Positive Reinforcement - Parenting Tip #22

Positive Reinforcement – Parenting Tip #22

It is always advantageous if our kids’ obedience is a choice on their part:

4 year old Susie: “I don’t want to eat the rest of my sandwich.”

Mom: “OK. You can finish your sandwich or eat it later and go take you nap right now. Your choice.”

4 year old Susie: “But I wanted you to read to me before nap.”

Mom: “I want to read to you too. You decide. Sandwich or bed?”

4 year old Susie: “Yes, I want to finish my sandwich.”

We all make choices and we appreciate our lives so much more if the life we are living is by our choice. As parents, we can get submission by force or by their choice. It’s so much sweeter if our kids obey by choice. If we can encourage them to do so, the better.

Mom: “Get back in bed.”

6 year old Charlie: “I want a drink of water.”

Mom: “Go to sleep, you already had water.”

6 year old Charlie: “Mom, Johnny is snoooorrrring!”

Mom: “Be quiet or you will wake your brother!”

(Morning) 6 year old Charlie: “Mom, why does Johnny get to watch cartoons and I don’t?”

Mom: “Johnny is in the Super Sleeper club. He went to bed, stayed in bed and went to sleep last night like he was told. You didn’t.”

(Night) 6 year old Charlie: “Mom, I’m going to bed tonight and I will stay in bed and go to sleep so I can be in the Super Sleeper club.”

Get Creative.

Get to know your child. Consider their sleep schedule. Know how much sleep your child needs and keep a consistent bed time. Don’t use this to keep your kids in bed out of convenience. Use it to meet their needs, establish your authority, and teach them good habits of obedience.

Use Positive Reinforcement

To help you along, I’ve made a Super Sleeper Club poster for your fridge.

Click on the Super Sleeper poster below and I will send you a full resolution JPG that you can get printed and laminated. Use a wipe off marker to write your kids’ name on it when they are a super sleeper – when they choose to be obedient at bed time.

When Positive Reinforcement Doesn’t Work

Some parents whether by birth or adoption will have children who do not respond to positive reinforcement. There will be times you must allow consequences to teach them or use discipline to correct bad behaviors.

Difficulties ≠ Bad Parenting

I wish I could say I always got results with positive reinforcement. But the reality is all kids are different. Some have had past experiences that color their responses. Some have learning difficulties. Some are stubborn and difficult. There is a marked difference in children’s learning styles and abilities. Do your best to learn them and go from there.

God only expects us to be faithful – to do our best. He alone can change their hearts. It’s our job to present situations to our kids to help them choose correctly. Click here to download the FREE poster.

If you are interested in our group of M.O.M.s, join the Mom of Many mailing list. You will receive information on parenting and free stuff like word art and giveaways. You will also be invited to our exclusive M.O.M.s Facebook group where we chat every day about mom stuff.

This month’s giveaway is two pair of earrings – one for you and one to give as a Christmas gift. To enter your name in the drawing, watch your inbox (if you have joined our M.O.M. group).

Progress through Perseverance

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or whether the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; Who, at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; And who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. It is far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight of life, knowing neither victory nor defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The Reformed Pastor – Richard Baxter

“We must carry on our work with patience. We must bear with many abuses and injuries from those to whom we seek to do good. When we have studied for them, and prayed for them, and exhorted them, and beseeched them with all earnestness and condescension, and given them what we are able, and tended them as if they had been our children, we must look that many of them will requite us with scorn and hatred and contempt, and account us their enemies, because we ‘tell them the truth.’ Now, we must endure all this patiently, and we must unweariedly hold on in doing good, ‘in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.’ We have to deal with distracted men who will fly in the face of their physician, but we must not, therefore, neglect their cure. He is unworthy to be a physician, who will be driven away from a frenetic patient by foul words. Yet, alas, when sinners reproach and slander us for our love, and are more ready to spit in our faces, than to thank us for our advice, what heart-risings will there be, and how will the remnants of old Adam (pride and passion) struggle against the meekness and patience of the new man! And how sadly do many ministers come off under such trials!”

4 replies on “Positive Reinforcement – Parenting Tip #22”

If it is June and you’re employed in audiovisual system design, installation and
help, then you either attend the annual InfoComm present,
otherwise you observe the news popping out of the show and
want that you had been there.

I think I will get one of these, put it on my fridge with your name on it, Val!

Ha! You could try but would you remember to write in it?

Probably not.

Related posts:

4 replies on “Positive Reinforcement – Parenting Tip #22”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply