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Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing family-5033990_640 - Coggle…

- - - - State exactly what was being praised.
        e.g., "Great! You've picked up the toys just like I asked."
        
        Something nonverbal.
        e.g., It could be a touch on the shoulder, high fives, rubbing the child's hair, a hug, kiss, whatever you do that's comfortable.
- - - - Select a small portion of the goal behaviour.
        e.g. just putting a spoon with vegetables to his lips and actually not eating them.
        
        What will be consequence? Praise is suggested. But some parents want to use points or a privilege.
        
        Praise the small step whenever you see it
        
        After some consistency, add a little bit more towards the goal.
    - - Parents set the bar too high in the begining.
        Knowing does not build habits. But, doing does.
        
        Parents do not assist in the first few steps. Parents have a slippery slope thinking if I have to help now, I'll always have to help.
        You help a little bit, you don't have to help anymore.
- - - - Emotional reactions of the child who is punished.
        This may include crying, arguing, or even striking a parent.
        
        Escape and avoidance.
        They do this physically and psychologically.
        When a parent delivers more punishment than praise, children often try to distance themselves from the person who punished them.
        
        Increase in aggressive behaviour.
        When a person punishes, the child is more likely to retaliate by hitting the punisher. This is especially likely when the punishment involves physical contact in some way.
        
        Modeling effect.
        The parent's punishment technique models behavior that the child tends to use with his peers. This includes hitting and shouting.
    - - Presenting something undesirable or negative after an undesirable behaviour.
        e.g. reprimands, shouting, or hitting a child.
        
        Taking away something positive after a behavior.
        e.g. Taking away an activity, a privilege, or some planned positive event. Time out, or isolating an individual from current activity.
        
        Requiring some effort or some task that has to be performed.
        This usually consists of using a chore or cleaning up something as a penalty.
    - - Decide the behaviour you want to decrease
        e.g. you want to stop your child from swearing.
        
        Identify the positive opposite
        Decide the behaviour you would like to replace that other behaviour. e.g. speaking nicely and without swear words.
        
        Reinforce the positive opposite behaviour
        Decide how you will reward that replacement, or positive opposite behaviour. You could use praise, attention, or points. Something is needed that regularly follows the behaviour you want to develop.
        
        Select a mild brief punishment
        Decide on the punishment that will be used. This could be time out from reinforcement, loss of a privilege, loss of points or even a mild reprimand. The keys here are keeping the punishment mild and brief.
        
        Ensure instances of the praise greatly outnumber the instances of the punishment.
    - - Punishment stops the behaviour in the moment due to the interruption and sometimes the startle value of the punishment.
        
        effects of punishment are not enduring beyond that moment.
        If you punish a person for being nasty or dishonest that does not teach you how to be kind or honest.
        
        Parents occasionally escalate or increase the punishment intensity.
        That does not make the punishment any more effective.
    - - Decide exactly what behavior will serve as the basis for asking the child to go to time out.
        It is important that the child know in advance what the behaviors are that will lead to time out. This can be one or more different behaviors. Just be explicit about what the behaviors are.
        
        Decide what will be used as time out.
        e.g. This could be a place like the child's room, sitting in a corner, sitting on a chair or a couch. Anything that is not interesting and part of activities as I mentioned.
        
        Decide duration of time out and be brief.
        1 to 10 minutes will get all the benefits. Even here 10 minutes is really not any better than five minutes when it comes to actually changing child behavior. This is hard to believe but the research shows that more or longer time out is not more effective. If you think 20 minutes is great and 45 minutes would even be better. This is not true. In fact two to five minutes maximum of 10 would all be equally effective.
        
        Have a back up punishing event.
        Something that your child would lose if he or she does not go to time out when you ask. Suggested is loss of TV or video games for one evening but nothing more than 24 hours. Your child does not go immediately to time out and you say, "You have a choice. You can go to time now for five minutes or you will not be able to watch TV tonight. Do not argue. Do not say any more and then within the next 30 seconds or so. If a child goes to time out now, at this time it's too late. It is critical not to argue and just walk away.
        
        Explain all of this to your child when everyone is calm.
        Maybe on a Saturday morning, you explain the behavior. Where the time out place is, and what the backup privilege is. It is even a good idea to practice going to time out when the child is not being punished. If you do this practice, praise the child for going to time out and sitting down and doing what you wanted even though it's just practice. That will increase compliance when time out is actually used for real.
      - Time-in
        The effectiveness of time out depends heavily on what is being done to develop positive behavior when the child's not in time out. Praising the behavior you wish when the child is not in time out.
    - - Provide positive reinforcement for positive opposites.
        To be effective, this part ought to be the main emphasis to develop the behaviors we want. So if one made the child go to timeout three times a day or a week for some misbehavior, the frequency of attention and praise for the positive opposite should be much more frequent. At least, two or three times that number.
        
        Punishment ought to be mild and brief.
        A short time out or a loss of privilege will achieve any benefits of the punishment, more severe and intense does not increase the effectiveness.
  - - - Identify some behaviour you want to reduce or eliminate in your child.
        e.g. your child throwing his clothes all over the floor in his bedroom.
        
        Identify what you'd like the child to do instead of that behaviour.
        e.g. Placing the clothes in the dresser or in the closet where you'd like them.
        
        Praise the child when you catch her doing the positive behaviour.
        The slogan is catch the child being good. But remember our brains are wired to catch something wrong so catching the child being good, and then acting on that is not so easy.
    - - Evolutionary adaptation to turn to things that might be bothersome or harmful, something in the environment that might be dangerous or at least deserves our attention.
      - Negativity bias carries over to our interactions in our daily life and to child-rearing.
    - - Attending
        Well, attending is noticing when someone is doing some behaviour that you wish to increase and then providing attention by praising, smiling, asking present questions, talking nicely, hugging or giving the child a pat on the back. I have discussed the power of praise in a separate video, attending is a much broader category that includes praise but more.
        
        Identify some behaviour you want to increase in your child.
        e.g. your child throwing his clothes all over the floor in his bedroom.
        
        Decide on the type of attention you're going to use.
        This is usually praise but you can use other things as well. Anything you do that will pay attention to the child. e.g., you might even say I noticed that you practice your music, or that you put away your clothes. If this attention is provided systematically and often rather than just on a one shot basis, the effects can be great. You do not need to use the same each time, that part's very flexible.
        
        Ensure the attention is provided immediately after the behaviour.
        Immediacy is very important. The effects of attending in diluted or lost if there is a delay.
      - Planned Ignoring
        You do not give attention to a behavior. You deliberately ignore an undesirable behavior in order to decrease it. To use ignoring, you would not look at the person, not talk to them and not smile at them. Maybe even turn away and talk to someone else or just leave the room.
        
        Define the behaviour you will be ignoring
        e.g. your child whines when he wants something
        
        Decide which kind of planned ignoring to use when that behavior occurs.
        You could look away, to try to avoid facial expression to avoid facial expression to convey a reaction. You can now to talk to the child, you can ignore all requests, and of course, you can leave the room.
        
        Be consistent and use planned ignoring
        Whenever that specific behavior occurs that you wish to decrease use planned ignorance. Sometimes you might not be able to do that, things might just get out of hand or you've reached your point where you can no longer tolerate and have to say something, that is fine. But get back on track as soon as you can and resume ignoring that behavior.
        
        Attend to the positive opposite.
        Using our example, be sure to praise your child when not complaining or whining. So if your child asks for something politely in a calm voice and says, please, praise and attend to that. Without attending, planned ignoring by itself will just not work.
        
        Planned ignoring will have to be absolutely perfect for you to be effective all by itself. That means the behavior will have to occur ignoring every single time. If there's a little attention even just a tiny pinch once in a while, the behavior you want to get rid of will continue for a long time. That research findings is used by gambling casinos.
        
        We also know that planned ignoring, if used by itself, can have an odd effect at the beginning. Behavior sometimes gets much worse just for a brief period.
        
        Panned ignoring all by itself does not teach appropriate behavior. You might ask why is it even needed if it doesn't teach what we should be doing? Well, it does work it just has to be combine with attention for the behavior you want to develop that is the key to developing behavior with both of those.
    - - Specify exactly the behaviours that earn points.
        Be very concrete. e.g., it should be something like completing 15 minutes of homework or putting your toys back into your room or getting into bed by 8 p.m.
        
        Choose a medium that will serve as points
        These can be checkmarks or smiley faces, tickets, stars, even pennies.
        
        Have a way of monitoring and keeping track of the point earnings.
        Use a chart or something so you and your child can see how many points were earned. Place the chart on a refrigerator or some place easily seen.
        
        Specify how many points the behavior or each behaviour earns.
        e.g. if you put your toys away, you earn one star; if you go to bed before 8 p.m., you can get another star.
        
        Develop a reward menu that specifies what the points can buy and what the prices are.
        e.g. And these might be two stars to get the story before bed or extra bedtime, four stars to get a computer game with mom or dad, and maybe 10 stars to get a weekend activity. Add some more so there's a choice. Have some things that are inexpensive, just a couple of stars, and other things that require saving up a little bit. But it's important to have small rewards that can be bought right away without saving up. At the end of each day or whenever convenient, choose a time when she can buy something. Whenever she earns a star, be sure to praise her. The praise is really critical. You need to tell her exactly what she did to get a star and praise that. If she gets ready for school on time when you ask in the morning, she gets a star. If she does not do the behavior, she just does not get a star – no nagging. You go off to when you say, "You did not get a star today, but maybe you can earn one for that behavior tomorrow." . Shy away from food and snacks as they add calories.