Living With Live Wires

Read Part 1

There are many parenting books that outline a reward system to deal with behaviors that need to be changed with your children. These types of systems are very appropriate with four-year olds (and all younger children) because, developmentally, they need structure, specific instructions, and a source of motivation towards the desired behaviors. Here is one expert’s advice about setting up such an action plan with four-year olds.

Alan E. Kazdin, Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic, in the book, The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child, recommends with four-year olds, to:

1.Chose one problem behavior to address first. Clearly identify the positive behavior you want to happen in place of the problem behavior. 

2.Get started right away and make a little progress to encourage and motivate everyone at the beginning. 

Use a point chart as a way of keeping track of and displaying the positive behaviors your child has accomplished and the rewards he can earn for them. Research shows several special advantages to a point chart (for children of all ages – and adults, too). Success will lie not in the presence of the chart itself but in how it is employed.

3.Once you’ve set up the chart, you need to select from fun, appropriate rewards and set the terms for “buying” them with points. 

4.Use pretend games to practice with your child to do the positive behaviors and show them how the new system will work. Practice positive feedback to your child for all their hard work and for trying. 

You and your child are both building habits, and this comes from practice. That’s how the actions become established and ingrained, natural and automatic. The first stage – getting the behavior to occur regularly, and providing the proper consequences – is often the hard part, because it feels unnatural at first. But it will soon feel natural, and soon not doing the behavior will feel unnatural.

Keys to Success

Success will require changes not only in your child’s behavior but, in all likelihood, also in your interactions with him or her.

1. Praise is all-important. It should be appropriate, enthusiastic, very specific related to the desired behavior or effort, include a gentle touch. It should be contingent on the desired behavior, immediate and frequent, especially at the beginning.
2. Make noncompliance a nonevent. Try to ignore your child if he does not comply with your request. 
3. Begin with “please.” When you ask your child to engage in the behaviors you want, begin with the word “please.” The research is clear that choice, or the appearance of choice, increases compliance.
4. The tone ought to be warm and gentle. 
5. Don’t ask a question when you are instructing your child to do something. 
6. Physical closeness counts. When you ask your child to do something, get close; it helps. 

Hopefully, this will provide a starting point for some parents struggling with younger children and tantrums. Remember it is not perfection we are trying to attain, or complete solutions, just making small steps of progress in the right direction is good enough.
NOTE: If you are having severe, chronic problems, if there are other traumatic family problems occurring, or if the situation escalates in physical violence, please get seek the assistance of a professional.