REINFORCING DESIRED BEHAVIOUR

Consequences are made even more powerful when combined with reinforcement. If you are a parent who imposes a consequence as well as allow their children to earn additional privileges or rewards, consider having a child start with nothing at the beginning of each day and earn privileges by complying with the rules.

Your teen’s Interests
To begin identifying rewards, it is helpful to identify activities or objects your teen enjoys. You may also want to consider things your teen used to enjoy prior to the start of the problematic behaviour. Ask your teen as a reward is more likely to work if you give her the opportunity to choose it. However, you as parent have the final say. It must be something you are comfortable with and able to provide.

Special Time
You might like to consider if your teen might like to spend some additional time with someone, e.g. extended family, older sibling, or a neighbour who would be willing to spend some special time

Places and Activities
Access or transportation to activities they enjoy can be considered an important reward. It is important to do due diligence on where they are being transported to.

Money
Avoid giving money to a teen who may be using alcohol or drugs, If your teen wants to buy something use a system of tokens with a given value to track earnings, and then purchase the approved item for her when enough has been accrued. OR create a daily checklist and check items off as she earns points toward the desired item. – good for larger item or privilege, or earning small increments of time.

Token Economy
You need to make eah behaviour worth a specified number of points, e.g. if verbal aggression is one of the targeted behaviours, the teen might earn 25 points for making it through the day without verbal aggression. If the behaviour normally occurs more frequently, you may give points based on a set number of hours. You want him to go longer than usual but not so lonh as to be unrealistic. As the behaviour begins to be more controlled, you can lengthen the time period of compliance needed to get the points.

 An example: – Say you give a favourite game a value of 250 points. You then break your teen’s day into five time periods, each worth 5 points. If he goes through the designated time period without being verbally aggressive, he earns 5 points. If he avoids the behaviour for the entire day, he earns 25 points. After teen days he earns the game. After that consider increasing the time period by an hour. In the case of truancy, if your child has not been to school for two weeks, you might let him win points for each day of attendance. If he typically misses only one day a week, you might let him earn points for attending every day for a week.

My teen hasn’t done anything special to deserve a reward 
The goal is not for your teen to turn into super beings but to simply not do whatever problematic behaviour is being targeted. If he accomplishes the goal you set he should get the reward. Even if you are upset with him for some other reason, you must make good on the reward, or you cannot expect him to follow the rules you have established.

Isn’t this bribery
Your teen’s less desirable behaviours are getting her some response that she likes. It is important to ensure that the responses to appropriate behaviour be more pleasurable to her than the response to her current behaviour If the delinquent behaviour brings punishment and the desired behaviour brings a reward we can expect behaviour to change. A bribe typically involves payment for a less acceptable behaviour.

My teen says she does not care about any of the rewards and consequences and will not participate
If you give up your teen learns that she can undermine your attempts simply by expressing disapproval. Your teen does care. Pretending not to care is a common method teens use. If this is her stance, then great, you should have no problem enforcing the rules. Enforce them well, with meaningful consequences and rewards, and you’ll find your teen does care.