Positive Behavior Support Ideas and Resources
What are Positive Behavior Supports?
- Preventative and proactive measures to decrease undesired behaviors
- Positive reinforcement and consequences
- Looking for what YOU WANT, not what you don't want to happen
- Teaching and helping children to strengthen areas of need
- Teaching children to be responsible
- Setting clear expectations
- Brief, calm, and consistent responses to behavior
Positive Behavior Supports at Home
Ways to Reinforce Positive Behaviors
Taken from http://blog.playdrhutch.com/2012/07/05/promoting-positive-behavior/
Taken from http://blog.playdrhutch.com/2012/07/05/promoting-positive-behavior/
- Limit Setting – using a consistent plan to set limits for your children can promote better behavior. Check out previous posts on Limit Setting.
- PLAY with your kids. Take time to play with them and let THEM take the lead. Find some Play Skills for Parents here.
- Having a Chore Chart to help remind kids of their responsibilities can be another great way to reinforce positive behaviors. Parents can give rewards for tasks that are completed (see below for ideas for rewards). The Board Dudes Chore Chart is a good chart to try if you don't want to make your own!
- Having realistic expectations is a HUGE one. Many times parents set their children up for poor behavior. When children people are tired, hungry, un-informed, excluded, overstimulated, understimulated/bored, or ill they tend to get a bit cranky … and undesirable behaviors occur. Knowing and following your own child’s schedule and limits can help allow positive behaviors to shine through. Also understanding your child’s own developmental level (not just chronological age) can assist parents in having realistic expectations of their own children.
- Focus on the positives. This can be very tricky for parents who are at their wits end with problematic behaviors. It can also be the key to turning things around. Many times parents are so focused on all the things that their child is doing wrong … they are blind to all the wondrous parts. When a family is trapped in the negative they can do this assignment (learned from Scott Riviere, RPT-S). Parents use a small memo pad write down at least 5 things that their child does right every day. It could be simple things like … you ate your breakfast, you brushed your teeth, etc. Parents then share the list with the child before bedtime every night. This assignment not only floods the child with positive reinforcement every night … but it also helps the parents shift from focusing on the negative to the positive.
Positive Parenting Tools: Time In vs. Time Out
If "TIme Out" is Not Effective With Your Child, Here is an Alternative...
Time out is a commonly used parenting practice to stop children from misbehaving. It has often been thought of as a non punitive alternative to harsher discipline such as spanking, however there are times when using time out can turn into a power struggle, and has the potential to leave children feeling vulnerable, upset, confused and insecure.
Time in is a parenting practice that can respectfully create a chance for children to change their behavior. Children really thrive when they feel loved and a sense of connection to their parents and caregivers. When children feel that they belong, when they sense that their words and ideas matter and they have a chance to reflect on their behavior they are more likely to want to change their behavior to something more positive.
So are time out’s really bad?
Most parents that use time out do so with good intentions and sometimes, a time out can give parents and children a chance to take a break from each other to cool off. However, non punitive parenting tools such as Time In are really effective in helping children develop life long skills such as regulating emotions and making decisions. It’s a mistaken but deeply ingrained notion that children need to feel bad about their behavior in order to change it. When parents focus on using time in instead, their response also tends to become more pro-active instead of reactive. If you are really used to Time Out and feel like it’s not a practice you can give up yet, you may want to consider making time to talk and reflect on what happened before the time out and also observe how your child is really feeling about it.
Taken from http://positiveparentingconnection.net/positive-parenting-tools-time-in-vs-time-out/
Time out is a commonly used parenting practice to stop children from misbehaving. It has often been thought of as a non punitive alternative to harsher discipline such as spanking, however there are times when using time out can turn into a power struggle, and has the potential to leave children feeling vulnerable, upset, confused and insecure.
Time in is a parenting practice that can respectfully create a chance for children to change their behavior. Children really thrive when they feel loved and a sense of connection to their parents and caregivers. When children feel that they belong, when they sense that their words and ideas matter and they have a chance to reflect on their behavior they are more likely to want to change their behavior to something more positive.
So are time out’s really bad?
Most parents that use time out do so with good intentions and sometimes, a time out can give parents and children a chance to take a break from each other to cool off. However, non punitive parenting tools such as Time In are really effective in helping children develop life long skills such as regulating emotions and making decisions. It’s a mistaken but deeply ingrained notion that children need to feel bad about their behavior in order to change it. When parents focus on using time in instead, their response also tends to become more pro-active instead of reactive. If you are really used to Time Out and feel like it’s not a practice you can give up yet, you may want to consider making time to talk and reflect on what happened before the time out and also observe how your child is really feeling about it.
Taken from http://positiveparentingconnection.net/positive-parenting-tools-time-in-vs-time-out/
Positive Discipline Tools to Interact with Angry Children
- Positive Time Out: Parents can walk away and take a parent time out so they won’t lose control when their teenager does. It can be helpful for a parent to announce to a teenager that he or she is walking away so to stay calm.
- Understand the Brain: When the brain is upset, it does not think rationally. Parents should not try to solve the problem when they or their child is upset. It’s more effective to wait for a cooling off period.
- Don’t Back Talk Back: Either simply say, “I’m listening” or show understanding through validating feelings or take deep breaths.
- Anger Wheel of Choice: When teenagers are not calm, help them explore healthy ways to vent their anger and create their own personal list of choices for ways they can calm down. When a teen is angry, act without words and redirect them to their list of ideas for calming down.
anger.pdf | |
File Size: | 200 kb |
File Type: |
Additional Resources on Our Site
Click below to view resources
Additional Outside Resources
Click below to view resources
- Great site for redirecting teens (dealing with lying, turning negatives into positives, promoting positive behavior)