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Home | Disease & Illness | Skin Cancer 1. How do special needs children understand cause and effect and also rewards versus punishments? Do they understand the same as other children? The fact is that this is not an issue. No matter what type of living being you are we akk have an interest in reward versus punishment to some level. Think about the bottom of the food chain such as a cockroach. Cockroaches despise the light and live to move around in the dark hours of the night. They associate good feelings with dark and bad feelings with light. They might not think about it, but rather just feel it based on experience and instinct. If you turn on the lights you will see roaches scrambling towards darkness under a couch or a crack in the wall. They sense the light and know that a feeling of punishment is headed their way. They understand if they head towards darkness they are going towards a reward. This repeated reward makes them head for the darkness right away. Roaches don't have a memory and can't be trained like humans can. Canines can be instructed because they have a great memory. They know, for example, if they hear the word "sit" they will sit down in order to receive a treat or reward. The higher you go up on the food chain, the better their memory can be. Interest in time and the improvement of analytical skills appears. When these attributes increase, you need to vary the intensity of the rewards and punishments to have any effect. How do you know what you can use? Simple. You start with a good guess, and then experiment. You implement a system of rewards and or punishments to modify a behavior (exact details of how to do this are in the book), and see what happens. If the behavior changes, the carry on! If it does not, then one of two things applies: a) your rewards and punishments systems did not have large enough effct in your child's life or b) your child could not create a link between the behavior and the reward or punishment. If you wait too long to respond to a behavior then your reward or punishment may have little or no meaning. This is especially true when dealing with younger children. So, when you see that your system is not working. You step back, have a think about it, modify it, and then try again. Ultimately you will either succeed in changing the behavior, or you won't. Which leads to the second question: You have tried all of the things you can think of and your child's behavior hasn't budged. What do you do? For example, let's say your child had PDD. You are required to complete a few hours of physical therapy with your child eacy day. However, your child doesn't want to do the physical therapy. Richard has read the book. He has experimented with just about every reward, punishment, incentive scheme he can think of. He has tried to make the therapy more exciting and fun. But despite all of these efforts, half the time the therapy just does not get done. What can you do to fix this? You have two options including: a. Richard could get stressed and worried about this. He can berate himself for failing to get his child to do the therapy he needs, and he can continue the search for some magic wand that will somehow motivate Tim to do those exercises. Or, b. You stop and look at your situation. You take a deep breath and look at things realistically and logically. You are okay with the fact that half the time the physical therapy session may not happen, but this is still an improvement from how much physical therapy your child was accomplishing last year. Which option, (a.) or (b.), will yield a better result? The downfall fo (a.) is that your stress level will sky rocket which affects everyone negatively. You are not having a fun time and your results won't improve this way. The reality is that there is, perhaps, nothing on Earth that would motivate Tim to do those exercise 100% of the time. Sorry. But we live in an imperfect world, and maybe the child in the wheelchair really will never walk. We would all wish it were different. But if that is how it is, then that is how it is. Is it not better to dial back the expectations and the striving, and aim to achieve the best that you can GIVEN THE LIMITATIONS YOU FIND YOURSELF UNDER? And, surprisingly, often when the stress is relieved, and the fun returns, then performance improves. But even if it doesn't, which would you rather have: a) 50% performance and everyone is miserable or, b) 50% performance and everyone is happy? The important thing to remember is to not try to compete to an unrealistic level. Strive to achieve the small successes and accept that things might never totally be the way you want them to be. Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
Why not visit Dr. Noel Swanson's website www.good-child-guide.com and buy his fascinating book The GOOD CHILD Guide? You can also get more free articles about child behavior AND a free newsletter. Well worth it.
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