Incentivize your children to be good people

Hello everybody! Marcel here. I haven’t written in my blog for a while but parenting challenges in this post-COVID world drove me back here like a turbo-charged Uber from hell. Not since the 1800s, when the majority of Americans lived on farms, have we seen so much of our kids! Many of us went from spending comfortable days at the office with our kids at school, to suddenly working (remotely or otherwise) and home-schooling our kids. And its HARD. I was initially optimistic. But suddenly I started noticing that when it was time for work, my 9 year old son would pout, put forth minimal amounts of effort, frequently ask to play video games, blame his teachers (or classmates, or friends…etc) when things didn’t go according to plan sometimes respond in agitated, passive aggressive tones.

This was not the Sasha I was used to! So in a moment of inspir/despar-ation, I called some friends, and we brainstormed what could the cause and how to handle the situation. In the end we came up with three solid points to build on:

Armed with these three points, I decided to try something new with the home school situation with my son. I’m excited to share that something with you today!

Point#1: kids love positive reinforcement.

When I taught high school, my students knew that when they entered my classroom they were expected to immediately sit down, pull out a pencil, and copy the day’s objectives onto a sheet of paper. I would begin teaching each class period by publicly acknowledging students who followed those instructions. “I LOVE how Franky has his pencil out! I LOVE how Elizabeth is writing the objectives,” I would shout while weaving between students’ desks. It was totally cheesy, but it worked. By giving students positive reinforcement when they did the behaviors I expected of them, I noticed more and more students doing the behaviors auto-magically.

The key part here was clearly communicating expectations. Of course some students still resisted, but by that point I knew who was being defiant vs. who just needed some healthy encouragement. Which brings us to point #2:

Point#2: Kids don’t always know how parents expect them to behave.

As parents, most of us instinctively know when we see a child behaving in ways we don’t approve of. Sometimes, we are even good about calling out those negative behaviors. On our best days, we might even correct the child and teach them better behavior. But how many of us systematically call out our children for doing things we want them to do more of?

I remember doing this when Sasha was a toddler. But somewhere after he learned how to use his words to ask for things, that practice got lost in the sauce.

Here’s where COVID enters the story: In a pre-COVID era, parents could simply outsource that education to schools: our kids would quickly learn which behaviors were socially acceptable through classroom rules, teacher interventions or peers on the playground. Not so in this time of social distancing! That education has now fallen back on busy, overworked parents.

Point#3: kids love video games

It has been super hard to regulate the time that Sasha has been spending in front of screens since shelter-at-home started. As a divorced dad working full time, there are times when I need to be left alone to get shit done. And the easiest way to do that is to let the digital baby sitter take over. But with point#1 and point#2 in mind, I decided to implement a the ticket system to incentivize Sasha’s good behavior with prizes, including screen time.

The ticket system premise is this:

If I want to train Sasha to act in ways I approve of more frequently, I can incentivize his good behavior with verbal positive reinforcement and awarding prizes including game-time time.

Here’s how it works in my house:

After creating the values, we brainstormed potential actions ticket-earning actions which fell under each value. Sasha and I found it helpful to have these specific actions to start with.

2. Now, when I see Sasha acting in a way that demonstrates family value, I stop whatever I am doing and make a big deal out of it! Whoohoo, ticket time!

3. Sasha gets awarded a ticket. Or rather, Sasha usually gets awarded a ticket. This nuance is key. From the onset, I was crystal clear that Sasha could earn a ticket for acting out family values, but occasionally he would not get a ticket that particular time. That way the ticket decision process is 100% up to the adult. This avoids a tricky quid-pro-quo trap where the child could argue “but daddy, I did this so now you owe me a ticket.” (these kids get smarter every day). Nope. Nobody owes nobody nothin’. Keep doing good things, kid eventually and you will get tickets. But not by asking for em!

4. We store Sasha’s tickets in a ticket jar. I decided to write Sasha’s name on his in an effort to increase buy-in.

5. At Sasha’s leisure, he can can redeem those positive behavior tickets for prizes.

Up until now Sasha has only used his tickets to for screen time. Which led me to another realization. By controlling the flow of tickets Sasha earns daily, I can control his daily screen time. Muahahah! In other words, I make sure to spontaneously award Sasha tickets through the day, but at the same time I also keep close tabs on how many tickets I gave him that day. In our case, I usually keep the flow at 4–6 tickets/day, which roughly equals 60 minutes of game time/day. This is what works in our family, but the system can easily be tuned to accommodate any family’s needs.

That’s it! If you do end up trying out the ticket system, let me know what worked or didn’t in the comments below. Cheers!

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