Reinforce Positive Behaviors
How to Use Positive Reinforcement without Bribery
The idea of bribery is a difficult concept to grasp. When does motivation become bribery? When are you “dangling the carrot” of incentive and when are you handing the carrot over in flat out bribery? Parents ask us this question everyday in response to the idea of using positive reinforcement. The mere mention of the phrase makes many people squirm in their chair. You are not alone if you have had this feeling. You are not alone with worries of “spoiling” or “bribing” your child.
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I fully understand the concepts of bribery and positive reinforcement – I have been both places :-)
My worries is primarily about the next step. If I use positive reinforcement, what happends when my sons aren’t “good enough”. If I dangeled out the carrot the wrong place and my sons can’t reach it (you cant always get it right).
At the end of the shopping trip they do not get the toy, to stay in the picture above. And what they get is an expierience that contribute negatively to their selfesteem – I’m not good enough :-(
What a great question Krista. Those times when your children aren’t “good enough” can be tricky. If it is a skill that you are trying to teach, you may want to think about breaking the skill down to the point that you know your son will be successful. If you are working on challenging behaviors, sometimes a token system is good to show progress toward a goal. Using the shopping trip example, you could give stickers that the child accumulates on a chart during the trip. Only rewarding for positive behaviors (staying close to mom, not screaming, walking feet) and you know how many stickers it takes to earn the prize at the end. This will allow your child to know exactly when he is doing the right thing. I hope that helps.
Kelli
Speech-Language Pathologist
Co-Founder, MyAutismNetwork.com
When you are using a token/reward system and the child is working toward a specific goal that is not an immediate reward ………………..is it ok to overlook one or two moderate infractions and still act as though the child earned the reward. I ask this because my son has been working toward “ice cream” with his therapist and overall he has earned it but has had one or two off nights (nothing too severe)…….. overall his behavior has been pretty good. What do you suggest in that situation?
That is a great point and I think we had someone mention this before in one of our forums. I think that one thing you have to consider is what type of reinforcement system you are using, since you mentioned that it is a token reinforcement system for a delayed reward it may require some modifications. If you are reinforcing for immediate things, always be concrete and consistent. I would think that he has probably encountered this type of system before since he is now working on such an advance/mature system. Just make sure the expectations are clear and that he understands when he has done something “unexpected”. Maybe even planning for a few of those “hiccups” to occur during the next task. Hope that helps & be sure to check out the forums. There are a lot of parents there with great advice too!