The Good Behavior

Apparently we've been schooled enough on counting out our children. Dr. Phelan feels that it's time for us parents to move on...to dealing with behaviors we want our little darlings to start doing. Part IV of 1-2-3 Magic gives seven strategies for encouraging good behavior.

Here's the strategies:

1. Positive Reinforcement (Catch kids being good, verbally praise kids...)
2. Simple Requests (Don't go into long, drawn out requests, keep tone of voice even)
3. Kitchen Timers (It's like a game of Beat the Clock, especially useful with younger kids)
4. The Docking System (Loss of Allowance)
5. Natural Consequences (Well, it's just allowing natural consequences of the kid's action be the motivator, duh!)
6. Charting (Keeping track of successful completion of desired behavior)
7. Counting for Brief Start Behavior (Only used for "start" behaviors that take no more than two minutes)

The remaining chapters discuss specific strategies and situations relating to getting out of bed and ready to go in the mornings, chore completion, making mealtimes more successful (even with picky eaters), homework completion, and bedtime battles and middle of the night waking. The tips and strategies described seem very straight forward and logical. I will definitely try and remember these as Peanut gets older.

For information on the previous three parts of this book, go here, here, and here.

On a sidenote, I've been using a modified version of "counting", as Peanut is only 16 months old. It has drastically reduced the red handprints on my face.

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