‘Shaping’ My Own Children

The basket is filling up with slips of paper with names of commenters – FOUR of whom will be rewarded with a healthy-habit-promoting dvd video in my latest giveaway. Am I shaping readers’ behavior towards commenting more often?

Subtitle: Behavior Modification and Me.

When ManChild was 2-years-old his father and I began to experience some challenges to parenting.

Ahem.

One cannot sport a doctorate in child development and have a badly behaved child. Fortunately, my years of experience as a therapist supported me in my parenting decisions. A combination of child development knowledge (what to expect) and practical applications (a range of options) produced a simple card/symbol system that we used for about a year (until his language caught-up with his understanding or he no longer needed the symbolic representations).

I wish I still had those cards so I could show them in a photograph. Who knew that I would want to show my parenting trick of 17 years ago?

Studly Hubby did the drawing on the 1x2-inch cards. Each card represented something 2-year-old-ManChild wanted, liked, or expected – tv, dessert (a piece of cake), books, and I cannot remember the last one. 2-year-old-ManChild was given all 4 cards at the beginning of every day. Whenever we determined he was misbehaving, he had to give-up a card, his choice which one, and thereby lost the privilege for the day.

Honestly, this system worked pretty good for us, but we did not repeat it with Younger Teen – born 3 years later. The system met a need at a specific time with a particular child (and particular parents).

Here I can point-out the potential for ABA being useful – if it teaches adults and parents to configure systems of rewards that are individual to the child.

In terms of punishment, we withdrew privileges. We used time-out inasmuch as it was effective – variable over the life of the child and in certain circumstances.

2-year-old-ManChild went through a phase where he was most unpleasant during the evening meal. SH and I strongly desired to develop the ‘family meal’ as part of our lifestyle. We HAD to figure this out. In what felt like a spontaneous impulse, I videotaped 2-year-old-ManChild during a tantrum at the dinner table one evening. After showing him the videotape the next day, the behavior was effectively squelched.

I had a brief email-exchange with Kim in early November where I shared this videotape story. Kim shared with me information on the program depicted in this video:

 

I only briefly perused the TeachTown site and I get the sense of video social stories. Let me know what you think. Or, consider this another option for you to explore – which you might think is a gift, or cause you to throw your shoe at the screen. [Betcha don’t throw both. I’m getting pretty good at the embed-video-thing – yeah, huh? Yeah!]

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: As our family developed, new challenges to our parenting continued to arise.

Ahem.

A couple of times during our children’s childhoods we devised refrigerator charts for tracking chores with consequences of either earning or restricting privileges. The charts did not seem to last too long but effectively served to teach a concept (of responsibility) and form habit through a few visible repetitions.

Gold star charts and comments from Fran and Jeanette on previous posts remind me of the times where gold stars helped me get through PT school. Let’s not go down a tangent on anything related to this….just accept that in the first semester of PT school I with 3 other students were tasked to dissect a human cadaver whilst learning anatomy. Our anatomy professor was not a PT, but an anatomist. He was quite the, erm, unique character. I’ll stop there, too.

On an afternoon when I was particularly dreading dissection lab, a day when my mood was resentful and resistant, when I felt rebellious that we had to so much labor in dissection – Dr. Spelunker announced that the first group to find the pudendal nerve and show its relationships to the artery and vein would get a gold star. The potential reward – symbolic - made an immediate change in my attitude. I proceeded to find the nerve and earn the star! In fact, of the 4 stars he offered over the semester, our team won 3! (The only reason we did not win the 4th was because our particular specimen did not have a star-level buccal fat pad.)

All of which leads me to repeat that behavior can be modified with the correct reward.

If ABA trains adults to recognize meaningful rewards for individual children, that is a worthwhile in my opinion. If ABA trains adults to recognize when to change rewards and move the behaviors forward, that is worthwhile in my opinion. I submit that the best therapists do this, too. That does not make ABA or behavior modification therapy.

Earning rewards is a cognitive process or learning - learning behavior. With maturation the learned behaviors can become internalized or controlled at will. Which is why some rewards do not continue to be rewards.

Back to food – recall that dessert was one of the privileges worked-for by 2-year-old-ManChild. SH and I used dessert as a reward for several years. And it served to get our children try and consume a variety of foods throughout their childhoods. We probably didn’t recognize dessert-as-reward had run its course as early as it did. Eventually we stopped offering all desserts on weekdays. The cue to us parents was the bartering that dominated dinner conversation. “How much do I have to eat to get dessert?”

That is to say, food preferences can be used to leverage some behaviors.

Again, use of food as reward might work for some children at certain ages in certain circumstances.

Having bared both my personal and parenting behavior-modification stories – my next post will include a collection of opinion from other parents on their experiences with the behavior modification technique ABA. Give me a couple of days…I’m going to reward myself with some dark chocolate now.

Comments

[Fran]

I don't know too many people with cadaver stories! That's one I'll have to share the next time I pass out stickers. :)

I left you a little something on my "alternative" blog. Kinda like a gold star, but different:

http://ourownoasis.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-am-honored.html

[Stacey]

If the ABA is only being used at home, and not at school, does that lessen it's impact?

When there is a gradual change in bad behavior, where do you start again?
do you concentrate on one or two things a week-- or do you try to make it a new world?
How do you determine if the child is using the situation to be the center of attention, and then still understanding that some skills are not yet able to be mastered?

[This Little Piggy]

The reward system works very well in our home. For all of us. Chuckle.

[HennHouse (Karin)]

I love your new layout.

Thanks for this post. Reward systems don't work for our boys. We're presently using a hybrid of Love and Logic and the Nurtured Heart Approach. My favorite thing is how I'm noticing a lot more. That they are sitting still. That they are struggling. That I can or can't help.

[The Barbara who lives here.]

Addressing your first question, Stacey: "If the ABA is only being used at home, and not at school, does that lessen it's impact?"

If ABA-techniques are used at home, and effective at home, then the impact is what it is. Effective=? Does the ABA-technique change the behavior of the child to the point of new behaviors learned, or does the child only behaved as desired when the rewards are given?

If school personnel do not use ABA-technique - consistent with what is used at home - it may take longer for the home-ABA-technique to have the desired effect. (Dosage and constistency issue - in my words.)

It is put-near impossible to control school personnel to the extent that they will do exactly as a parent asks. It is unthinkable for school personnel to dictate the home lifestyle and parenting of a student. But people in both crowds continue to influence each other.

Your second two questions are best answered by someone you trust who knows both you and your children. If you are using ABA-techniques at home, I recommend you direct your questions to whoever is training you in the techniques.

I'm still mulling your last question for - a future post?

[The Barbara who lives here.]

I still have a mental chuckle, on myself, everytime of think of that earned-star in anatomy lab...TLP.

Thanks, Karin. Simple and functional - quick to load, too - dominate my blog design decisions. It's neat that you are learning to be a better observer of your children. Not an easy task.

[Stephanie]

The newest carrot on my behavior mod stick is Webkinz! Home school studies have been completed in record time in exchange for an extra 15 minutes of virtual pet playtime.

This works well for 3 of my children, but I'm wondering...have you ever come across a child for whom no reward or consequence was meaningful?

[The Barbara who lives here.]

The short answer, Stephanie, is yes. But the children who come to mind are those who probably benefitted from other techniques more than from behavior modification techniques. It is incumbant on adults to find and configure a reward system for a child.

[Stephanie]

The child I'm thinking of is now a nearly grown 17 year old! We went through heck with him, from trying different reward systems at home and school to trying different schools! Even though it is late, I'd like to learn about what those different techniques might be. It can't hurt to put some extra tools in my box, can it?

[The Barbara who lives here.]

I answered Stephanie's last comment off-blog - and will expand on portions of my answer in future posts. Speaking of which, I hope my next post answers some of your questions, Stacey, instead of bringing more questions to mind. Sigh. I try.