Need feedback re allowance/behavior

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Registered: 03-31-2003
Need feedback re allowance/behavior
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Fri, 07-08-2005 - 10:58pm

I'm thinking of implementing a kind of allowance idea that I read about in 1-2-3 Magic. The idea is that when you want your child to do something, like put his shoes away, if he refuses to do it, you say, "Okay, I'll do it for you. But I charge a fee." And you take some money out of his allowance.

David is 7.5, and although we tried giving him an allowance when he was younger, he just wasn't mature enough. Now I think he is. However, the behaviors that I want to use this for are things that I'm not sure if he can control that well. I'm just not sure.

For instance, this evening I made spaghetti for dinner. It's one of the three things my youngest will eat, spaghetti, fish sticks, scrambled eggs. Anyway, David has always had difficulty controlling himself at the table. I gave him a spoon to scoop up his own parmesan cheese, and reminded him to go easy on it. He grabbed the tub, dumped about a cup of cheese onto his noodles, and began to wildly stir it around, laughing. I tried to take it, but he scooped up a huge wad of noodles with his hand and jammed them into his mouth, then ran around the room, and up the stairs, laughing, and spraying noodle bits all around.

This is not uncommon dinner behavior for him, although he generally is better-behaved then that these days. In fact, I gave up on cooking anything complicated long ago; with one kid like that, and another who refuses to eat anything anyway (and a DH who works late), cooking "real food" is an exercise in futility. He later said he was just trying to make Nathan laugh. I reminded him, AGAIN, that meal times are not appropriate times for "trying to make Nathan laugh." He apologized, but calmly refused to pick up the noodle bits. At this point, I want to say, "Fine, I'll do it, but it will cost you a dollar" and remind him of the Ogel Agent's Ice Fortress he wants. But I can't, because there isn't any allowance to speak of.

I'm wondering, in order to make this work, if it would make more sense to keep track of it on paper or a piggy bank. I'm leaning towards a ledger. If he has his own cash in hand, he's likely to get silly with it and play with it. I'm not sure how much to give, either. Ideally, he should be able to buy a small Lego set every month or so

Sometimes I just want him to pick up the Legos that are scattered to the four corners, or at least give it a good effort. Or a mediocre effort. There isn't necessarily any goofiness that goes along with this. He just doesn't seem to grasp why HE should stop what he's doing and do this odd, difficult thing.

Just as an update, it's now about an hour later, and David is finally plucking little noodle bits out of the shag carpet under table. (Whoever decided that carpeting should go under the table didn't have kids like mine.) The thing that finally worked was giving his brother candy and saying he'd get his as soon as he'd cleaned up the carpet. I didn't really *want* to give anyone candy, but it's getting the noodles picked up. Before I gave him the candy, I said, very nicely, "Can you tell me: Why do you think I wanted *you* to be the one who cleaned up that mess?" I had explained it a hundred times, but he said, "Because you are being mean." I said, "Do really believe that?" He said, "Yes." I'm not worried about him thinking I'm mean, but he REALLY seems to not "get it." He was going on before about how unfair it is that HE has to pick up all the noodles.

So...allowance? Is anyone using an allowance in this way to have something to take away when certain things don't get done? I'd love to hear any BTDT's or ideas.

Evelyn
David 7
Nathan 3.5

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 07-08-2005 - 11:50pm

Ok, first I am sorry. ADHD brain won't let me focus enough to read whole post today but I did want to respond while I had a clear thought in my head. Feeling particularly unfocused tonight. Wonder if it has anything to do with the extra caffeine mixed with a margharetta from earlier, hmmmm.

Any way, instead of charging him a fee, I would turn it around to rewarding behavior. That is what we do. So instead of having it taken away (which is very bad for us) they earn it by doing what we want.

My kids earn marbles for good behavior. At the end of the week marbles turn into money. 10 cents per marble. Not alot of money. It tends to be about 3-5 dollars a week per kid so you can up it if you like. This works for us. They can earn marbles for anything and the amount of marbles they earn are up to us. So something like spontaneously saying thank you may be one marble, but cleaning the entire playroom may be 5 or 10 depending on how good they do and how messy it is.

So for instance, he can earn marbles for eating appropriately or staying at the table. He could earn marbles for being helpful with cleaning up the mess. However, rather than earning marbles for cleaning up something that he probably shouldn't have done in the first place I would probably word it like helping clean up after dinner. I am very careful with costing the kids marbles because it usually backfires, but you could totally fine him marbles and he has to pay you his marbles for doing his job. That I have done.

I have a dish full of marbles and each kid has a marble jar. So the keeping track is right there. We have had problems with David stealing marbles and putting them in his jar so he went a week without earning them. Boy was he bummed when the other kids traded in for money and he had none that week.

HTH,

Renee

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Registered: 10-24-2003
Sat, 07-09-2005 - 11:15am

I tend to agree with Renee that rewarding desired behavior has worked much better than punishing undesirable behavior for us (bad behaviors I want extinquished are better ignored than given alot of attention).

Pat

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. --

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Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 07-09-2005 - 11:44am

we use something called my chore chart and each child is award 1 token for completeing each chore. We also make up a list of rewards and how many toeksn it takes to get those rewards. Its a picture chart so they have a visual reminder and have to move the chore from one hook to the I did it box.

The nice thing is you can control the rewards and the amounts for each (we use things like Happy Meals from McDonalds, Carosual and train rides at the zoo etc.. the thing also suggests things like an extra hour of TV/Computer time, staying up x minutes past bedtime having mom/dad eat lunch with you at school and other ideas)

We used this successfully to keep my oldest son in his bed all night. He knows he doens't earn his token unless he stays in his bed. Thus after he wakes uo in the middle of the night to potty or a bad dream he may come to us for comfort but then gets bakc in bed (unless he wet the bed then he refuses to leave our bed but its rare so thats much better then every night). We also require things like hanging up backpacks, putting away shoes, brushing teeth, washing his hair, walking in the house, using an indoor voice, not yelling when he is upset but using words instead. Alot of these things were things he doens't do because he doens't like to or needs verbal.visual reminders for. It has helped tremendously and most of the time he keeps forgetting to give me the cards for his token rewards but continues to do about half the chores on a daily basis (teeth and hair brushing still isn't going well but we are getting there)

We also use it for our younger NT boy for potty training, picking up his toys, and putting his shoes away. He's so far only grasped putting his shoes away daily and the resthe isn't too keen on doing but we are getting there.

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 07-09-2005 - 9:28pm

Good point on the frequency.

I should mention that initially we traded the kids in for actual money about every other day and went shopping at least 1 time a week. They have wallets they keep in a drawer near the marbles. So about every other day they would trade in (usually for a dollar) and put it in thier wallet. I think at the very begining we went shopping with each trade in. We have a dollar store near by so that was helpful. Now they go on the first Saturday of the month and they really love having more money to spend on better stuff, but they really couldn't do that at first. We have been doing this for at least 3-4 years.

I also rarely, rarely take away marbles. I tend to instead boost the other kids marbles. So lets say, Mike is not listening and doing something naughty at dinner. "Wow Cait, Emily and Dave, I LOVE how nicely you are eating your dinner tonight. You each get 2 marbles". Mike -"But mom, what about my marbles" "Well, maybe next time Mike if you are eating your dinner the right way"

Renee

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Registered: 12-24-2004
Sun, 07-10-2005 - 3:04pm

Evelyn,

I can't tell you what will work for your child, but I can certainly empathize and tell you what we have found helps Cassian learn. I have been finding that consequences do little for Cassian's behavior right now, but then he is 2 yrs younger than your son. We use mostly front-end procedures at this time. I do a lot of writing down of contingencies and rules for Cassian (some kids would be helped by pictures also, but Cassian is hyperlexic and has good comprehension of written language. I post rules and contingencies in various places around the house, and Cassian will read these over and over at strategic times, as if to remind himself. Given these reminders, he is usually not oppositional. We also talk about or go over written renditions of problem behaviors, reasons for not doing them, and the consequences (social stories and step-by-step recounting of events).

For a variety of reasons, learning in vivo is very difficult for children with ASD's. These reasons include: difficulty focusing on relevant details in real-life situations, lack of theory of mind (especially in times of stress), hyperfocusing on what they want to do and having no executive processing capacity left to think of the rules or what someone else wants, auditory processing issues, difficulty reasoning through procedures that have not been memorized, etc.

Ross Greene writes in The Explosive Child that there is about 10 percent of kids who don't learn well using the traditional behavior modification principles that are favored today. Ironicallly, these are the same kids who get behavior modified most at school and home. He encourages parents to use front-end procedures and focus on getting the child back into a calm state right after an event has taken place. He also talks about making the environment more user-friendly for our kids (most of us with ASD have already done this because we have no other choice).

I have also found Stanley Greenspan's suggestions to dramatic play the same kinds of events later with your child to be very helpful, but for these to work, you have to have a child who likes to do dramatic play and who can transfer the information from a play setting to real life. Kids with ASD's can't always do this, and they may also go ballistic when you act oppositional in play with them.

I guess you just have to play it by ear and see what works with your child. In most cases, though I think we will be seeing slower progress on these issues than you would with NT kids. NT kids just learn from the real context so much better than ours do. With Cassian, I have come to the conclusion that it is more accurate to have behavioral expectations that are in line with a 2 year old for him, even though he is 5.5 yrs. If you make a similar estimate for your son (perhaps he is more like a 4 or 5 yr old most of the time in this respect), then you may be able to come up with a good idea of what he can and cannot understand in such situations.

That's my 2 cents for what it's worth.

Suzi