August 18, 2009: How to Handle Negative Attitudes and Behaviors

There's a part of every parent that can't help but celebrate the end of summer vacation and the return of the school year (parents of kindergartners excepted).

But the school year also brings perils. For many parents, releasing children "back into the wild" means having to deal with the emergence (or re-emergence) of vexing attitudes and behaviors, some of which can be downright distressing.

If you've had little success with your behavior modification techniques -- groundings, extra chores, and the like -- I invite you to try something new.

I was taught the concept of "directional improvement" by a wonderful professor when I was earning my master's degree in education many years ago. Truth be told, it was the only concept of any value that I got out of those five years of evening classes, but it's proven to be such a powerful tool in my middle school classroom that in some sense, it was all I really needed to know.

Directional improvement is based on the simple notion of rewarding good behavior, but it includes some surprisingly counterintuitive elements.

Rule #1: Set goals that are so easy to reach, they are practically certain to be met.

Instead of challenging an F student to have no F's on his next report card, start by challenging him to turn in a single homework assignment that you know he has completed. Instead of asking your defiant daughter to make it through a week without any detentions, see if she can get through one morning's worth of classes.

The key here is that you must rig the arrangement to ensure success. Because the sooner you get to any kind of success, the sooner you get to demonstrate your joy with a reward.

Rule #2: Reward success immediately. Do not select any kind of reward that is so special it has to wait, because by delaying, you give your child the opportunity to demonstrate failure again before he or she has been rewarded.

In the examples above, on the same afternoon that you've confirmed your son turned in his assignment or your daughter got through the morning without a detention, slather them with praise, treat them to a smoothie, give them an extra half-hour on the computer -- whatever makes them happy.

Rule #3: Even if the one success is accompanied by nine other failures, the reward emphatically stays. This means your son is rewarded even if he failed to turn in any of his other assignments, and your daughter is rewarded even if she got detention in the afternoon.
By now you should be getting a feel for what "directional improvement" means -- no matter how small a step, just get your kid heading in the right direction. One assignment is better than no assignments; afternoon detention is better than all day detention. Your child must taste success (no matter how contorted the definition) in order to want more of it.

As your child begins to taste the rewards of small successes and begins to improve on his habits and attitudes, you will naturally need to develop a rhythm of adjusting the goals -- this is where your wisdom as a parent will come into play. And to be clear, this approach does not preclude punishing children when necessary -- my students can vouch for that.

In the academic world we speak often of setting high standards. Adopting the philosophy of rewarding directional improvement does not contradict this. It merely recognizes that the standard is a finish line, and that there is a step-by-step process that must take place as you approach it.

Every child matures, adapts and thinks at a different pace, so resist the temptation to move too quickly -- some failure is OK, but try to keep your child in a general zone of success, even if it is at a level of achievement (academic or otherwise) that is lower than where you ultimately want him or her to be.

And lastly, hold onto this article because if any of this advice works, you may want to pass it along to your child's teacher, too.