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* Be very clear about what behavior is expected of your child in order to earn the reward and make sure your child's understands this. o For example, "Listening to what I say" would be too vague; "Picking up your toys and putting them away the first time I ask" is more specific.
* Make sure that the expectation you have for your child is reasonable - do not set you and your child up for failure by having expectations that are not appropriate for your child's age. o It is always a good idea to reflect on what you expect from your child and consider whether your expectations are reasonable. For example, punishing a 5 year old for being unable to sit quietly at the dinner table for an hour will generally create problems because most 5 year olds simply can not do this. For children with ADHD, behavioral expectations need to take this into account in addition to the child's age.
* Don't try to work on too many different things at one time. o It is generally better to focus on a couple of things that are really important rather than taking on everything at once. Choose your battles carefully and selectively!
* Let your child participate in choosing the types of rewards he or she can earn o Children are generally more invested in this type of program when they have some input in itís design. Try to create the feeling that this is something that you are doing with your child rather than something you are doing to your child.
* Design the program so your child has a good chance to experience some initial success. o It is important that the child experience some initial success in order to maintain and enhance their motivation. As their behavior improves, you can gradually raise the criterion required to earn rewards.
* Be sure to provide lots of social rewards (e.g. praise) in addition to the more tangible rewards that can be earned. o This is a great way to increase your childís desire to please you and to increase the amount of positive feelings between you and your child.
* Be consistent. o For this approach to succeed you have to apply it consistently. Using the program one day but not the next, or failing to provide rewards when they are earned, is a sure fire way to keep this from being helpful. "Isn't this bribing my child? Why should he be rewarded for things he should do anyway?" Parents are often concerned that providing their child with rewards for behaving appropriately is nothing more than bribery. The way I prefer to look at this, however, is that you are providing your child with the opportunity to earn extra privileges for behaving in a more mature and cooperative manner. An analogy to the adult workplace may be useful here. If your boss promises a promotion and raise for a specified level of productivity are you being bribed, or are you being given the chance to earn a deserved reward for a job well done? If your child's behavior improves shouldn't he or she have access to more privileges than when they were behaving poorly? That is really all that is being talked about here - the main difference with what most parents already try to do is that the expectations and rewards for meeting those expectations are made more explicit.
USING NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES TO REDUCE MISBEHAVIOR
In addition to using positive reinforcement to encourage good behavior, behavioral treatment also relies on negative consequences or punishment to reduce undesirable behavior. Simply stated, when a particular behavior is consistently followed by negative consequences for a child, it should diminish in frequency and intensity.
For example, suppose you are trying to reduce your child's tendency to "talk back" and this is being targeted in your behavioral treatment plan. Here is a general approach one might take.
* First, your child would need to understand exactly what you mean by "talking back" so it is clear what should not be done. * Second, you would want to teach your child an acceptable way to disagree with you - how he or she is allowed to express disagreement and how they can not. * Third, as discussed above, you would review with your child the rewards they will earn for not talking back and for expressing disagreements in an acceptable way. * Finally, you would discuss with your child what privileges they will lose each time they "talk back". For example, talking back could result in their having to take a "time out", losing TV time, having to go to bed early, ect. If you are using a token system where your child is accumulating tokens that can be used to purchase rewards, talking back can result in the loss of a pre-specified number of tokens. By setting things up this way, what you are trying to do is to make sure your child understands that there is simply no pay-off for bad behavior. Instead, when he or she acts appropriately, it will always result in good things coming their way. In contrast, when behavioral expectations are not met, the consequences are always negative. IMPORTANT - Try hard not to overdo the negative consequences.
Children tend to get discouraged if they are used too frequently and can lose interest in the program as a result. If you find yourself having to resort to negative consequences too frequently, it's important to take a careful look at what may be going wrong with an eye towards redesigning the program. HAVE A GAME PLAN! Now it would be wonderful if the first time you used a negative consequence as discussed above, it effectively ended your child's misbehavior. As we all know, however, this is often not the case. Instead, you may take away TV time because of some misbehavior, and your child either ignores you or says he "doesn't care" and continues with the problematic behavior. It is easy to become frustrated and angry in situations like this. At such times it is easy (I know from experience because this is a mistake I make myself) to blurt out a punishment that is born of frustration and will be difficult if not impossible to enforce: "Your grounded for the next 2 weeks!" "That's it! No more birthday party for you!" I know that I've had the experience of shouting out something like this, and realizing right away that it wasnít something I would stick with. In fact, it wasn't even something I should stick with because it was excessive and unreasonable. You are then left with the uncomfortable choice of enforcing something unreasonable to show your child that you mean business or backing down. Choose the former and your child is justifiably upset and you wind up feeling guilty. Choose the latter and your child gets the idea that punishments don't matter because you don't stick with them anyway. One helpful way to avoid this dilemma is to plan out, IN ADVANCE, a graded series of punishments for persistent misbehavior. For example, when your child initially fails to comply you could impose a 5 minute time-out. If the non-compliance continues you could say "If you don't do what your told now, the time out will increase to 10 minutes." Continued non-compliance results in loss of TV in addition to the time out. After that, an earlier bed time could be imposed. You have to decide what specifics make sense, of course, but the general point is to have an escalating series of consequences that you can calmly but firmly announce and calmly but firmly enforce. (It is best that these consequences do not extend into the following day so the new day can get off to a fresh start.) Having this plan in mind can help you to keep your cool and prevent you from blurting out a punishment that is not going to be helpful. If you can stick with this, your child should learn that there is something nothing to be gained by persistent disobedience.
