Positive Reinforcement

Positive Reinforcement: Our Way of Parenting

As parents, you might have been using positive reinforcement knowingly or unknowingly. Ever offered your kid candy for being quiet while you work? Yup! That’s it! Positive reinforcement refers to the introduction of a desirable or pleasant stimulus after a behavior. The desirable stimulus reinforces the behavior, making it more likely that the behavior will reoccur. In simpler terms, it means rewarding the good behavior of a child to increase the chance of the same good behavior happening again and again.

Almost every child development professional will suggest that the parents completely ignore the bad behavior and reward the good behavior. But as you probably know, as a parent it is sometimes difficult to do so.

Punishments VS Rewards

But when it comes to misbehavior, our usual go-to approach is Punishments. Despite how reasonable this sounds, it turns out that most experts, believe that rewards are more effective than punishment. Positive reinforcement can also be an effective way to encourage and motivate your child to be responsible, do their chores, get along with their siblings, or complete their homework assignments without arguing.

How does it work?

Most adults go to work so they can receive a paycheck. Of course, there may be other rewards they experience too, self satisfaction, their ability to help others etc. But their paycheck provides the main positive consequence of going to work and acts as a motivation. Like adults, kids who receive positive reinforcement for their good work are motivated to keep working hard. So, it’s important to reward the behavior you want to see more often, rather than focusing on their negative actions.

Good Good Piggy is your personal positive reinforcement app that rewards good good behavior through tasks and missions set by you. It uses coins (money) to facilitate a good behavior to finally convert that into a habit

It is crucial to implement this system into your child from a young age before any negative behavior permanently sets in. So why not enhance your child with all the good habits they need in order to grow up to be more responsible adults? Something to think about.