Rewards
We have talked about the 5 parenting steps. Now lets dig a bit deeper and talk about rewards and consequences. We know that if we want a behavior to stop then we do not feed into that behavior. But how do we get our children to act in a way that is acceptable to us?
Rewards: We all love them!
Whether it be that chocolate cake, ice cream, paycheck, smile, touch, hug, or any of the millions of rewards that are within our reach. When we reward a behavior then the likely hood of that behavior continuing is exceedingly high. It is an amazingly simple concept that is so extremely hard to apply in situations without some guidance. I will give two examples of what this looks like.
Example 1:
I wanted my children to say please if they wanted their milk out of the refrigerator. This was important to me for several reasons but the biggest one was that I wanted my son to speak. (Diagnosed with severe autism and was told he would probably never speak). At the time, my mom was still alive, and we were at her house. My son wanted milk, so he signed the word for milk, and he was by the refrigerator. I got up and went into the kitchen and said to him “do you want milk” and he shook his head while using sign for milk. I say, “you need to say/sign milk please”. Like every toddler he liked to push boundaries. I would not give him the milk until he said/signed what I wanted him to sign. As you can imagine he started to wail, cry and eventually throw himself on the ground in a full temper tantrum.
Guess who was more upset than my son? My mom!
She said to me “oh Denise just give him the milk he’s thirsty” I held my ground and told my mom that him talking was more important to me then dealing with his temper tantrum. When he was in a temper tantrum, I did not feed into the behavior but also made sure he was safe. Once he calmed down, he got up and signed/spoke more milk please” and I gave him his milk. I would love to tell you that it only needed to happen a couple of times before he got it . But he learned to sign/say more milk please which then carried over to water please, food please, etc. So, his reward when the behavior I wanted was present was the milk in this example. When Darrin was younger his reward at school was Cheetos. I swear that boy would do a back flip for a ½ of a Cheeto! Both at home and at school we were doing the same behavior training.
Example 2:
A young lady around 12 years old wants her mother’s attention. This is her reward. Her behavior is extreme in trying and succeeding in getting her mom’s attention with negative behavior. This caused havoc in the home and there are other children as well who want and need their mom’s attention and are younger. The mom wanted to pull her hair out and had a serious internal battle going on. On one hand, she knew that she should not be giving into her daughters demands while at the same time knowing that kids need love and attention. I am talking serious internal fight going on within the mom. Mom came to me ready to work so we dug right in and started to ignore the attention seeking behaviors and when we had success with that (about 5 days) we started to reward the kid’s non attention seeking behavior with spending one on one time with mom. Yep, we literally changed the behavior to that of a reward or positive reinforcement and everyone in this house benefitted. The daughter still will have times where her old behavior will return but that’s when mom employs her bag of tools. Consistency 😉
Stay well, friends. You are important!
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