Behaviorism for Parents 2

Behaviorism for Parents – New Behaviors (Lesson 2)

If you haven’t read Behaviorism for Parents – The Basics, start there! 

You want behaviors done differently, or you want more complex behaviors.

(1) First, assume your kids want to behave and troubleshoot with them before assuming they are oppositional.

If your kids aren’t doing what you want them to do, make sure they CAN do it and KNOW that they are supposed to. So many instances of what parents think is “defiance” is actually a child not being capable for one reason or another, because we didn’t train them how (we just assumed they should know), or not knowing or remembering what they’re supposed to do when. Sometimes, they really didn’t hear you because they were focused on Minecraft they same way you don’t always hear your partner when you’re focused on a work email.

Kids are not shorter adults! They don’t have the same capacity for memory, sustained attention, fine motor skills, frustration tolerance, etc. as we do! Asking your kid to do the dishes is not equivalent to you doing the dishes. Kendra doesn’t wipe down the counters because she hates the feeling of crumbs in her hand and doesn’t have great coordination when she has to reach up so high. Marcus finds your “highly efficient” system for managing his multiple homework subjects too difficult to grasp and he’s already overwhelmed from struggling in Algebra 2.

Teach Kendra to hold a plate under the lip of the counter to catch the crumbs instead. Just give Marcus one big folder for homework and let him search through it at the beginning of class.

Be willing to train your kids (remember, that’s one of the main jobs of parents!) – that involves choosing behaviors they are capable of and then modeling, giving explicit instruction, doing it with them, helping while they practice, and then supervising their practice with feedback before they can do a behavior on their own!

Be willing to negotiate, or choose your battles. Is this behavior totally necessary for the family to function or for your kid to be a functioning adult? If they don’t make their bed, is it going to damage anything or just bother you? (Just bothering you isn’t a good enough reason to cause discord and stress in the family system!) If they eventually have a bed partner who wants it made, they can learn it then, can’t they?

(2) Second, you can build new or more complex behaviors through shaping.   

Shaping means starting with where your kid is (or where you are) and the making doable baby-steps toward the thing you ultimately want (successive approximations toward the goal). Sometimes this is pretty easy. If you want Jillian to make her bed, first show her how and then go through the training process (but don’t expect military corners if she’s only 6, please!), including showing, teaching, helping, and supervising. The first time she does it on her own, and it’s hot mess, just comforter pulled up and pillows askew, reward it anyway, however it is. That’s your starting point. The next day, or next week, up the ante a little. Remind her to pull up the inside sheet first – show, teach, help, supervise. Then, only reward a bed making that includes the inside sheet being pulled up. Don’t reward a bed-making if the underneath sheet is down. Just give a gentle reminder. Do the training again if need be. After another week or so, up the ante again. Remind her that all of her pillows and stuffed animals should be on the bed, at the top, facing front. Show, teach, help, supervise. Then, when she does it on her own, only reward a bed that is made with the comforter pulled up, the inner sheet pulled up, and the pillow and animals correct. Voila!  

You’ll also want to use this as your kids age, as an easy way to update their behaviors. For example, when kids are very little, they’ll need the whole training sequence to learn how to put their toys in their toybox. As they get a little older, they won’t need much training to put away toys and books, but they won’t be able to do things like “clean their room.” If you keep on top of how their capacities are increasing, you can increase the scope and complexity of their rule-following behaviors with relative ease.

Sometimes this is very hard, especially if you and your kid have gotten into a deep behavioral hole. If the behavior you have during a conflict is screaming+cursing+storming off, and the behavior you want is listening-quietly-with-a-calm-attitude-and-joining-you-pleasantly-for-dinner… there’s more work to do there than your kid will be able to do in one try, no matter how big the punishment or reward. So, even though you won’t want to do it, you will still need to reward the baby steps. That means that if your kid screams and curses, but doesn’t storm off – that behavior gets rewarded. That’s right. You heard me. After they are reliably not storming off, then you work on the cursing, then on the volume. I know it seems counterintuitive, but let me guess… you’ve already been trying it “your way” and it hasn’t gotten better, right? So, be willing to give it a try!

Note: There’s a Behaviorism for Parents Vol 3 here.