"You are what you REPeat."

Have ever heard that phrase, "You are what you eat?"

Well, we are what we repeat.

We repeat what has been reinforced.

Reinforcement has somehow gotten a bad rep. Some say reinforcement is bribery. But, reinforcement is a part of everyday life. It is what knowingly, or unknowingly, we use to determine whether or not the behaviors we are demonstrating are worth repeating. We get paid to go to work, it’s worth going to work again. We get a win after putting money in the slot machine, worth playing again. We hear praises from a friend, worth spending time with this friend again. We eat a delicious slice of pizza, worth the extra pounds and money to eat that again. We take some Advil when we get a headache and the headache goes away, worth taking Advil again. All of these consequential situations increased the likelihood you would engage in that behavior again. This is reinforcement. A behavior happens, you’re reinforced in some way that is meaningful to you, so you want to repeat this again in the future.

On the other hand, all these situations could have gone the other way. You go to work and you don’t get paid enough.  Or your pay-check gets to you a week after they said it would. Or you don’t get paid at all! This has now just decreased the likelihood that you will go back to this job. The reinforcement didn’t match the effort required of your behavior to make doing the job worth it.

So our kids, what do they like? Money? Relief from a headache? Praises from a friend? Not likely. They like iPad time, the same nursery rhymes played on repeat, sweets, chips, toys, and if we’re lucky, a hug or praises from parents. If we want them to continue to show-up for “work" then we need to make sure their “pay" is meaningful and worthwhile to them. Remember to keep in mind, their idea of what is difficult isn’t the same as ours. If they aren’t currently doing a behavior we want to see out of them, then we probably need to sprinkle a little bit of reinforcement on it. Not eating veggies? Begin to pay them for their “work." For example, 1 bite veggie, 1 minute iPad. Not cleaning up their toys? Begin to pay them for their “work." For example, clean up the toys, 1 piece of chocolate. You’ll have to figure out what the right salary is for each job that matches the difficulty. This is not a negotiation. You set the salary, they either get it or they don’t.

Major concerns that I always hear from parents when I talk about reinforcement are “but I want them to want to do it,”  “I want them to understand they just have to do it,” and “When can I stop reinforcing them for doing these things?” My first thought is always, “jeez they’re aren’t even doing these things you want them to do yet and you’re already trying to take their pay away!”

Children do not have intrinsic understanding and desire to complete tasks that have no value to them. Why clean up your toys when you know you’re going to play with them again later? Why use words when screaming has worked in the past and gets parents attention even faster? So what if a friend's kid cleans-up their toys when they are asked without getting anything out of it, that’s not your kid. So, if you want your kids to start cleaning up, then you have to start to reinforce it.

We have to stop comparing our children to other people’s children or even their siblings. Each child is different, what they do, and won’t do, will be different. This means, what we have to teach and reinforce will be different. Once you have reinforced the behaviors you want to see happen every time they complete the behavior, for at least a few days (hopefully more like a few weeks), now we can talk about fading out the reinforcement. We do not want to do this too soon! I repeat, we do not want to do this too soon! We need the child to be repeating this behavior consistently, without protest, with the reinforcement before we fade the reinforcement or we will just go back to square one. When fading the reinforcement, it will not be here today and gone tomorrow. It will be here this time and not next time but back again the time after that, every other time but still receiving praise and excitement from you. Based on how well your kid is doing, then maybe every third time. This continues until we can completely remove the external reinforcer (pay) because this behavior has now become their routine.

We are what we repeat, we repeat what has been reinforced. It is very important to be slow with this even when you feel like you are making progress, you wouldn’t show up to work everyday knowing you’re not going to get paid at all so make sure your child doesn’t experience that either.

You and I have been trained over time to operate on a reinforcement schedule of every two week, some may even be on a once a month schedule. We trust that we’ll get the “universal reinforcer,” that is this dirty paper with a dead president on it (a.k.a.money) that we can exchange for anything we can think of. It’s time to start training our kids for that same world and the first step starts at home with immediate payouts with reinforcers that are meaningful to them.

By guest blogger Ellen McNicoll M.S., BCBA, 1-17-26431