talk to me about reward charts

[PavlovtheCat]

My DD is a lovely wonderful happy girl. But recently she has been testing boundaries, in particular over the last week.

We have noticed in the last couple of days a rise in the number of times she has been sent to the naughty step or to her room to calm down, and a rise in us losing our patience and getting visibly frustrated. We have felt like we have lost some control.

We have been doing stickers for her having a dry bed, and it has gone very well, so we have decided to extend this into the normal day, as we really really want to praise positive and try to ignore, or at least give less importance, to bad behaviour.

So we were thinking about how to do this, and have thought about doing simply a happy face, if she has been good, or a sad face if she has been naughty, but how do we do this? I do not want to give her a 'treat' every time she has a happy face as I don't really want her to be 'happy' in order to gain something, so what would be the purpose? to get a sticker? Also, how to we give her the faces? we were thinking that we would give her a warning for the sad face, 'if you don't do that/do that again/do xyz we will be sad and we will draw that sad face on your chart', but what about happy faces? She is happy all the time, so would we do it like at snack time 'you have been good all morning and we are very happy so we will draw a happy face on your chart'.

Or what else can we do/how? I can't find anything i want on google etc, so your extensive knowledge is needed ladies!

Ooh, as a mother of three formerly bedwetting children, and as a former bedwetter myself, I would at all costs avoid including bedwetting into any kind of reward chart. Rewarding a dry bed means by default punishing a wet one, and making the assumption that the bedwetter does it deliberately, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. If I could have avoided waking up every night in a puddle of piddle, of being embarrassed to high heaven to wake up stinking in the morning, or be screamed at and embarrassed by my father, I would have. I just didn't have any control over it. Eventually (like my children did) I grew out it. I was quite traumatised by the time I did though. My children grew out of a lot earlier than I did.

Sorry, I know that's not what you were asking, I just felt I had to mention it.

how old is your dd? Children are moody sometimes and they do not feel responsible for why they feel angry or frustrated. It is up to us to teach them how to get themselves out of it. My feeling is that sticker charts are not great for this kind of thing as it rewards them for things that they feel are not their doing.
I'm sure others will be along who disagree (as it is mumnet after all!)

I think what you are doing now sounds great and if my ds is anything to go by; things will get loads better

I only did the stickers as she asked for one, when i have talked her up in the morning when she has had a dry bed, i have praised her endlessly and when she has wet the bed i have said, nevermind baby it happens sometimes and given her cuddles. She wanted the chart done 4 days ago, and has so far not wet the bed so did not even think about what would happen if she did not wet the bed oh good point though...

"I do not want to give her a 'treat' every time she has a happy face as I don't really want her to be 'happy' in order to gain something,"

There's the rub you see. Ideally you want kids to "behave" in certain ways because they know inside that it is the right thing to do and not because doing it will mean dodging the naughty step or obtaining a reward.

Sorry - can't be more helpful.

just another thing has something happened that might have made her insecure (changing room at nursery, are you pregnant). This can sometimes result in testing behaviour

Another cause can be exposure to a family with different rules. She then might be testing whether you will still react in the same way.

She is 3.7. Another good point thank you. We were certainly not thinking of doing the stickers as the only method of dealing with this, but as an additional incentive. I do agree we need to help her learn how to control her behaviour, that is our job, and part of that is to remain calm!

accio i know, that is our dilemna. For the most part, she is a delightful child. She is happy, and fun and compassionate and empathic, and is just amazing with her new brother, but has taken to being a bit angry sometimes, or absolutely refrusing to listen or do what she is told. She has started laughing at us when we are cross (which i have to say i find worse than her being cross herself).

The naughty step is only reserved for when she has got herself into a state and will not calm down, or when we have reached a 'stalemate' and nothing will immediatey resolve it, so i guess its a 'timeout'step really.

I am now going to change my mind about the sticker charts for DD in relation to a dry bed. You are so right. I just want to give her something special as she has been so good about us getting her up at midnight for 2 nights to put her on the potty, then for 2 nights we did not and still dry, and I am very proud of her doing it, and she so wanted stickers! Maybe i should just give her a sticker then for being dry for half the night or whatever.

She sounds like a sweetheart Pavlov and her "challenging" behaviours sound fairly typical.

As for the bedwetting stickers, if she wants stickers fair enough but perhaps let her decide if she gets a sticker and what for? I don't know - does that sound a bit Viz "Modern Parents"-ish? I am a bit of a wet liberal when it comes to this sort of thing. I'm all "do what you want tarquin, find your own way, be free child of the stars".

witch interesting what you have said about changes going on - yes, very much so, she has a new baby brother who is now 11wks old. She is wonderful with him. She has developed some difficult behaviour which we know is as a result of this, she is more angry and more clingy sometimes, and we have for the most part been able to manage that quite well, and remember the reasons for this. She has become more angry and 'defiant' with DH more than me, she tests him more, and wants me more, she wants lots more cuddles (which she absolutely gets, always) and more stories from me, she wants me to put her to bed more (DH and i normally share this, and sometimes do this together). We have tried very hard to keep her involved with her brother, and also give her lots of her own time too.

This new behaviour is more out of the blue, in fact it started on thursday, that is how sudden it is.

Oh bless her - sounds like you would be better off forgetting the reward charts and focussing on giving her lots of opportunities for involvement with activities in the house and lots of cuddles and reassurance.

accio we are sure it is normal behaviour too (she says hopefully!) especially with the arrival of her baby brother. But just reached a stuck point on how to manage it the right way. We seemed to 'know' what to do up to know, much more, had more ideas we could try and agreed much more on the best way to do things as it was so clear to us.

We are also relatively relaxed in how we teach her, and are definitely of the giving her choices (only small ones mind!) and quite liberal with her upbringing too. But wonder if we need to reign this in a little with two children? I could not be too strict or military in our raising of the kids though, its just not our way!

One thing i am amazed at though, is her enormous capacity for empathy, it is astounding. It showed when i was suffering with HG during my pregnancy, and now with her baby brother, she just is so caring and compassionate it has made us love her even more than we did (if that was possible)

ime the effect of a sibling is not like a big shock that starts at birth and slowly dies away. It could be that she is reacting to the fact that her brother is now taking up more of your time or that she realises that he is there for keeps. We can't really know what goes on in her head. My ds has suddenly got really jealous of his little sister who is 13 months. Its easier this time because i know that it will pass and there is really not much that we can do to prevent it.

Maybe, maybe. I just am not sure how we move forward with her to stop her for example hiding in cupboards and refusing to come out, just giggling in this sort of 'devil child' kind of way, or blowing raspberries when we ask her to do something. Or, where she used to kick and scream if she refused to wash her hands and face and we would carry her to the bathroom, now she just hangs like a dead weight and laughs. Or pulling all her toys out of her toybox and laughing saying 'i love my bedroom messy' , its so new !

witch the thing is, she is not at all jealous towards him. She still loves him and fusses him, and tries to make him laugh. She still insists on kissing him first in the morning before us, and wants to help with changing his nappy or giving him a bath. She wants him to come when we go somewhere etc, she does not like him being upset and tells me when he needs feeding.

I guess, its the sharing of attention that is the problem though, rather than him. So how to manage that then?

pavlov,

I agree with other posters re stickers and bedwetting.

I have never been much of a reward chart mum partly because they can be great in theory but difficult in practice, and also because I don't want them to behave just to get something, but rather because it's the right thing to do.

However, occasionally my DS gets into an overly annoying phase and I feel like he needs something extra to help pull his behaviour back up to a reasonable level.

I draw a ladder with about 7 rungs and he draws a picture of himself which we cut out. We put the ladder on the fridge and attach 'him' (the drawing!) with blu-tac to the middle rung. We write a prize at the top and a punishment at the bottom which he chooses (something like going to the park or out on his bike for the prize and losing TV as the punishment).

Then throughout the day I move him up or down the ladder depending on his behaviour. It's a good way to warn him that things are not going well by saying "If you carry on like that I'm going to move you down the ladder" and also a good way to praise things I might not otherwise comment on like playing nicely. He often volunteers that he should go up or down himself. It also means that you don't have to label the whole day as a good or bad day. When he gets to the top he gets the prize and vice versa, then goes back to the middle. So you do have to make sure the prizes are things you can easily deliver.

I think we probably set up a ladder once every 4 to 6 weeks and leep it going for about a week. It seems to get his behaviour back on track. He's just 5 BTW and we probably started doing ladders about a year ago. I have never done them with my 2 older DDs because I never needed to be so interventionist with discipline.

HTH

Clarice that sounds interesting. I like the idea that he is feeding into that process and making judgments about his own behaviour, not just passively accepting the judgments of others and either not understanding those judgments or worse, silently disagreeing and resenting them.

what we did (not really sure it made much difference as think these things do get better by themselves as the elder dcs realise that a) they are still loved to pieces and b) that they do not need constant attention and it is great to play and do stuff by yourself)
was :

pick some of the most important battles to you and then just ask and ask again until they do what they are told. Don't pick them up as this becomes a game, direct conversation through the baby until she does what she is told so "wish your big sister would hurry up as I really want to read XX".

clarice i love that idea. I think the punishment part would be difficult as not sure she would be able to help pick one, but i could suggest something very small and have her agree to it, if she is not happy with that, we can change it before it goes on the ladder. As you say, it is just periods of time, not all the time, i like the idea of dipping in and out of it when it is needed.

I might give it a try!

Pavlov we use the reward chart for a variety of things but mainly for encouraging DS (3.11) to stay in bed as he's a bugger for getting up.

The way we do it is we have a calendar and when he has done something sticker-worthy we add a sticker to that day.

We also have a bag of small toys (cost no more than £5) in a cupboard. DS knows what is in the bag and sometimes has chosen them. He sometimes asks to have a look in the bag and then carefully puts it away. He knows that he has to earn the toys in the bag - this takes 7 stickers. Once he has the 7 stickers he's allowed to choose something from the bag.

Good luck. Agree with others on here - there's something of a phase about the behaviour at this age but what I like about our approach is the concept of working towards earning something.

sunshine i like that too. DD is into littlest petshop stuff right now, think you can get them for about £2 or so, that would be a good treat, and help with her counting! And like yours, she is a pain in the mornings, she likes to see the small hand on a 6, and sometimes (like this morning) on a 5!!! (5:55am, got her to stay in bed til 6:30am though, yey!)

Pavlov - tell me about it. Both DS and DD (17m) are up by 6am latest every day of the week. It's exhausting