Positive Reinforcement

It is good, right?  We all know that.  Animals love it.  So do people.  And it is really fantastic because nobody has to be the bad guy.  That's my favorite part.  I do my best with it, I really do.  I make sure to mention how well he has done at sharing with his sister or sitting at the table properly or getting himself ready to leave and thank him for those things well done.  I could do so much better though and I've been thinking a lot about it since I decided to inject a little structure to our learning this year because, well, what happens when he doesn't want to do something in the curriculum?  Plus, I think some days all I do is put him in time out and that just makes a bad day for everyone.  Isn't there something better?

As it turns out, teachers have some really great classroom management ideas that I *think* can be crossed over into the parenting world.  Some teachers use the system where you get some sort of marker to indicate whether you are behaving well or poorly.  You "earn" your way up to the higher bits of the chart with good behavior and your marker can be demoted for poor behavior.  I've heard that this works quite well and I recall it being used when my sisters were in kindergarten. (I honestly have no earthly idea what happened in my kindergarten.  Maybe I've blocked it out?)

But the system I liked better came from A Teeny Tiny Teacher, whose blog I mentioned on the last post. She uses a sort of "gold ticket" system for positive reinforcement and I fell in love for a few reasons.

1. It gives you the ability to separate dealing with poor behavior from rewarding good behavior.  Kids are given gold tickets when they are caught doing something we want to reinforce.  You don't need to take them away for bad behavior if you don't want to.  Use something else.  This way you can demonstrate the idea that making a mistake doesn't invalidate all the nice things you've done and that they are still good kids even when they have fallen short of our (and their) expectations.
2. This can be a great way to practice counting, addition, and subtraction. I plan to put up a reward chart.  Different rewards are worth different numbers of tickets.  He can count up how many he has, figure out how many he still needs to earn the reward he wants, and count how many he has left when he turns them in.
3. Finally, I love giving out "prizes".  I am in the drivers seat here.  The prizes are completely up to me and maybe I can even change them week to week or month to month.  He could earn an extra trip to the park, an ice cream treat, or maybe a new movie from amazon on demand.  Maybe I could slip in a cheap toy he's been eyeing or a book we've checked out multiple times from the library.

So.  Tomorrow I'm off to the store for several last minute items.  I'll need laminating stuff for the gold tickets and some poster paper for reward charts.  I still need a world map.  I'd also like to use some poster paper for "house rules" though I'd rather that be printed out on something nice.  I'm thinking that I may need to adjust as I go though so I'll settle for handwritten for now.

I'm also starting a trial of our schedule this week to see how it goes.  Wish me luck!