You Pinspire Me
I love my son son much that it makes my heart ache sometimes, which is why it was so tough to deal with him in July and August. He had just turned 3.5, and every minute of every day was a battle.
I’d ask him to put on his shoes, a task that he had done perfectly well the day before, and he’d say, “I need help!” I’d say, “H, I know that you can put your shoes on by yourself, you did a great job doing it yesterday! Let’s see you do it again today!” Cue the breakdown. First, the crying, then the screaming. I’d send him to his room until he calmed down, and for three or four minutes he’d rage around his room. Eventually it would stop and he’d come downstairs with his tear stained face, “Mommy, I’m all done crying now. Can you help me put on my shoes now?” Lather, rinse, repeat.
Every time we left the house, put pajamas on, cleaned up the toy room, the scenario repeated itself. Every time his little sister touched him or (gasp!) one of his THINGS, the tantrums boiled up and spilled over. So much crying. So much screaming. So many negative words coming out of my mouth. I hated it, the way that we were relating to eachother all day, every day.
My friends couldn’t quite believe that this was happening – “but he’s always so sweet and polite! I can’t picture him acting like that!” Believe me, ladies, not only could he act like that, he was a star method actor.
I knew that I had to change my behaviour before he’d change his – we were in a vicious downward spiral and the more tantrums he had, the more negative I was towards his behaviour, which caused more tantrums. I was a psychology minor in university, and, surprise surprise, I’ve actually found it to be useful once in a while! I decided that I was going to start with Positive Reinforcement.
While it sure sounds like Positive Reinforcement means responding to a good behaviour with praise for that behaviour, it means, more generally, the addition of a reinforcing stimulus following a behaviour that makes it more likely that the behaviour will be repeated. It could mean a negative reinforcing stimulus – child has a tantrum at the store, parent gives in and buys them a sucker – thus encouraging the child to have a tantrum the next time they’re at the store. What I was aiming for was rewarding his good behaviour to encourage it to be repeated. (On the other side of things, Negative Reinforcement doesn’t mean responding to a behaviour with a negative comment, it means to remove something in response to a certain behaviour in order to encourage that behaviour to be repeated. Child finally cleans their room, parent stops the nagging, making the child more likely to clean their room sooner next time the nagging starts.)
Enter the Chickpeas. I needed to stop focusing on the negative behaviour and start rewarding the positive behaviour. Verbal rewards weren’t enough – he could hear them, but didn’t remember them because 80% of the day was spent listening to my negative comments to his behaviour. I needed something that he could focus on, something that grew in size as his behaviour started to improve. Something with a big reward at the end. This didn’t mean that I didn’t still deal with the negative outbursts, but rewarding the positive with something physical put extra emphasis on that part of the day.
I took an 8oz mason jar & added the lid that, when paired with a straw, turns the jar into a drinking cup (but I left the straw out). I took a bag of chickpeas from the pantry & dumped them into a large glass jar, and I set both jars on the counter. (The lid with the hole in the middle isn’t necessary, the chickpea just fits so nicely through it so I’m not taking the lid on and off all the time, and if the jar tips over, they won’t spill everywhere.) Every single time H put his shoes on, brushed his teeth, put his pajamas on, helped his sister, said “Thanks for making supper!”, etc, without any whining or complaining, I put a chickpea into the jar. If the task was particularly unsavoury or arduous, I’d add two, or three. Last month, he learned how to buckle himself into his car seat, and got FIVE chickpeas each time he did it properly without being reminded to.
When the jar is full, H will get to go to McDonald’s & have a Happy Meal. We started this in September, and while he gets MANY chickpeas every day, it’s going to be until about the middle of November before the jar is full. That’s a pretty good return on investment for me, and it’s enough to keep him going. (McDonald’s is a very special treat in this house – and he has specified that it has to be a McD’s with a Play Place. Smart boy.) If your Little One needs faster gratification, you can use kidney beans, which will fill up the jar faster, or simply give 2 at a time as a default and increase from there for other behaviours and actions.
His behaviour has changed radically. Yes, we still have breakdowns, but maybe once every three days as opposed to three times a day. Our relationship is so much better. I have far less to apologize for at the end of the day, and feel so much better about myself as a parent. He is happier throughout the day, and is proud of his accomplishments when I put chickpeas in his jar. His attitude (more often) now is that of “Look what I did!” rather than “I can’t do that!”
Overall, this behavioural experiment has been a success, and we’re going to keep running with this, for the sake of both of our sanity and happiness.
Jenn vanOosten
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We’re just entering this phase where Mom has to help with everything. I like this idea, must try.
Love it. I want to steal and and run with it. But I have TWO kids old enough to understand this, so I’m not sure what to do about that. Should I have two separate jars so one of them is not affected by the behaviour of the other, but then they are constantly competing with one another? Or should I have one jar that they work together to fill, but then one will get mad at the other when she is not contributing well enough to the sisterly team?
Maybe I’ll just keep yelling at them.
Hmmm, I would do one jar for each of them – and if they want to make it a competition, all the better – if they’re encouraging each other to behave better / pick up their toys / be helpful and kind, is it bad to compete?? 🙂 I think you should try it out, one way or the other – I’d love to read YOUR post on the process!! 😀
I wonder if this will work on my six year old. He’d probably ask me what chickpeas have to do with anything.
Oh, trust me – it works on the older ones! When I was in grade 2 our teacher had a bean jar for us, I think, for when the class responded to her requests for quiet, etc. When the jar was full, we’d get to choose if she was going to spend an hour reading us a book, or if we got to go to the gym for an extra 30 minutes, or whatever – as long as you highlight the reward!! {side note: I asked H what we were going to do when his chickpea jar was full. His response: uh… make soup?}
Love the behavior analysis! When you go back to work you need to do what I do, I have spent hours at workshops trying to explain the difference between neg and pos reinforcement haha! If, in the future, it stops working it could be because of something called ratio strain, which just means you need to increase the frequency of the big reward
Hah, this was definitely a part of PSY 341 (Behavioural) that I found really interesting!! We didn’t get into Ratio Strain, though, but it makes sense – I’ve already had to start doing that a bit – fine by me!
I did the same thing with marbles in a jar. It worked like a charm!
Love this! We do something similar. It is so easy to focus on the bad behavior and not all of the good. Thank you for teh encouragement and reminder to focus on positive reinforcement.
Whatever keeps you sane & reinforces good behavior is worth doing. Good luck in raising your son & have fun while you’re at it.
what a fantastic idea…you’re doing a great job! parenting is quite challenging.
I used to use the marbles in the jar. They worked like a charm. 😉
I actually have a 10 year old who acts like this. It’s my fault, we gave in to everything when he was younger. So I started a behavior chart! He gets rewards every week and it has helped so much!
It’s so great you broke that negativity cycle and turn it on its head. What a super idea to reinforce good behavior.
Positive Reinforcement is so important for the self esteem of these little ones.
That is a great idea. It is a must try
What a clever way to encourage and reinforce positive behavior! My brother is using a point system with my nephew so that he can earn ‘tech time.’ It works.
This is an awesome idea! I will try this when my son gets a little older.
I always focus on the positive and really make a big deal of the things they do RIGHT. The jar idea is really good – I’ve used stickers or fuzzy colorful cotton balls and books as a reward.
i think I might just use this idea to get my son to put his lunchbox away. I like this a lot! Been working with this system for a while but did not think of chickpeas!
Martine s