Tangible rewards…and why I think they work.

Posted on November 4, 2008

I am going to premise this post with a confession. I have never done any formal research when it comes to the efficacy of tangible rewards vs internal rewards. But, as a trained “behaviorist,” I can tell you what I have seen from my personal experience.

Those of you that have been following along know that before I became a “stay at home mommy” I was a special education teacher who specialized in behavioral disorders. Interpretation: I worked with kids with emotional and behavioral disorders that made it difficult if not impossible for them to be successful in a typical general education classroom. Ie: I worked with the toughest of the tough kids. Another definition: I worked with the kids that nobody wanted.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had to defend the “tangible reward philosophy.” The pie in the sky ideal is that kids will do well because the act of doing well is reward enough. I say “ideal” because that’s what it is. IN THE REALITY WHERE MOST OF US LIVE, this is not the case. To put this in “real world” terms, a paycheck is a tangible reward. How many of us would do what we do every day that is considered our responsibilities that we would honestly do without being paid?

Now, we all know that there is a minority who do the “right thing” because it is the right thing, And, ironically enough, I count myself in its number. Although, when I found out that I could make more money with fewer hours, I moved to public school.

But, I digress. Because this is a post about behaviorism applied to potty training.

My child, as much as I love and cherish her, is not unique when it comes to primal behavior. She is ‘trainable” in that she responds very well to tangible rewards. I, honestly, have put off potty training because I knew it would take at least a week to two weeks commitment, and I didn’t have that leniency in my current schedule for her. Well, this week she has off of school, so I dove in. I put on the “training pants,” where she would get the physical sensation of getting wet, and I turned on the “potty monkey” which essentially works as a “Pavlov’s” Bell as well as a transitional object.  Every thirty minutes, the potty monkey says, “I have to go potty, take me to the potty…”

Chloe seems to be the kind of child that needs a familiar object to help her through the transition from her known to the unknown.  This seemed to be extremely important when I started her in her in school.  The first couple of weeks, I sent her on her own, with me dropping her off and not giving her anything to “hold on to.”

The third week of school, I let her choose toys to bring with her to school, and after that she did fine.  The “transitional objects” gave her an automatic conversational piece with the teacher, which gave her the opportunity to develop a relationship without her mommy being present.

In the case of potty training, the Potty Monkey works as the catalyst, but I have offered the additional reward of a Hershey’s Kiss when she successfully pees and two Hershey Kisses if she successfully poops on her training potty.

Yesterday, this system worked very well in the morning, but fell apart after he nap because the external rewards couldn’t beat her internal rewards of doing whatever it is she wanted to do.

So, today, I made sure that all of her external rewards were tied to her internal rewards:  IE:  We pumped up the pride of keeping her pants dry with the idea that if she agreed to sit on the potty, she was able to watch her favorite show, and if she peed on the potty, she earned a chocolate kiss.  And I still have kisses with colored foil, so she also gets to choose which color of kiss she will get.

She stayed dry the entire time she was home!  She peed in a pull up when we were at Ellen’s house.  But I really think it was timing.  I didn’t bring the Potty Monkey with me, so I don’t know how long she sat there withough peeing. And, our biggest victory, SHE POOPED IN THE POTTY!

Those of you with young children know that this is a huge behavioral step.

I will (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your philosophy) will continue to plan her potty training as an exercise in behavioral training.

I will keep you updated, whether you like it or not, with the results.

Is it wrong that my child has become my personal research study?