Dr. Anthony Kane: Hi, I am Dr. Anthony Kane from the Complete Connection Parenting program with another parenting tip for you. Today we are going to discuss a big parenting mistake that many parents make particularly with their children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder or otherwise difficult defined children. And that mistake is giving rewards.
Now I am sure you have heard from many sources that the way you motivate a child is to give the child rewards. And in fact, it's 100% proven to work every time in laboratory animals, guinea pigs, rats and things like that.
But here is what breaks it down for you. First of all, your child is not a rat, and your child is not going to respond like a rat. And here is a warning, the three basic problems with giving rewards , the way it's commonly practiced.
First of all, that's not the way your child's world operates. For example, your child sometimes just has to listen to what he is being told to do. When your child walks into the classroom and teacher has 25 children, she cannot cut a private deal with every child to get in and to behave. That's not how a child's world operates, and that's not how your world operates either. For example, when was the last time the IRS ever sent you a thank you note for not cheating on your taxes. The world doesn't work that way.
Number two, the other problem is children are not rats, a rat will accept the tablet every time, but a child will understand that she is getting rewards for behavior and he is going to start holding out for more. So when your child is three years old, you maybe able to give your child a little trinket for he doesn't ride his tricycle on the street. When he is ten, you may have to give him a video game, if he doesn't wears a helmet when he is riding his bicycle. And are you going to give your 16-year-old, for not driving drunk, a new mustang?
It just escalates from there. Now onwards, your child understands that, he understands the process and he knows he can hog for more. And the third problem, and this is really a big problem with Oppositional Defiant Disorder children, is that sometimes you know just not every reward is big enough.
For example, the major issue with ODD children is they want to be in control at all times. They want to be the ones in charge. So when the child doesn't listen to you, it shows that he is in charge. Now that is something you just cannot buy.
There are some things you cannot buy-off. There are rewards that are big enough to take that away from the child. So what's going to happen is this. Let's take the case of James. Now, James is a 12 year old and James' mother, she has got an ODD child, smart child, and his mother wants James to take out the trash.
Now there can be times when James does not mind, he doesn't bother so much, so he thinks that I should go and to take out the trash. But other times are going to come up, when he is upset with his mother or is bothered by something and he wants to really assort himself and there is nothing his mother can do to get him take out the trash. Make sure so I get more and next time, just take two to get the trash out. That's the basic problem with giving rewards.
Now this is not to say that rewards can be a very powerful technique to motivate the child to listen even of a child is in opposition this buying disorder. But the way it's commonly practiced is not effective that way and we are going to discuss shortly in another video how you really can use rewards to affectively get your child to listen to you. This is Dr. Anthony Kane from the ccparenting program. If you want to get more tips like this, please go to our website, that's ccparenting.com and sign up for our free parenting newsletter.
