In this video I will introduce a new technique to change child behavior. The technique is referred to as developing positive opposites. The technique to turns out to be an effective way to get rid of behaviors you do not want. Does your child engage in any behaviors you would like to get rid of? So for example, maybe she does not take no for an answer without a massive tantrum. Or maybe your son teases or argues too much with a sibling or peer. Or maybe he acts out at a supermarket and really embarrasses you. Developing positive opposites is an effective way to get rid of these and many other behaviors. For all these videos in the series, if you are able to get the behaviors you want without special techniques or tools we are describing that is fine, wonderful. We are discussing techniques to help you and give you options that have been well-studied in research for those times in which the usual parenting practices may not be working. And this particular tool today will be of interest, but a little spoiler or a warning, you may be very skeptical about this technique because it is counterintuitive. You'll be skeptical because in getting a child to stop doing something our first natural inclination is to punish it. This technique is the effective alternative to punishment. The technique has a lot of research behind it so we know about its effects. I've actually used it many, many times, a few thousand actually with children over the years. Something really interesting about us as humans is related to the technique we are discussing. Our brains naturally focus on things we do not like in another person. The reason is that our brains are hard wired to pick out things in the environment that are negative, bothersome, or annoying. This is called negativity bias and is considered to be adaptive in evolution. We naturally turn to things that might be bothersome or harmful, something in the environment that might be dangerous or at least deserves our attention and this bias carries over to our interactions in our daily life and to child-rearing. So if two children are playing nicely but start to argue, we're likely to jump in and pay attention to the arguing. We'll probably just ignore them when they are playing nicely and that negativity bias is related to today's technique. We have to go against our bias and our first impulse to run in and punish. Developing positive opposites is not a punishment technique but still a good way to get rid of behaviors. In any case the first part of the technique is identify some behavior you want to reduce or eliminate in your child. This is the easy part and it comes naturally to us. The second part is identify what you'd like the child to do instead of that behavior. It is called the positive opposite usually because it's the exact opposite of what you want to get rid of. So you want to get rid of your children fighting over a TV show. What's the positive opposite. Sitting and watching TV together nicely. So you want to get rid of your child throwing his clothes all over the floor in his bedroom. What's the positive opposite. Placing them in his dresser or in the closet where you'd like them. So you want to get rid of your child getting out of bed again and again for a drink of water and ice and now to the bathroom, and another not a drink or water. What's the positive opposite? Going to bed, maybe getting up no more than once and staying in bed once you go back to your room. You want to get rid of your child arguing and shouting at you whenever you say no to something. What's the positive opposite? Expressing anger calmly and doing what you asked. You get the picture. You know what you don't want the child to do, but what behavior exactly do you want him to do instead? Step two is identify saying exactly what that behavior is. Sometimes it's the exact opposite and sometimes it's just a more appropriate behavior that you want in his place. Third ingredient, the third part is praising the child when you catch her doing the positive behavior. In a separate video, I talked about how to provide special praise that's effective in changing behavior. That's the praise we want here. We want to emphasize in this technique of developing the positive opposite. The slogan is catch the child being good. But remember our brains are wired to catch something wrong so catching the child being good, and then acting on that is not so easy. Of course it's not being good, it's about the child doing specific behavior. So this third part is praising the positive opposite. Brief summary. Three components: What behavior that you don't want the child to do? Second component, what's the opposite behavior you want there instead? Third component, praise the positive opposite whenever you see it. Now developing the positive opposite puts the emphasis on replacing or building the behavior and now will lead to a decrease in the behavior you want. Now as you do this, you may still have to punish behavior once in a while, I will come back to that in a moment. But here are some common examples about how to use positive opposites. So your children are not always fighting with each other. Try to go to them and say, "You two are playing so nicely. That's wonderful to see you get along so well," and then maybe touch or hug them. Do that a few times a week and that will really reduce the amount of times that they fight when they're watching TV and at other times. So you say your child never goes to bed on time, well he may go to bed close to the time you want and when he does say, "It's so nice the way you went into your room and got ready for bed right away." Those things will decrease the problems. There are some questions that this procedure may raise in your mind. If my child does not do something I want, why don't I just tell him what he should do and punish him if he doesn't do it? Well this is the part I mentioned that is probably counter-intuitive. Telling children, or one spouse, or partner what to do and then reprimand or punishing does not work very well. As a matter of fact it usually doesn't work at all. An assumption is that if we just punish behavior the good behavior will come through. But it doesn't work like that. Research shows that it is actually false. So for example, if you punish a person for being nasty or dishonest that does not teach you how to be kind or honest. And if you punish your child for talking back that does not teach the child how to speak nicely to you. So punishing some behavior, you will just stops the behavior for the moment, but it doesn't really teach the skills that we want the child to have. Developing positive opposites can really lead to permanent change and decrease or eliminate the need to reprimand. Another question that comes up so what do I do when the child still does the behavior I'm trying to get rid of? I have to do something. Yes, the positive opposite procedure is not going to work tomorrow. It takes a little while. So use mild or brief punishment. No shouting. No hitting. These can lead to other problems or brief timeout, maybe take a privilege away for the evening or for 24 hours but give emphasis to your praise for the positive opposite. The more you do that the faster the behavior change. Another question. How long do you have to do this? Well it's hard to answer because children are all different, parents are all different, and how often you do this will make a big difference. As a general rule a couple or three weeks should be enough. You develop this behavior and the negative behavior drops out. So let me summarize by telling you again what the procedure is. Developing positive opposites definitely try this at home. It's a difficult tool to use because it doesn't come naturally. A curse of all parenting that haunts all of us is the following maladaptive thought, "My child knows what to do but he just doesn't do it." Well this frustration actually applies to children, adolescents, and adults. It is quite common for people to know something well, but not to do it. For example, we know from our own behavior and from research that knowing and doing are not connected very well. For example, we know we should exercise more, we should be eating lots of broccoli, we should be following a Mediterranean diet, we just stay away from fast foods, we should follow through with all those new year's resolutions. More often than not we do not follow through. And in psychology the technical term for that is called normal. So telling ourselves or telling someone else does not develop habits or consistent behavior, developing positive opposites is a way to build behavior so the child actually learns what to do, does it consistently and has this as a habit. These videos cover many tools and one of them is useful as a way of making permanent changes, but they usually have to be used together. Developing positive opposite is one really good tool and it will reduce your frustration. You can now develop a behavior without reprimanding and screaming at the child.
