We have discussed many different techniques, or tools that can be used to help develop behaviors and habits in your child. The techniques are really helpful in addressing the challenges of parenting. Some of the techniques you may have used before or recently have tried them after watching the videos. You may have found that the techniques do not work with your child. Some parents have come to me and have said, I have tried reward programs, and they do not work. Or they also say, I've tried time-out with my child, and it has no effect. Well, there are two points to make in response to these comments. First, it is possible that a given technique would not work with any particular child. We know this from medicine, psychology, education and rehabilitation that effective interventions do not work for everyone. Chemotherapy for cancer, antibiotics for strep throat, Aspirin for headaches, plastic surgery and so forth, all of those one can say are effective treatments, or programs but they do not work for everyone. Secondly, it is usually premature to conclude that the techniques are not working or would not work in the case we're talking about. In my experience, the techniques we are discussing in these videos are not usually done correctly. For example, when someone says, a reward program did not work. My view would be, it should not work. This is not about reward program. Rewards, especially praise, is one tool, and to try to build something with one tool, would not be expected to accomplish very much. Similarly, when someone says to me, I used time-out and it did not work with my child. I believe them, but I wonder how time-out was being done. If you looked at the video on time-out, you will note that the effectiveness of time-out depends on that less familiar procedure time-in. So when time-out has failed, perhaps it would not be expected to unless there's time-in or reinforcing the positive opposite. More often than not, as these quick examples convey, the techniques are not being used in a way that would make them work. Well, the reasons I've mentioned about why programs fail maybe interesting, but it's not exactly helpful to you right now, if you're seeking help to solve a challenge with your child. We could be much more helpful than that. So let me begin by the following situation. You have tried one or more of the tools we have discussed in other videos, and you did not get the results you want. In this video, I will be discussing troubleshooting. By troubleshooting, I mean we are going to begin with some technique not working and outline ways to fix that. The task is to figure out why the technique did not work and more importantly to make it so the techniques do work. And that you get the changes that you want. You are very familiar with troubleshooting. Most equipment, gadgets, appliances, all the things that we buy now, come with a problem solving or troubleshooting section in their manuals. We consult these sections for common problems and frequently asked questions. Usually, the problem with our equipment can be resolved by following those directions. There is no parenting manual that comes with our children. And child rearing is much more complex and demanding than getting some quick answer to get your printer or your scanner to work. There are two videos on troubleshooting. This one is the first, and I will talk about basic troubleshooting techniques. In the vast majority of instances, if you address the points in this video, the program with your child will be much more effective and you'll get to behave as you want. The second video focuses on advanced troubleshooting techniques. In that video, some more complex techniques are suggested that can improve an ailing program. And those techniques also offer new tools that might be useful for troubleshooting, but in other situations as well. So how can you tell when you need to troubleshoot? Well, here are five signs, and one of these indicates the need for troubleshooting. First, you are not seeing the change in behavior that you are working on. Second, change is occurring but is too slow or too small, for example, it is hard to see much progress after a week. Or the number of tantrums has decreased, but the ones that occur are still nuclear. A third way, change is occurring, but it's not lasting. You stop the program and everything went back to where it was as if you hadn't done the program at all. Fourth, change occurred but only where the praise or the points were given for the behavior. The problem still occurred outside of this context, maybe outside the home, maybe at school. And a final way is that perhaps the behavior that you're working on has actually gotten worse. This is very rare, and we have not seen that except under circumstances when there's this huge stressor or event in the home, such as divorce or separation, or in one case, a parental suicide. Well, there are two common problems and quick fixes before we get into more detail on troubleshooting. Let me talk about these. First, some parents indiscriminately provide rewards for all sort of behaviors. I have heard parents get into the routine of saying, if you do this you'll get a prize. If you go upstairs and get my slippers, I'll give you that. And they're kind of shooting from the hip all day on rewards for these one shot behaviors. This improvise scheme will not work in developing behaviors, and it violates all the uses of the tools we've been discussing. Remember, we want to establish consistency in how you respond to specific behaviors you wish to change. Second, the common problem is that parents are giving too many reminders. In a separate video on antecedents, I discussed using clear and specific prompts and these are statements that get the behavior you wish. An example would be, when a parent says, please go pick up four toys from the floor in your room and put them in the toy box. Prompts initiate a behavior, and the prompted behavior must then be reinforced, usually with praise. So after the child does that, you say, great! You picked up the toys right when I asked, that was wonderful! Now, repeated prompts will not get the behavior, and actually make the behavior less likely. As a rough guide, if you give verbal statements twice, let's call that reminding. But if you say the statement, let's say three or four times, let us call that nagging. Now, nagging is not an effective strategy at all. And actually decreases the likelihood of getting the behavior. If the child does not do what you ask, request less of the behavior, and then go help the child carry that out, at least in the beginning. When you get a little portion of the behavior, praise that. Gradually, you could increase the amount of the behavior you get and all without nagging. I mentioned that reward programs do not work well by themselves. That is just getting consequences. Similarly, prompting programs do not work by themselves. That's just getting antecedents, like constant reminders. Antecedents and consequences need to be put together to get the long lasting changes you wish. In short, for the two situations I've mentioned, check to make sure that you are not throwing around rewards and throwing around reminders with the hope of changing behavior. It doesn't really work. Okay, you have determined that you're not throwing rewards around and you're not nagging your child. And are there other things you can do to get the results you want So let us go to our basic checklist for troubleshooting. Again, in the vast majority of instances, a change in one of these will dramatically alter the effectiveness of the program to change your child. So for troubleshooting, check these things. First, check your prompts and positive setting events. These are the antecedents. I mentioned our programs have three components, antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. The first troubleshooting tip is about the antecedents. Are you providing prompts right before you want the behavior to occur? The prompts can include verbal statements or notes, messages, gestures, physical guidance or actually helping the child to do part of the task. Reminders or prompts that are distant from the behavior in time are less effective. Especially at first, say please clean up your room, and say that right before you want that behavior to happen. Later when the behavior is well developed, you can say please clean up your room later today or when you get home from school, and so on. That close proximity isn't important later on. But in the beginning, prompts are to occur in very, very close proximity to the behavior. And verbal prompts can be helped by doing a physical prompt, actually doing something to help the child with the task. Remember that prompts alone will not establish behavior as an enduring habit, but check to see whether they are being used well, and maybe that more than one type of prompt is being used. So you could model the behavior, you could physically guide the child, or you could help the child do the task itself. Another check on your antecedents is whether you are using positive setting events. Remember, these are indirect antecedents to help start the behavior. Examples include tone of voice and facial expression when you give instructions, these can really help to get behavior. For example, if you say something pleasantly like please pick up your toys, the chance of getting the behavior are greatly increased because of the way you said it. Other antecedents, modeling the behavior, giving choices, we talked about that, and giving playful challenges. I'll bet you can't pick up five toys in your room right now. These were covered in the video on antecedent events and can really get the behavior you want going. Parents often use prompts, the instructions, but they do not take advantage of the power of positive setting events in getting behaviors. A second basic troubleshooting technique is to demand less behavior. The most common culprit leading to program failure is a parent expecting too much behavior. That is, the parent sets the bar very high and failure rather than success is common. Lower the bar for what gets praised. Shaping will be easier and more effective. For example, you might say to the child to do all of your homework, or to clean up all of your room or behave well all of the day. It's unrealistic expectation, because it's too much to demand particularly at the beginning of a program. Pretty good behaviors will dropout if you're not praising them, and at the beginning we want pretty good behaviors. We don't want great. Shaping is the troubleshooting strategy here. Provide praise, reinforcement for small steps along the way. If the child is not performing to behavior, break it down and provide praise for even the smaller part of his behavior. You'll get to where you want to go, but start small. There are two common myths that completely misguide us as parents. One of them is we say, the child knows how to do it, and we raise the bar high because of that. And the second one is the child has actually done this before. So I know he not only knows how to do it, he's actually done it. Both of these are huge problems and make programs fail. First, knowing does not mean the child will be doing this or doing the behavior regularly. Knowing and doing are not very connected at all in humans. Also, having then at once does not mean the child can or would do the behavior again or reliably. Doing something once or twice is not an ingrained habit. For example, almost anyone can make that one basketball shot from half court and win the million dollar prize at halftime. But only someone with repeated training and the habit could do that with any degree of consistency. The third basic troubleshooting technique is to check how the consequences, especially praise, are delivered. Are you sure that you are praising the behavior every time or almost every time it occurs? In the beginning, are you using that very special praise and praising a high proportion of the time. This has been well studied. So, praising desired behavior every time is much better than once in a while. And in real life, praising behavior 100% of the time is not possible. But when programs are not working, I often find it's because parents are close to 25% of the time or even less. Another part of checking the consequences is check the immediacy of it. The behavior occurs, praise has to be right afterward, especially when the behavior is first developing. If you can not be there, try to find other ways to make your praise immediate. Have the child phone you after she's done her homework, or fed the pet, or prepares part of the meal. Immediate praise by phone, even without the chance to add a touch or a smile, is much better than delayed praise in person. Your normal routine praise is fine for everyday life, but to change behavior we need that very special praise. Effusive, you might say, is not like me. I'm just not like that as a person. It doesn't have to be you as a person. Just try to take your enthusiasm up a notch and be sure to add a little hug for younger children or a high-five in the air for older children. Way to go. A big gesture, something like that, will go very far in making your praise much more effective. Remember, the tools and techniques of these videos are quite temporary, but they lead to rather permanent change. So another basic troubleshooting technique, it applies if you're using a point program. These are points or token programs we've talked about. In a point program, points are given to children and the children buy the prizes or privileges with them. The act of spending the points has two important effects. It keeps the child earning the points and engaging the behaviors you want and it keeps the system working overall so the child can engage in these behaviors repeatedly. Spending the points is a very important part of this, so the child has to earn them and spend them and so you have to make sure that's kind of working. Now once in a while a child's doing very well and just saving the points. The points are valuable and that's all the child's doing is saving them, that's fine too. So you only need the spending if the child is not engaged in the behavior. So, the first question to ask in a point program is, is the child earning enough points, but unable or unwilling to spend them? It's true that some children just want to save and as I said, that is quite fine but generally, we want the system working as a whole and so check the reward and spending. If the child is not spending you might look at the back up rewards. What is the child able to earn? Sometimes there's a link between earning the points and buying them but there's not anything to buy. Perhaps you've made the child save up too many points and there's nothing available or perhaps the points are failing Because there's just nothing that's very tempting. Maybe you can add some backup rewards and some things that the child will actually buy. So be sure there's something that can be bought with just a few points, and that you do not have to accumulate points for a long time, like for the weekend. A final basic troubleshooting technique relates to whether there are two or more adults in the home. If there are two parents or other adults in the home, work together to be sure that you are administering the program similarly. All adults will not be consistent in providing praise. And in some case, only one parent is involved, even when there are two parents in the home. These inconsistencies are not usually much of a problem. But if the program is not working, it is important to check. At the beginning when you start using one of the techniques, it is fine and sometimes even better to have just one parent administer the program so the program is administered very well, or very well for just part of the day. That is better than having inconsistencies across people and across time periods. The initial task is to get behavior changed under some circumstances. And in the mornings, that might be enough. With just a mother or father, that would be fine. Once you develop behavior change under even very narrow circumstances, that's the hard part. It is easy to extend the program to other people, settings, and times of the day. So let me summarize some of the basic troubleshooting techniques. Perhaps the main point is this, check on the program that is not working, and you will find that there are some things that you can do to correct that. In my experience, most of the time checking what I have mentioned here in the basics and slightly adjusting your approach can lead to positive changes. Actually, really large changes. So there are some common questions and concerns in talking about troubleshooting techniques. The first is, what if I suspend the program, if I stop it for a while? My child may go to camp I may have to go away for a few days. Or we go on vacation and are away. What effect does that have? Well, it is fine to temporarily suspend the program if you cannot do it well. Doing the program partially and well is better than keeping it going and doing it poorly. If you have to take a week off, take a week off and then get back to it. If you can only do it properly on weekdays, take weekends off. It would be better to do it exactly right all of the time. But the program will still show useful results if you cannot do it and just do it most of the time, as long as you can do it pretty well on those occasions in which you do it. For vacations, parents often develop a small point program for a few behaviors. For example, during the car ride and other places where they might have some problem behaviors. And you should feel free to do that. And remember, you have the most potent behavior change tool with you at all times, namely that special praise for the behaviors you want to develop. A second question, what if I'm divorced or separated, and there's joint custody? My child may have the program just in my home. Is there any point to that? Yes. If you can carry out the behavior change program in only one of the two places where the child stays, that can still make a huge difference. Of course, if the child is at one place more than the other, that would be the better place to have the program. In many instances we've had parents keep some of the program going in each home after a separation or divorce. But the relief is, that's not necessary. We can have success in your home. And once we have success in your home, we can get that to transfer to the rest of the world. A third question is about consistency. The techniques call for consistency on my part as a parent. And am I undermining the program if I relapse and yell at my child, or even hit the child? Have I undermined all of the progress? No, if you go off the program, and stop praising the behaviors you were trying to develop, that is not a catastrophe. It's very much like going off your diet and eating a whole cheesecake, or breaking your vow not to smoke. What do you do now? You get back on your diet soon as you can, and you get back to not smoking as soon as you can. And here we are, get back on track with your child and the behavior change toolkit if you feel you've departed from the techniques. We are humans first, and the program can fail if we raise the bar too high for the child. I talked about that. Also, we do not want the bar to be too high for you. Implement the techniques as I described them to get the changes you want. If you go off and miss a day or so because of your own situation and circumstances, that's called being human. These videos are intended for humans, I'm not sure if I made that clear from the beginning. But they are, so keep the bar realistic. Well, let me close by making a few points. First, if programs are not achieving the effects you wish, there are all sorts of options that can readily change that. Two, I have seen programs turn around completely and very quickly, once the changes are made. Mediocre and infrequent praise will not change behavior very well. And it's easy for a parent to say praise does not work, or at least it doesn't work in my home with my child. This is not likely to be true, or at least it's premature to say that. Actually, we have turned around that situation a few hundred times by working with parents, as well as teachers, to administer the special praises I have noted in the video on praise. Parents often focus on what tool or technique is used to change child behavior. Yet the main lesson from these videos is in the how, how the technique is used. Most of the time when a program is not working well, we check on some aspect of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences, and find something is not being done the optimal way. Think of another tool that's very familiar, think of a hammer, a real tool. And think of it now as if you're holding the hammer from the wrong end. And now you say to someone, this hammer does not work very well. I still can't get the nail into the wood. Turn the handle around. In a parallel fashion, the tools we've been discussing have to be used in a special way. If a behavior change program for your child is not working well, the first thing to do is focus on tools we have discussed. And most importantly, how you are applying them. This lesson covers the basics of troubleshooting. I discuss more advanced techniques in another lesson. And those advanced techniques include new tools. as well. that could be used for troubleshooting. But also can be used separately. Please look at the second lesson on troubleshooting for information and techniques I think you will find very helpful.
