The Power of Positive Reinforcement
Think about the times you’ve been honoured for your contributions at work, gushed over for cooking a delicious meal or high-fived for rocking it at karaoke. Likely, the recognition made you feel awesome and motivated to do more of the same. Positive reinforcement helps bring out the best in all of us, especially children! Focusing on and praising your learner’s desirable actions is the best way to shape consistently good behaviour. Here’s the scoop on positive reinforcement.
How Positive Reinforcement Works
Rewarding your student’s performance right after he does or says something increases the likelihood that he will repeat the behaviour again. That’s because your praise makes Peter feel really good – it helps boost his self-esteem – and he’ll continue to do the things that gain your attention. For example, when you give Peter hugs and hoorays for putting his toys away properly, he’ll be motivated to continue cleaning up nicely in the future. In contrast, if you give a lot of attention to what he’s doing wrong and little recognition to what he’s doing well, the rate of Peter’s negative behavior will rise.
Put Positive Reinforcement Into Action
To increase a particular behaviour, you must reinforce your student’s behavior as soon as she does it. That way it’s clear to her what action has earned her an awesome reaction. Let’s use the example of sharing toys at playtime. The instant Polly calmly gives her Dora doll to a pal, deliver specific verbal praise – “I love the way you share your toys!” – and give her a tickle, hug or high-five. Celebrate each positive step she takes – be your child’s cheerleader! – and ignore any negative outbursts until sharing toys appropriately becomes automatic behaviour. Once that happens, you can fade back reinforcement, giving praise intermittently.
TIP: Avoid generic kudos such as “good job.” (Click here for ideas on how to update your praise repertoire.) Instead, use verbal reinforcement that calls out what your student did well, so they understand what behavior to repeat.
Be Careful Not to Reinforce the Wrong Thing!
We must also be careful in how we use reinforcers. We can accidentally reinforce negative behaviors in children. For example, if your attention is a reinforcer for your child and you respond to negative behaviors with attention (even with verbal reprimands such as, “Don’t do that”), you may actually increase the likelihood that your child will exhibit the inappropriate behavior again. In addition, for the child who does not like to comply with adult requests, time-out for misbehavior during demands may reinforce the misbehavior because it allows the child to escape the request.
Catch Them Being Good
One very important way to impact your child’s behavior is to “catch them being good.” The idea behind this is that for most children attention is a reinforcer. So when you reinforce your child’s good behavior by providing them with praise and attention, you are teaching your child what you want them to do and increasing the likelihood that they will do that good behavior again. When you “catch your child being good” and respond by telling them exactly what they are doing that is good, you are teaching your child how you want them to behave. Instead of just saying “nice job!” tell your child exactly what you liked about what they did, “Nice job sharing your truck, Jake!”
