How to Use Behavior Charts at Home

By Amanda Morin

Instructions

Things You’ll Need:

list of appropriate/inappropriate behaviors
small rewards
chart
time

Step 1:
Start small. It may be that your child has several behaviors that you would like to extinguish or many chores he doesn't complete to your satisfaction, but in order to be successful, you need to choose one or two major issues to tackle first. Behavior charts are only successful if a child is given the opportunity to succeed--choosing too many target behaviors can set him up to fail.
Step 2:
Identify both the behavior you are trying to modify and the behavior with which your child needs to replace it. List these behaviors in simple-to-understand, plain language either on the bottom of the chart or on a piece of paper nearby. Try color-coding the undesirable and desirable behaviors and placing them directly across from each other so your child can easily see which behavior is inappropriate and what the alternatives are.
Step 3:
Make the behavior chart positive. Allow your child the opportunity to earn stickers, stars or tokens for exhibiting the correct behaviors instead of losing them when she misbehaves. Talk with her to see what system would have the most meaning to her and have her help you come up with a list of meaningful (but small) rewards to choose from when she meets one of her goals.
Step 4:
Promote success at the beginning and work your way up to higher compliance requirements. In order to get your child on board and feeling good about using behavior charts at home, you'll need to set your success goals low--perhaps at 30 to 40 percent compliance rate. As he shows some consistent success in meeting his goals, you can slowly increase the expectation of what constitutes success.
Step 5:
Break the day into manageable increments of time. For some children, it may reasonable to expect them to avoid the target behavior for an entire morning, but for others you may need to start with blocks of time as small as 15 minutes long. Remember, you are trying to help your child be successful in his efforts.

Tips & Warnings

Avoid delaying gratification. Your child needs to know that her reward is available when she earns it and that you will stick to your end of the bargain.

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