Positive Parenting: What You Need To Know

Positive Parenting:  Positive parenting involves using techniques that can help promote your child's mental health and social behavior.  These strategies begin with developing a plan of actions that focuses on positive behavior through rewards rather than punishment.  Other strategies include working on your child's social skills, taking time to talk with your child, leaving the stresses of work at work, and attending to your child's accomplishments.  These techniques are described below.

Positive Reinforcement:  This strategy involves rewarding your child's good behavior with praise or a special privilege.  For example, if your child has cleaned up their room, but has left a pile of clothes in the corner, you would want to say how impressed you are that the room is clean, rather than focus on the pile of clothes.  If you only notice the bad things, your child will continue to behave badly. 

Behavior Contract: A behavior contract is a written agreement that states a child's behavioral expectations.  A behavior contract between a child and an adult (parent, teacher, etc.) can help increase positive behaviors and decrease those that are negative.  If a child meets the expectations of the contract, he or she can maintain or earn special privileges.  If a child fails to meet the expectations of the contract, he or she might not get the rewards or might endure a consequence.  Behavior contracts can help adults make clear and consistent expectations, motivate children to improve their behavior, and teach children to take responsibility for their own behavior. 

Behavior Chart:  A behavior chart allows you to track your child's behavior.  It lists target behaviors that you want to increase and the number of points each behavior is worth.  At first, only focus on positive behaviors with a high chance for success.  At the end of each day or week, the number of points that a child has earned is tallied.  These points can then be used to obtain special privileges, which should be outlined in the behavior contract. 

Timeouts:  For a specific amount of time, a child is restricted to a small area in which there are no possibilities for reinforcement (i.e., TV, video games, toys, etc).  Although kids sometimes respond to timeouts by becoming angry or rebellious, it's important to hold your ground.  If timeouts are not followed through, there's a chance that negative behaviors will be reinforced.