7 START BEHAVIOR TACTICS
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not spur-of-the-moment, and your phrasing was not wishy-washy, your child still does not comply with what you ask him to do? After reading this chapter, you now realize that you have several options. For example, after your son returned home from school, you told him: “Be sure you change your clothes before you go outside to play.” He’s been having a snack and playing an electronic game, still in his school clothes, when one of his friends calls him from the back door. Your son calls back that he’ll be right out. It doesn’t sound as though a different wardrobe is on his mind at all. Here are some choices you have at this point: 1. Set the timer for ten minutes and tell your son, “I want your clothes changed before the timer goes off.” Avoid what we call “shouldy” thinking—the kind of parental thinking that expects kids to act like adults. If you were into shouldy thinking, you might have said, “I want your clothes changed before the timer goes off. I already told you that. What does it take to get you to listen to me for once? I’m the one who has to do the laundry, you know, and buy you all sorts of new things to wear!” You could also add a reward or a consequence to the act of changing clothes before the timer goers off. You would not do this every time, but sometimes a strategy like this can “jump-start” the kids into remembering a new behavior. “You change before the timer goes off, you can stay up ten minutes later tonight. If you don’t beat the timer, bedtime is ten minutes earlier.” Simple, calm, straightforward. 2. Can you use the Docking System here? No, because you can’t put his clothes on and charge him for the service. You could, of course, use the Docking System if what you had asked your son to do was take out the garbage. After his first refusal of the refuse, you might simply say, “Do you want to take out the trash or do you want to pay me to do it?” Good maneuver. 3. How about natural consequences for our reluctant clothes changer? This tactic is a possibility. The boy who plays outside in his school clothes might be required to wash his outfit as soon as he comes in. 4. Finally, you could consider using counting. Can your son change clothes in two minutes? Maybe. So as the boy is walking out the door— school outfit still on—you simply say, “That’s 1.” He probably won’t know