Social Skills Training and Rewards: Five Tips to Tailor Your System to a Perfect Fit for Your Child

By Ellen Mossman- Glazer M.Ed. Life Skills Coach, Behavior Specialist.

If you want to improve how your kids respond to your behavior change program, you may need to fine-tune your reward system. Here are six key questions to guide you to create rewards to a tailor-made fit to your child's individuality.

1. Do your rewards have enough novelty to keep your child motivated? Even the most fun and unique rewards get old. Keep updated with rewards that propel your children and students to keep working towards a goal. Fine tune and freshen up rewards before their appeal fizzles out.

2. Are you overlooking praise as a natural and easy to deliver reward? Praise blossoms self-esteem. Praise is a compelling motivator. Kids love to hear their parents and teachers be proud of them. Praise the deed. "Good job on the clean-up. I don't see a speck of dirt!"

3. Are you rewarding for effort? Build success into your behavior program. Make sure your child can count on achievement. If a reward is getting an A, set it up so the child has opportunities to get the thrill of an A.

4. Are your rewards scheduled frequently enough? Remember the objective of a reward is to reinforce positive behavior. That means giving your child encouragement to keep doing the good thing. If the goal is a tougher for your child to achieve, set up your program to give little rewards or partial points along the way for effort or steps taken toward an end goal.

5. Are you keeping the focus on positive behaviors? Play down points not earned. You want your child to keep the thrill of earning in his mind and you do this by keeping the focus on building the points or accumulating the tokens. Allow your child to keep points once earned no matter how the scene may have deteriorated. At times he does not earn his points, that in itself is a penalty so you need do nothing more. Refocus on the positive.

6. Are you following through with your part? Parents, educators and caregivers are busy people and what sometimes is neglected, as a result, is their very vital role. A most common reason that a well-crafted behavior program does not work is because the adults get too busy and those essential and exciting check marks, parent initials or tokens don't get handed out. If it is impossible to be there consistently, let the tracking system be self-administering, where your child is on the honor system. You might be delighted by how he or she honors the agreement. It is okay to commit only to what you comfortably can do. And you will see, the time you give up now will pay off dramatically in the time and relief that will be your reward.

For more on rewards in your behavior change program, see companion articles:

Social Skills and Rewards: Five Tips for Tailoring your Behavior Change System to a Perfect Fit for your Child

Social Skills and Your Behavior Change Program: Troubleshooting When the Rewards Aren't Working

Ellen Mossman-Glazer M.Ed. is a Life Skills Coach and Behavior Specialist. She is the author of two on line e-zines, Emotion Matters: Tools and Tips for Parents, Educators and Caregivers and Social Skills: The Micro Steps. Subscribe for free and see more about Ellen at http://artofbehaviorchange.com/ You can take a free mini assessment which Ellen will reply to with your first action step. Over her 20 years in special education classrooms and treatment settings, Ellen has seen the struggle that children and adults have when they feel they don't fit in. Currently she works in private practice helping parents, educators, caregivers and their challenging loved ones find the tools to thrive.

Copyright Ellen Mossman-Glazer 2006. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share or reprint this article, providing it remains as written with all contact and copyright information included along with a link to http://artofbehaviorchange.com This content is coaching and education and not intended to take the place of psychological services, where advised and appropriate.