Many moons ago on a planet far far away, I was friends with a humorous fellow named Mike Black. My freshman year of college, we were inseparable. He kept me somewhat sane during a huge transitional part of my life. How, you ask? He kept me laughing. He used to tell he thought I would look so cool if I were fat (I got pretty fat when pregnant with Chloe, and I can tell you I didn’t look that cool). He would tell stories about how when he was younger, he was the menace of the neighborhood and the parents would tell their kids, “we don’t want that Black kid coming over!” And, he nearly got me kicked out of “Playscript analysis,” or whatever it was called, by drawing stick figures getting horribly disfigured.
Well, apparently I am not the only one who thinks he’s funny. He is now earning his living as a stand up comedian, and has been featured on Comedy Central. I gotta say, Mike if you read this, I am REALLY proud of you! Oh, and not at all surprised. I always thought you were freakin’ hilarious!
Finally. I am FINALLY proud to call myself an American. Yesterday, we broke through a great barrier and are slowly on the way to making a better world for our children, and our children’s children. This election has renewed my faith in the American people. It gives me hope that as a nation we can change, we can all band together and fight as one to create a place where the only boundaries are those we make for ourselves. Even if you didn’t vote for Obama, you cannot deny the magnitude of our first African American President. I believe that this will send a powerful message to the rest of the world that the American people are ready for change.
In some ways, I feel sorry for Obama. Look at the mess he has to clean up. But, especially after watching his speech, I believe with everything in my being that we have chosen the right person for the job.
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?
We had days and days of beautiful weather. Yesterday, I didn’t even wear a jacket. Today, it snowed. My parents are flying in at 11:45 pm, and it decides to snow. Luckily, the initial report that the plane was going to be delayed by an hour and ten minutes proved to be false. But, I still have to leave my house at 10:45 pm to get my mommy and daddy from the airport.
Luckily, Chloe slept until 8:45 this morning (which she never ever does.) I really really hope she decides to sleep in tomorrow, too. My bedtime adjusts to her wake up time, but getting home at 1:45 am is late. Very late. A little bit past my bedtime.
I was in my garden level, one bedroom apartment, getting ready for work like I did every morning. I had the radio turned to Greg and Bo and they were being funny as usual. All of a sudden, one of them said, “We just got a report saying that an airplane flew into the World Trade Center.”
At that time, everybody seemed to assume it was an accident. I was shocked, but I still had to go to work. I got into my car and I listened, my hands gripped on the steering wheel, my knuckles white, trying to focus on driving and hoping that maybe it had been a mistake. Then the announcement came on that a second plane struck. At that point, I knew it wasn’t an accident.
I got to the Day Treatment, and the director had put the news on in our community room. The staff sat around the couches, shocked into silence, and watched the replay over and over and over. The kids started to trickle in as their buses arrived and we had to explain with each new batch what had happened. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get across to these students, who had problems of their own, that this was serious. We couldn’t get them to understand that people had DIED on those planes, and in those buildings. I hate to say this, but some of them actually thought the images of planes flying into buildings were “cool.”
Then, we all watched in horror as the buildings collapsed. First one, then the other. Some of the girls screamed, I think I screamed, as they went down. The boys finally shut up.
The staff had a quick pow wow and decided that our students needed us to carry on, business as usual. The director pulled the set into her office and we started our school day. I only got snippets of information during breaks between classes. After the buses picked the kids up, the whole staff gathered in the directors office and we watched. I vaguely remember discussing the commentary, I don’t remember what we said.
Around 5:00pm, we decided we all needed to get home, and we left. I stopped by a liquor store and bought a six pack of beer, then went home to my lonely apartment, and watched the news until I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I didn’t know anybody who died. I still lived in Colorado, and New York and DC seemed so far away. I had some friends who lived in Arlington, but they let me know early on that they were okay, so I wasn’t worried.
I do distinctly remember thinking, “Life will never be the same after this.”
I knew fear would begin to rule us. I knew people would start looking at each other with greater scrutiny, wondering if we could be trusted. I knew, for a short time, we would all rally and support each other, we would hold up our flags and pledge our patriotism. I knew it wasn’t going to be that long before our fear would require us to trade some of our personal freedoms for the feeling of security. I knew that I was going to have to start answering questions from my students, I knew I wasn’t prepared to give them answers, and that there weren’t answers.
For Chloe, this will be ancient history. Us old folks will sit around the telly, talking about where we were when the earth shook. And she will never truly understand the fear, the horror and the grief. And I hope that she will never have to feel these things herself.