Taking control of your parenting

Parenting is hard work, whether you are a new parent to an infant, have six kids, or recently gained step-kids. There’s no doubt about it. Parenting is hard work.

Understanding how behaviors work can make parenting seem a little easier.

There are four reasons for behavior.

1. To avoid something. Face it; there are things you want to avoid. For example, you may want to avoid doing the dishes, going to work, or even parenting during a tough mental health day. Like you, your kids want to avoid their chores, hanging out with the family, or doing homework.
2. To gain an object. Kids want to play with their toys, have the extra cookie, or get that new video game everyone has been talking about. They may ask nicely for whatever they want, or they may throw a tantrum if they cannot gain the desired object.
3. To gain stimulation. Stimulation is anything that raises the activity in the nervous system. This may include the feeling of satisfaction when completing a book or a particularly hard level on a video game.
4. To gain attention. Both children and adults need attention. We need attention from our significant other and our friends. However, children need a lot more attention, and they need attention from their parents the most.

Your kids’ behavior is always driven by one of these four reasons. You just need to find out which one.

Once you figure out the reason for the behavior, parenting the behavior is a breeze.

For example, my 14-year-old stepson hates doing his chores, much like any other teenager. So, he will make jokes and act extremely angry when we tell him to do his chores. He is trying to avoid his chores. We needed to figure out a way to reinforce getting his chores done and stop the angry behavior.

First, we started by ignoring the maladaptive behavior – in this case, the anger and the joking around.

By giving attention to his jokes and playing along with him, he could easily avoid getting his chores done in the moment. Then we had to deal with his anger when we asked him again to do his chores. So we ignored the jokes and asked him again to complete his chores. We also ignored the angry comments that followed.

Next, we reinforced him when he completed his chores by creating a point system.

In this system, every point is worth $0.10. For example, we made chores worth $5 an hour, so if it took him one hour to wash the dishes, sweep the floor, take out the trash, recycle, and wipe the counters, he would earn 50 points. He could use his points to buy new games or pay for activities with friends.

When parenting, ignoring maladaptive behavior and rewarding adaptive behavior is the best course of action.

Ignoring the maladaptive behavior is considered a punishment, and rewarding the adaptive behavior is reinforcement. Punishment is anything that decreases a behavior, and reinforcement is anything that increases a behavior.

There are two types of reinforcements and punishments: positive and negative. In both reinforcement and punishment, positive means adding something, and negative means taking something away.

A positive punishment includes adding an aversive stimulus to decrease a behavior. For example, you may add on additional chores as a form of punishment. Negative punishment is taking away a favored stimulus to decrease a behavior. For example, you might take your kid’s cell phone away. Another negative punishment is ignoring maladaptive behavior. This is because you no longer reinforce the behavior with attention by ignoring maladaptive behavior.

Positive reinforcement includes adding a favored stimulus to increase a behavior. For example, you may give your kid more screen time if they complete their chores. We use positive reinforcement in our point system. Negative reinforcement is taking away an aversive stimulus to increase a behavior. For example, your car will ding at you until you put your seatbelt on. Maladaptive behavior will stop naturally when you reinforce only the adaptive behavior.