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When Reward Systems Do Not Work

When Reward Systems Do Not Work

Felipe was diagnosed with PDD. After many years of trying to reason with Felipe through a system of rewards, and after having it fail time and time again, we decided to make a change today that I feel very positive about. This change I necessary for our own sanity and the development of Felipe.

From Felipe's perspective he believes that whatever he does is his best or trying the best, even if it is in direct opposition to hat you expect from him. An example of this would be asking him to not walk up and down while eating. We may say to Felipe that IF he does not walk up and down while eating THEN he will get 'x' reward. We will ask Felipe if he understands, he will say yes and then start walking up and down while eating.

Something in him says that he has just got to do it (walk up and down and eat) regardless to what we say. We might then say to Felipe that because he did not listen he will not get 'x' reward. This causes such defiance and anger in him as you could not believe, because in his mind he should get 'x' reward regardless to whether he is following what we ask or not. This leads to days of me not being able to concentrate as there is alway fighting with a seven year old to get the most basic of things done in the house that many of us take for granted with a 'normal' kid.

I noticed that if you tell Felipe about the reward then he will focus on that all day, but not at all consider what he must do to get the reward. Therefore we cut out all alternative statements where we say IF you do this THEN you get that. The IF part in his mind is not a consideration for some reason.

So how do we 'reward' him? We use words of encouragement and not things. If he says he wants a sweet then we say sweets are bad for your teeth and he will accept that, but if we say you will get a sweet IF you do 'x' then we are asking for trouble.

Are there other parents with a similar situation?

Work Not Systems Reward When

I was trying to google the same title of this thread and came up with little or nothing. Most of the time, psychologists would say that what is needed is behavior modification but this method is heavily involved with a reward system which does NOT work with Felipe! Reward systems seem to work extremely well with most kids though.

When Reward Systems Do Not Work Health & Special Psychology

I was just looking at this Thread and although it was written several months ago I notice nothing has changed, it is as though Felipe is in a way 'frozen in time' with his perspective of life.

Work Not Systems Reward When

For what I read, through the ABA method...the focus should be in ONE task at the time and not several. For instance, if the child has problems sitting down then that should be the focus ONLY. Once is accomplished, then the child is rewarded immediately. In case of bad behavior, the undesired behavior is totally ignored and their attention brought to something else.

Rather off topic, but... Something I learned today is that autistic children do NOT behave badly because they want their way but is a way of communication for them, a social approach. There are autistic kids who pinch, when in fact they want to be cuddled. So the parent approach the child and ask him/her what they need, ignoring the pinching. With time, the bad behavior stops. It is when the bad behavior IS noticed and a reaction is caused is when the child REPEATS the bad behavior since any attention is rewarding for them, positive or negative.

Work Not Systems Reward When

I can relate to what your going through. When my 16 year old was younger we could not get him to settle down hardly long enough to even take his shoes off let alone do any homework. We soon found out that a reward system that would work one day was not going to work another. It was like a game that only he knew the rules to.

We started to get him to focus on one thing at a time. Over time this worked better and better. IT got to the point we could ask him to do things around the house and he would actually go them. We also found out he was not getting up in the middle of the night to do all the things he was not able to do in day. These were things in his mind. Like call a 900 or 800 number and talk for half a hour. Or eat a dozen raw eggs. He would even go to the bathroom and leave us drawings on the wall from his own feces. I am glad that is over now.

I can tell you it takes a lot of patience and positive reenforcement but our child is now much better for it. Even though I wanted to pull all my hair out I am glad we did not give up.

When Reward Systems Do Not Work

Rewards 'work like drugs' in ADHD

Behavioural rewards for children with attention-deficit disorders work on the brain in the same way as drugs, a study suggests. Ref. Source 4

When Reward Systems Not Work

Our oldest son loves to play games in the computer so my system is if he does all his homeschool work without complaining and nicely, he gets to play games later on the day. I know that for most ADHD kids (As stated in the article) the rewards work better if given in the spot, in my case since I homeschool I get him to work hard for what he wants and the reward is later on the day. It works some days and others does not. Having said that, he does not fight as much when he knows he did not complete the assignments correctly in order to get the reward.