I mentioned previously that I have been taking my daughter Abby to the nursing home. This has turned out to be a spectacular success. She not only looks forward to these visits but also stays on the lookout for helping opportunities. Wherever we are, she notices people who are older or who have limited mobility. She will talk to them, hug them, hold the door for them, even engage in long conversations.
One day we were eating lunch and she invited another little girl (a complete stranger) to join us at the nursing home. My favorite story was an episode that I did not witness. Abby saw a woman with a cane and asked if she could help her walk. When we heard about this, we had a spontaneous celebration in our home. It may seem like a small thing, but here’s the great part: no one was there watching or directing her.
Virtually all of my tips on parenting are based on the idea that we want to prepare our children to live successfully without us. The real test of discipline is not whether we can make our children do or not do something; it is how they act when we are not there. Psychologists do a test in which a child is instructed not to touch something, and then the authority figure leaves the room. What would your child do with a pile of candy there for the taking and no one watching? Most children are very restrained when someone is standing right there, but exercising restraint when no one is watching is a rare thing.
I am thrilled that Abby has taken to the role of helper, but the best part is that this behavior no longer depends on our prompting. Any time we seek to build behavior, we use reinforcements of various types. However, these are “artificial” reinforcements. In real life, people don’t jump up and down and high five you for doing the right thing. No one gives college students M&M’s when they go to bed on time or turn in homework. Adults don’t get gold stars for cleaning their rooms. Since most of us don’t plan on following our children around for the rest of our lives, we have to make sure that positive behaviors will stick. We want our kids to experience the payoff — the delivery of “natural” reinforcers.
When you do your job and get a paycheck, or when you are kind and people respond positively to you, those are natural reinforcers. Most worthwhile things carry their own payoff, so we must make it our goal to shift from artificial to natural reinforcement over time. Abby started helping because it pleased her parents, but now she will continue helping because she got the payoff of feeling good about herself and realizing the joy of making other people happy. That’s the kind of experience we should all desire for our children.
Now if only she would discover the payoff for washing dishes ….
Bruce Powers, whose column appears monthly, is pastor of Westhaven Baptist Church in Portsmouth. Contact him at [email protected]. Other parenting resources are available from Diane Smith ([email protected]) of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s emerging leaders team.