It seems that everytime I tell my child it’s time to do homework, they purposely throw the worksheets all over the kitchen. What should I do?
I know this can be a tough situation to deal with. There is a tactic you can try to work on teaching your child how to ask for a break after doing a portion of the assigned work.
Using what ABA calls negative reinforcement will help to promote more appropriate ways to request breaks, or removal of non-preferred tasks.
What is negative reinforcement?
Negative reinforcement, simply put, is removing something from your child’s environment after a behavior occurs that increases the chances that behavior will occur more in the future.
Some examples of negative reinforcement:
- Removing aversive noises
- Removing bright lights
- Taking away undesired work, or worksheets
- Taking away non-preferred tasks
- Relieving pain
Learning about how to use different ABA strategies, including various types of reinforcement can be beneficial for children as they development new skills. To keep up with ABA and how to implement in the home, subscribe to our blog.
Why use negative reinforcement?
Using negative reinforcement can help your child learn more appropriate ways to request removal of an item, tasks, or sensory aversiveness.
It can also be used to promote on-task behaviors that go hand-in-hand with then removing that non-preferred tasks.
Having an easier way to get non-preferred tasks removed is more motivating to keep engaging in. Negative reinforcement can aid in learning and maintaining these more appropriate behaviors.
How to implement negative reinforcement
First, pick a behavior that you want to teach your child when they want something removed.
Next, be sure you can prompt that behavior when the situations arise. This will help to teach the behavior sooner.
As the behavior occurs, whether prompted or independent, be sure to reinforcement those instances by removing the non-preferred item or task.
Take Aways
Negative reinforcement is when you take something away upon a behavior happening that increases the chances of the behavior occurring again in the future in similar situations.
The use of negative reinforcement is utilized to teach an alternative behavior to get something removed that is undesired from the child’s environment.
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