I can’t answer your question yet, as we haven’t gotten to this stage, but I will tell you a few things that the book is stating (to hopefully help answer what you are asking)

It appears that you can use these techniques up through adolescence, although the rewards will obviously change based on your child’s needs. They have things like earning gift certificates, staying up late, taking time off from chores, getting a special haircut, taking the car to school, and having sleepovers as some activities that you could do when they got older.

This is a quote from the book:

“A behavior developed through reinforced practice and many practice opportunities is often maintained. What typically happens, in my experience, is that we design the program and the parents carry it out, we tinker as needed to make sure it is working, and the program goes on for a few weeks. The behavior change occurs, becomes fairly stable, and proves satisfactory to all the parties, and the program tapers off. Once the positive opposite behavior has largely replaced the problem behavior, no one has much incentive to bring the program back, and there usually is no need to unless we see a relapse.”

Basically you are rewarding good behavior and teaching your child to do things the right way. What happens is that the new and good behavior becomes a routine and your child automatically does it. But children change so much and so does their behavior, so once you have resolved the current problem, you can apply the rewards to another behavior that you are hoping to see.

I also wanted to add one other part in the book (then I shall step down from my wild and crazy soap box)

“Technically, a “reward” is defined as something the child will like and value. A “reinforcer” is defined as a consequence that when given contingently (that means the child gets it if and only if he does the desired behavior) increases the likelihood of the child doing the behavior again in the future. There’s a large area of overlap between rewards and reinforcers, but not all rewards are reinforcers and not all reinforcers are rewards. The non overlapping portions can be critical. .. The point is that in some cases your child may not share your view of what constitutes an effective reward, reinforcer, or punishment. Or he may share your view , but even f you both agree that it’s a reward it still may not function as a reinforcer. If the program’s not working, you may want to consider such a possibility. And yes, in some rare cases you may have to conclude that you just can’t come up with consequence that have the desired effect on behavior.”

I would highly recommend reading the book- maybe one of these days we will have to do a book club on parenting books for discussion, since this has been such a great and lively one! I am throughly enjoying this and I appreciate everyone being so respectful while sharing their own opinions on these types of techniques. I am learning so much!

I really appreciate this discussion! I think a lot of if it works or not depends on each person’s individual situations and even their children’s personalities!

Keep your thoughts coming!

I think its wonderful that you all share what you are going through/went through.

Can’t thank you enough

There is question though of how they work. Are people doing things out of fear (either of punishment, or lack of getting what they want)? Are you teaching your child (or employee, or student, because these are the main methods used in these areas) it is only worth doing something if you get something?

Are you learning how to live by following your own conscious, because you want to do something, or because of some external reward?

There is a great book by Alphie Kohn called Punished By Rewards that gives one a lot to think about.

When you have grown up (and I’m including myself here) with behaviorism as a back drop, it can be really difficult to not let this theory influence how you parent. When I actually sat down and read Skinner’s ideas, I knew I definitely did not want to use his theories in my home. Going back to the source of things is very eye opening sometimes. I still struggle with using punishment and rewards when I’m stressed out and/or frustrated (which is a lot of the time), but more and more I find myself using other means of teaching and leading my children, and these other ways always end up working so much better in the long run.