Janey May: "Mixing exceeds the respective skills"
When working with four-legged friends, it is different, reports the veterinarian and dog trainer Janey May on request.
“Of course, 'positive reinforcement' is also manipulation.
With dogs we accept that in certain points of coexistence because they are a different species that has to find their way in the human world. ”May recommends something that is actually obvious: If you have problems in the dog-human relationship, you should get help from a dog behavioral consultant search - and if things go wrong in the family with a suitable psychologist.
"A mix exceeds the respective competencies."
For family counselor Deuretzbacher, in the end the hope remains that parents will not look at anything from the RTL documentary, even if they sometimes feel helpless.
After all, helplessness is part of being a parent.
