- Renting a special movie
- A grab-bag surprise
- Comic book or magazine
- Friend over for supper
- Choice of three reinforcers
- Reading a story with parents
- Sleeping with the dog or cat
- Special phone call
- Other items for collections
- Helping make and eat cookies
- Using a power tool with supervision
Keep charts simple. Three or four things to work on at one time
are enough; more than that get 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 accounting task, and the positive effects can fade when
Mom and Dad become tired of filling out the chart 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 doesn’t keep up with the desired
behavior, you can reinstate the chart.
- Counting Variation: Brief Start Behavior