March 8, 2011 ~ Day 89 Caught You Being Good

A few days ago I had the chance to catch up over the telephone with my big sister who lives in a different city with her husband and four children.

They are quite a bit ahead of us on this parenting road, having sent their eldest daughter off for her freshman year of college this past September. My sister currently has three teens left in the house - ages 16, 15 and 14. To say that she has her hands full would be an understatement... but she is a devoted mother and her kids are thriving.

Like me, my sister is a former educator - she actually holds two Masters degrees in education. At various times she has been a teacher, counselor and administrator. Her most recent job (before retiring to be a full time mother to her kids) was as a high school vice principal. She has a lot of experience with kids of all ages.

I confided in her about our continuing struggles with sibling rivalry, an issue she has definitely seen before. Describing all of the different strategies we have tried out to ease the problem, I confessed my frustration. "I'm really excited about meeting with the play therapist because I don't know what else to try. I need suggestions."

"Have you tried a positive behavior chart?"

"Yes, we've tried it like three times. He can never make it through an entire day without losing his ticket or sticker, which makes him hate the chart."

"Well, a day is a long time for a five year old to act nicely. That is a lot to expect - I know plenty of adults that can't make it through an entire day without having a grumpy patch. Have you tried a 'Caught you being good' chart?"

I asked her to elaborate, and she quickly summed up for me the key points of this kind of behavior reinforcement... you ignore the bad behavior but notice when a child is doing something positive and give him/her immediate reinforcement with a sticker saying "Wow, I caught you being good!" Then when the child has earned X number of stickers, they can redeem them for a small toy or a privilege.

"Sounds great," I decided. "It's definitely worth a try. I'll get some posterboard and stickers today."

My husband and I explained the merits of the chart to our sons, noting that we wouldn't be rewarding them for actively trying to earn a sticker (e.g. "Look mommy, I made my bed, do I get a sticker?") but rather that the stickers would be doled out spontaneously as we noticed them acting with kindness and patience in their daily lives.

We explained that they could 'catch us' being good too, and that it would be a chart not just for them but rather for our entire family.

"Are you going to get a toy when you get your ten stickers too?" our son asked my husband.

"Oh yes, Daddy likes toys. For my toy, I am going to get a new mini-van!" my husband laughed.

"That's going to take you a lot more than ten stickers, buddy," I laughed, "especially since you know full well how much I hate mini-vans."

"Maybe I'll just try for a brand new bicycle," he smiled.

We were off to an auspicious start.

Yesterday I was just in the middle of making our family chart when I received an email from my husband. He had written me the sweetest poem and it made my entire day. Printing out his loving words, I decided to share them with our sons so they could see an example of love between their parents. I think it is really healthy for them as little boys to see that their father acting in a loving way to their mother, since he is their all time hero and role model.

"Look honey!" I called to our eldest son - "I caught your daddy being good!"

"You did?" he came out of his room into the hallway to see what I was talking about.

I read my son his father's poem (something of a cross between Wordsworth and Shakespeare - a landscape poem full of metaphors about me) and said, "This makes me so happy, I am going to give Daddy the very first sticker on our "Caught You Being Good" chart because he did this for me out of the kindness of his heart."

Something about seeing his father get the first sticker on the chart was very motivating to our boy. Over the course of the next several hours I saw him making the conscious effort to find nice things to do and to control his temper with his brother and sister. Twice during that time, I caught him being good - once when he went without being asked to find his little sister and make sure she wasn't getting into trouble (while I was cooking dinner), and another time when he offered to let his brother play with his favorite toy.

"Wow honey, I caught you being good AGAIN!" I exclaimed. "Great job!"

My sons were both very excited to see the stickers going up on their chart. By the end of the night they had each earned three stickers for general kindness and consideration. We were also careful to catch their little sister making good choices too, for example when her brother was looking for a ball to play with and she went and found him one without being asked.

Happily, the feeling of warmth and joy over receiving stickers for positive choices seemed to be contagious. My sons, especially the eldest one, decided that I too deserved to be caught being good. "Mommy," he said, "I caught you being good. You cooked us a yummy and healthy dinner. You get a sticker." He then picked me out a sticker from the package that said, "Nice work!" and we put it on the board.

Later in the evening, right before bedtime my son closed the doors to his bedroom and began to work on a 'secret project' while I bathed his brother and sister. I was just rinsing the shampoo from their little heads when he marched proudly into the bathroom and handed me a crisp white sheet of paper folded in half. "I made this for you!" he crowed, and handed it over. "It's a poem!"

Opening the paper, I got a little misty. It read:

"I LOVE YOU MOMM I WILL COL YOU FALOR MY LUVEEN MOMM."

(I love you mom, I will call you flower, My loving mom.)

This is by far the nicest thing my eldest son has ever said to me in our nearly six years together. He is not an effusive boy and I can probably count the number of times he has told me that he loves me on two hands. Something about knowing that I've seen his positive behaviors seems to be striking a real chord in him... perhaps filling a need of his that I never realized existed.

I realize that there are sure to be bumps in the road ahead... but on this sunny day I'm feeling a lot of hope for our family.