A Lesson Learned: Positive Reinforcement

Sometimes in the throes of disciplining a young child, it is easy to fall into the pattern of simply “punishing” instead of offering positive reinforcement…or at least it is for me. I concentrate so much on getting Big Brother to “obey” that I don’t really create positive consequences, only negative ones.

We’ve been having a bit of a hard time with some undesirable behaviors with “numero uno” since Christmas. He has been throwing huge tantrums when he doesn’t get his way and in those tantrums, talking disrespectfully to both of us (pretty typical behavior for a 3-year old, but in need of major correction nonetheless). After an utterly frustrating lunch with my family after church last Sunday, I decided we had to try something different.

So we made a sticker chart. A row for each day of the week with two columns:  morning and afternoon. If Big Brother talked respectfully to us for the morning, he received a sticker. If he didn’t, he had to try better later. It has worked really well for the most part. He needs a few reminders that he will, in fact, lose the privilege of putting a sticker up on his chart, but other than that it has been just the motivation he needed. And it’s been interesting to see the pattern…most of the week he did NOT receive his morning sticker. We tend to have more battles in the morning, apparently.

After earning 5 stickers, we went to the indoor “waterpark” at our local YMCA. Five stickers isn’t much, but we wanted him to feel successful and will gradually increase the amount needed for a fun activity such as this.

While reflecting on our recent “positive reinforcement” implementation, I started thinking about how God is the ultimate parent. He dealt swiftly (and many times seemingly harshly in our human eyes) with the Israelites when they disobeyed. But he also offered lots of positive reinforcement to them and he still offers it to us.