Behavior Plans

How to create a behavior plan for your child:

First, you need to make a list of the positive behaviors that you want to see from your child. This means that you will focus on the positive rather than the negative behaviors.

Secondly, you need to make a list of the rewards that will be available to the child for their positive behaviors.

The basic principles of behavior therapy state that the behaviors you reward will be shown more often than the behaviors that are not rewarded. The reason that a child displays negative behaviors is that the negative behaviors have been rewarded in the past. We must begin to cut out the rewards for negative behavior and begin to reward positive behaviors.

Rewards for negative behaviors include attention. Children learn quite early that negative attention (yelling, punishment) are still attention. All children require attention; they will get it any way that they can.

A second thing that all children want is consistent and stable rules. This requires the parents to parent their child in a consistent manner. Our job as parents is to provide a positive learning environment for our child. This means that we need to display positive, consistent & stable values and rules that we follow which we want our children to model. Research has shown that children model the behavior they see. When we have a child that is acting out, we must ask ourselves what behaviors we partake in that they are modeling; the days of 'Do as I say, not as I do' are over.

SCHEDULES & ROUTINE

If we are going to provide a stable atmosphere, we must provide routine for ourselves as well as our children. Not to say that things are not going to arise that will interfere with those routines; but, that should be the exception rather than the rule.

Part of our job as parents is to make a life that is stable and routine. We are the adults, we must take the time to decide what we want in life, what we want our values to be and what we want our children to adopt from us.