Positive Reinforcement: What It Is and How to Use It to Address Behaviors

I want to encourage my child to do a different behavior, but I’m not sure how.

It’s ideal to want to encourage your child to engage in an alternative and more appropriate behavior. One of the most widely used ways in ABA is to try positive reinforcement.

Adding positive reinforcement through high-fives, or social praise, can help children learn behaviors such as lining up to wait for the bus.

What is positive reinforcement?

Well I’m glad you asked! Positive reinforcement is when you add something after a behavior occurs (that you want to see more of) that is likely to increase it happening in the future.

Using positive reinforcement is beneficial when done correctly because then you are “rewarding” the desired behavior for your child.

To learn more about reinforcement, and other ABA topics, subscribe for updates in new posts!

Some examples of positive reinforcement:

Providing praise or compliments
Giving high fives, smiles, or physical contact (like tickles)
Giving money
Access to toys or activities
Presenting food, like preferred snacks

Why use positive reinforcement?

It will provide more chances for a desired behavior to access more motivating items, activities, or locations.

While the new behavior accesses preferred items or activities, it gains more momentum to continue with this behavior.

Gaining access to preferred things will keep your child motivated to continue engaging in this behavior.

How to implement positive reinforcement

First things first, you will need to determine what exact behavior you want to teach your child to increase, or engage more in.

When the behavior occurs, either on their own or with you prompting it, be sure to provide the reinforcement. This means you will present an item, or access to an activity after the behavior happens.

Take Aways

The use of positive reinforcement is done to increase a specific behavior by adding something, whether it be an item, activity, or location, after the behavior happens.

Positive reinforcement is done to the chances of a behavior occurring more in the future in similar scenarios.

Subscribe here to be notified about new posts, updates, and more from The ABA Parent Page. Let’s talk about behaviors!

Don’t miss these tips!