The Kadzin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child

Introduction

First, you must shift your own focus and attention. Instead of focusing on what you don’t want the kid to do, focus on what you do want him to do.

When you commit to positively reinforcing the behavior you want, you can be kinder to your child while being more systematic.

Being more effectively gentle and positive with your child is not a sign of weakness. The reverse is true. Perpetually being angry, shouting, hitting, and losing control are the signs of an ineffective and out-of-control parent.

The method in the book is not a lifelong commitment. You apply it in a focused way for a very specific behavior you want to change. After a certain amount of time, perhaps a few weeks to two months, once the change has been effected, you need not continue with the method in the book.

One key point that the book continually emphasizes is that you don’t need to dig into the root causes of the behavior to cure the kid of that behavior. Focusing instead on modifying the behavior is usually sufficient to change the child internally.

A lot of tactics that parents use, such as harsh punishment or rationalizing with the child why you are asking them to behave a certain way, do not really work well as many studies show and often exacerbate the problem because you are suddenly giving more attention to the negative behavior.

Instead, the focus is to catch the child while they are being good and give more attention to their positive behavior. That’s why the goal isn’t to make the kid not do something, but instead give the kid an opportunity to do the polar positive opposite instead and then give a lot of attention to that action.

Timeouts are one strategy that the book advocates in fairly limited use. And it advocates fairly short timeouts to the span of around one to two minutes. In fact, studies have shown that increasing the length of the timeout does not lead to a more significant change in behavior. It’s a sign that for that particular behavior, timeouts will fail. They may work in a very temporary way, but they’re not effective.

A lot of people believe that giving a child a timeout is a means to make the child think about their actions. In fact, this is not true nor effective. There are many good reasons you want a child to think about their behavior, but it’s not a way to change a child’s behavior. Focusing instead on getting the child to do things differently has much more dividends. And not only will it change the behavior, it often changes how the child thinks about it.

Another approach that is often advocated is improving the communication capabilities of the child. For example, if a child can explain why he is angry, then he will likely not kick or express aggression in negative ways. This also is not supported by evidence. Quite a lot of studies have shown that talking about aggression does not reduce aggressive behavior and occasionally can increase aggressive behavior.

Chapter 1: Myths of Effective Parenting

Sometimes what comes most naturally is what works best in child rearing. Parents feel a natural urge to be affectionate towards their children, and being so has positive outcomes.

When it comes to changing a child’s behavior, what often comes easily and naturally to parents is the opposite of what works best. If a child is misbehaving, we have an urge to be harsh or nasty to them, or we may have an urge to rationally explain things to children. These methods are not that effective. Nor is nagging effective.

One of the problems with all these approaches is we are giving more attention to their negative behavior. And that attention unwittingly reinforces the behavior. Furthermore, when a child is behaving the way they should, we view it as normal and do not give attention to it. We do not go out of our way to praise the appropriate behavior.

Myth 1: Punishment will change bad behavior.

Common methods that parents use are giving timeouts, removing privileges, or shouting with a statement like, “Stop that!” You often start with milder punishment and escalate to more severe ones. Whether you do it mildly or severely, calmly or angrily, systematically or randomly, you focus a lot on punishing or threatening to punish.

Study after study has shown that punishment by itself is relatively ineffective in changing behavior. It doesn’t teach a child what to do, and it doesn’t provide any kind of reward for the desired behavior. There is a negative side effect of making a parent work harder to work with their child to improve the behavior. It often increases the child’s aggressiveness, drives them to avoid and resent you, and they become adapted to your punishments. All of this makes it harder on you.

The only effective way to get a child to do something is to reward the desired behavior.

Let’s say the child is hitting his sister. So you go and punish him for it, and he stops immediately. You observed that your punishment worked, and it had an effect on you.

In most cases, though, the punishment only stops the behavior for a moment. Initially, its effect may last days. Then it may begin to occur daily. Then the poor behavior may begin to occur every few hours. Clearly, although punishment is working in the moment, it is not changing the behavior. And so you start escalating your punishments by making them worse, increasing the length of timeouts, taking away more privileges, and so on.

Sometimes during a punishment, the child might show remorse or cry out. They might make statements like, “I’m sorry.” Parents misinterpret these to believe that the punishment is working when, in fact, the child is reacting to the moment. Their exclamation of remorse is not necessarily genuine; they know that’s what you want to hear and are trying to do what they can to limit the harshness of the punishment. Any positive effect of punishment tends to be instantaneous or fleeting. The negative aspects of punishment tend to take a longer time to reveal themselves and, in the long run, have a much more profound impact on the child.

Punishing a child often changes the behavior of the parents. When they see a punishment working, it provides positive reinforcement to the parents, making them more likely to perform the punishment. Instead of changing the child’s behavior, it is changing the parents’ behavior. Here are some sobering statistics: 35% of parents who start out with relatively mild punishments often cross the line drawn by the state into what is classified as child abuse.

Punishing changes the parents’ behavior far more than it changes the child’s behavior.

It teaches children a lot of negative lessons, such as hitting being an appropriate way to deal with problems in life. The parent teaches them to yell, being visibly angry and potentially out of control teaches them the same. This is known as modeling.

When you hit your daughter, your daughter learns to hit her younger brother. And then punishing her to do it does not get the message across. You are modeling hitting and the daughter is learning.

Any attention to behavior is increasing the likelihood of the behavior recurring. Punishing a child for their behavior is giving more attention to the behavior. So is punishing with a lengthy explanation of why what they did was wrong. So is explaining how the punishment is good for the kid. The next thing they learn is: when I perform this particular behavior, my parent pays a lot of attention to me. So the next time I want the parent’s attention, I will repeat that behavior. I know for a fact that if I continue with this behavior, I will not be ignored.

The author is clear in saying that there is a place for punishment provided it is a small part of a larger, more effective program filled with positive reinforcement for the behaviors that are desired.

Sometimes a well-timed look or word can stop this behavior. Simply speaking, that look or word is classified as a punishment or a threat of one. It can be effective, but most parents often wait until the poor behavior has run its course and then give a severe punishment after the fact. That doesn’t work so well.

Myth 2: More reminders lead to better behavior.

Increasing the frequency of reminders is nagging. Studies clearly show that nagging is less effective than saying it once or twice. Nagging will make the desired behavior less likely to occur. It has a lot of the same effects as punishment does. It will cause a child to become evasive and try to escape as much as possible from the person who is nagging.

When you ask your child to do something, that is an antecedent; it is an action that comes before the behavior. The way your child subsequently acts is known as the behavior. The last portion of the sequence is the consequence.

As an example, you ask a child to clean the room; he cleans it, and you praise him. So, the antecedent is your request to clean the room. The behavior is that he actually cleans the room, and the consequence is the praise. If he doesn’t clean it and you punish him, then the consequence is a punishment.

A mnemonic to remember this is A, B, C:

• A for antecedent,
• B for behavior, and
• C for consequence.

ABC is a sequence. Suppose you ask a kid to clean up the room and they don’t do it. You start nagging and you keep repeating. It results in them being less likely to do it. The reason is that ABC is a sequence: repeating that antecedent over and over without the appropriate behavior and consequence results in the antecedent losing its effect. To enhance an antecedent, you need the behavior and the consequence that is desired.

If you keep nagging, the child will try to avoid you. Once again, it is a parent’s behavior that is changing, not the child. The parent is escalating by increasing the frequency of the request. Unwittingly, the child is the one training the parent and not the other way around.

Myth 3: Explaining to your child why a behavior is wrong will lead the child to stop that behavior.

In practice, the correlation is low. Your child may understand you and may understand the importance of the behavior: that doesn’t necessarily lead to any kind of action. For whatever reason, we expect this to work with children when we know that it fails dramatically even for adults. Telling an adult that overeating leads to poor health outcomes is a fairly ineffective way to change the adult’s eating habits. The same with educating them about sexually transmitted diseases.

The author is not suggesting you don’t explain things to children. There are other benefits to explaining them. It lets children practice their analytical skills and so on. The message is that while it has benefits, it does not change behavior.

Myth 4: Lots of praise spoils a child.

Praise has been shown to be one of the strongest ways to influence a child’s behavior. It could improve the behavior for the better, but it can also make the behavior worse. Which outcome you get depends on how you deliver the praise. There are ways to deliver praise that lead to poor behavior.

Praising need not be verbal. A hug, a kiss, or simply giving attention can serve to reinforce a behavior. Think of how you interacted with your kid when he was learning to walk.

Say you are talking on the phone and your child keeps bothering you with requests. Finally, you give in and say yes, yes, whatever. Just don’t bother me while I’m on the phone anymore. This reinforces the habit of interrupting you while on the phone. The alternative is to tell the kid: When I’m on the phone, please don’t ask me for things. It can wait until I’m off the phone. If you ask me when I’m on the phone, the answer will always be no. If you wait until I’m off, the answer may be yes or no, depending on what you’re asking for. Of course, you have to follow through.

Here are examples of poor ways to deliver praise. Saying things like: You’re smart. You’re the greatest. The problem with this is you are not specifying the behavior that you are praising. Instead, say something like: I’m so impressed that you sat right down and practiced the piano for 20 minutes.

Another trap parents fall into is what the author calls caboosing. It’s when a parent adds a negative comment to a positive phrase. “Thanks, you did a great job cleaning up your room. Why can’t you do this every day?”

Myth 5: Doing it once or twice means your child can do it regularly.

Consistency of performance, which means doing the behavior regularly, has to be trained. Just because they did it right once or twice doesn’t mean that they’ve built in the habit. Once again, we have unreasonable expectations from children when adults do not follow this behavior. Clearly, adults know how to exercise, but they do not exercise regularly. They know how to eat healthy, but they don’t do it every day or in many cases on most days. And a lot of these adults are well-meaning and they really want to do it, but that doesn’t mean they will.

What’s worse? When parents see that the kid has performed it properly in the past, they know they are capable of it. So they assume that if a kid misbehaves, then they are doing it intentionally or are being malicious, that they are being defiant. Such parents have unrealistic expectations of children. Once again, if you apply the test to adults, it will fail miserably.

Whenever they fail to do it, berating them is counter-effective. Instead, focus on when they actually do it properly and provide praise for it. Praise the good behavior. Don’t punish the bad behavior. Don’t say things like, “You did this yesterday with no problem. Why can’t you do it now?” Instead, say, “Remember how well you did it yesterday?” And hopefully, you praised them yesterday for it. This is known as positive reinforcement, and it is the most crucial aspect of the recipe.

Everything in the book centers around positive reinforcement. It’s a fairly simple concept that most people are aware of, and they make the mistake of applying it themselves. Just because positive reinforcement is a vital ingredient, it doesn’t mean that the implementation doesn’t matter. Getting it to work requires subtleties in how you implement it. Don’t assume you can figure this out intuitively.

Myth 7: My child is just being manipulative.

Research shows children are no more manipulative than the rest of the population and are typically less manipulative. What parents interpret as manipulation is often just a tendency towards irritable actions that the parents themselves may have unwittingly reinforced and turned into a habit.

They performed a study where children interacted with three types of teachers. The first type would notice and praise good behavior 100% of the time. The second category would praise about 50% of the time, and the last category of teachers would never praise. They wanted to see how well the children behaved with each group of teachers.

As you can expect, when interacting with teachers who praised all the time, the children behaved very well. When interacting with teachers who praised half the time, they didn’t behave as well, but their behavior was acceptable. When interacting with teachers who never praised, the children often behaved poorly.

Chapter 2: Everything You Need to Know (Except How)

The first thing a parent needs to do is to stop thinking in terms of what they don’t want the kid to do and then start thinking in terms of the behavior they do want. This is what he calls the positive opposite. So instead of thinking “my kid has too many tantrums,” think “when my kid gets frustrated, I want him to tell me with nice words and a calm body.” You can then convert this into a request to the child.

A fair amount of the book is going to talk about rewarding the child for good behavior. It’s not important that the reward be extravagant, and you won’t have to keep giving these rewards for the rest of their life. It’s there only for the period where you are building the habit. In addition to the reward, there are two other aspects of the recipe: force practice and shaping.

Reinforced practice consists of two elements. The reinforcement part is where you notice the positive behavior and reward it. That’s positive reinforcement. The practice portion means that the child has to be given a fair number of opportunities so that the habit can be built. During the period when you’re working on this behavior, you need to find ways to give the child a lot of attempts to do that behavior. In fact, one of the common failings of parents who say it doesn’t work is that they were not giving enough chances for the kid to practice, or the period between attempts was too long to build a habit.

Shaping is where you take a desired complex behavior and split it up into smaller steps and reinforce each of those steps as you build to the bigger practice. This way, a child doesn’t have to worry about doing a fairly complicated task right. They will get positive reinforcement even if they do it only partially correct. One of the greatest mistakes parents make is expecting too much good behavior and only rewarding when the desired behavior is perfect without flaws. Instead, start low - perhaps asking them to do 10 minutes. As they continually succeed in that, increase the time period to 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour, and build all the way up to two hours.

When the kid performs a behavior that’s not quite right, ask yourself: Was there anything about it that’s a component of what I’d like them to do? If the answer is yes, which it almost always is, then jump on that component. Say it was great that you did X, where X is whatever they did right. Then escalate incrementally and say it would be really, really great if you did both X and Y, where Y is what they didn’t do correctly. Be careful in your phrasing so you don’t caboose.

The way to extinguish a behavior is not to give attention to it. Don’t feed the flame or give fuel to the fire. So if your child is whining, ignore it. But couple it with rewarding something that you do want to encourage, such as making a request only once in a non-whiny tone. Remember ABC? Often parents focus too much on the consequences. They are very generous with their rewards but are careless in how they make their requests and how often or consistently they notice the behavior. You don’t want to be in a situation where the kid often performs a behavior correctly, but you notice only once in a while and only praise it then. It comes across as very random.

If there’s behavior you don’t like in a child, there are two ways to think about it. You can ponder over what the original cause is, which is thinking about how they ended up with that habit, or you can focus on what the current causes are, what things in the environment trigger them to behave that way. A common refrain in the book is that you don’t have to figure out what the original cause is. By focusing on the current causes, you can change the behavior permanently.

On the topic of punishment, he gives an example where a child is punished for something very wrong: his bicycle privileges were suspended for two weeks. Two weeks is a lot, but it sets the seriousness of the crime, right? His studies show that you can get the same effect by suspending the privileges for only about a day.

That’s enough for them to get the message and to change the behavior. Increasing it to two weeks doesn’t increase the chances of the desired behavior and can lead to undesirable effects. Furthermore, you have to consider externalities like the fact that the child may not socialize as much because he no longer has a bicycle.

Most importantly, though, the problem with this approach is it does not provide a means for the child to earn back the privilege with any kind of desired behavior. He is being punished for undesirable behavior, but not rewarded for any kind of desirable behavior.

Consider this poor example of an attempt to reward behavior: A kid is told that she can go to a concert only if she does all her homework for the next two weeks without getting a bad grade.

The problem with this approach is there is no shaping. It’s asking for a commitment over a relatively long period of time, and there is no way to reinforce specific behaviors in the interim. That’s what shaping provides. The other problem is it doesn’t provide regular repeated opportunities to do the desired behavior. Or to put it simply, it doesn’t provide a way for the child to practice the desired behavior. Finally, the reward is much too delayed to influence behavior directly. The link between the antecedent behavior and consequence is very weak.

Furthermore, it puts you in a difficult situation. Suppose a child did fairly well but did not get completely good grades or may have backtracked on a certain day. What do you do? Do you want to punish the child for being almost perfect but not perfect? That’s going to have a negative effect. If, on the other hand, you decide to be generous and let the child go to the concert, it is teaching the child that they can get rewards without the behavior. Either way, your contract has a problem.

Chapter 3: Putting the Method in Place

When you first start this method, focus on just one problem. Once you have it right, you can then start working on other problems.

Let’s say the problem you’re trying to solve is temper tantrums. Stop focusing on stopping the temper tantrums. Instead, one day when everyone is calm and relaxed, you tell the kid that he has a way to win new rewards. You say you need his help and you’ll put a point chart on the fridge.

But we haven’t talked about how you make such a point chart, so let’s do that first.

Chapter 4: Six to Twelve Year Old

Once a kid is six or older, he will have mastered the art of annoying you. He will be very good at pushing you to jump to the conclusion that you’re in a battle for control. And because of that, you feel like you have to exert control to remind him who’s boss. Unfortunately, that’ll make the child even more aggressive.

One thing to keep in mind is that as your child gets older, it’s likely that you will have even more unrealistic expectations for the child’s behavior. You’ll start saying things like, “He’s 10 years old now. He should have figured this out by now.”

Always be aware of your own behavior and the modeling you are unwittingly doing. Parents often complain about their children lying, swearing, or being sarcastic, but they don’t realize that that’s how the children are seeing their parents behave. A sign of this is when you have to say something like, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

As the kids get older, the nature of the rewards has to change. You will have to adjust your assumptions about your own authority. As the kid grows, he will want more autonomy, and you have to be ready to give up some control and to start negotiating with him more and dictate less.

Consider the example of a child making tantrums in a store if you don’t buy him the desired toy or candy. It often gets to the point where the exasperated parent will say, “Okay, okay, I’ll get this to you if you’ll shut up.” What the kid has done is successfully shape the parent’s behavior. And he is learning that this is an effective way to get what he wants.

The author actually tells parents in this situation that instead of resisting completely, or giving in, it would have been better to tell the kid that he will get the candy if he learns to ask nicely. Even better would be to let the kid know in advance that they are going shopping for a certain period of time and he can get his candy if he conforms to a certain level of behavior. You then have to stick to your guns. If he behaves well, he gets a candy; otherwise, he doesn’t.

But what if what the kids want is non-negotiable? Say, as a parent, you feel it is damaging to the child. Don’t simply say no. Start negotiating. Reward the kid for asking politely. Tell him he can’t have candy, but offer him something else instead. Like reading a new book, watching a new movie, or anything else that he likes. He should always feel that he can earn something for his good behavior.

Make sure he gets the reward after the shopping is complete. If you give it to him as he enters the store, he’s received the reward without doing anything to earn it, and that breaks the ABC sequence.

If the parent seriously doubts the kid’s ability to behave during the whole shopping experience, practice good behavior in the car before going into the store or right before entering the store. Say explicitly, “Okay, let’s practice asking nicely.” If the practice goes well, praise him and potentially have him practice again. Always remember when you praise, explain the behavior that you are praising. As you start shopping and go from aisle to aisle, if the kid is not misbehaving, keep praising him throughout the entire shopping experience.

If you feel that there’s virtually no chance of continual good behavior throughout the shopping experience, then that means he won’t be able to earn his reward and he won’t be able to make the connection to good behavior. If you strongly feel that’s the case with your child, then break it down to smaller rewards. You may have to do this anyway for the first few times.

Perhaps use a three-by-five-inch index card to keep track of the points as you go shopping. You can decide how you want to grant the points: perhaps a point for every five minutes or a point for every aisle. If he gets a certain minimum threshold of points, he can get anything from the reward bag at home. You can set higher goals that will let him buy anything in the store as long as it’s below a specified price.

He gives another example of a child that is always late in getting ready to go to school. Your first step is to define the problem and identify its positive opposite. To define the problem, the first step is simply to observe and describe. If the child is always late in the morning, what exactly is the child doing during that time? Break it down.

Once you know all the sequence of steps that she performs every morning, you can start targeting some of these behaviors that you want to change. Start making positive opposites of the behavior you want to change. Don’t try to change all the negative morning routines at once. Pick one or two behaviors at a time until you’ve got them down pat, and then work on the others.

Again, for rewards, pick a number of items that are relatively minor that cost just a few points. You want to give the kid an opportunity to earn a reward every day in the beginning. Once again, the rewards don’t always have to be tangible: it could be privileges like the right to make decisions about free time activities, what to eat for dinner, or letting her stay up a bit later than usual, releasing her from one of the chores of that day, etc.

Fight the urge to be stingy with points. You’re trying to shape behavior, and you need to be looking for excuses to reward a lot of points contingent on behavior, of course. You want to create as many possible steps so that they can at least experience success at some point.

Once again, if you get non-compliance, then don’t nag.

If the kid is making progress and doing what she’s been asked without reminders, you can start adding bonus points. You can say that if she gets out of bed and comes to breakfast on time without being asked or reminded to, she gets an extra point. The goal is to begin to fade your own participation so that the kid can continue to behave without you having to prompt them.

Fading is crucial to the success of the program. It’s supposed to be temporary. You don’t want to have a program that relies on you being there all the time.

Hopefully within a week of starting, you will begin to see progress. At some point, you might want to start adding rewards for consistency. So if the kid performs well on some days and not on others, start awarding points if they do well two days in a row. When the kid earns those extra points, be specific in identifying that extra point and praising the kid for it. If the kid consistently earns the two-day reward, then drop it and extend it to three or four days. It could be something like if she gets three points per day for four days in a row, she earns two extra points. Or if she can go a whole week getting three points per day, she gets three extra points.

If you’re not seeing good progress, look immediately to the A, B, and Cs. Start with behavior: Did the kid do any of the desired behavior at all, even if she didn’t do all of it? If she does do it partially, start looking to make small changes in the antecedents and consequences.

For antecedents, try reminding her right before it’s time for the behavior because you want the shortest possible gap between the prompt and the behavior. You may want to have more prompts and lots of help, but don’t nag. Start saying things like, “Let me help you get some points.” And it may require you to do some of the work in getting her ready, like packing her bag. This hopefully will be temporary. Your physical presence is a powerful antecedent compared to a mere verbal reminder.

Let’s focus on the behavior. Maybe you set too tight a time limit. Maybe it takes her 20 minutes to get dressed and you demand five minutes. If it’s not working, try 15 minutes and slowly over time reduce it to 10 and so on.

Let’s consider the consequences. It’s possible that the rewards on the reward menu are no longer appealing to her. Simply ask her and she’ll tell you if that’s the case. Try spicing the point system up by adding more challenges and fun. You can declare some days to be double point days - hopefully not more than once or twice a week. Or you can make it contingent on the weather if it’s raining. Or even let her choose double days as long as it’s not more than once or twice a week.

Don’t get hung up on fairness or correctness of the rules. Allowing double point days is not cheating. Your goal is to get the desired behavior as often as possible in a relatively short period of time. If double point days give that to you, go for it.

The success of the program is not on the promise of points, but on the praise. Points and praise go together, but keep in mind that it’s praise that is carrying most of the work.

Chapter 5: Your Preadolescent

Most research shows that most children do well in adolescence and do not present horrible challenges or other reasons for parental dread. So take heart.

As your child grows into adolescence, certain transitions are going to happen. They may have more swing moods, constant messaging, they want fewer rules, swearing, sexual activity, and so on. There’s no way a parent can avoid these transitions. Statistically, the riskiest period of divorce is when the child enters adolescence.

Risky behavior will increase in these years. You have to decide what’s non-negotiable. You can draw the line on certain things, like tattoos and so on. But there are nuances to risk-taking. Research shows that kids who don’t experiment with risky behavior are just at risk later in life.

Family values are very important in getting through this stage. How a parent has interacted with the child in the past and how they interact now exerts an important influence. If you have been nagging, screaming, and punishing for years, that investment will be compounded. Likewise, if you set up positive relations, that can act as a significant deterrent to poor behavior.

As an aside, when it comes to messiness and the slippery slope argument fallacy, having a messy room is something that usually appears in adolescence and eventually goes away.

Chapter 6: Punishment

Punishment teaches what not to do. It does not teach what to do. If you punish your kid for fighting with someone, it will indeed stop the fight. But the next time there’s a conflict between them, fighting is still the first and only tool of choice. As you did not provide an alternative to fighting, even if they know they’re going to get punished, they feel they have no choice.

You can see this dynamic on a greater stage at the national level. Two countries that are continually in conflict over decades often say things like, “Well, what else can we do? We can’t let them mistreat us and not respond.” Even as they acknowledge that responding is not improving anything.

When thoughts of punishment get into your head, make sure you first think of two things. The first is: is the behavior such that I can just let it slide? And the second is: how can I build up the positive opposite? Only once you’ve answered these questions should you consider punishment.

Research has shown that if a timeout is effective, all one needs is a one-minute timeout. Extending the duration of the timeout doesn’t have any added benefit. As a parent, you may feel that certain misdeeds are much worse than others and deserve a harsher punishment. But a longer timeout simply doesn’t have any extra benefit.

Parents often use the notion of respect or control as a rationale for harsh punishment. Generally, it has the opposite of the desired effect. If a parent is measured in his response, non-impulsive and non-heated, the kid will respect him, not the other way around. Physical power, shouting, and other forceful expressions can cause the child to comply, but the child will know that you are losing control, and the compliance usually only lasts as long as the parent is immediately present.

During punishment, a child might make heartfelt cries: “I’m sorry.” This is not a sign that the punishment is working. It’s not even a sign that the child has contemplated his actions and is expressing true remorse. It’s simply an indication of how upset the child is and the child is saying whatever he thinks is needed from him.

Children have an amazing capacity to adapt to punishment. That’s why parents who punish find themselves having to punish more often or with greater harshness to achieve the same effects that they achieved the first time they punished.

Punishments can work, and when they do, it will be evident very quickly. If punishment is going to change the behavior in a lasting way, you should see lower rates of the unwanted behavior soon. If you don’t see a rate change right away, stop the punishments. The key is to have the positive reinforcement program in place. Studies show that a mild and properly used punishment slightly speeds up the process of replacing unwanted behavior.

There are some reasons that punishment fails. One of them is that the reward for misbehaving is often more immediate and reliable than the punishment.

Punishment produces unwanted side effects that have no relation to the unwanted behavior, and these can make life more difficult for a parent. Some of these side effects are emotional reactions, such as becoming angry, upset, and so on. The phrase depends on the relationship between the parent and the child. Punishment drives a wedge in that relationship and reduces the effectiveness of the parent’s praise. Physical punishment increases the child’s aggression towards parents and peers.

Incredibly important is the side effect of punishment on your own behavior. You are likely to punish more and increase the severity of punishments over time. Your own behavior as a parent is reinforced, and a significant percentage of parents who punish slide into what the state calls child abuse. Is it worth the risk?

Here I’ll outline how to punish.

1. Any punishment should be combined with

a reinforcement program that encourages a positive opposite.

This is because punishment teaches a child what not to do, but doesn’t teach him what to do. A mild punishment is more effective than a severe one if the mild one is supported by positive reinforcement.

If two positive reinforcement programs are the same and you add a mild and properly used punishment in one, it makes the program slightly more effective. There’s a real question of whether that mild increased effectiveness is worth the risk.

1. The punishment should be mild and brief.

It could be a brief timeout, a gentle reprimand, or even a warning look. As a general rule, if the child gets upset, cries, trembles, or is startled by the punishment, then it was not even close to mild.

A timeout for a younger child should last no more than two to five minutes.

If the punishment is taking away points that they can earn, then don’t take away too many points. As an example, if the child has an opportunity to earn five in a day, don’t take away more than one point.

If you’re taking away a privilege, don’t take it away for more than a day.

Grounding has not shown to be particularly effective.

You have to take the privilege away right after the offense. The time between the behavior and the punishment is much more important than the severity of the punishment. Also, if the punishment is such that it keeps the child away from friends and socializing or learning, then you are causing harm in other ways.

To the parent, an effective punishment will almost always seem much milder than the crime. If a kid punches someone and causes a nosebleed, giving two minutes of time out seems like ineffective justice. But as long as you’re pairing it with positive reinforcement, it’s sufficient. Suppose your child has committed a grave crime: Give the mild punishment, then add in positive opposite behavior. Things like chores at school to put the damage right, writing apology letters to the appropriate people, etc. This type of restitution can go on for longer than a week. These are all positive behaviors that may feel like a punishment to the child, but they are not really a punishment. Don’t be rigid in the restitution chores. You can give several options and let the child pick from them. They will get their privileges restored after a successful completion.

Remember, the goal is to create opportunities to practice good pro-social behavior, not to punish or publicly humiliate.

1. Never punish when you are angry.

Being rational and calm models good behavior for the child. Having strong emotions makes you careless. Your judgment and your technique will suffer. You will find it harder to be specific. Say things like “You never listen to a single word I say” or “Why do you do this all the time?”

If you have to teach a lesson, stick to the specifics: what your child did wrong, and why it isn’t right. Don’t reason in the abstract by saying things like “Well, what if everyone did what you did?” It doesn’t help.

As the kid gets older, they’ll become more adept at pushing your buttons. It’ll cause strong emotions in you. You have to learn to step back from such hot emotions. Recognize that button-pushing behavior depends on the parent’s reaction: it is a reinforcer. So if you react very negatively to button-pushing, you are reinforcing the button-pushing behavior in the child.

He tells his client to respond to button-pushing behavior with a slight smile. This seems to work even better than simply walking away. Not getting mad or having the habit of avoiding a scene when you do get mad sets you on the shortest path to eliminating irritating behavior.

1. Do not use punishment for any activity that you wish to foster.

So don’t punish by assigning reading or writing. These are things you normally want to reward your kids with.

Also, don’t use punishment that will keep the child away from positive social contacts with peers or adults. Forbidding them from going to a friend’s house may seem reasonable, but the kid is missing out on positive social stimulation. Likewise, if you take their bike away and that limits them from visiting their friends, it’s not a good punishment.

1. The ratio of praise for positive opposite behavior to the punishment for

unwanted behavior should be at least five to one.

If you want to eliminate tantrums, find ways to praise not throwing a tantrum at least five times as often as you punish tantrums. If it’s not enough to have that ratio, then manufacture practicing opportunities for the desired behavior so that you can reward it.

1. If you find yourself punishing the same behavior a few times a day for

more than a day, stop.

When you give a timeout, don’t ask the child to contemplate their crimes.

Timeouts have to be given right after the crime on the spot. Don’t give a timeout when you get home or when you leave the store or the playground. In a timeout, the child should be isolated from others, either in a separate room or sitting in a chair. You must be calm when you administer a timeout. It should not be given in anger or as an act of vengeance.

Praise compliance with the timeout. Praise for going when asked. Praise for sitting quietly. Praise for completing the timeout properly.

Don’t threaten your child with a timeout. One warning is plenty.

If you find yourself needing to drag or restrain the child to make the timeout happen, drop it. It’s not going to work. It means the child is resistant, and asserting physical control increases resistance, leading to escalation. If he refuses to go for the timeout, give him an extra minute penalty up to twice, so from two minutes to three and then to four. If that doesn’t work, take away a privilege, something significant but brief, like no TV for the day. Then turn and walk away. Don’t give in if he suddenly starts saying, “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll do it.” Don’t caboose either. Don’t add statements like, “I hope you learned,” “Next time you’ll do what you’re told,” “You don’t listen and now you’re paying the price,” or “You really made me mad.”

Of course, you should spend time in advance thinking of what privilege to take away. Don’t try to come up with one on the spot.

If the child does go to the timeout right away or after an additional minute has been added, praise them for doing it.

To make timeouts work better, practice it with the child. Tell them that you’re just about to practice and you’re going to show them how it works. Pretend they did something wrong. Then whisper, “I’m going to ask you to go on a timeout and you start walking to the room.” In your normal voice say, “All right, you did this, so that’s a five-minute timeout. Please go to your room.” Then whisper, “Go ahead, start walking.” While they are walking, say in your regular voice, “Very good, I asked you to go for a timeout and you started right away.” Physically guide the child if necessary, walking with them, but don’t push them. If they sit down, praise them. If they stay there, praise them.

Chapter 7: Special Situations

What if the kid doesn’t do the desired behavior often enough to reinforce the rewards? What if the unwanted behavior you’re trying to get rid of happens only occasionally, making it hard for reinforcing to work?

Do it by jump-starting the behavior. Reduce the desired behavior to a tiny amount and try to get the child to do that often enough. If you want him to complete 30 minutes of homework, jump-start by making him sit at the desk with the book open. If he succeeds, the child is allowed to stop. But ask, “If you would like to stop now, that’s okay, but would you like to continue?” You could even just be quiet and let the activity continue.

Jump-starting is a one-shot strategy and it doesn’t involve rewards. It’s perfect for situations where a child has been doing the correct behavior but suddenly has regressed. Don’t dive back into setting up a rewards chart. Instead, perform a jump-start.

Research shows that the further an individual gets into the sequence, the more likely they will stick to it as the rest of the sequence unfolds without intervention on your part. If there are nine steps before the final behavior, the likelihood of getting the full sequence to be completed is to get the person to do just the first step. If possible, you could skip the first step and drop the individual directly into the third step and so on.

If you want someone to exercise, start with simply asking them to change into exercise clothes and not requiring anything more. You can promise that you will not force them to exercise.

Surprisingly, it’s not even important that the child remembers the whole sequence. Putting them into a certain step in the sequence increases the chance that they will continue along with the sequence, as long as there are cues offered by the situation itself.

If the child proceeds and completes the sequence, don’t rehash the original problem by saying, “See, that wasn’t so hard. Why didn’t you want to come?” Those types of comments will cue the entire sequence of oppositional behavior.

If after doing one step of the sequence, the child says he doesn’t want to continue, don’t urge him to continue. At least not immediately. You can ask in a non-nagging manner a few minutes later and then drop it after that.

He gives an example of wanting to have the kids help in cleaning the yard. This is a one-time behavior, not a habit. Before the day comes, tell the kid that you would like his help in cleaning up the yard. If he says yes, good. If he says no, try to jumpstart and say, “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Just help me for two minutes. After that, you can stop if you like. It’ll help me a lot just to have you there.” If he says no, then ask again on that day.

After his two minutes are up, you can say, “All right, if you want to stop now, you can. It really helped that you came out with me. If you want to keep going, that’s great, but you don’t have to.” Or once again, you could just not say anything and let the child continue if he’s continuing.

What if your child misbehaves but does it at a fairly low rate, say once a month or less? It could be a serious offense like stealing. But the problem is it happens at such a low frequency that it’s hard for reinforcement to kick in. You can’t set up any kind of point program because it happens so rarely. So focus on consequences.

Select a punishment just for this behavior. Make it an effortful task like a chore that the child would not otherwise do. Don’t make it cruel or excessive, but make it something that the kid will consider significant, like cleaning your hard work, etc. It should be something tedious and something that the kid would never select as a reward. Recommend a chore of 15 minutes for five or six-year-olds or 30 minutes for anyone over seven. You could have different timings based on the seriousness of the crime.

There should be no consequence other than that chore, no humiliation, no lecturing, no punishment. With the weight of the penalty entirely on the chosen task, not on words or actions. If there was a victim, then the child should also be required to meet with the offended party and apologize. Restitution should be made if applicable, such as returning a stolen item or paying for damage. If you can’t afford to do full restitution, make it a partial one.

Below are the steps for a lower rate program:

1. Be sure you can observe the behavior you want stopped.

Things like stealing cannot necessarily be observed. So you may have to use proxies like finding objects in his pockets that aren’t his, and so on.

1. Select a chore that is tedious and not something he would do during

his free time.

Don’t pick anything that you would like your child to do more of or that is socially desirable. So definitely not things like math homework. Don’t pick something that you have been trying to get him to do that he never does. That’ll get the punishment entangled into another battle.

1. Stay calm
2. Explain the program to her before you make her do it.

So if the child has the habit of stealing, talk about the program and the punishment prior to the next occurrence of stealing.

1. Assign the chore immediately.

2. Don’t threaten with the chore and don’t give warnings. Assign it immediately.

3. Don’t debate or argue. Tell him what he did was wrong. And then assign.

4. If he refuses to do the chore, calmly tell him that you won’t be able to start the time until he starts the chore.

5. If he still refuses calmly, tell him that he has a choice: do the chore or lose a privilege.

   (Have some privileges thought out in advance)

6. If the kid complies but acts poorly or doesn’t complete the chore, stop the kid and take away the privilege.

7. Praise the child for doing the chore. Praise when he starts, while he is doing it, and when he is done.

8. Continue to praise the positive opposite of the problem behavior. As an example, if the problem behavior is stealing, praise the child every time he asks for something or waits to ask for something or simply tells you that he really wants something.

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting

Below is when you need to troubleshoot:

1. No change in the behavior is occurring.
2. Change is occurring, but it’s too slow or too small. If you don’t see

progress in a week,

1. Change occurs, but it’s not enduring. Program and the problematic

behavior begins again.

1. Change occurred when and where the points were given, but not out of

this context. As an example, if it occurs at home, but not outside home.

Ask yourself: are you indiscriminately throwing rewards at all behavior? Even for ordinarily good behavior? If so, then stop.

You want to limit rewards for situations where you’re trying to change the behavior. One other problem with this approach is it’s unpredictable for the child. They don’t know when they’ll get a reward and they don’t know what actions they need to do to get a reward if the parents are randomly giving rewards all the time.

You want to give rewards for a limited context and provide multiple opportunities for the same behavior. Giving rewards for different behaviors affects the reinforcement cycle.

Ask yourself if you’re giving too many reminders. If you say something twice, that’s a reminder. If you say it three or more times, that’s nagging. Nagging will undermine the program.

Are you providing prompts right before you want the behavior to occur? Prompts are things like verbal statements, notes, messages, gestures, guidance, and help by modeling.

Are you expecting too much from the kid? Are you giving rewards only if they clean the whole room or behave all day? You want to perform shaping/ Split the task into smaller steps and reward and praise as they go along.

One method of shaping is to extend the time interval between poor behavior. If a kid sits at a dinner table and starts arguing or misbehaving within five minutes, start with a 10-minute desired behavior. Once he’s consistently capable of going 10 minutes without poor behavior, extend the time interval.

Ask yourself if the kid has enough opportunities to practice positive opposite behavior. If he doesn’t, start doing practice sessions when he is calm.

Ask yourself if you are praising the behavior every time or almost every time it occurs. The occurrence of the behavior is directly proportional to the percentage of times you provide praise to the behavior. Ask if you are providing effusive praise when you award points. Don’t just say “good, good.”

Ask yourself if the praise is immediate or close to immediate. Is your point scheme appropriate? Can some things be earned each day rather than others after saving for a few days? Are they interested in the rewards? If your child is accumulating points and not buying anything, there’s a good chance that the kid is not interested in the rewards.

Note that some kids are natural scrooges. They don’t really want to spend the points, but they do value earning the points. So first, find out if the problem is that they want to spend, but they’re not interested in any of the presented rewards. If not, and if the good behavior is continuing, let them continue to hoard. Don’t change the program because it’s working. If the child’s performance is not good - if it seems to have reached a plateau at some mediocre level - find ways to encourage spending. Add a rule to the program that requires them to buy a reward every other day or by the end of the week.

Chapter 9: Your Child’s Wider World

How long should this program continue? His experience shows that it could be as little as a few weeks or up to two months. His research shows that once a desired behavior is consistently there, it remains even after a follow-up a year or two later.

Some behaviors are known not to continue very well after the program. Examples are regular reading, learning new things, practicing a musical instrument, and doing math homework. Even children who enjoy math often stop doing their homework.

So don’t think that you can use this program to get children to do every positive thing you can think of.

When a child’s positive behavior continues after the program, it’s often also due to the fact that the parent’s behavior has changed during that program.

Here is how you start fading the program:

1. Make the reinforcers more intermittent or more delayed, or both.
2. Add levels to the program such that they can level up, and after they reach the final level the game ends.

In school, you can give the teacher a card with desired behavior and points. Surprisingly, teachers actually like doing it. See the book for details. In general, the teacher is not the enemy nor your employee. They’re busy, so don’t demand but ask for help. Definitely don’t give them attitude.

Chapter 10: Parental Stress and Household Chaos

There are plenty of opportunities for a parent to become stressed. Understand that there are two parts of stress. One is the stressor, which is the event causing the stress. The other part is the person’s perceptions and attitudes towards the stressor.

If a child is acting obnoxious, are you viewing it as willful or manipulative? Or is it simply a part of normal child development?

A parent’s poor reaction can make the child’s behavior even worse, which contributes further to the parent’s stress. This reciprocity can undermine almost everything in this book. You have to be aware of how your behavior could be causing the child to misbehave, adding to your stress.

Here are some ways to reduce your stress:

• Having good social support.
• Having time for yourself.
• Having time with your partner.
• Quality time that is not rushed.
• A less programmed life - reduce the number of scheduled activities in your week.
• More family time that is routine and ritual, such as special Friday dinners.
• Participating in a group activity that makes you part of a community.
• Psychotherapy.

The method has shown to be effective even in highly stressed families. Still, those highly stressed families will encounter more obstacles than less stressed families.

Scientists define household chaos as one that is high in noise and activity and low in regular activities, routines, and rituals.

The main recommendation in the studies is to develop more routines: regular, repeated, predictable, reliable activities that individuals in the home perform as a group.

Think back to your own childhood. You would likely find that the routines tend to be memorable and help organize memory, even though there was nothing special about them. Things like going for groceries every Saturday. Or a weekly trip to the public library.

Chapter 11: Beyond the Method

His method has an 80% success rate on the toughest children, extreme problems in society that have been referred to him for anti-social and violent behavior. He expects that the success rate is significantly higher for ordinary families.

Beware that for some children, a timeout is viewed as a privilege. They enjoy the solitary time. For such kids, consider using timeouts as a reward.

There’s a difference between a reward and a reinforcer. A reward is something that the child likes and values. A reinforcer is a consequence that, when given contingently, increases the likelihood of the behavior to recur.

The two sets do overlap, but the difference is important. As an example, if you ask teachers to list things they’d like to get more of, they will often list things like vacation days, more breaks during the day, and more money. These are examples of rewards. Things that will improve performance are reinforcers, such as praise from principals and students.

The author has a negative view on medication as a treatment. There are very specialized cases where medication is important, but for the types of problems covered in the book, it’s usually not effective at treating disruptive behavior. Nor is diet.

At the time of the book writing, there were no FDA-approved medications for oppositional, aggressive, and antisocial behavior. There are medications for ADHD, and there is strong scientific evidence behind them. One of the problems with such a medication, though, is that the positive effects occur only while the child is on the medication.

Still, he does say it is a good medication to treat hyperactivity. Children who are hyperactive also tend to be aggressive and oppositional. And even when the hyperactivity is reduced by the medication, the aggressive and oppositional behavior is not necessarily reduced. So you still need a program to address those.

Try to get expert advice when it comes to medications. And don’t simply take the school’s recommendation. Find out if there is evidence to support the efficacy of the medication. Even if it is effective, ask if there is a less costly or alternative medication available. Keep in mind that many people who have psychiatric disorders live just fine in the world and have a relatively normal life.

According to the research, roughly 20% of the population, be it children or adults, meets the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder. Just because your child has been diagnosed with one doesn’t mean they will have a terrible life if not treated with medication. Don’t go by symptoms alone, but look for signs that their disorder is seriously interfering with their functioning in the world.

Here are some common problems that many kids will go through in a phase. They could be signs of a serious disorder or just normal growth:

• Lying: Approximately 30 to 40 percent of 10 and 11-year-old children will lie in a way that the parents think is a significant problem. The rate of lying tends to drop after this age.
• An inability to sit still is a significant problem for 60 percent of 4 and 5-year-old boys. This also decreases with age.
• Delinquent acts: Adolescents. Over half of males and 20 to 35 percent of females have engaged in illegal delinquent behavior. Common ones are stealing and vandalism. Most kids grow out of this.
• Stuttering: Approximately 2.5 percent of children under the age of five stutter. Most of them stop stuttering without any treatment.

He offers some criteria by which you may want to consider professional help:

• Impairment: does a child’s behavior interfere with meeting the usual expectation at home or school?
• Change in behavior.
• Signs of distress, particularly if it coincides with exposure to an event or stressor.
• Danger and risk of danger: is a child’s behavior dangerous to himself or others?
• Unusual behaviors and extreme symptoms, things like hearing voices.
• Danger and risk of danger: does a child’s behavior interfere with meeting the usual expectation at home or school?

If you do see any licensed professional, here is a list of questions to ask:

• What is a treatment you provide for my child’s problems?
• How long have you been providing this treatment?
• Has this particular treatment been studied and does it have scientific evidence in its favor?
• What are treatment options other than the one you provide?

Keep in mind that the professional you are speaking with will state that the treatment is very effective. He will be warm, persuasive, and reasonable, with lots of credentials. The waiting room will look good. The office will look good. There will be lots of certifications and certificates. However, none of this is an indicator that you are getting the appropriate treatment.

You will have to do some of the work in finding out if there’s evidence that the therapy works and whether it’s the desired treatment of choice. The book gives some websites and resources to help you with this.

Chapter 12: Conclusion

It’s good to hug your kid. Hugging them will lead them to value your praise more and heed your instructions better.

Some more random tips:

1. Instruct calmly.

The best time to instruct is not when you’re on the battlefield. Simply modeling calmness when you talk about serious issues will help your child handle difficult issues themselves.

1. Listen to your child. Encourage your child to share his views with you,

then model listening. Once you have heard your child, do not begin by refuting what he said.

When your child talks, is he getting the feeling that you’re just waiting for him to finish so that you can state your piece? Does he feel that you are really listening or just waiting for your turn?

1. Solve problems together.
2. Be generous with warm fuzzies.
3. Build competencies - more than one of them - at different points in

childhood. This does not mean a whole bunch of extracurricular activities like swimming, music, etc. Think of what the kid seems to like. Pick two areas if they’re between 1 and 10 years old, and help him continue in those areas.

1. Encourage social interaction under your supervision. As much as you can, be available but resist the urge to referee when your child plays with other kids.
2. Always know where your child is.
3. Plan downtime.
4. Put value on quantity time, not quality time. These are your common daily routines and regular household business: meals and errands. This type of mundane quantity time is much more significant than the one-off quality times at ball games or vacations. Quality time is more expensive and less effective.
5. Develop rituals and routines with the kid.
6. Connect the kid to other family members.
7. Take care of yourself.