A family of five at a nice restaurant:  2 kids on Nintendo DS, 1 kid on an iPhone, mommy posting on Facebook how “fab the apps” are at this restaurant, “cant wait to see how the tuna is” and daddy on his phone giving a final order to his secretary (therefore cancelling her weekend plans)…

WHAT?! How did we get here?   This is NOT what our parents envisioned.  This is NOT quality time. 

But, but, you said “prevention…”

I have made several comments about how important “prevention” and planning is to maintaining appropriate behavior and making it more likely to occur, especially in tougher environments like restaurants, malls and stores.  THIS IS NOT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.  There is a difference between “prevention” and complete avoidance of interaction.  I’m not a doomsday, “what is this world coming to” kind of person, but what does this teach our kids? 

A father’s lesson (my father)

It reminds me of something my father told me years and years ago when I asked him why he is the only person in the world that does not have call waiting:

“If I put you on hold to click over to the other line, I am essentially telling you that someone on the other line, even though I have no clue who it is, is automatically more important than you.”

WOW.  Have you thought of that?  Are you automatically telling your kids that your Facebook is more important than an interaction with them about their new girlfriend or their baseball game?  That their DS is more important than a decent “how was your day” conversation with you?  That a “talking cat” or “angry bird” is more interesting than anything you might have to say?  That your secretary’s filing system errors cant wait until after the bill comes?

“Social density”

Take advantage of what I call social “density,” which is a way I measure the amount of people for a particular area of social “space.”  In this case, there are 5 people in the small area of a dinner table.  High social density ratio.  Take advantage of the opportunity.  Interact with your kids.  Get one of the many “dinner time games” marketed out there (thanks to “friends” of the BehaviorBandAid.com Facebook page).  Leave the phone in the car.  It will make a difference and the effect on behavior at the dinner table and at home will be noticeable.  “Like” your kids in the old fashioned way. 

…the phone rings, daddy gets up… “this is important, I need to take this.”  Mommy gasps, orders another martini and posts “this tuna better be world class” on her “wall.”

Kids fall and scrape their knees, chins and elbows.  They trip over their own feet, the Thomas train on the kitchen floor or the bump in the rug.  It is what it is.  

What is the first thing they usually do when this happens?  They look up to you to figure out how they should respond.  Agreed?  The ball is now in your hand.  What will you teach: drama or resiliency?  There are reams and reams of research that show how important resilience and the “resilient mindset” is to mental and behavioral health.  Everything from depression to anger problems to failed marriages can be linked, in part, to lack of resiliency.  Obviously, there many other factors that play a part with these things, but still, that’s pretty scary.  Sorry about that.

Kid’s bodies are incredibly resilient…something I learn every day.  How about their emotions, though?  You have more control than you think.  

My wife and I decided early on we wanted to pay attention to this.  When our son was learning to walk we decided we would clap and say “yay!” every time he fell.  WHAT?  “That’s just plain cruel,” you say.  “Not as cruel as the alternative,” I would say back.  What happened?  He learned that every fall is not a big deal.  He got over it at a time when he was only falling a few inches (the possibility of him actually hurting himself was very limited, and those times we attended to him).  

BUT, don’t listen to me just because I’m a dad.  Listen to the lesson about behavior: with each “fall,” with each scrape and bruise, they are looking to you to learn how to respond.  Yes, it does physically hurt them.  They will cry when they fall in your absence (meaning they are responding to the physical pain).  If you are solely responsible for making your child feel better, you are teaching your child complete dependence on other people to make them feel better.  You are also likely teaching him the louder he cries, the more soothing he will get.  I know…that’s harsh.  Sorry, again.

When this happens, go to them, make sure they are ok and assure them (quickly and calmly) that they are OK.  Redirect their attention: “hey look at that over there…isn’t that funny?”  Give them something physical to do: “hey can you hand me that baseball over there?”  Make a comment about the fall itself in a light way, “wow…you really took a spill, but you are up and at ‘em…sweet!”  Attending to the child, not the injury or the emotion.

There will be times when its not just a fall or a scrape. That is when you cruise in.  My son recently decided to play Superman off his swing when he was 5 feet in the air.  You can bet I swept him up, held him like a baby, patted his back and head, wiped his tears and uttered the famous words, “daddy’s here.”  It completely freaked me out.  I had to watch my emotions.  I did a once over, checked him out, asked him if he was OK, and then he was back on the swing.  

Although I use physical things as examples here, this also is true of other things like when they don’t get their way, or the indoor playground is closed, or (God forbid) the restaurant does not have something you promised them.  Think about how you respond when your kid falls or when something doesn’t go their way.  What are you teaching?

Here is a common strategy:  child misbehaves, parent takes away TV, child continues to misbehave, parent takes away Playstation, child continues to misbehave, parent takes away iPod…you get the process.  It happens a lot.  What also happens a lot is parents coming to me saying, “I have taken away just about everything he likes and it does not seem to be working!” 

Amazingly, these parents will continue taking things away (often things of lesser and lesser value to the child) knowing its not working, but hoping there will be one time when the kid turns to them and says, “OK.  I’m sorry.  I get it now.  I will stop screaming at my sister.”  How often does that happen?  Not often (I’m being nice).

Here are some ideas and notes about these strategies, what to do and what not to do.  Some of this I have mentioned before, but is worth repeating in this context.

• Avoid this “taking away” strategy altogether…hmmm, now that was easy.
• Control access to these preferred items (i.e., keep the Wii controllers out of their reach) and activities and offer access to the child when they have done well rather than taking them when they have not.  All you have to do is deliver…nice and easy and on a daily basis.  
• Please do not engage in a physical tug of war over something.  Please.  Don’t grab the controller, the video game, etc. in a fit of emotion or argument.  This is especially for older children who might fight back.
• Do not take away something that you ultimately do not control.  For example, don’t tell your child he cant go outside until he finishes his homework, unless you can make sure he cant go outside.  For the older and more gutsy kids, they might try to go outside, even when you told them not to.  If you can’t control it, I wouldn’t use it.  I would hate to see you take the Wii away, not get the controllers, then come into the living room to find your son and daughter in a competitive game of Guitar Hero. Smoke is coming out of your ears and he just showed you up.
• Make sure there are specific criteria for earning access to these things.  Not, “do a good job,” but “all socks in your drawer and your underwear off the fan.”  Not, “until I say you are done,” but “when you have completed each one of your math problems with 80% accuracy.”

Leave the rope where it is…you have lost every time anyway.

Recently, I started a conversation about the ins and outs of token systems/sticker charts systems.  However, there is so much to be said about “token systems,” “sticker charts,” etc., I needed a bit more space to fill in some of the gaps. Here is some more background that needs to be said.  

Token systems take advantage of several things to help improve behavior.  One of the basics is that we are associating a seemingly neutral thing (a piece of plastic we call a poker chip, a random mark on a page called a check, or an oversimplified image of a happy person’s face, etc.) to something that is valuable (candy, time on Wii, movie night, etc.).  Two very powerful versions of this concept are money (pieces of colored paper we trade for things we want and need) and poker chips.  These things are only valuable on their own because what we can get with them.  Think of it this way…lets take away the connection to value and see what happens:

• You are home recovering from your trip to Vegas and, amongst other things you don’t want to talk about, you find a few chips in your suitcase.  What do you do with these?  Kid’s room as a toy or stashed away as a “souvenir.” Right?  Why?  It’s not valuable anymore other than as a novelty because it can’t be traded in for anything.  Again, that chip goes back to its roots as a piece of standard plastic.

• You are home from your second honeymoon in Mexico and, in between swigs of Pepto, you run across several Pesos.  Same thing happens…the money goes to school with the kids as a “show and tell” or gets stowed away in a photo album next to those cool Mexican beer labels you tore off on your last night on the town.  It’s not worth anything anymore because it cannot be traded for other things easily.  When was the last time you put a $10 bill in a photo album?  

A common misunderstanding about these systems is that is it all about the token itself.  I have heard parents say, “the stickers didn’t work, but the Dora stamps did for a while” or “anything works for about a week, but then it stops working.”  Obviously, there are several reasons why it could have stopped working, but chances are the novelty of the “token” wore off because it wasn’t connected to anything valuable beyond the initial value of that cool stamp or the new CARS 2 stickers on the fridge.

The lesson: the tokens are only as powerful as what they are connected to and how available those things are.

e – mo – tion: noun

An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness (www.dictionary.com)

Does that say what I think it does? That emotional responding and thinking are mutually exclusive? “Distinguished from cognitive?”  You can’t think while being emotional?  I think it does…and I think this has so much to say about parenting.

Emotion plays a huge role in parenting.  It is the spice of life in many ways. BUT, lets face it…we are horrible decision makers when we are acting on emotion or in the “heat of the moment.”  Some of our worst decisions are made when we are emotional, in either direction.  How many times have you reacted differently to your child because of the way YOU felt, not the way HE behaved?  That’s what I’m talking about here…

Depending on the age of your child, you probably know the things she does to get herself in trouble.  The things that really make you red in the face and make you want to scream (or actually scream).  Emotion should not play a role here.  You need a plan:

• Given these are “hot button” experiences for you, go ahead and make decisions about what you are going to do when it happens.  AHEAD OF TIME.  
• For example, when he hits his sister, “I am going to take him to his room,” “when he spills his milk, I’m just going to ask him to clean it up,” “when he has a huge tantrum in the middle of the kitchen, I’m going to go to the den and read a magazine,” “when he freaks about leaving the store, I’m just going to leave and not threaten to take away toys.”
• Discuss this with anyone else who is responsible for your child and who might experience similar experiences.
• Follow your rule.  You have already made the decision based on sound and logical thinking.  

Much better.  Go be mad somewhere else.

I read a recent article on Parenting.com about parenting myths and want to clear up something about what the author calls “bribery.”  Nothing against Ms. Newman, described as “popular and edgy.”  She writes well (clearly, as she is published in a lot of cool places), but she’s a freelance writer and a film producer.  She has some good points and includes professional opinions, but I need to clarify one of her points a bit further from the professional behavior analyst side of things.

There is a difference between reinforcement strategies (we can use the word rewards here if you like that better) and “bribery.”  It really is an issue of timing and planning. Here is a quick example to differentiate the two, and to explain why bribery, as I define it here, can get you in trouble:

BRIBERY: You go into Wal-Mart at noon on Sunday with your kid in tow.  After the turn down the frozen food section aisle, you kid starts wiggling and complaining.  

 PARENT:  “STOP IT.” “SIT DOWN.” “STOP.” “SHHHH.”  

CHILD:     “BUT, I WANT THE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES”

PARENT:  “Not if you are acting like this.  NOW SIT DOWN!”

CHILD:     “AHHHH!!!!  BUT I WANT THE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES!!!”

PARENT:   “NO! SIT…SIT DOWN!   ——-     SIT DOWN!

 CHILD:      “NO! I.    WANT.    ICE.   CREAM!”

PARENT:   “O.K., If you sit down and be quiet, I will get you your ice cream sandwiches”

Did you see what just happened?  The ice cream sandwiches only became available after the bad behavior as a ploy, A BRIBE, to get that child to sit down and be quiet.  The child probably sat, but this is not good. 

REINFORCEMENT:  Same scenario…different outcome short and long term.  

Conversation begins in the car:

PARENT:  “OK, We are only going to get a few things, so we will be in and out.  If you can hold my hand, sit in your seat and use your inside voice, we can get ice cream sandwiches on the way out.”

                                       Fast forward to the store

PARENT:  “You are doing a good job sitting in your seat, we are almost to the ice cream sandwiches!”  

CHILD:     “Can I get chocolate?”

PARENT:  “As long as you keep sitting nice and quiet”

CHILD:     “HEY!  There are the ICE CREAM SANDWICHES!!!”

PARENT:  “You did a good job, Grab those chocolate ones!”

See the difference?  Now, I made the examples clearly different.  It will not be 100% compliance every time you set it up, but at least you have communicated what gets the ice cream sandwiches and what doesn’t, BEFORE THE BAD BEHAVIOR OCCURS—-THAT’S THE POINT.