How to Be a Loving Parent When Your Child Behaves Badly
There is a wide range of research around the different ways to handle your child when he or she is behaving badly. The practice of using “time-outs” to punish objectionable behavior is as obsolete as spankings were for an earlier generation. Experts in child rearing and behavioral psychology say that incentive theory of motivation, also known as the reward theory, provides positive behavioral reinforcement that is the most effective way to get your unruly one to be…well, a little less unruly.
As a society, we are incentive based. One of the main reason many of us go to work on Monday mornings is to receive the “extrinsic” incentive called a paycheck, and the many corollary benefits it provides like cash to pay for our daily needs, as well as the “intrinsic” incentive of feeling more content when we have some measure of financial security. The psychologist Robert Feldman describes this as “incentive theory.”
From a psychological standpoint, we don’t go to work simply because a failure to do so for no good reason would cause us to get fired. We understand that cause and effect, but even though we understand it, that doesn’t actually motivate us. That is to say, a fear of being fired generally does not make us go to work in the first place; it is the incentive of the paycheck that leads us in to the workplace.
It’s the same with children. Negative consequences of bad behavior, meaning punishment, are something you would think kids would want to avoid. Often parents will warn children about consequences for naughty behavior, whether it is the threat of time outs, the removal of privileges (“no computer or iPad for you!”), or earlier bedtimes. But the human brain is hardwired to be motivated more towards those intrinsic and extrinsic things it perceives to be positive, and to focus less on the negative.
When Johnny is fighting his sister for control of some toy, his perceived positive benefits are two fold. First, there is the extrinsic benefit of the toy itself. Secondly, there are at least two intrinsic benefits – his expected joy of playing with it and probably more importantly, his expected feeling of empowerment if he triumphs over his sister. In Johnny’s brain these factors outweigh the potential negative punishment that his mom may be warning him about. Even if she is warning him in a very loud tone of voice. Sound familiar?
What’s a parent to do? First, it’s appropriate to get familiar with a wide variety of positive incentives that will motivate your child. These will include both material things like healthy snacks, toys and games – and experiential activities like a trip to the zoo, having a friend over, and picking a movie for the whole family to watch.
As you assemble this list of incentives, it’s important to consider the holistic picture of psychological motivation for your child. Think about the extrinsic and intrinsic benefits. When you spend a little time considering your child’s inner motivation, you can determine the psychological benefits that he or she is motivated by without needing a PhD to figure it out.
Going back to our example with Johnny, we can imagine the extrinsic incentive of getting a new toy might motivate him to abandon his struggle for that existing toy. But you know your kids better than anybody. Perhaps Johnny’s larger issue involves common sibling rivalry and he is fighting for control of the toy in order to exert a sense of empowerment in the natural pecking order of his family. A shiny new toy might be great, but providing Johnny an avenue to exert control in a positive way and for a limited period of time is even more motivating.
Here’s where you have to get creative. For example, provide an incentive where Johnny gets to pick the movie that the whole family watches together on Saturday night. Now he’s not just controlling his sister by taking over that toy; he’s top of the pecking order by determining what the whole family will enjoy on movie night.
We are big fans of cartoons, ranging from those old Warner Bros. Looney Tunes classics to the new features and TV shows available today. Family movie night with cartoons can be an excellent motivational incentive for kids, and a much more pleasant behavioral modification tool for parents than dishing out some punishment.
A landmark 2004 study on the cognitive effects of TV on young children was conducted by a team led by Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at Seattle Children’s Hospital. The paper, published in 2004, examined the relationship between the number of hours of television that a child watched between the ages of 1 and 3, and the child’s score on a well-known diagnostic test of attention problems at age 7. One of the researcher’s conclusions was that for younger children, slower-paced and repetitious educational cartoons were preferable to fast paced shows that have noisy voice tracks and lots of camera cuts. The more beneficial cartoons include Blues Clues, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Doc McStuffins and their like.
We call it the Mister Rogers effect – if the show has a more calm, slower pace, with repetition and some level of educational content, it is more beneficial for younger kids than the frenetic pace of other cartoons like Sponge Bob. When it comes to older kids, the key is to limit screen time to a reasonable amount of hours per day that you feel is appropriate. Ensure that your kids do their homework, play outside with friends, and try new sports and hobbies.
When you need positive incentives to make sure your kids are obeying the rules, a great product for this purpose is the CINEMOOD Storyteller portable mini cinema.
CINEMOOD was designed with all the positive reinforcement benefits discussed above in mind. You can let your child pick what’s on for movie night for the whole family, and then project it on any wall, or even outdoors for a drive in movie experience. He or she can use it each day for the allowed amount of viewing time; it has a timer feature that lets you gently control how much time your child spends watching the shows you allow them to see. It’s a lot easier for you to control than TV or a smart phone. CINEMOOD is a terrific incentive with both those extrinsic and intrinsic benefits to make sure your child’s behavior is meeting your expectations as appropriate for his or her age.
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