Rewards
A reward is a consequence of good behaviour. It’s a way of saying ‘well done’ after your child has done something good or behaved well. It could be a treat, a surprise or an extra privilege.
Rewards can make your praise and encouragement more effective in encouraging good behaviour. Most behaviour is influenced by the consequences that follow it, so when you reward your child’s behaviour, the behaviour is more likely to happen again in the future.
If you’d like to use a structured approach to rewards, you can find more information in our article on reward charts.
You can use praise as a tool to help change difficult behaviour and replace it with desirable behaviour.
The first step is watching for times when your child behaves the way you want. When you see the desirable behaviour, or another behaviour you like, immediately get your child’s attention.
Then tell your child exactly what you liked about the behaviour. You can praise effort as well as achievement – for example, ‘It’s great how you used words to ask for that toy’. You could even look for ways to reward the desirable behaviour – for example, give your child a high five or special cuddle.
At the beginning, you can praise every time you see the behaviour. When your child starts doing the behaviour more often, you can praise it less.