Rewards and Consequences: Part 2

Consequences ahead road sign
Consequences

There are times where the kiddos are not acting out with a full-on temper tantrum, but they are doing behaviors that we do not like. This is when consequences are awesome tools to use. Think of consequences as removal of stimulation. When we punish the behavior with a consequence then that behavior will decrease. This again is an amazingly simple concept that we complicate.  We can have consequences like time outs, taking away of tv time, going to bed early, taking away phone, taking away screen time etc. Even when the kiddo says “I don’t care that you took away my television time tonight I am going to read instead so there” yeah-do not fall for this. They care! They just don’t want to show you it bothers them so they will instead lash out and tell you how wrong you are for taking something away by showing you or telling you it will not work.

They are crafty little buggers.

If you threaten to take something away, you better hold yourself accountable and take whatever it was away. This helps provide security and trust between you and your child. They will understand that when you, the parent, say something, you mean it. If you hear yourself repeatedly saying the same things to your child/children, then it is you that needs to change something, not the kids.

Example 1:

One of my daughter’s chores in our house is to empty the dishwasher when I ask. When the dishwasher is ready, I will call her downstairs and say, “could you please empty the dishwasher by 6 pm”. She of course would say what I wanted to hear “yes mom” but then she would not follow through with what I asked her. The me that was raised by my parents would have said yelling, “get down here now and do the dishwasher” and then as she was walking towards the dishwasher, I would say things like, “how many times do I have to ask you, it’s not that hard if you just did it the first time I wouldn’t have to yell,” etc. you get the picture. But the Denise version 2.0 just says “if you don’t empty the dishwasher by 6 then the cell phone is mine. It’s literally that easy. There is no yelling in my house. It is not allowed.

Example 2:

I had a client who was married for over 25 years and she would get so angry over one of her husband’s behaviors. After several times telling me her frustration with this behavior I asked if she wanted to change it. She looked at me with a very puzzled look on her face, “He has been doing this for ever how I am going to get him to change?” That was the moment I strategically placed my consequence plan in place. Her husband’s behavior that she was frustrated with was that he would eat at the island and not push his stool back in. yep, it might sound frivolous to some, but this droves her crazy. What is the plan: I told her that every time from now until next week he does not put his stool back in that she was to say nothing and when he left the room, she would take away that stool?.  Again, she looked at me like I was nuts. She said well there are two other stools and I said, “Guess what you are going to do if he uses the 2 other stools and doesn’t push them in? Yep, you are going to take those away as well.” I believe that she put them out on their porch for safe keeping. So, after the 3rd day when he was going to sit down for lunch there were no stools. He looked at her confused and said, “where are the stools” she calmly and politely said “Since you won’t push them in like I ask I guess you don’t have them anymore” after some short discussion he said, “oh that’s all it will take to get my seat back you want me to push them in?”

Ever since that day, which has now been years, he has pushed his stool in. This person’s husband literally had no idea how much it bothered her even though she begged and pleaded, yelled, got into arguments about the stool throughout the years he never heard her until she “acted” and took something away.

Stay well, friends. You are important.

Rewards and Consequences: Part 1

temper tantrum

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!

Parenting Part 2: Denise explains how to change a child’s behavior

Family Photo with dogs
Last post we ended with not taking thing personal.
I’m going to go into that a little more.

 

Step 3 continued – Don’t take it personal

It’s tough to raise kids and no one bothered to give us a set of directions!  We get a set of directions for assembling furniture and driving a car and there sure should be one for raising children.  In light of a set of directions, these steps will help.

Your child or children are going to fight, yell, call you names (like seriously bad names) just to push boundaries.  What their behavior is really saying is “please mom/dad/parental figure give me a consequence to my behavior because I don’t know what I am doing”  An example for me is when my daughter gets frustrated with the way I do or say something because it’s not what she wants to hear.  She will get in my face and yell and/or tell me loudly how my parenting is subpar to what she would do if in my shoes!  Usually there are swear words thrown in there and ones that she knows will push my buttons.  I mean she is my kid and has been watching me for over 17 years.

So what do I do when she is acting like this…….. NOTHING  I do not say a word. By the way, that drives her crazy.  I give her no reinforcement of any kind.   I try to keep my body language the same and my facial expressions the same-although if you know me keeping my eyebrows from moving is difficult- but just the same, I try to not react.  When things calm down, I come up with her consequences.  This can involve taking away the phone or sometimes if the teenager won’t give it to you, then I resort to shutting off wi-fi and her phone.   These episodes could easily blow up and become disastrous, but NOT taking anything they say personal can help your mindset so that you too can not react.

Step 4 – Extinguish the behavior and reward when behavior is no longer present.

This is a play off of the other steps.  If we want to extinguish behavior we can not under any circumstances feed into the behavior.  Part of this is trusting yourself that at each point of your child’s life you have provided them with the necessary tools to self-sooth.  If you are like most parents (including this one) your natural instinct is to scoop them up and hold them and give into their demands but that is the opposite of what needs to happen if you want that behavior to disappear.

I have a lot of examples but the recent example that comes to mind is that of a parent of an 11 year old girl who appears to be having the worst anxiety of her life.  The mom describes the anxiety as painstaking to see and hear.  The mom’s heart just breaks each time the child gets anxious.  Sound familiar?  The child’s behavior gets amped up towards the end of the day when they are getting ready for bed.  This is when the child’s behavior goes from a 6 to a 10+.  She comes into the parents room, cries for mom or dad, sometimes goes into their room to use the bathroom when there is one in the hall where her bedroom is, etc you get the picture.  What do you think I told this mom (and lots and lots and lots of other parents)?

STOP STOP STOP.

Do not give her any attention at all when she is like this.  Stop and walk away.  Go to your bedroom or a bathroom or outside or in the car. I don’t really care but do not stay present while her child is doing this behavior.   Because it is a behavior and it is not anxiety the way we think of anxiety.  This kiddo is awesome. She comes up with every reason you can imagine why she needs her mom or dad.  Once this mom decided enough was enough, she was able to listen to my suggestion and did not say one word when the child’s behavior happened.  This mom had to actually lock her and her husband in their bedroom.  Even when the kid was knocking and begging at the door the parents didn’t say a word.  The dad had to yell in the pillow out of frustration and the mom cried but they didn’t let the child hear any of that which is really important.  It took 3 nights after they committed to stop feeding into the child’s behavior and the kiddo stopped banging on the door or crying  or coming up with every trick she could think of to get mom and dad’s attention.

Of course kids are adaptable and the child started a different behavior to get mom’s attention.

Mom caved but quickly realized what was happening and immediately stopped.   It has been over 2 weeks and that kiddos extreme anxiety is down to less than a 5.  That’s right, after 3 nights the behavior was almost completely eliminated and after 5 nights it is no longer present.  Imagine how this could benefit your particular situation.

I know I mentioned rewarding when the behavior is no longer present.  This is another blog post in it’s own so for now, you’ll have to stay tuned.

These two steps are a lot to take in.  I know. I understand. I’ve done it. Since they are so much, I’m going to leave my final step for next week.

If you’d like a 1:1 session with my for parenting, I am available.  Call Transformation Mentors at 860-787-0178 and Shawna will help you get on my schedule.

Stay well friends. You are important.

Autism is like red hair

Autism

Autism is like red hair

No joke.  Autism happens in about 1.85% of people.  Guess how many people are born with red hair? Yep, one to two percent.

I’m bringing this up because I feel like we need to work on the acceptance of people with autism and what makes them uniquely fabulous, like we do with redheads.

Help me take out the negative stigmas that come with autism. It’s not just kids, either. Kids with Autism become adults with Autism.  What I’ve learned is that what doctors usually say a kid grows out of is often them “masking” or learning to conform within society constraints without really understanding context.

My son Darrin has autism.  He also has Tourette’s syndrome.

This is something that WE are more or less used to. His expression of autism is not just he’s socially awkward or misses social queues.  Darrin is almost always in a constant brain spin on fourteen different things.  He expresses it by using his hands to represent the “voices” or scripts going on in his head. He is always talking-very seldom does he stop talking. It’s mostly to himself with the scripts of the programs he watches and he will be very LOUD not realizing how loud he is. With all of this, he is 18 and looks like a young man. He is almost 6ft tall and over 200lbs-but he thinks he is still a child around 6-8.  He will probably remain about 8 years old developmentally for the rest of his life.  He is our man child. We love him dearly.

Something else about Darrin, he has no ego, he is always in the moment, he is very keen on people’s suffering, and he is unaware of others who might be disparaging to him-THANK GOD.  I’m going to tell you a story.

Yesterday when Darrin came home from school,

we talked about going to get him cards to write back to all his friends who sent him letters through the mail. So, we hop in “CHEETAH” (our orange Jeep) and I give him the list. “We’re going to the bank, to UPS, and then to Target to get your cards.”  The ride to the bank Darrin played the script in his head about all the “Higglytown Heroes” which is a children’s show that talks about different jobs. So, when we get to the bank, Darrin asked the bank teller if she was going to mail the letters.  Of course, he towers over both the teller and I and he speaks like a child. She looked at him confused but then I said, “she’s a bank teller. She helps people put money in the bank and take money out of the bank”. He seemed to understand better and then carried on a conversation with her about how his friend at school has her same name. We finished our transaction and Darrin waved and said “Bye teller!”.  From the time we entered the bank until we left, we had so many looks. By the time he said “Bye teller!” you could see a lot of eyes lift in delight. He brings the joy. 

Next, we go to UPS. Now, this one was confusing because Darrin knows all about the post office and the process of letters getting to destinations and was trying to ask questions since we weren’t in the post office.  The UPS worker was NOT interested in interacting with Darrin at all.  So, Darrin blew him a kiss.  No ego-aware of person’s suffering-doesn’t take it personal.

Finally, we make it to Target. Darrin has to use the restroom.

We both go in and I beat him out.  At the door, I hear him speaking. I don’t worry about it. It’s the script.  Another woman approaches the men’s restroom with her kids.  She tells her young son-probably 5-“don’t let anyone touch you.” Then, a grown man nearby says, “There’s some weird guy in there talking to himself”.  I flare up. I get full mama bear and in a polite but matter of fact voice I say, “He’s not weird. He has autism.” It shut the guy down and he walked away with his head down. Then, the mom and I proceeded to talk about shoes and waiting for spring.

Four minutes later, I call into the bathroom, “Darrin, I’m still out here waiting”. His reply, “I’m still here”. Of course he is. In the moment. No ego.

So, the next time you’re in a public place and someone is talking to themselves in disjointed sentences, or flinging their hands around in a nonsensical manner, yeah – they might be drunk or high. But, they may also have autism.  If you’re not in danger, maybe mind your own business. Or, you could be surprised if you engage in a conversation with them and let them bring some joy into your world.

Finally, these are our kids.

They are just as much a part of our community as all the red heads. They have value. They are real and have real emotions just like you and I. Help me love our kids up and in turn lift our community.

Here’s some more info:

About Autism

About Tourette’s Syndrome

Stay well, friends. You are important.