Adapptive Behaviors
What is it?
Adapptive Behaviors is an integrated behavioral management system to help parents positively incentivize and reward the good behaviors of their children in an effort to improve family communication, parental consistency, and the child’s sense of self-esteem and responsibility.
A little background:
Adapptive Behaviors is the brain-child of a budding child psychiatrist in an effort to support positive parenting methods to provide for happier homes, parents, and children. This program will provide parents with the ability to immediately reward and discipline their children for good and bad behaviors, will allow parents to schedule chores and for children to complete them, and will even allow curfew times and features to help children avoid excess screen-time and maladaptive use (such as staying up all night playing games / texting / etc.).
Why it will work:
1. Consistency is key.
a. Do you ever have trouble remembering your own rules? Load the rules into Adapptive Behaviors and watch the system work its magic.
b. Come from a divorced household and have trouble with behaviors due to inconsistency? Then load the rules into Adapptive Behaviors and keep track of your child’s progress even when he/she is at the other parent’s house.
c. Does your child often ask the other parent for permission when he/she doesn’t get the response desired from the first? Adapptive Behaviors will send the request to both parents and will show the other parent’s response.
2. Token economies are proven behavioral management systems.
a. Token economies provide children with goals to work toward, rewards to earn, and a sense of value.
b. Adapptive Behaviors’ token economy is adjustable to the desires of the parent as the parent can add / drop items from the ‘Token Shop’ and can also adjust the token cost for said items.
3. Immediate feedback links positive behaviors to their rewards and helps extinguish bad behavior.
a. When the child completes the chore they get the reward.
b. If they do something good, fire off an ‘iPraise’ to give them that further positive encouragement.
4. Positive intermittent reinforcement is the most behaviorally adaptive technique.
a. Variable intermittent reward systems are the strongest reinforcers for behavioral change. This uses the very system that makes gambling so behaviorally addictive to promote positive behavioral changes in the child. (No, this will not lead to gambling).
5. Encouraging a sense of morality and responsibility (owning your mistakes)
a. miBad – child-side function
I. This allows the child to self-report things that they may have done wrong or are not proud (poor performance on a test, getting in trouble at school, getting in a confrontation at school or with a sibling, etc.).
ii. By reporting on their own issues it teaches responsibility and rewards the child by offering a reduction to the disciplinary cost (50% less if self-reported vs. 200% if the parent reports it).
b. iDiscipline – parent-side function
I. This allows the parent to discipline / deduct tokens based upon negative behaviors at the time of the behavior. This requires the parent to either select or type-in the reason for the disciplinary measure.
ii. Disciplinary measures that are logged that could have been self-reported by the child are weighted at a higher value (double the token loss).
6. Improving self-esteem
a. miGood – child-side function
I. This allows the child to self-report things that they feel they have done well or are proud of (doing good on a test, having a good day at school, sharing with siblings / friends, going out of their way to help others, etc.)
ii. By reporting positive behaviors with miGood this encourages the child to see themselves in a positive light and provides them with further opportunity to earn rewards for good behaviors.
iii. The child assigns a proposed value and the parent may approve or alter the value.
b. iPraise – parent-side function
I. This allows the parent to praise / reward good behaviors immediately upon their occurrence with the simple tap of a button. This can be in the form of text responses such as “Great job!” “Keep up the good work!” or positive praise with tokens.
With your support, this application will be made free to anyone that wishes to download it with an advertisement feature to provide revenue flow to further update and enhance the application.
My overall goal is not only to improve family communication and behaviors, but, by doing so, to lessen the medication burden on our children and improve the outcomes for child mental health across the world.