The 1-2-3 Magic Workbook for Christian Parents: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12 (22 page)

as though their mothers dressed them in the morning. The solution? Let

the cold talk to the kids if they’re not dressed properly, and avoid starting

the day with the obvious, aggravating comment, “You’re not going out

like that again, are you?!”

One final, real-life example of natural consequences. One mother I

used to see years ago had a four-and-one-half-year-old boy who was driv-

ing her nuts in the morning. The boy was in preschool, but he wouldn’t

get dressed on time for his car pool ride. Every morning when the horn

honked in the driveway, this little guy was sitting in his pajamas watching

cartoons on TV. The poor Mom was tearing her hair out.

One morning this mother decided she’d had enough. The boy was in

his pajamas watching cartoons when the car in the drive honked. Mom

7 START BEHAVIOR TACTICS 121

then calmly proceeded to send her son off to school in his pajamas (this

was not my idea!). This youngster spent two and one half hours, with his

peers, with little flowered booties on and with butterflies all over his chest.

At our next session a relieved Mom reported to me that, since that day, she

had never again had a problem with her son being ready for his ride.

6. Charting

Charting is a very friendly motivational technique. With charting you use

something like a calendar to keep track of how well a child is doing with

different Start behaviors. You can put the chart on the refrigerator door,

if public acclaim is desired, or on the back of the child’s bedroom door, if

privacy is desired. The days of the week usually go across the top of the

chart, and down the left side is a list of the tasks the child is working on,

such as picking up after herself, getting to bed and clearing the table after

supper. If the child completes the task to your satisfaction, you indicate

this on the chart with stickers for the little kids (approximate ages four to

nine) and grades or points (A-F, 5-1) for the older children.

Here’s what a chart might look like. This child is working on cleaning

her room, brushing her teeth and feeding her parakeet:

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat

Room

Teeth

Bird

With charting, positive reinforcement comes, we hope, from three

things: the chart itself, parental praise and the inherent satisfaction of

doing a good job. We call these three things
natural
reinforcers. When

my daughter was nine, she decided she wanted to take piano lessons.

Although this was her choice, she didn’t practice regularly and—like

the fourth-grader we mentioned earlier—she would worry a lot the night

before her lesson that her teacher was going to be upset with her the next

day when she couldn’t perform well.

We first tried natural consequences, suggesting to our little girl that

122 1-2-3 MAGIC

she work out the problem with her teacher. This tactic failed. So we next

tried charting with only natural reinforcers. Our agreement was this: Each

day after practicing, our daughter was to find her mother or father and tell

that parent exactly how many minutes she had practiced. One of us would

then write that number for that day on the chart and praise our budding

concert pianist for her work. That was it. The plan worked like a charm.

Unfortunately for us parents, natural rein-

CAUTION

forcers are frequently insufficient to motivate a

Natural

child to complete a particular task. Your son, for

reinforcers,

example, may simply be a natural slob—a clean

such as praise, sometimes room means nothing to him. Or your little girl

aren’t enough to motivate

children to complete a

may be attention deficit and learning disabled,

task—especially if the

and homework provides no satisfaction—but

kids hate the job! In these

much frustration—for her.

cases artificial rewards

In these cases you must use what we call

can be used; you’ll try to

borrow some motivation

artificial
reinforcers. Artificial reinforcers mean

from somewhere else.

that the child is going to earn something—which

It works!

may have nothing directly to do with the task—

for successful completion of that task. Since the

activity doesn’t provide any incentive to the child—and, in fact, may pro-

vide a negative incentive—we are going to try to borrow motivation from

somewhere else. Our little girl who hates homework, for example, might

earn part of her allowance, a special meal or a special time with you.

For smaller children the best ideas are often relatively small things that

can be dished out frequently and in little pieces. With older kids, larger

rewards that take longer to earn become more feasible. Let yourself be

creative in coming up with reinforcers. Rewards certainly do not always

have to be material. Some kids, for example, will work hard to earn

minutes to stay up later at night, or to be able to do some special activity

with one of their parents.

Here is a list of possible artificial reinforcers:

A trip for ice cream

Cash

Brightly colored tokens

Staying up past bedtime

A small toy

Renting a special movie

Renting a special game

A grab-bag surprise

7 START BEHAVIOR TACTICS 123

Outing with a parent

Comic book or magazine

Shopping trip

Friend over for supper

Sleepover

Choice of three reinforcers

Playing a game with parent Reading a story with parent

A “No Chore” voucher

Sleeping with dog or cat

Camping out in backyard Special phone call

Card for a collection

Other items for collections

Snack of choice

Helping make and eat cookies

Breakfast in bed

Using power tool with supervision

Keep any chart simple. Three or four things to work on at one time

is enough; more than that gets too confusing. I saw a family once who

created a chart for their son on which they were attempting to rate thirty-

three different behaviors every day! I had to give them an “A” for effort,

but also a high rating for confusion.

Keep in mind that you probably will not want to do charting for long

periods of time. Charting can become a semi-obnoxious behavioral ac-

counting task, and the positive effects can fade when mom and dad are

getting tired of filling the chart out every day. So build in “discontinuation

criteria”—rules for determining when the chart is no longer necessary.

You might say, for example, that if the child gets good scores (define this

precisely) for two weeks running on a particular behavior, that item will

be taken off the chart. When the child has earned his way off the chart

entirely, it’s time to go out for pizza and a movie to celebrate. If after a

while the child gets worse again, you can reinstate the chart.

7. Counting for Brief Start Behavior

As mentioned earlier, one of the most frequent mistakes parents make with

the 1-2-3 is attempting to use counting to get a child to do Start behavior

like homework, chores or getting up and out in the morning. Recall that

these tasks can take twenty minutes or more, while counting itself only

produces several seconds worth of motivation.

What if the Start behavior itself, however, only required a few sec-

onds worth of cooperation? You want your daughter to hang up her coat,

feed the cat or come into the room. Counting, which is so useful for Stop

124 1-2-3 MAGIC

behavior, can be used for some Start behavior, but only on one condition:

What you want the child to do cannot take more than about two minutes.

Your child throws her coat on the floor after school, and you ask her to

pick it up. She doesn’t, and you say, “That’s 1.” If she still refuses to

comply and gets timed out, she goes and serves the time. When she comes

out, you say, “Would you please hang up your coat?” If there is still no

cooperation, another time out would follow.

What if this girl, for some unknown reason, is in a totally ornery mood

today and never seems to get the idea? With Start behavior tactics you

have more flexibility. Switch from counting to the Docking System and

the kitchen timer. Set the timer for five minutes and tell your daughter she

has that time to hang up the coat. If she does pick it up, fine. You promise

you’ll not say another word. If she doesn’t hang the thing up, however,

you have good news and bad news. You’ll hang up the coat for her, but

you will charge for your services. The charge will be twenty-five cents

for the coat and twenty-five cents for all the aggravation that was just

involved in getting her to hang it up. Keep the talking to a minimum, and

count whining, arguing, yelling and other forms of testing.

What can you use this version of the 1-2-3 for? Items like brushing

teeth, picking up something, or just “Would you please come here for a

second?” You are in the kitchen and you need some help for a minute.

You can see your ten-year-old son in the other room, lying on the coach,

eyes wide open. You say, “Would you please come here?” His response

is “I can’t. I’m busy.”

This kid’s about as busy as a rock. So let’s redo this one.

“Would you please come here?”

“I can’t. I’m busy.”

“That’s 1.”

“Oh, all right!”

And the reluctant servant enters the room to carry out your bidding.

Simple Requests Revisited

Now let’s return to our question about simple requests. What if, in spite

of the fact that your voice quality was matter-of-fact, your request was

7 START BEHAVIOR TACTICS 125

not spur-of-the-moment, and your phrasing was not wishy-washy, your

child still does not comply with what you ask him to do? After reading

this chapter, you now realize that you have several options.

For example, after your son returned home from school, you told him:

“Be sure you change your clothes before you go outside to play.” He’s

been having a snack and playing an electronic game, still in his school

clothes, when one of his friends calls him from the back door. Your son

calls back that he’ll be right out. It doesn’t sound as though a different

wardrobe is on his mind at all.

Here are some choices you have at this point:

1. Set the timer for ten minutes and tell your son, “I want your clothes

changed before the timer goes off.” Avoid what we call “shouldy” think-

ing—the kind of parental thinking that expects kids to act like adults. If

you were into shouldy thinking, you might have said, “I want your clothes

changed before the timer goes off. I already told you that. What does it

take to get you to listen to me for once? I’m the one who has to do the

laundry, you know, and buy you all sorts of new things to wear!”

You could also add a reward or a consequence to the act of changing

clothes before the timer goers off. You would not do this every time, but

sometimes a strategy like this can “jump-start” the kids into remember-

ing a new behavior. “You change before the timer goes off, you can stay

up ten minutes later tonight. If you don’t beat the timer, bedtime is ten

minutes earlier.” Simple, calm, straightforward.

2. Can you use the Docking System here? No, because you can’t put

his clothes on and charge him for the service. You could, of course, use

the Docking System if what you had asked your son to do was take out

the garbage. After his first refusal of the refuse, you might simply say,

“Do you want to take out the trash or do you want to pay me to do it?”

Good maneuver.

3. How about natural consequences for our reluctant clothes changer?

This tactic is a possibility. The boy who plays outside in his school clothes

might be required to wash his outfit as soon as he comes in.

4. Finally, you could consider using counting. Can your son change

clothes in two minutes? Maybe. So as the boy is walking out the door—

school outfit stil on—you simply say, “That’s 1.” He probably won’t know