Rewards system for v. difficult teenagers rather than punishments???

[fedup4]

Has anyone had any good results from rewarding teenagers rather than punishing?

The trouble is my older boy who is 15 has extremely bad behaviour at school (he is in Year 11) to the point where he has been excluded five times this year for various things. This is after 14 months of truanting lessons. His behaviour has improved 75% at home compared to the beginning of the year when we were having a terrible time with abusive behaviour, so we do know he can change but he is hanging round with a bad crowd who think they can do what they like.

The school phoned yesterday to say he had this time he been excluded internally for one day (the rest were external 2 ? 5 day exclusions).

He got an Ipod Touch for Christmas (50% from us and 50% from his granddad) which he wasn?t over the moon about as he would have preferred the money. He did however also get an £85 pair of jeans which I have this morning taken back.

I have said he can have these at the end of January when he has done a few weeks back at school with no phone calls from teachers/exclusions. As you can imagine he is not happy at all.

Usually he does get a lot of money for his birthday and Christmas as we have a large family. I have told my son this has now stopped and he will have to earn everything he gets.

The night before he got excluded for a fifth time he was looking at an £85 jacket on the internet ? he has no hope of getting this now unless his behaviour in school improves.

I can?t believe his attitude when he has only 4/5 months of school left.

After an exclusion he is not allowed out that weekend, gets no money, no computer time and no playstation.

I also have a Y11 son who luckily has not been excluded, but he has to earn his money. He gets nothing for free as we can't afford it.

He has had a paper round since he was 11 (weekly), daily paper round since he was 13 and now is looking for a Saturday job. Your DS can only go and buy things (from your OP) if you give him money.

I see that you have stopped his money. I would continue with the stopping money. Give that back last.

Also, is there anyone at school that does pastoral care who can talk to him/you. This is such an important year for him. Is he not mature enough to realise this? Has anyone sat him down and actually told him this?

When my DS was in Y7 and 8 he was no angel at all. I had a couple of issues and had a meeting with the HoY. She told us/him in no uncertain terms that the tutor groups he was in was not merely for his academic work, but also for behaviour as they could not have disruptive pupils wrecking higher sets' chances. Luckily, this got through to my DS and he changed.

I really would suggest that you ask if someone would tell him these important facts. Is there an adult that you know that he looks up to who will talk to him as an adult? I really think that might help.

I do wish you luck.

You need Custy, she has been there with her DS1. She will probably tell you to be even more hard-ass about it.

Sorry, I feel like I didn't answer thread title at all. If you want a radically different approach you could look up Consensual Living. I do not understand it, but I have read testimonials from many people, parents of teenagers, about how well it works for them.
CL is not about rewards or punishments, btw.

My parents do fostering and therefore a lot of the teenagers that they deal with have behavioural problems and especially have problems at school. The girls in particular seem to respond very well to reward systems and little goals that they feel able to achieve. So I don't have any direct experience of this but I do know that it has had remarkable results with truancy and behaviour in some of the foster children. Can't see why it wouldn't work with boys too!

He smashed the front door glass in the summer in a temper tantrum and we made him pay for it - he still had some Christmas money and he was intending to buy a guitar with it. I didn't really see it as a punishment at the time as I don't think he would have ever got round to buying the guitar - we had the money so just kept it.

After all the problems we had with him this year he still got over £200 worth of clothes when we told him he wasn't getting them which was really down to my husband giving in to him.

The way I see it he gets what he wants whatever he does as we have usually calmed down once Christmas and birthdays come.

I told him yesterday I am glad he did the wrong thing again so quickly at school yesterday (he has only done 3 days since his last exclusion) as it forces me to get a very tight grip on reality.

The trouble is all this is rubbing off on his younger brother - he is starting now - load of phone calls from school.

I can't wait until he leaves.

Divas and Doorslammers recommends money in small amounts for each good day, the total available being the amount of their full allowance.

I think you need to make the amounts more achievable - ie, available for a shorter space of time. End of January is another lifetime to a teen and probably not much incentive to bother - he knows the chances of him not getting into trouble by then are pretty slim. Each day is good. Make what he has to do very specific, eg no detention at school, no swearing or smashing things in the house. Make the targets achievable in small steps at first (ie leave out the less important stuff like tidy room). As long as he achieves those targets, he gets the money.

If younger brother is going the same way it might not hurt to make the same rewards for both, that way the younger one won't feel the older on is being rewarded over him.

I think he has become accustomed to having a lot of money and nice stuff without anything being expected of him in return.

I am reasonably generous (in my terms) with my 15yo, but she is very responsible and motivated in general, though she does have her moments. But she does not have £80 quid jackets, unless she wants to earn the money herself. She does have an ipod touch which she got last christmas, and she loves and guards it like a piece of the true cross.

Somehow your ds has got the idea that life will provide him with nice things without him having to make any effort. I'd not be looking at 'rewarding', what has he done that needs rewarding? He shouldn't be behaving at school because he wants a reward from you, he should do it because it's in his interests to get a set of decent qualifications so he can get a good job and buy his own expensive kit.

You don't have very long left to teach him different, so I'd be getting very hardcore very quickly. Take away all his nice kit, anything he has in his room by way of electronic entertainment. He can earn them back by doing what he's told and working hard at school. If he wants actual money, he's old enough to get a Saturday job.

I see what you mean Pollymorfic but you are lucky to have a well behaved, responsible and motivated child. I am not - he has been difficult since he was 13 1/2 and it is ongoing. It is not that simple with some teenagers to work hard and knuckle down for their own good to have a decent life - they want to constantly rock the boat and don't have the maturity or foresight to see where they are heading.

We have a very large family which means he usually got a lot for his birthday and Christmas (usually money). This has now stopped. We had to ring each of them up individually to explain that we didn't want our son having a "windfall" twice a year.

When I look back over the last year we could appear to have "confused" him as he has not really gone without even when his behaviour was very bad. I always took the advice of parentline, books and people on here who said keep the punishments short and sharp.

We hope to see a complete change in his behaviour with this new "regime".