Some children have not been
taught to respond to praise from adults.
Some children have not been
taught to like school work, homework, or any kind of work.
Some children don't care.
They are turned off by people and their world.
How does this happen?
What can we do to make
them care?
Most children who do not care are children who do not
receive many rewards or reinforcers. A day is mostly
one punishing experience after another. Large changes
are easily produced in such children simply by switching
from the use of criticism and punishment to the use of
praise and other reinforcers.
Turned off children are unmotivated children. They can
become motivated by rewarding them for the things we want
them to learn to do.
There has to be an effective payoff for behavior if the
behavior is to persist.
We need to reduce or eliminate the use of punishment,
except under special conditions which we will cover later.
We need to increase our use of effective reinforcers.
When praise, attention, and affection do not work as
reinforcers, then we have to go back to more basic
unlearned reinforcers such as food or fun activities.
When To Reinforce
There are three rules about when to reinforce which are
important for parents:
1. In teaching new tasks, reinforce immediately
rather than permitting a delay between the
response and reinforcement.
2. In the early stages of learning a task,
reinforce every correct response. As the
behavior becomes stronger, require more and
more correct responses before reinforcing
(gradually shift to unpredictable intermittent
reinforcement).
3. Reinforce improvement or steps in the right
direction. Do not insist on perfect performance
on the first try.
Do not reinforce the wrong behaviors:
1. If a behavior is reinforced only now and then,
it follows from what we know about intermittent
reinforcement that such behaviors are likely to
be persistent.
2. If tantrums by Johnny are usually punished but
sometimes he gets his parents to "give in", we
might guess that the tantrums would become quite
persistent.
3. We can accidentally train our children into bad
habits by occasionally giving in, even though we
"know better". To change an undesirable behavior,
the parents must be VERY CONSISTENT in not
rewarding that behavior.
The Criticism Trap
The CRITICISM TRAP consists of thinking criticism works
because the criticized behavior stops for a bit, when, in
fact, the criticized behavior is being reinforced.
This is most likely to happen when most of the attention
received from adults is in the form of criticism and
punishment.
You can escape the criticism trap by:
1. Providing for cues or reminders to praise more.
2. Getting practice in how to praise.
3. Making it possible to be reinforced for praising
more. (Usually, the improvement in your child is
the best reinforcer, but that may take a little
time.)
While we have emphasized praise behavior as a way out of the
criticism trap, actually we are talking about increasing the
use of reinforcers generally and reducing the use of
criticism and punishment.
1997
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"The greatest power is often simple patience."
- E. Joseph Cossman
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