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ADHD, 3.07 (V) DRC Consequences

3.07 (V) DRC Consequences

In this last segment, we're going to talk about how to effectively provide consequences for our daily report card. And by consequences, I'm talking about rewards. DRC, Daily Report Card, is not a punishment based system, it's a reward based system. So children are told at the beginning of the day that they do not have the rewards. And they have to earn their way towards attaining the rewards based on meeting the goals on the daily report card. So in a sense the children have a choice to make. They can work hard and meet the goals that are set for them and, therefore, experience all kinds of positive things after school. If they make poor choices or bad ones where they're not following the rules or getting their work done, well that day they're not going to have quite as good of a situation after school as they might have had, had they chosen a different path. Working with parents to setup home rewards involves a couple of key points. One is that there should be a hierarchy of reward. So any target on a daily report card represents something that's difficult for that child to do. So even if they get one yes on the goals that they have for that day and a bunch of places where they received no's, we still want to reward that one yes, because that represents incremental progress towards better behavior. Rewards should be daily. So one thing that often happens for kids with behavioral challenges, is that they lose their privileges for weeks at a time, sometimes months. Well that has two problems. One is that it's very hard for parents to maintain consequences for months at a time. There might be some chiseling or slippage where the child has access to these rewards or privileges after a few weeks. And that sends a message that I saw that you lost these things but, in effect, you really didn't. The other problem is that by taking away privileges for months or weeks at a time all the ammunition a parent has to help motivate and encourage a child's appropriate behavior is now gone. Why bother trying hard? If I can't have any of these fun things, I might as well get my money's worth, and not do any of this work or not follow these rules. By resetting the reward list each day, a parent can maximize the chances that the child is motivated to do well. And so this daily report card is called a daily report card for a reason. Each day the child's put right back in earning situation where they have to meet goals in order to get these consequences that they enjoy. At times, if it's difficult to get parents to consistently reward the daily report card, either because they have work schedules that make it hard for them to be around after school, or perhaps they're dealing with their own organizational or time-management challenges. School rewards can take the place of the home rewards, although I would say that in almost all cases, the rewards that can be provided at home, screen time, parent attention, access to certain toys or activities, are almost always more powerful than the ones that can be provided in a classroom setting. On that note, rewards should be naturally occurring ones. So parents should have the mindset of taking away the things a child has as a right. Television, computer, maybe a phone, a bike, possibly access to later bedtime. And they are now earned back as privileges. So all of those things can be taken away by the parent. They can say, if you want to get on the screen, or you want to stay up past 7:30, or you want to have dessert, whatever it might be, you need to get a certain number of yeses on your daily report card to be able to earn those things. In a reward hierarchy, less desirable rewards are things that aren't quite as good, or at the bottom. So if the child needs a handful of yeses, that's the range they're going to be in for rewards. If they have an outstanding day, where they get almost all of their goals met with a positive mark by the teacher, then they get the best level of the rewards or perhaps the longest length of time on one of their rewards. It's important to have a menu of rewards because children can get bored with or tired of particular rewards over time. So, for example, I once worked with a family where the child had a video game he really liked. That was the only reward that was offered. The child eventually beat the video game. It wasn't as fun anymore, and we saw a deterioration in behavior until we added in a few other rewards that could be earned after school, that were more interesting to the child. We then saw behavior improve because the child was motivated again. There's some examples of home rewards. There's some links to websites where parents or teachers can look at some outlines of how to establish a daily report card home rewards system. The important thing is that the rewards are ones that the child is motivated to work toward and that there's enough of them so that, on any given day, there's a chance the child would like to earn what's on that list. Once the daily report card is constructed and the reward menu with the parents is established, the parent and teacher have to explain the daily report card to the child. This can usually be done by the teacher meeting with the child to go over the goals and explain how the process is going to work, how they might give the child feedback on the daily report card throughout the day. The parent should meet with the child to review the reward menu and make sure that what's on that list are things that the child really wants to work toward or earn. Parents and teachers can even role play a little bit about how particular situations would occur given a positive daily report card or one that isn't so hot. But the focus to all the discussions should be positive. You can do this! We know you can meet these goals. Look, if you work hard in school and bring home a positive daily report card, look at all these great things that you can do. That positive focus is going to help rev up the engine for the child so that when he or she hits the classroom, they're maximally motivated to try to meet the goals, have a good day at school, because there's a good payoff for them at the end of the day. And this is going to be different than the type of experience they may have had in the past, where it was a failure experience that resulted in even more failure at home, when they had to interact with their parents about the bad day that they had. Now the daily report card is expected to be an intervention that's on going. Probably, throughout the whole school year for most kids with ADHD. Parents and teachers are monitoring progress frequently. If the child's routinely getting a 100% of their goals met then they might, the teacher might decide to add other goals or make the criterion a little more difficult. If a child's below 75% of the goals met, that suggests that perhaps the targets were set too conservatively and, therefore, it's too difficult for the child. The sweet spot is when the child's getting about 75 to 80% of the yeses on the daily report card circled each day. Too many means it's too easy. Fewer than that means it might be too challenging. One advantage of the daily report card is if a teacher or parent saves them, over time, it can be used as a progress monitoring tool, so the adults can see kind of how the child's performing over time during the school year, and it'll also track some backsliding if it occurs. And if that happens, the parent, teacher, can get together to figure out, how are we going to revise this program to make it work again? Thank you for the attention to Module 3. There's some helpful links on the website that may be worth pursuing and exploring. And now we're going to move on to Module 4.


3.07 (V) DRC Consequences

In this last segment, we're going to talk about how to effectively provide consequences for our daily report card. And by consequences, I'm talking about rewards. DRC, Daily Report Card, is not a punishment based system, it's a reward based system. So children are told at the beginning of the day that they do not have the rewards. And they have to earn their way towards attaining the rewards based on meeting the goals on the daily report card. So in a sense the children have a choice to make. They can work hard and meet the goals that are set for them and, therefore, experience all kinds of positive things after school. If they make poor choices or bad ones where they're not following the rules or getting their work done, well that day they're not going to have quite as good of a situation after school as they might have had, had they chosen a different path. Working with parents to setup home rewards involves a couple of key points. One is that there should be a hierarchy of reward. So any target on a daily report card represents something that's difficult for that child to do. So even if they get one yes on the goals that they have for that day and a bunch of places where they received no's, we still want to reward that one yes, because that represents incremental progress towards better behavior. Rewards should be daily. So one thing that often happens for kids with behavioral challenges, is that they lose their privileges for weeks at a time, sometimes months. Well that has two problems. One is that it's very hard for parents to maintain consequences for months at a time. There might be some chiseling or slippage where the child has access to these rewards or privileges after a few weeks. And that sends a message that I saw that you lost these things but, in effect, you really didn't. The other problem is that by taking away privileges for months or weeks at a time all the ammunition a parent has to help motivate and encourage a child's appropriate behavior is now gone. Why bother trying hard? If I can't have any of these fun things, I might as well get my money's worth, and not do any of this work or not follow these rules. By resetting the reward list each day, a parent can maximize the chances that the child is motivated to do well. And so this daily report card is called a daily report card for a reason. Each day the child's put right back in earning situation where they have to meet goals in order to get these consequences that they enjoy. At times, if it's difficult to get parents to consistently reward the daily report card, either because they have work schedules that make it hard for them to be around after school, or perhaps they're dealing with their own organizational or time-management challenges. School rewards can take the place of the home rewards, although I would say that in almost all cases, the rewards that can be provided at home, screen time, parent attention, access to certain toys or activities, are almost always more powerful than the ones that can be provided in a classroom setting. On that note, rewards should be naturally occurring ones. So parents should have the mindset of taking away the things a child has as a right. Television, computer, maybe a phone, a bike, possibly access to later bedtime. And they are now earned back as privileges. So all of those things can be taken away by the parent. They can say, if you want to get on the screen, or you want to stay up past 7:30, or you want to have dessert, whatever it might be, you need to get a certain number of yeses on your daily report card to be able to earn those things. In a reward hierarchy, less desirable rewards are things that aren't quite as good, or at the bottom. So if the child needs a handful of yeses, that's the range they're going to be in for rewards. If they have an outstanding day, where they get almost all of their goals met with a positive mark by the teacher, then they get the best level of the rewards or perhaps the longest length of time on one of their rewards. It's important to have a menu of rewards because children can get bored with or tired of particular rewards over time. So, for example, I once worked with a family where the child had a video game he really liked. That was the only reward that was offered. The child eventually beat the video game. It wasn't as fun anymore, and we saw a deterioration in behavior until we added in a few other rewards that could be earned after school, that were more interesting to the child. We then saw behavior improve because the child was motivated again. There's some examples of home rewards. There's some links to websites where parents or teachers can look at some outlines of how to establish a daily report card home rewards system. The important thing is that the rewards are ones that the child is motivated to work toward and that there's enough of them so that, on any given day, there's a chance the child would like to earn what's on that list. Once the daily report card is constructed and the reward menu with the parents is established, the parent and teacher have to explain the daily report card to the child. This can usually be done by the teacher meeting with the child to go over the goals and explain how the process is going to work, how they might give the child feedback on the daily report card throughout the day. The parent should meet with the child to review the reward menu and make sure that what's on that list are things that the child really wants to work toward or earn. Parents and teachers can even role play a little bit about how particular situations would occur given a positive daily report card or one that isn't so hot. But the focus to all the discussions should be positive. You can do this! We know you can meet these goals. Look, if you work hard in school and bring home a positive daily report card, look at all these great things that you can do. That positive focus is going to help rev up the engine for the child so that when he or she hits the classroom, they're maximally motivated to try to meet the goals, have a good day at school, because there's a good payoff for them at the end of the day. And this is going to be different than the type of experience they may have had in the past, where it was a failure experience that resulted in even more failure at home, when they had to interact with their parents about the bad day that they had. Now the daily report card is expected to be an intervention that's on going. Probably, throughout the whole school year for most kids with ADHD. Parents and teachers are monitoring progress frequently. If the child's routinely getting a 100% of their goals met then they might, the teacher might decide to add other goals or make the criterion a little more difficult. If a child's below 75% of the goals met, that suggests that perhaps the targets were set too conservatively and, therefore, it's too difficult for the child. The sweet spot is when the child's getting about 75 to 80% of the yeses on the daily report card circled each day. Too many means it's too easy. Fewer than that means it might be too challenging. One advantage of the daily report card is if a teacher or parent saves them, over time, it can be used as a progress monitoring tool, so the adults can see kind of how the child's performing over time during the school year, and it'll also track some backsliding if it occurs. And if that happens, the parent, teacher, can get together to figure out, how are we going to revise this program to make it work again? Thank you for the attention to Module 3. There's some helpful links on the website that may be worth pursuing and exploring. And now we're going to move on to Module 4.