How Behavior Develops: Some Important Principles

"I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
- Sir Isaac Newton

Science is a wonderful thing. A really wonderful thing! From it we can learn so much if we will only listen to what it has to teach us. Nowhere is this more true than with human behavior, the things people say and do. As with physics, chemistry, or any of the other so-called "hard sciences," human behavior is lawful. It is predictable. Furthermore, as with physics, chemistry, and the hard sciences, research in human behavior has taught us about laws that govern human behavior and how to predict human behavior given a description of the environment within which it will occur. For example, in chemistry we know that under certain environmental conditions hydrogen and oxygen molecules will always form water. The laws of physics assure us that a heavier-than-air object will fall in a straight line towards the center of the earth at predictable speeds. Given the conditions under which the object is dropped, its behavior in space is absolutely predictable.

Human behavior is also predictable in light of the environment within which it occurs. It is not as absolutely predictable as is the case with chemical reactions, gravitational phenomena, and heavenly bodies in space, but it is predictable enough for us to know generally what will happen under given conditions. There is, indeed, a science of human behavior. Human behavior is lawful and as is the case with other sciences, we can predict events-not, perhaps, with the same level of certainty, but certainly at high levels of accuracy. With knowledge about human behavior, we can improve the quality of the environment within which we live. We can build a better world for all, including ourselves and our children-and grandchildren!

There is no need to be afraid of science, nor to be frightened away by the suggestion that we can use science to improve the quality of our lives and the lives of the members of our family. When I speak to parents about the science of human behavior, I sometimes see them flinch and become anxious because of the difficulty they had in school with their science classes. What I am talking about here is not to be confused with doing science or studying science in the traditional sense. What I am talking about here is using what we know from science to improve our lives. We do that all the time and quite effortlessly, in fact even comfortably. For example, though it might be frigidly cold or torridly hot outside, we can create a comfortable environment within our home or our car by simply manipulating a device on the wall or on the dashboard that controls the environment to our liking. That is a wonderful option over heating our house with an open fire, or hitching up a team of horses to take us to our destination through the heat or the cold. This option has been made available to us by science.

Science has made options available to us in the realm of human behavior which, if used properly, make it possible for us to create wonderfully comfortable human environments in our homes and families, in the work place and the community, or wherever human beings dwell or interact.

Just as the climate-control devices in our homes and cars can be used badly resulting in our discomfort, the "climate-control devices" available to us in managing the human environment can also be used badly, thus creating a good deal of discomfort there. To help assure the development of effective parenting skills so that the behavioral climate in the home can be correctly controlled, it is important to understand some basic principles of that science.

In this chapter I discuss four principles of human behavior, which, if well under-stood and applied, make it possible for us to skillfully create and predict positive behavioral events in our environment. In Chapter 3, I discuss five strategies for effectively applying these principals in the family setting. The understanding of these principles and the skillful application of them will remarkably improve the quality of the environment in the home.

There is nothing mythical nor magical about what happens when behavioral principles are skillfully applied, though parents often tell me "a miracle has happened in my home" when they apply these principles well. Indeed, it might seem miraculous, but, in fact, it is simply a lawful, predictable, cause and effect relationship that can be repeated time and time again in an infinite array of settings.

I recently gave a talk to a group of parents during which I assured them that if they applied these principles correctly, they would have good results. A few days later, I met one of those parents in a grocery store. He said, "You know, we tried what you suggested and it worked!" (There was considerable surprise in his voice.) Then he stopped, and with a kind of funny look on his face added, "But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. That's what you said would happen." "Yeah!" I said, happy he'd gotten the message.

Intro : : Principle 1 : :  Principle 2 : : Principle 3 : : Principle 4

PRINCIPLE 1:

Though you might not think of the development of behavior in these terms, we are all very familiar with this principle as we experience it in our everyday lives. Everyday, members of the work force pull themselves out of a comfortable bed, put themselves back together, and even endure long hours in an unpleasant work place, and why? The answer, of course, is obvious: an array of pleasant, though delayed, consequences beginning with a paycheck and the goodies it provides. When driving through traffic we observe traffic rules, and why? Consequences in the form of continued driving privileges, a car that is free of scratches and dents and expensive repair bills, the avoidance of discomfort and the loss of money resulting from being stopped by a police officer and fined for breaking the law. A child will ask nicely for something he or she wants or will even have a tantrum to get what he or she wants, and why? Consequences, in the form of getting what is wanted.

If you ever wonder why individuals continue to behave the way they do, you needn't wonder for long. Just observe the events that follow their behavior and you will know why the behavior persists. And by the same token, if you ever wonder why a behavior ceases to exist, wonder no longer. We call the events that follow behavior consequences. Behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences. This is a primary principle of human behavior and will be referred to repeatedly throughout this book.

A recent experience of the power of this principle provides a classic example for the point I want to make. I have the pleasant opportunity to work closely with about 90 young married couples attending the university, many of whom have small children. Recently I attended a program which featured several of these children as they sang and performed for their parents. After the program, I made sure to give all of the children a hug for the good job they had done, and to tell them how much I enjoyed the program. As I left the room where the children had gone after their performance, I heard a child's voice calling to me. I turned and there in the dimly lit hall was a little boy hurrying toward me. With his arms outstretched he said, " I didn't get my hug." Somehow I had missed him and he wasn't about to let that go unnoticed. I frequently give these little ones hugs for the many good things they do. They have come to value these hugs-consequences!-and they behave well in good measure because of them. Even the anticipation of a hug will greatly influence how they behave.

For centuries, the controversy has raged over the origins of human behavior; the persisting nature-nurture debate. Popular theories about one or the other guide the work of practitioners. In recent years, particularly due to advances in the study of human genetics, it has become popular to explain human behavior in terms of internal events and conditions, some of which are reported to virtually render an individual a victim of his/her genetic makeup. The genetic role in hyperactivity, eating disorders, sexual preference, schizophrenia, youth violence, depression, suicide, alcoholism, temper, crime, phobias, cancer, and so on are frequent topics in the popular and professional literature today.

Despite all that is being said about the genetic origins of human behavior, I caution you to not be too quick to cave in to the notion that just because there may appear to be a relationship between some genetic phenomenon and human behavior that there is, in fact, a close cause and effect relationship. Many, if not most, of these studies are correlational studies; that is, they simply reveal that some individuals with a common problem behavior also share a common genetic condition; hence; they are co-related. But since others who share that same genetic condition do not have the same problem behavior, and vice versa, we must not assume that some kind of a powerful cause and effect relationship necessarily exists.

For the most part, the behavioral literature speaks far more clearly and eloquently to the cause and effect relationship between one's environment and behavior than does genetic research speak to cause and effect relationships between one's genetics and his/ her behavior. The lesson to be learned from this is that regardless of the behavior, and regardless of its origins, behavioral treatment which focuses on the careful arrangement of consequences (and, as is discussed later in the chapter, the equally careful arrangement of the environment) will ultimately have a much greater effect on behavior than does genetics. For that matter, being too preoccupied with internal events, genetic or otherwise, can and does rob people of the kind of treatment they need most. If a school counselor, teacher, psychologist, or a doctor tells you your child is "hyperactive" and suggests drug therapy to compensate for a supposed genetic disposition to be "out of control," regard that diagnosis with great suspicion and pursue with vigor behavioral treatments that we know to be effective. In fact, even if there is a bona fide genetic problem, behavioral treatment should also be a major part of therapy. Drug therapy alone is never adequate in the treatment of behavior problems. Be very careful about diagnoses and treatments that focus only on so-called "internal" events or conditions.

The preoccupation of finding out what's going on inside a kid typically leads to a plethora of needless testing, endless and expensive and needless therapies, and a desperate search for answers to questions which, even if found, give little or no direction to treatment. One is much better off to begin with an analysis of the consequences of behavior. That is a cause and effect relationship. That is the relationship that most likely answers the question "Why does the kid behave that way?" That kind of an analysis also gives specific direction to treatment. Be careful of drug therapy as the treatment of first and only choice.

Intro : : Principle 1 : :  Principle 2 : : Principle 3 : : Principle 4

PRINCIPLE 2:

My eighth-grade educated mother understood this principle very well and said it to me many, many times as a boy: "A cup of honey will draw more flies than a bucket of gall." Despite this age-old truth, the tendency of parents is to use negative, coercive, punitive means of stopping or eliminating behavior rather than positive, pleasant, reinforcing means of strengthening behavior. Why they do this is easily explained by the first principle of behavior we just discussed: consequences. A child misbehaves, the parent immediately scolds, spanks, or screams at the child, and the inappropriate behavior stops. The immediate consequence of the scolding, spanking, or screaming was exactly what the parents wanted: the child immediately quit misbehaving. Furthermore, the parents' behavior (that is, scolding, spanking or screaming) is also strengthened because it seems to be effective; hence it will certainly reoccur in the future when the child misbehaves again. And the child will misbehave again because the scolding, spanking, or screaming will have only a short-lived effect on the child's behavior. Unfortunately, parents don't see the reoccurrence of the child's behavior as being a function of the scolding, spanking, or screaming. Rather, they will recall only that the scolding, spanking, or screaming stopped the behavior before and it will stop it again ... and again and again and again and again and again. Get the point?

The more parents scold, spank and scream to control their children's behavior, the more their children's behavior will invite scolding, spanking, and screaming because negative consequences are ineffective ways of controlling children's behavior. Similar studies in classrooms have revealed exactly the same thing. The more teachers scold and scream at students to sit down and be quiet, the more the students will be out of their seats and rowdy. It is predictable. It is lawful. (As well as awful!)

The better way, the way that has more lasting and beneficial results, is to take advantage of the many opportunities that occur every day to attach a positive consequence to an appropriate behavior. That positive consequence can come in the form of a hug, a kiss, a pat on the back, a word of encouragement and praise, a smile, a wink, a token in a jar or a point on a good behavior record, and the list goes on. But what is really wonderful about this approach is that when used appropriately and consistently, the incidence of inappropriate behavior goes down dramatically while the incidence of appropriate behavior increases dramatically and maintains. It is predictable. You can bet on it. It is lawful. It is a well established matter of fact that in homes where parents smile at their children, laugh with their children, have lots of positive and appropriate physical interactions with their children (hugging and kissing and patting), and talk to their children a lot in pleasant, supportive, nonjudgmental ways, the frequency of problem behaviors in those families goes down, down, down, and the frequency of pleasant parent-child relationships goes up, up, up!

Here is a telling case in point. Recently I was in the front yard of a friend's home playing with my 15-month-old grandson. As 15-month-old babies do, he made a dash for the street. I gently picked him up, and said, "No, you may not play in the street." As I put him down on the sidewalk, I said, as I patted his back, "Play here," and I touched the ground. As expected, he headed right back for the street. (Later, when I talk about multiple trial learning vs. single trial learning, this will make more sense.) Again, I gently picked him up, and repeated the same corrective teaching strategy. After four learning trials, he went to the edge of the sidewalk, stopped and looked up at me. I smiled, knelt down beside him, gave him a hug and kiss, and said, "Thank you for playing here," as I touched the ground. He went up and down the sidewalk for a few minutes, then, as to be expected, headed for the street. I repeated, word-for-word, action-for-action, exactly what I had done earlier. He played for a few minutes, headed for the street, stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, pointed to the street and said, "No. Don't." Of course, that behavior was rewarded with a loving, tender consequence.

As we headed back into the house, I heard a terrible noise coming from next door. The child of the family living there, also about 15-months-old, went into the street. The boy's father screamed, "Get out of that street, you little brat!" Then in anger he grabbed the boy's arm, gave it a terrible jerk, swung the child into the air at the same time giving him a swat on the bottom, then harshly put the boy down on the lawn. The boy, by now, was crying in pain. You bet, the boy didn't return to the street, nor did he seek out his father for comfort. My heart aches for that boy, but it aches even more for him and his entire family when he is 15 years old! The child had been taught nothing about where he should play, but he was learning a lot about the distasteful effects of coercion, aversion, and pain. Since human beings behave to avoid coercion, aversion, and pain, imagine how that boy will behave when he has the opportunity to exercise avoidance behaviors. Imagine who he will avoid. Imagine what environment he will escape as soon as he can.

As parents, we must not be seduced into believing that because we get immediate results from scoldings, spankings, and screaming, that these are appropriate ways to respond to inappropriate behavior. They are not. In the long run, behavior responds better to positive than to negative consequences. Don't be blinded by immediate, short-lived results, or by immediate, short-lived gains. There is an economy in child rearing, a price we must pay. Either we remain solvent with positives or we are forever in debt and even bankrupted with negatives; positives that produce low-risk families or negatives that produce high-risk families.

If negative, aversive, coercive methods of control are not working (and they never do for long!), try a better way. I recently read a wonderful definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results." This is much like the concentration-camp-behavior-management-philosophy that "the flogging will continue until behavior improves." Well, behavior seldom improves with such consequences. Rather, plans to escape, despite the risks, are continually being devised. And so it is with children and coercion: they desire to escape, which they do at the rate of millions a year-running away from home, dropping out of school, committing suicide, and just giving up!

Intro : : Principle 1 : :  Principle 2 : : Principle 3 : : Principle 4

PRINCIPLE 3:
Whether a Behavior Has Been Punished or Reinforced Is Known Only by the Course of that Behavior in the Future

Parents tell me repeatedly, "I punish the child for that rotten behavior time and time again everyday and the kid continues to do it!" In light of this principle of human behavior, what is the matter with that analysis of the child's behavior? The answer is simple and clear: The parent isn't punishing the child at all. Rather, the child's behavior is being reinforced. What the parent thinks he or she is doing is one thing but what the parent is really doing is another. The only way one can know what the parent is really doing to the behavior is by observing what happens to the behavior subsequently, as illustrated in Figure 2.1. If the behavior persists, no matter what the parent thinks he or she has done to it, the behavior has been reinforced. Punishment has not occurred in the least. Rather, the behavior has been strengthened, and a behavior that has been strengthened is a behavior that will probably reoccur. Conversely, if the behavior gets weaker, or stops, then it has been punished.

The lesson for parents to learn from this is that they must carefully observe the course of their children's behavior over time. If inappropriate behavior persists, parents must be prepared to change the way they have been responding to that behavior. If appropriate behavior persists, the parents must be prepared to continue what they are doing. Parents must be prepared to change if they hope to improve an otherwise unpleasant situation. I heard it said, "If you're always going to do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always gotten." The changes that need to be made are revealed to us by how children respond to what we do.

It is the child's behavior which should determine the course of our action, not what we feel logically or intuitively should be done. What we do can be thought of as a form of treatment, and if the behavior improves, then we know the treatment has been effective. If the behavior persists or even gets worse, then we know the treatment is ineffective and needs to be changed. The best treatment known to humankind is to respond in a positive way to appropriate behavior. As noted by Dr. Murray Sidman (1988) in his wonderful book Coercion and Its Fallout, "When used effectively, positive reinforcement is the most powerful teaching tool we have" (p. 249). Nothing is known to work better nor to have a more lasting effect. How to do that will be addressed repeatedly throughout this book in common everyday situations familiar to parents around the globe. As a constant reminder of the power and importance of positive responding, every chapter in this book ends with this quotation from Dr. Sidney Bijou, one of the world's greatest contributors to the study of human behavior:

Before going to principle 4, let's look at the treatment of behavior in light of what has been discussed so far. Look at Figure 2.2 on the next page. I call this the treatment curve and it illustrates something that is very important for parents to know. First, I'll explain a few of the terms on the figure. The term baseline simply refers to a measure of a behavior over time. For example, if we were to measure the number of times or the length of time a child spent throwing tantrums every day and plotted that behavior on a graph for several days, that graph would be a baseline measure of that behavior. We could assume that if nothing was done to change the behavior, it would continue on in the future pretty much as it occurred during the days when it was being measured (In this regard, one of Isaac Newton's laws of motion applies very much to human behavior: A body set in motion will remain in motion in the direction and at the velocity it was set in motion unless acted upon by some other force. And so it is with human behavior. Unless it is acted upon in some "other" way, it will continue in whatever direction it is going.) since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Baseline data are often collected to help us determine how best to treat a behavior, and to know whether our treatment of that behavior has been effective.

The line labeled Treatment simply refers to that point in time when treatment of some sort was introduced to change the behavior. In this instance, the treatment was intended to decrease the amount of inappropriate behavior, for example, tantrums.

It is important to understand that treatment might not have the immediate effect we want it to have. In fact, in some instances the behavior might get worse for a short period of time. For example, when eliminating tantrums, it is not at all unusual for the severity of the child's tantrums to increase immediately following the onset of treatment. This is called an extinction burst. If and when this happens just remember, things might get worse before they get better. As I explain in Chapter 14, "Eliminating Tantrums," this is to be expected for a number of well known reasons. However, if the treatment is correct and correctly applied, regardless of what behavior is being treated, the probability is very great that the behavior will eventually improve as illustrated by the curve.

This improvement is accounted for by at least two things. First, the treatment is having the intended effect, and second, there is often a certain novelty associated with treatment. Parents often will tell me their kids get quite a kick out of what their parents are doing differently and seem to be willing to go along with it, at least for the time being, because it is somewhat novel and fun. One mother told me how amused she was when her children said to her, "Mom, you and Dad are acting really weird!"

However, after a while, usually two or three days, the "honeymoon" ends and the behavior moves back in the direction of baseline. We call this regression to baseline. It does this for at least two reasons. The first is that parents get careless and are sloppy in their management of the treatment. They become inconsistent, or they give in, or they slip back into their old habits of being punitive, coercive, and negative. When this occurs, the behavior will most certainly regress to its earlier level of inappropriateness. Second, as the novelty effect wears off and children tire of this "game" their parents are playing, they will challenge the system by going to extreme measures to get their way; or better put, to get the reinforcer (sick as they were!) that were available to them in such abundance before treatment was put into effect, and which maintained behavior at the baseline level. They are still under what we call the reinforcement control of their old ways of behaving (that is, during baseline), and since that is where all of the reinforcer's have been in the past, and since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, that is the direction in which the behavior will go; it will regress. As I noted earlier, in scientific terms it is called regression to baseline.

Nevertheless, despite the tendency to regress to baseline, if treatment is administered correctly and consistently, the behavior will come under the immediate reinforcement control of the treatment and in time a new baseline will be established. When this occurs, you know that you have successfully administered the treatment. If the behavior returns to baseline, or even exceeds it, you know the treatment was either ineffective or ineffectively administered. But the only way you can know whether the treatment (that is, your response to the behavior) was effective is by looking at what happens to the behavior after treatment. Whether a behavior has been punished or reinforced is determined only by the course it takes in the future.

Ultimately, of course, we hope that our children will perform and behave well because of "natural reinforcement," sometimes referred to as "intrinsic consequences," since such consequences are immediately reinforcing. That is, the child doesn't have to wait for someone to administer the reinforcer. As noted by my good friends at Comunidad Los Horcones, Sonora, Mexico, in an article entitled "Natural Reinforcement. A Way to Improve Education," "Natural reinforcer's are available for all students at the same time. With contrived reinforcement it is about impossible for teachers to reinforce every behavior of every student at the most appropriate moment; with natural reinforcement, that is possible." And so it is with children at home. Once they find that behaving well is naturally reinforcing, the need for extrinsic (contrived) reinforcer's diminishes rapidly.

Intro : : Principle 1 : :  Principle 2 : : Principle 3 : : Principle 4

PRINCIPLE 4:
Behavior is Largely a Product of its Immediate Environment

Invariably, when perplexed by a child's inappropriate behavior, parents will ask, "What's the matter with that kid?" They will even look for answers in their spouses genes ("The kid got it from his father"). They will explain it away using meaningless terms: "He's hyperactive," "He has a short attention span," "She's spoiled," and so on. None of these explanations, or excuses, or reasons, give any clue whatsoever about what to do with the behavior.

The only thing parents can agree on is that the kid needs to be fixed. We hear it not only at home with parents, but in schools with teachers, psychologists, and principals, in the court system with judges and juvenile justice people, and in virtually any situation where children are behaving inappropriately: fix the kid. Well, there is a better way, and this fourth principle of human behavior teaches us what that better way is: fix the environment and you'll fix the behavior. That's what fixes the kid! In its simplest, purest sense, a disciplined child is a product of a disciplined environment.

It is not possible to make sense out of a child's behavior without first making sense out of the environment within which that behavior occurs. Think of it this way. If you are repeatedly spending money on costly automobile repairs made necessary because the road you travel is in such bad condition as to be forever destructive to your car, no amount of money spent fixing the car is going to have any lasting benefit on how well the car operates unless the road gets fixed or you go a different way. How well the car operates isn't a function of how much time it spends being repaired. How well the car operates depends upon the condition of the road over which it travels every day. Fix the road and you "fix" the car. And so it is with children. Their behavior is simply a response to forces in the environment that get their behavior going (we call these cues and prompts), and forces in the environment that keep them going (we call these consequences). So the question isn't, "What's the matter with that kid?," the question is, "What's the matter with the environment?" Fix the environment and you fix the behavior.

This is almost too simple for some people to accept. As I pointed out earlier, we have become so conditioned to believing that the answer to children's problem behaviors lies somewhere within them, it is hard to imagine that by simply fine-tuning the environment we can have a remarkably positive, remedial effect on the behavior. As difficult as that may be to believe, that's the way it is. A recent experience illustrates this point. Parents of two small boys, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, came to me distraught because the older boy was repeatedly attacking his 2-year-old brother. As I listened to the parents recount their agonies over this situation, I heard what I typically hear from parents: "We can't imagine what's going on inside this boy of ours. We fear that we are raising a monster. It worries us so to think that he is going to grow up and be a menace to society. What can possibly be going on inside of this kid's head that causes him to do these things?" These expressions of quandary were then followed by predictable expressions of guilt and inadequacy: "We must be doing something terribly wrong. We must be terrible parents. Sometimes we wonder if we should have ever had any children in the first place. We feel so awful, so ashamed." Then the tears began flowing. As is typically the case, it was very intense.

After I was sure the parents had gotten their feelings out on the table and emotions were under control, I began to systematically analyze the relationships that existed between the child's behavior and his environment. (We call this a behavior analysis.) My first question was, "What happens when your 4-year-old hits his little brother?" The mother answered, "His little brother begins to cry. I mean, he really gets hurt!" My next question was simply a repeat of the first one, "Then what happens?" "Well," answered the mother, "I make my 4-year-old stop it." I then asked, "How do you do that? What do you say or do to your 4-year-old that makes him stop? Let's pretend that I am your 4-year-old and I have just hit my little brother. Say and do to me what you usually say and do to your 4-year-old when he hits his little brother."

The mother's response to this simple role-playing activity provided the answers to both why the 4-year-old repeatedly hit his younger brother, and what needed to be done to bring that behavior under control. She said she scolded the child, asked him why he hit his brother, reminded the boy that they go through this time and again every day, and said, "I'm getting sick and tired of it, so stop it! Stop it right now!" She spanked the 4-year-old, then gave affectionate comfort to the little brother. Simply stated, the mother gave the boy immense amounts of attention every time he hit his little brother. Parental attention is a powerful, powerful reinforcer of children's behavior.

More than anything else, children want the attention of their parents, and if they can't get it behaving appropriately, they will get it behaving inappropriately. As a young mother recently told me, recalling her childhood at home, "If I couldn't get my parent's attention by behaving well, then I behaved badly. Even that's better than no attention at all." One way or another, they will get it because it is so reinforcing to them. I often make this point by using an analogy. Profits are to business what attention is to behavior. People go into business to earn a profit, and people behave to get attention. In this instance, the 4-year-old child was getting a ton of attention, even though some of it was, by adult standards, not very pleasant. He was being scolded, sometimes spanked, frequently abruptly lifted up and carried to another area of the house, and questioned at great lengths about why he continues to do this kind of thing and how many times is he going to have to be told to stop it before he stops it, and so on. I then asked the mother what she did in response to the younger child's crying. She told me she picks him up and comforts him, holds him close, and assures him that she loves him, and that everything will be okay.

Can you see what is happening in this environment to encourage and maintain this hitting behavior by the 4-year-old? The 4-year-old gets huge amounts of attention for hitting and the 2-year-old gets huge amounts of attention for crying. It is in the best interest of both of them, from a behavioral perspective, to persist in these behaviors since the consequences available in their environment are so heavily reinforcing to them.

Knowing this, treatment became quite obvious and began with this question to the parents, "What do you do when the children are playing nicely together?" The answer was typical: "Well, we just leave them alone to play. We don't want to disturb them when they are happy." Though, at first blush, it appears to be the logically appropriate thing to do, it is, in fact, the absolutely wrong thing to do. Here is what I had the parents do. First, I told them to have at least 20 positive interactions with their children every hour while they were behaving nicely and playing appropriately together. As illustrated later in this book, I demonstrated how that was to be done. It's called raising the general level of reinforcement.

I pointed out that these interactions should be very brief and natural, and how they could have 20 positive interactions per hour without it taking more than a minute per hour, by using a wink, a smile, a pat on the back, or by simply saying, "You boys are playing so nicely together." All of it was to be done in a very natural way in the course of the parents' comings and goings in the home.

To help remind the parents to do this sort of thing regularly and frequently, I encouraged them to arrange their environment to give them the reminders they need. We call this creating a prosthetic environment. A prosthetic device is something that helps us do something we can't otherwise do alone. For example, a pair of glasses is a prosthetic that helps us see, a hearing aid is a prosthetic that helps us hear, and a crutch is a prosthetic that helps us walk. The prosthetics I suggested were to help the parents remember to have lots and lots of appropriate positive interactions with their children when they were behaving well. For example, I suggested to the mother that she tilt a picture on the wall so that it was enough off level to catch her attention. When she saw it, it would remind her to have a positive interaction with her children when they were behaving appropriately. I suggested that a plant or a knick-knack be moved to an unusual place as a reminder. Parents I've worked with have put a rubber band around their wrist, or a band aid around their thumb, or a penny in their shoe as reminders to acknowledge their children's appropriate behavior. I assured the parents that if they did these things the probability was extremely great that appropriate behavior would rapidly increase and inappropriate behavior would rapidly decrease. "After all," I told them, "Why should the children behave inappropriately when they are getting all of the attention they want by behaving appropriately? Remember, it's your attention they are after. They would far rather have your attention for behaving appropriately than for hitting and crying."

I then showed them how to respond in the event that the 4-year-old hit his 2-year-old brother. This, too, was a simple matter. I told the parents to unemotionally and immediately stop the hitting by removing the 4-year-old to a safe distance, looking him squarely in the eye and saying, "No, you may not do that to your brother," and to maintain eye-to-eye contact for a few seconds after he was told to stop. I instructed the parents to then redirect the boy's behavior to something that was appropriate: "Now sit over here and look at your book," or "Go play with your toys in the other room" or something to that effect. Remember, it isn't enough to simply stop the behavior. The behavior must be stopped then redirected to an appropriate behavior. This is important for two reasons. First, it gets the child doing something positive and worthy of attention. Second, after the child has been behaving appropriately for a minute or so, the parent has an opportunity to acknowledge that behavior, thus reinforcing appropriate behavior. I call this the stop, redirect, reinforce strategy.

As will be noted repeatedly in this book, it is not sufficient to simply stop inappropriate behavior. As parents, we must teach appropriate behavior. Parents are forever telling their children to "stop that!", but not providing them with replacement behaviors by which they can learn a better way to behave. The only thing children learn when they are told to stop behaving is what not to do. In effect, we leave it up to the child to figure out how to behave well, and the probabilities of the child doing that are very, very slim! Very slim indeed. The better way is for the parent to direct the child's behavior toward something that is appropriate, then briefly acknowledge the better behavior in a positive, descriptive way: "Thanks, Honey, for getting that chore done."

Now, regarding the behavior of the 2-year-old who was left crying, I instructed the parents to gently touch the child and in comforting words say, "You will feel better soon," then, in a very natural, unemotional way, go on to other things that need to be done around the house. This is called purposeful or planned ignoring. I cautioned the parents that as they walk away, they should not have any expressions of despair or frustration on their faces, they are not to be abrupt in their movements, they should not roll their eyes to the ceiling, nor do anything that would suggest that they are the least bit upset by the hitting and the crying. I told them that as they walk away, they should look at their watch and make note of when a minute to a minute and a half has passed, at which time they are to revisit their children, and if they are behaving appropriately, to have a positive, brief, reinforcing interaction with them. For example, "Thank you, Billy, for being so kind to your brother."

After role playing this in a simulated setting, I sent the parents on their way with the instructions to call me in two or three days to tell me how things were going. Usually parents don't call, but that is often a good sign meaning things are going well. (People don't typically call their doctor or their therapist to tell them that things are going well.) As chance would have it, I ran into the family about a week later. What I experienced during that brief visit was what I experience so often. The parents said to me, "We can't believe what has happened in our home. It's like a miracle!" Then the mother said, "I guess the children just weren't developmentally ready before." Even in a situation as dramatic as this, the parents couldn't imagine that such simple adjustments in the environment could possibly produce such remarkable improvements in their boys' behavior. To the parents, it could only be accounted for by some maturational phenomenon going on inside the children. I asked, "What effect do you think the treatment had on the children's behavior?" The mother replied, "Oh, I'm sure it helped some. We were lucky that it happened at a time when the children were developmentally ready." It wasn't until a few weeks later when the parents were back in my office with their original concerns that they became convinced that inner forces didn't have a single thing to do with the improvement in their children's behavior. As illustrated by the treatment curve, (Figure 2.2), the children's behavior had begun regressing toward baseline and the parents were beside themselves again.

As I suspected, the environment had gotten out of tune and the behavior was responding in kind. In a word, the parents had reverted to their old ways of doing things. Their behavior had regressed to baseline; consequently, so had the children's. We repeated the role-playing exercises, reviewed these important principles of human behavior, and the parents have subsequently shaped up the environment. Consequently, the behavior of the boys is just fine. In fact, a short time ago I happened to meet the mother's father and even he commented on how much better the boys behaved. Happily, the parents now have a functional understanding of this important principle of human behavior: behavior is largely a product of its immediate environment. They also know that it doesn't always take remarkable changes within the environment to produce remarkable changes in children's behavior. They know that it is essentially a matter of simply fine-tuning events in the environment. A radio doesn't have to be very far out of tune to produce static, noise, and annoying sounds.

Although the illustration I used here involved small children, what I have said is equally relevant to adolescents and adults. It might take longer to get the desired results, but if the environment is well tuned-and kept well tuned-the odds are great that the desired results will eventually come. Remember, behavior is largely the product of its immediate environment. Fix the environment and you fix the behavior. As parents, our responsibility isn't so much with modifying behavior as it is with modifying the environment. The environment will modify the behavior. Luther Burbank, one of history's preeminent horticulturists, in his book Training of the Human Plant, wrote:

This discussion of principles of human behavior is important because it takes behavior out of the realms of myth, magic, and tradition, and anchors it squarely where it ought to be-in science. Parents who have a working knowledge of these principles are no longer victims of despair and hopelessness aroused by the behavior of their children. It doesn't mean that knowledgeable parents won't be upset by the behavior of their children or annoyed by it or concerned about it. Certainly all conscientious parents have these feelings about their children. Nor does having a working knowledge of these principles guarantee parents that their children's behavior will always be wonderful. Kids are kids, and age-typical behaviors are real. But with a working knowledge of these principles, the probabilities increase dramatically that children's behaviors will be more wonderful because we as parents will be more skilled.

As I pointed out earlier, the "hard" sciences, like physics and chemistry, allow us to predict events precisely and exactly. The study of human behavior like medicine, is a less exact science; hence, we can only predict events in terms of probabilities, not certainties. But we know for sure that if certain conditions exist within the child's environment, the probability is great that the desired results will occur. Our job as parents is to create the environment in our homes that will remarkably increase the probability that children will behave appropriately and that they will be happy, productive, and contributing members of society. Unfortunately, since behavior is the product of its immediate environment, the older children get the greater number of environments they find themselves in, most of which are outside parents' sphere of influence. Therefore, it is important for us to equip our children at home with those behaviors that will make it possible for them to defend themselves against the harmful yet reinforcing effects of those other environments. To a large extent, we can do that, but we can't expect to be absolutely successful in every instance.

From time to time, children will come upon "unhealthy" reinforcer's operating in other environments that encourage inappropriate behavior. None of us makes it through life completely undamaged by the slings and arrows of other environments. The school, the work place, places of entertainment, and even the church can encourage and reinforce junk behavior. But that's to be expected. Even the most expensive car ever built, given the best care imaginable, will occasionally need repairs and tune-ups. Our job isn't to create perfect, risk-free children. That's impossible. Our job is to create in our homes, and within those spheres of our influence, environments that will teach children and reinforce children for behaving appropriately; to create an environment which brings joy to them for behaving appropriately. A working knowledge of the principles of human behavior makes it possible for us to do that, but not totally without risk or without some failure. My wife and I have six children, six lovely children all grown and married. Every one of them is a well educated, contributing, productive member of society. If I were to describe the circumstances of each of our children at the time of this writing, you would consider me a braggart. You would think I was showing off my kids. But bound up in the lives of those six wonderful children is a litany of nearly every imaginable rotten behavior short of homicide and grand larceny. When they were behaving in those dumb ways, they were, unfortunately, under the reinforcement control of environments beyond our influence as parents.

Happily, those environments have not had long-term negative effects, and our children are well established in the family fold and within the family value system because that is where the long-term reinforcer's were always predictably available. They all had their fling with idiocy and selfishness (i.e., age-typical behavior) as they made their way through the treachery of adolescence (the age of raging hormonal imbalance). In time, a new set of reinforcer's came into play in their lives. They suddenly realized that home and family were the best of all places. They came to that realization because of a history of its long-term and predictably reinforcing effects in their lives. I received a Father's Day card from my oldest son, a father of three, who wrote: "It seems the older I get and the more my family grows the more I appreciate all the time and sacrifice you and Mom went through on our behalf. We really love and appreciate you for who you are and for all you've done for us." While reviewing my materials in preparation of this chapter, I ran across a note I made a few years ago as I listened in on a conversation between my wife and youngest son. He said with alarm, "Mom, you know what I find myself doing? Things I said I'd never do! I'm doing things just like Dad. I'm growing up to be just like Dad!"

Human beings seek out and gravitate toward those environments that are pleasant and positively reinforcing, and they avoid and flee those environments that are coercive and punishing. A working knowledge of these principles makes it possible for us to create a positive, pleasant, reinforcing environment that our children will crave. But even then, they will do things that we as parents find annoying and distasteful. But that should not prompt us to reject them. As I point out in Chapter 25, When All Else Fails, we must do all we can to create the most pleasant, positive, reinforcing environment possible within our homes irrespective of our children's behavior. To one degree or another, they might be out of control, but we must not be out of control. If a child is out of control, a child is out of control. If the parents are out of control, the family is out of control. As I point out in Chapter 7, Proactive Responding To Reactive Adolescent Behavior, as parents we must be proactive rather than reactive. We must be teachers of behavior, not punishers of behavior. When we learn to do that, we see behavior in an entirely different light. The husband of a couple with whom I worked put it this way:

The intent of this book is to help you see your behavior and the behavior of your children and others entirely differently, and then to respond to it appropriately; that is, in a scientifically sound way-analytically and clinically. Indeed, science is a wonderful thing!

NOW TO REVIEW

Human behavior is lawful, and can be managed and predicted given a keen understanding of the principles of human behavior. Especially for parenting purposes, the following principles are important:

1. Behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences.
2. Behavior ultimately responds better to positive consequences.
3. Whether a behavior has been punished or reinforced is known only by the course of that behavior in the future.
4. Behavior is largely a product of its immediate environment.