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 worried a lot the night
before her lesson that her teacher was going to be upset with her when
she couldn’t perform well.
We first tried natural consequences, suggesting to our little girl
that 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 parents, natural reinforcers are frequently
insufficient to motivate a child to complete a particular task. Your
son, for example, may simply be a natural slob—a clean room means
nothing to him. Or your little girl may have ADHD and be learning-
disabled, so homework provides no satisfaction—but much
frustration—for her.
In these cases you must use what we call artificial reinforcers.
These are things that the child will earn for successful completion of
a task. The reinforcers may have nothing directly to do with the given
task. But since the activity doesn’t offer any incentive to the child—
and, in fact, may provide a negative incentive—we are going to try to
borrow motivation from somewhere else. The 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 in little pieces. With older
marcin
(Marcin)
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