Live Q&A
Live Q&A with Marga Grey & Colette Dekker – Reluctance & Refusal, Reward Systems
Summary & Transcript from Live Q&A on Reluctance & Refusal, Reward Systems, and Whining
with Colette Dekker, Family Psychologist and Marga Grey, Pediatric Occupational Therapist.
QUESTION 1
My six-year-old son is clever and can do most of his school work, but he is reluctant and wants to watch TV or wants to play outside. How can I get him to finish his work first? (3:28)
Marga: I do think that it is challenging for parents if kids are just reluctant to do it. If he is clever, it’s possible he can easily do the work in two ticks and he might be reluctant to do it because it is not the correct challenge for him.. What I love to do is to empower a child.
Negotiate with him, and make him feel part of the solution. Say to him, “Ok, this is the problem we have to solve together. You have to do your homework. There is no question. You can’t not do it, and the sooner you do it the better. So, let us put some strategies in place and work out a routine together.”
And if he is anything like me, he might want to change that routine on a daily basis! Mondays, we do this, Tuesdays we do that – it depends on the child’s personality. I would definitely first empower that child to be part of the decision-making on how to approach this problem.
Colette: What I like to do with the children that I see who are reluctant to do homework after school is let them sit down and create a daily schedule as an art therapy project.
Because yes, they do just want to come home and play and just do what they want to do. So we create a schedule together, and we review the schedule every week together. If something did not work for you, okay where would you like to put your homework in?
I would suggest time-slots and, on the board, we will put activities and then they take it and put it where they feel. Sometimes they break up the homework.
Sometimes they say okay I will do some homework; okay I will do some reading at this time but then I want to go play. And then they will come back and do some writing.
Like Marga said – empower them. I like to make it visual: they can write it down, colour it in, give them some art things they can put stickers, pompoms so that it is theirs, and they take responsibility.
I think if it is theirs and they have helped with the decision-making, then it has to be done. There is no option of changing their mind in the moment and say, “oh I don’t really want to do it now after all.” Yesterday you said you would do it now, so we can’t change that now. So, they’re taking responsibility.
Response from viewer: We are having a hard time with bedtime routine which has always been pretty simple and straight forward for us. We have three things we do, and then we go to bed.
But with the amount of time we have all spend together in quarantine, my son does not want to be in his own room anymore. He want to be with us all the time and so when we go to put him to bed now he want to immediately get up and come sleep next to the floor next to us, just to be close to us.
So we have been starting to use your strategy of giving him the choices but making him stick to the choice. Choice 1 is extra snuggles in bed. We will do two books, we will lay in bed with you for a while, but from then you need to stay in your room.
Otherwise if you want Choice 2, to sleep in our room, then we are going to cut down the bedtime routine. We are going to do one book. We are not going to snuggle. We are just going to go straight to sleep and it is quiet time for everyone.
It’s hard for me to stick to that, when we are laying in his bed because when we are finished, he starts crying in his bed and says he has changed his mind.
I have to tell him, “Sorry but you made that decision, and I need you to be a big boy and just try.” And that is hard! But we’re trying to follow your advice! (6:53).
Colette: I think the big thing we need to teach our children is that with choice comes responsibility. Yes, kids have a choice but teach them the responsibility is attached to that.
Question 2
I have a 10-year-old son who is oppositional to every instruction we give him. He has tantrums until he gets what he wants. Everything from eating unhealthy food to avoiding his chores even the CoordiKids exercises with in the beginning he really loved. What suggestions do you have for me to start getting things straighten out? (10:00)
Marga: I will give a short answer here because I think people can read last week’s talk about the routines – those routine charts Colette made available for us are great.
(Watch Q&A with Marga and Colette on kids with ADHD)Secondly I want to remind parents that to get what you want after a tantrum is actually to condition your child. He will then throw a tantrum so he can get what he wants.
And it escalates and keeps getting more intense as a tantrum, because parents are busy and it is just sometimes you don’t have energy and you don’t have time and you just give him what he wants so he can stop with what he is doing.
But that actually feeds it and it just escalates and it can become completely out of hand. With the CoordiKids I encourage parents to put it in a routine. So after breakfast every morning we do CoordiKids or just before we go to bed.
It’s set in a routine, and the first time the child has the opportunity to break that routine is the first time that they start to challenge you, and see are you going to give in next time and if you do then he thinks, ‘This is great I just keep going and throwing a tantrum and she’ll eventually give in.’
Colette: I totally agree with you. As soon as we start losing our leverage, that is when they will start walking over us and run the household. Yes, tantrums feed on attention. It is okay sometimes to ignore bad behaviour (if it is not destructive).
Just walk away. Especially with a 10-year-old, the hormones and the frontal brain is changing. Hormones are changing, feelings are changing so frustrations come in.
Don’t feed on those tantrums, don’t give in because that’s going to grow into more and more. The other thing as well is if they have their routine, they need their choices, these are the choices.
We are doing CoordiKids at this time of the day. If he says: I don’t want to and throws a tantrum, you offer a choice. “I you don’t do CoordiKids, we cannot do XYZ.”
(Something else in the daily routine that they like to do) So, for a deviant child the easiest way is choices, these are your choices. And keep in mind that if they’re refusing to do something beneficial to them, then the second choice you offer the must also be equally beneficial.
But perhaps something that’s not quite as enjoyable. That way they can weigh the options, and hopefully choose what you want them to choose, but it feels like more of a reward to them. But not a reward system. It’s a choice system.
Question 3
I need help stopping with the whining. As a parent I feel I can’t take it any longer. She is 4 years old and she moans about everything. When we force her to do a task, she will refuse. She pretends to be lame! Or to be a sleep so she won’t do it. We are so frustrated we need help as soon as possible. (15:50)
Colette: As coming from the previous question, this is similar. As we find that our kids are becoming deviant or whining. For example if they’re running in the house.
Maybe instead of screaming “don’t run in the house. I told you not to run”. Try “It would be better if you walked slower” just change it. Not everything is always positive it the world, but just the way that we react to kids and their whining.
Instead of “Stop whining” say, “what is happening to you today that you feel you don’t want to do this?” That is not giving power over. It’s a discussion that brings the focus back to them and their feelings.
They’ll still need to tidy up the room, but have a quick chat first. Like “what’s going with your feelings today?” “how is your heart feeling?” My son will say “Oh, my heart is hungry”.
With a 4-year-old it’s good for them to know your feelings. You can put their ear to your chest and say, “This is my heart, can you hear it is beating? But when I’m feeling angry or frustrated it goes faster. How is your heart?”
Then you as a parent can go and listen. Then you can ask them how is their heart feeling, what is your heart feeling, what is going with you today? It helps to redirect their energy.
Marga: From an OT perspective, sometimes a child cannot do the task and they are too shy to say, “I’m having trouble, I can’t do this, can you help me?”
So, they just pretend they are lame or sleeping, or they are too tired to do it today. So just check on that too – that the task that you ask the child to do is something she can actually do.
Perhaps she does need help. Often you just need to help at the initial stages of the task until she sees “Oh, I can do it, okay mom I can do it you can go.”
This is very important to me because lots of kids have problems with planning, not that they are completely clumsy, but it is just that little motor planning and just knowing how to approach a task.
Then they have seen, if I lie down on the floor and whine, I don’t have to do it, so that is what I’m going to do. Also, what I used to do when my children did that is say, “Sorry I cannot hear you when you talk like that.” and ignore them for a bit.
Just check on that because I don’t want you to punish a child that actually cannot do a task, because that is unfair.
Colette: The thing about tiding up your room – I want to say that I am very much like that myself. It is very easy if you look around your house and your desk, and suddenly there are 20 things on your desk.
It’s overwhelming and I don’t always know where to start. And children are like that. Suddenly there is a whole floor full of toys. If you ask them to tidy up it can be overwhelming, they don’t know where to start.
At the age of 4, lots of kids do not have that planning and strategic planning of okay, I’m going to pack the cars away first and then I’m going to the blocks. There is nothing wrong with offering to sit and help them.
You pick up two blocks and make sure the child picks up 10. They’ll see that you’ll help and make it easier for them to start and follow your lead. They will be more prone to help you in the kitchen this way, too. Make it a game.
Question 4
We have an effective reward system in place for our children when doing chores. It used to work well but lately the kids ask for bigger rewards. They refuse doing even easy things, like taking mom’s cup to the kitchen if they are already going to the kitchen. Or even helping carrying the groceries from the car without rewards. I know this is getting out of hand. I don’t know how to correct it. Family life has become a continuous battle of asking and rewarding. (24:19)
Colette: I think we need to decide what is rewardable and what is not. Making up your bed, for example, ok we have to do that. It is a life skill. That is part of the household. You have to make up your bed.
You have to clean up after yourself. We should not reward that. It is something that should be done. But say there is an extra task they want to do, washing your car. Okay yes, I will give you something for washing the car.
We have hiking boots at our house. If James wants to put the wax on our hiking boots then yes, that is a rewardable task.
But I believe and you guys can give your input that normal household tasks to make the household run and normal social skills, and life skills should not be rewarded.
Marga: I personally grew up in a house where I did not even know that you could get a reward for anything. It’s just that we need to run the house. I read a while ago this beautiful thing of a father that said, I don’t help my wife in the kitchen.
It’s our kitchen. So we see that the kitchen is running smoothly, and that our kids have food on the table. It’s not that I’m helping her, it’s that we are doing it as a team. And the same can go for household chores.
We want to live in a clean house. I’m not helping my wife; we are cleaning the house. And I think if you can incorporate the kids in that mindset that this is our house, we want to be proud of it. So, we want it to be clean so I will do this for you but then you can take my cup to the kitchen.
I brought you some tea so why don’t you just take my cup back. I think that, that give and take teaches them so much skills for life but to get some rewards for extra things nothing wrong with that. Its gives them some pocket money and to empower them then again to do something else.
Comment from a viewer: What about the situation where you have started encouraging your child with positive reinforcement? Like now you clean your room now you get to choose dinner for the night.
We have gone too far let say the kids says I don’t have to do the dishes what is my reward? For example, how many coins do I get if I set the table? How many coins do I get for taking your cup to the kitchen? How do we start that conversation going back and reeling it in? (28:00).
Colette: From a psychological point of view I do not think there is a quick answer. That will take some family intervention and therapy. Though processing and behaviour changing from both sides. Parents and the kids so from a personal point of view – I can’t answer with a quick fix.
Marga: I think today’s questions were all very tricky and getting some outside help would best. It is very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own children. I always used that when I was raising my children, I feel that somebody has put a light bulb over my child and they realize, “oh” this is how it works.
It might be a once off session, it might be a long sequence of sessions, but I do think it is so helpful to get someone from outside who is complete objective.
Colette, is this something you can help parents with? (30:00)We can have a conversation on the consultation platform and go forward from there. That is a starting point.