Browsing Tag: positive reinforcement

When one of my children was 3 years old she struggled with having her socks just the right way on her feet.  Not only did she want to wear a certain kind of socks (just the right thickness and feel), the line across her toes had to be perfectly straight and if it wasn’t for some reason she couldn’t cope and she would have a major melt down. When we got the line straight it had to stay straight while going into her shoe and had to be straight across her foot while in her shoe.  If the sock pulled in any way she would rip the shoe off, scream and straighten the sock. Sometimes she would take the shoe off just to see if the sock line was still straight.  It was a major ordeal every time I helped her get dressed.  I might have handled it better but every time we did errands she would take her shoes off in the car and before we went into a store we would have to go through this ordeal again, and again before the next store.  I couldn’t convince her to keep her shoes on no matter what I tried and I dreaded having to do errands with her, especially because I had other things to do and other children to help.  This same daughter also had to have her blanket on her bed perfectly straight while she slept. When she woke up during the night if the blanket was not straight and smooth she would very loudly scream and since we lived in a duplex, letting her scream several times a night, every night was not an option.  I was exhausted from the constant battle between shoes and blankets and didn’t know what to do about it.  Comforting her, yelling at her, scolding her and anything else I could think of in my very tired brain during the many trips to her room each night was not effective. She still woke up screaming if her blanket was not perfectly straight.  One day, after many months of this, I switched from mom brain to therapist brain, and in thinking about it I realized that for some reason she needed her world to be orderly to cope with her life.  So I gave her a new coping mechanism.  I told her that when she woke up in the middle of the night that if her blanket was not straight to tell herself “it’s okay, mommy will straighten it for me in the morning.” I also remembered that positive reinforcement worked better than negative reinforcement, so we made a star chart together and I told her that if she slept through the night without waking up and screaming about her blanket she could put a star on her chart in the morning. The night came and went and no screaming! I went into her room in the morning to check on her and the first thing she told me was she had awakened during the night, saw her blanket messed up and told herself that it was okay and that I would straighten it in the morning, which I gladly did and then she very proudly put a star on her chart. She soon learned to straighten the blanket by herself and thankfully she eventually outgrew the sock and blanket behaviors.  I learned that life can be hard for children too and giving them the skills they need to successfully cope is important. I also learned to look beyond the behavior to understand the cause better and to think of solutions and not about my anger or ineptness as a parent.

https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/mental-health-matters/social-and-emotional-learning/emotional-development/coping-skills-managing

https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/families/starting-school/5-coping-skills-children