More of What We Want, Less of What We Don’t: Using Attention to Shape Children’s Behavior
By: Brianna Phipps, LSW
As humans, we all want attention, and this is especially important and true for children. The attention we give can be positive or negative. When people think about positive attention, such as praise or high-fives, it’s used to show the person they did something you like. When people think about negative attention, such as physical punishment or yelling, it’s used to show dislike for what the person has done. For young children, there are ways to show positive attention that will increase the likelihood of repeating behaviors we want to see and strengthen the caregiver-child relationship. There are also ways of showing negative attention to discourage behaviors we want to decrease.
Most caregivers let their child be when they are behaving so as not to bother them, and then as soon as behavior that is not liked or misbehaving happens, caregivers direct their attention to that behavior. This move tends to fail because attending to misbehavior has the likelihood of increasing that misbehavior as a way to get more attention. Consciously or unconsciously, children want any attention, so if most of the attention a caregiver is giving is to misbehavior, the child will continue to misbehave to get the maximum amount of attention. With this in mind, the best way to improve and increase the behavior we want to see is to give children the most attention when they are doing something you want to see more of and remove attention when they are doing something you don’t like.
Positive attention
The goal of using positive attention with children is to let them know the person giving the attention likes what they are doing and wants to see more of it, which increases the chance of the behaviors happening in the future. One form of positive attention is praise, which can be given as labeled or unlabeled. Unlabeled praise sounds like “good job” or “that’s nice”. Unlabeled praise is good, don’t get me wrong, but if our goal is to increase wanted behaviors, it’s best to use labeled praise. Labeled praise is behavior-specific praise of the child’s behavior, product, or attributes. For example, “I love how nicely you are walking down the hall” or “Thank you for sharing your toys with me.” When praise is being used for behavior change, I like to think about giving out praise like trying to catch children “doing right” or “being good”, so think about what behaviors you want to see more of and go big with praise when you catch that moment. Additional benefits of praise include strengthening the caregiver-child relationship, improving the child’s emotional and social functioning, and building up the child’s self-esteem. I have worked with caregivers who struggle with this at first, so if labeled praise is new for you, here are some starter phrases:
That’s a great way to…
I like/love when you..
You’re doing a great job of..
What a good idea to…
I’m proud of you for…
Thank you for…
Additional tip for positive attention:
Have you ever caught yourself as a caregiver saying “stop doing this” or “don’t do that”, inserting whatever frequent phrase you have to say to your children to get them not to do something? In the same mindset of wanting to increase wanted behavior, instead of telling the child what not to do, tell them what you want them to do instead. For example, you and your child are arriving at your therapy appointment, but there’s a long hall to the therapist’s room. Your child starts to dart down the hall. Fight that urge to say, “Don’t run down that hall,” and try saying “I would like us to walk down the hall” or “use walking feet.” And if your child is like others I’ve worked with, it’s good to set them up for success with expectations before they even get to that amazing long hall, by saying we will be using walking feet, then big praise when you see it happen.
Other forms of positive attention are tangible rewards such as games/toys, money, or extra time for a preferred activity; physical affection, and quality time also help increase frequency of behavior.
Negative Attention
There are going to be times when a child is doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and we need them to stop, so negative attention is needed. Some parents might use yelling or physical punishment to get these behaviors to stop, but these ways have the potential to weaken the caregiver-child relationship and lead to problems with managing emotions and behaviors as the child gets older. As discussed above, even negative attention has the likelihood of increasing misbehavior, so one alternative is to remove your attention or ignore behaviors you don’t want to see in order not to encourage more of it. For example, if your child is whining for another treat after you already discussed buying one, you can ignore this bid for attention. Sometimes ignoring unwanted behaviors can be hard if it’s something that annoys you, but it is very important to be consistent with ignoring behaviors. For example, if a child is begging for a treat you said no to, and you've been ignoring the whining for ten minutes, but at the eleventh minute you give in, that just lets the child know they have to beg longer to get the attention. For behaviors like these, you might use a warning to help shut the behavior down. Warnings should be specific and use an even tone. A helpful structure can be “if (insert the behavior that you want to be stopped), then (insert a consequence that fits the situation).” It is very important to mention that we are not ignoring unsafe, destructive, or highly aggressive behaviors. These behaviors should be stopped immediately and met with an explained consequence to let the child know that the behavior is unacceptable.
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