There can be various reasons as to why a child will exhibit “oppositional” behavior.  While some children exhibit willful behavior simply because they do not wish to engage in the task, other children struggle to manage internal barriers.  Internal barriers may include  low frustration tolerance, difficulty managing transitions, and low language skills/inability to express their resistance.  Children with these types of internal barriers face increased difficulty as they contradict the misconception of children intrinsically seeking adult approval. While some children are internally motivated to complete tasks requested by adults, not all children respond in this manner.

When a child does not appear to be intrinsically motivated by adult approval, adults usually rely on consequences/punishment as a method of externally motivating a child.  Resorting to punishment to gain compliance is a natural response that has been endorsed by society.  There are few things more embarrassing than being in a public place with a willful child who is throwing a tantrum.  The embarrassment increases as onlookers remark about the adult’s lack of control of the child.

To gain compliance, adults become more focused on making the child follow directions.  They do not take the time to listen and understand if there is a reason for their resistance.  Granted, there are lessons that even children with internal struggles must learn to function within society.  These lessons include:

• You will not always get your way. Life is nothing if not getting up every day to do things we do not want to do.
• You must learn how to self-regulate in the face of adversity. Having a tantrum is not prosocial method to handle conflict.
• You need to be able to communicate your frustration. Other people cannot read your mind, thus you need to be able to explain how you feel and why.

However, using punishment as a method to gain compliance often has the opposite effect.  Consequences reinforce to not engage in undesirable behavior, but do not teach more acceptable alternatives. Punishment does not teach a child how to self-regulate or how to communicate.  It reinforces that the adult’s way is the right way and the adult is not interested in the child’s feelings and does not want to hear about them. This is particularly damaging for children that need to have a relationship with an adult before they will respond to the adult’s request.

How do I know if it is a problem?

While temper tantrums and general defiance are common in children between the ages of 2 to 3.  Children around the age of 4, generally, have less tantrums and are able to exhibit some self-regulation strategies.  However, tantrums are developmentally appropriate past the age 4, usually ceasing around the age of 8.  Excessive tantrums/defiance occurring almost daily especially without any perceivable trigger, may be an indication a child struggles with an internal barrier.

Another way to identify a child with internal barriers is to look to the adults in their lives. Adults who regularly engage with particularly willful children are usually exhausted.  They report having tried various tactics with few results.  In many cases, the adults feel as if they are at the end of their rope.

Can anything help?

Good Choice Dollars intervention allows a child to earn pretend play money by exhibiting “good choices”.  Once earned, the Good Choice Dollars are put into a Good Choice Bank which the child can use to purchase preferred activities/items.  Good Choice Dollars can be earned for a variety of good choices which can range from “completing a task the first time it is requested” to “spontaneously initiated nice behavior towards others” as it is the adult’s discretion to determine the behavior and the level of reinforcement.  It provides an opportunity to motivate a child to complete an adult requested task that is reinforced with a reinforcement of a child’s choosing.  Before I go further, I would like to discuss the importance of “paying a child to do what they are already supposed to be doing”. The most common resistance to this intervention is the concept that children should not be paid to do what they should already be doing.  The problem with this concept is two-fold:

• They are already not doing what you want them to do. If you have tried everything and it is not working, why not give this intervention a chance.
• Adults get paid to do things they do not want to do all the time. For example, few adults would continue to show up to their jobs if they were not receiving a pay check.

The purpose of this activity is to increase the child’s intrinsic motivation to complete an adult requested task.  Once intrinsic motivation is established, extrinsic motivators can be modified. For younger children, create a list of activities/items that the child likes.  Set up a dollar to activity ratio.  For example, two good choice dollars equates to 10 minutes of tablet time. It is important to have the reward chart posted so the child is aware of how many good choices it takes to earn a desired activity.  This increases structure which is extremely important for children with internal struggles as knowing what is coming and what to expect reduces some degree of internal struggles.

It is also helpful to pre-correct the child to let them know what they are working towards in advance.  For example, “John, you will earn 2 Good Choice Dollars if you can sit in the cart quietly while I check out at the pharmacy”.  This way John knows what the expected behavior is and what he will receive if he exhibits the expected behavior.  In the beginning, if John is able to exhibit the expected behavior for half of the allotted time; he would earn 1 Good Choice Dollar with a discussion about why he only earned 1 Good Choice Dollar and what he would need to do next time to earn 2 Good Choice Dollars.  As time progresses and John understands the expected behavior, he would earn no Good Choice Dollars if he is unable to sit quietly during the allotted time.

For children who are older, it may be more helpful to work with them to create a list of what they can earn for dollars.  Increased child involvement, will increase buy-in from the child and make them more willing to engage in the activity.

Contact me for more information about the details of this activity.

The Results

This intervention has been extremely successful in families where parents have different parenting styles. Parents can determine behaviors that are most important to them, and reinforce at the level they believe to be appropriate.  This intervention is also beneficial in changing the dialogue around the child’s behavior.  It reinforces positive choices the child made instead of focusing on inappropriate choices which contributes to increased self-esteem in the child.

Children with internal struggles often receive a lot of negative feedback about their behavior without an understanding of how to improve.  Children quickly begin to internalize these critiques on their behavior and begin to believe they are a bad person.  By using the language “good choice” and “not-good choice”, it focuses the attention on the action and not the person who committed the action.  In younger children, it is important to stress to them that everyone makes “not-good choices” and “not-good choices” help us learn how to make “good choices”.

Lastly, removal of earned Good Choice Dollars for inappropriate behavior undermines the intent behind the intervention.  The purpose of Good Choice Dollars is to teach the child and reinforce prosocial choices.  Using the pharmacy example above, if John were unable to sit quietly in the pharmacy; he would not earn any Good Choice Dollars but none of the previous dollars he earned would be taken away.  In this intervention, not earning the reinforcement is the punishment.  This intervention is best when used to reinforce prosocial behaviors, behaviors that are intentional and extreme should be reprimanded accordingly.

What is it?

Many people believe that social skills are innate and those who do not exhibit prosocial skills are “wired differently”.  However, social skills are learned within the environment.  Small children watch the social behavior of others and mimic their behavior.  They gain an understanding of what is considered acceptable and not acceptable behavior by how other’s behavior is reinforced. This understanding is either cemented or destroyed by how society responds to the behavior they are mimicking.

In an ideal world, we would positively reinforce the prosocial behavior and “punish” inappropriate behavior.  Unfortunately, circumstances are rarely ideal and there are instances when inappropriate behavior has been rewarded.  While some inappropriate behaviors are minor, major inappropriate behavior can result in peer and societal rejection.  Remember that if prosocial behavior allows us to blend into the crowd, then inappropriate behavior causes one to be easily identified in the crowd.  Sustained inappropriate behavior can bring unwanted and unkind attention from peers and adults.

This is not to say that one must deny core aspects of their personality to fit into some larger societal norm.  Rather, socially acceptable behavior is more of a range than simply right and wrong.  They key to understanding if behavior is appropriate or inappropriate is based on the context of that moment.  What is acceptable behavior in one area, may not be acceptable in another.  For example, it is acceptable to wildly scream and cheer at a sporting event.  It is not acceptable to wildly scream and cheer during a math test.

How do I know when it is a problem?

There are some children who are better at discerning whether their behavior is appropriate for the setting and others who find it quite difficult.  For the children who find it difficult, they tend to struggle socially without a clear understanding as to what went wrong.  Children with these struggles are usually children who have a desire to be social and socially interact, but are often rejected by peers quickly during their interactions.  The child is unable to make the connection between their behavior and the impact it is having on their peers. Their inability to understand how their behavior may be negatively impacting peers, sustains a cycle of negative peer interactions.

What can I do about it?

Fortunately, there are specific interventions that can be used to improve a child’s social awareness.  Early this school year, I was asked by a first grade teacher to do a classroom wide activity to address what the teacher believed was social miscommunication between her students.  The teacher reported the class appeared to desire interaction with each other but appeared to have inappropriate ways of gaining and sustaining peer attention.

Addressing the problem as the teacher understood it, the intervention needed to focus on improving age appropriate social interactions.  At 6 to 7 years old, friendship consists primarily of who do I want to play with at recess.  Understanding the level of social play in which children at this age engage, the intervention did not need to focus on building long lasting friendships between students.  Rather, the intervention needed to focus on helping students better understand that their actions were negatively impacting their peers; and now, as a result of said negative interactions, their peers do not want to play with them.

While I could have gone into the class to do a lesson about what it means to be a good friend, I did not think it would have a long term impact.  However, teaching the class how to better attune to the feelings and the responses of their peers, would be a strategy they could use in various settings.

The Activity.

As my intentional intervention, I decided to pin each student as Social Detective.  I provided them 3 cases they would need to solve and explained to them how we would gather the clues we needed to solve the mysteries.  I used The Meanest Girl in Second Grade video to have them use their eyes to see the expression on the person’s face; use their ears to hear to the words the person said; and use their brains to figure out how the person felt and why.

I will spare you the nitty gritty of how I broke down the video to demonstrate the lesson, but take a little more time to focus on why I put so much effort into explaining this concept to 6 and 7 year olds.  People often assume that children cannot understand complex concepts; because, when an adult explains the complex concept to the child, the child does not seem to understand.  In reality, it is not, usually, the complexity of the concept with which the child struggles, but merely the complexity of the language used.  Speech is not an indication of intelligence; but, rather, the ability to convey the intelligence within.  When communicating with young children, it is important to break down concepts into terms they can understand.  Additionally, it is important to use a familiar medium and to add hands on activities to address the various learning styles of each child.

Feel free to contact me if you would like more information regarding this activity.

The Results

At the end of the 45 minute lesson, the kids were able to understand and put together how the 3 different characters felt and why. Additionally, we discussed what to do if you do something unkind and make your peer upset. Unfortunately, at the end of the lesson, a classmate did something unkind to his peer which made his peer sad.  Fortunately, the class was able to identify that the peer was sad and why he was sad.  They were even able to suggest to their peer that he should apologize.  In later conversations with the teacher, she reported improved social awareness and communication amongst many of her students.