What Behavior Are You Rewarding?

I’m sitting in a Starbucks right now, attempting to get some good writing in. At a table near me sits a young mom with her toddler. The toddler is periodically yelling a loud nonsense word. Each time, the mother shushes her. She’s also teasing the little girl, “You’re so loud.”

After the tenth time, I started paying more attention to the interaction. Why was the child not responding to her mother? As I observed, I realized that the child was taking it as a game: When she misbehaved, her mother turned her full attention on the child. The kid clearly loved this and was incented to keep yelling out.

How often are we frustrated by how others treat us when the reality is that we reward them with our attention?

It had me thinking about relationships in general. How often are we frustrated by how others treat us when the reality is that we reward them with our attention?

For some people, acting out is the only way they know to get attention. It may be a negative coping strategy, and it may annoy or upset the other person, but that annoyance tells them they have an impact.

It’s a way of validating our place and importance in the world, no matter how damaging it is.

I’ve seen this first-hand with my own child. I was that mom in the Starbucks, desperately trying to figure out how to rein my hyperactive child.

I took advice from any place I could find it: I tried shushing, I tried leaving stores, I tried time outs, I tried spankings. I took away toys and enforced early bedtimes for poor behavior.

I was desperate to avoid looking like “that parent” who over-indulges their kid and enables bad behavior.

Even after Harper was diagnosed with ADHD and placed on medication, it simply meant that her outbursts and bad behavior happened on a slightly smaller scale.

Finally, I got the education I really needed in the form of a behavioral therapist.

Harper had figured out that she got my undivided attention when she misbehaved. I felt obligated to control my child, and thus was hyper-aware of her actions and correcting her — especially when we were in public.

I was desperate to avoid looking like “that parent” who over-indulges their kid and enables bad behavior. Instead, I swung the pendulum too far to the other side, which had the same effect as being too permissive a parent.

After spending the first week recording Harper’s tantrums, how long they lasted, and what sparked them, Dr. Tony gave me some guidance: It was time to switch up the game.

Now, when Harper refused to follow a direction or threw a tantrum, I was guided to ignore her completely. She could pretty much do anything she wanted (short of injuring either of us or the cats) for as long as she wanted.

I felt obligated to control my child, and thus was hyper-aware of her actions and correcting her — especially when we were in public.

She could scream. She could kick holes in doors; doors, after all, are replaceable. Children are not. She could pound on the floor, screech at the highest volumes, call me names, tell me she hated me — anything.

If she attempted to hit or kick me, I had permission to walk away from her, including locking myself in my bedroom until she calmed down.

It was a level of acknowledgment that Dr. Tony didn’t like, but it was better than my getting hurt.

Then, as soon as she calmed down, I was to give her attention by offering Harper a hug or some sort of physical attention.

It didn’t matter if I was still upset or my feelings were hurt; I had to set that aside and give her some positive attention immediately and on the spot.

Then, we were to finish by problem-solving to identify what upset her, help her name her emotions, and identify alternate responses.

I hated it. I hated every moment of it. Those first two weeks were the worst.

One of the first tantrums lasted over two-and-a-half hours and featured full-throated, high-pitched screeching and kicking and pummeling the floor and more. For this one, I did lock myself in my bedroom. It was scary, and the cats huddled with me for safety.

I learned that ignoring someone is a powerful way to get them to treat you differently.

As soon as I heard her calm down outside my door, I got up and asked her if she was calm now. When she affirmed she was, I opened the door and gave her a hug.

“I’m proud of you for calming yourself down. I know that you were really upset.” She didn’t seem responsive to positive feedback.

Despite my discouragement, I soldiered on, desperately praying that this approach would finally start working.

For another tantrum, my husband and I were in the car with Harper on the back half of a six-hour drive when she went off. It was 52 minutes of window-shaking screaming, crying, and kicking the back of my seat as hard as she could, while I saw there ignoring everything.

My husband, who was rarely home for her tantrums was floored by her behavior. I was excited that she was able to calm down in under an hour.

We can usually prevent the need to use [the ignoring] tactic by giving positive attention.

At the end of those two weeks, I had a different child. Her tantrums, which had been at least once a day (and usually two or three times), now only occurred once every few days. Also, they were lower in intensity and significantly shorter in duration.

Also, she started listening to me better. While it would take another nine months of behavior therapy to gain long-term behavioral change, just achieving this first step gave me hope.

I learned that ignoring someone is a powerful way to get them to treat you differently — as long as it is paired with positive behavior when they do something well.

Ignoring is an extreme action, and has its place in our relationships. While we can usually prevent the need to use this tactic by giving positive attention, it can be helpful when boundaries are consistently crossed.

One difference in using the ignoring approach with adults is that often the conflict is a two-way street and we need to recognize our role.

Stonewalling with silence until an apology is made isn’t always effective in repairing valued relationships. In fact, it can deepen the challenges in the relationship.

We may have to step back and allow re-engagement for the sake of problem-solving the issue, no matter how much ignoring feels like the more satisfactory approach to achieving a change in behavior.

Regardless, ignoring bad behavior is effective. We just have to use this skill wisely.

How you do let people know when their behavior has hit an extreme?