I was reading about positive reinforcement on one of my pinterest pins. They were talking about using a chart, similar to the potty achievement chart, for things like behavioral issues. Below is the part that inspired me from http://www.theeducatorsspinonit.blogspot.com/2012/06/raising-strong-willed-child-we-get-it.html
Create Goals Together and Chart It
Whenever we observe an undesired behavior arising we try to resolve it by encouraging her to come up with a Weekly Behavior Chart. We sit down together on the computer and create a chart. She helps us to write the rule and theme. Then we print it out and she decorates it and hangs it up. We’ve created it together and she feels that she’s had a voice, a part of the control that she’s seeking. All it takes is a week or two with the chart and we’ve seen a big improvement with that specific behavior issue. It’s worked for staying in her bed at night, combing her hair, watching TV, cleaning up toys, eating her food, controlling temper tantrums. Truthfully it’s worked over the years in my classrooms and it very easily works at home. Pick a goal and work with your child for a few weeks and you will see such a difference.
Well, I thought this was brilliant, because it works well with the potty training. But I also wanted a way to reinforce negative consequences (you know, when she's bad... something other than me yelling at her or spanking, especially if I'm in a bad mood and don't feel I can control my anger). So I wanted to be able to take away the stickers as well. Then it hit me, why not make a jar? Like what you see the weight watching people do with jelly beans or whatnot (for every pound they loose they take a marble or jelly bean or something from the "I want/need to loose this much" jar and put it in the "I've lost this much" jar so they can see how far they've gone). So I decided to do this with Erin. It's relatively inexpensive since most the items can be bought at the Dollar Tree (everything $1 store), even the rewards. But instead of using jelly beans (too tempting to waste the reward bean by eating it instead), I wanted to use pom poms.
I bought two clear plastic containers; one to hold all the pom poms, and one to hold the "I deserve a reward" pom poms. That container would stay clear, so she could see how many she has earned... but I decorated it sparingly with a smiley face. The other container that would hold the rest of the pom poms (we will call this: the first container) looked exactly like the other one except I covered it (from the inside) with black construction paper so as to not get confused and so she couldn't get discouraged by seeing how many pom poms she didn't have.
I figured every morning I would start the "I deserve a reward" container with 10 pom poms. Every time she did something good I would take one from the first container and put it in the reward container. These would be things like sharing, calming down when frustrated, turning off the tv, going to bed without a fuss/fight, eating something I've been begging her to try, cleaning up, picking up toys, being quiet during prayers, etc. All the things the other website had suggested and more (except the potty training stuff would remain seperate, because that's already a system).
The difference would be that I can take away the reward pom poms if she warrented it. If she throws a fit, hits, screams, whynes, watches too much tv, refuses to clean up, is too loud during prayers, etc, she will get a pom pom taken away from the reward canister and put back into the first container. A simple enough concept, and it's going to work perfectly!
As a reward I stocked up at the Dollar Tree. I got a couple of dolls, a few balls, coloring books, disney cups, nail polish, candy bars, suckers, puzzles, slinkie, etc. It was a lot of fun picking them. I even picked up an extra small laundry basket to put them all in.
I'm going to make a fun sign to put on it that says "Rewards=" and then a number of pom poms. I was originally thinking if she got 25 pom poms a night she could get a reward. But I'm not sure. Even though they're a dollar, some of the rewards are just so cool. I've just got to get over that and remind myself they are a dollar, easily replaced and easy to get more. This is supposed to encourage her, and this is the way to do it.
I'm excited to see how this plays out tomorrow!
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