Robert: Is your child’s room a complete and utter disaster area. Have you struggled to find any way to get them to take you seriously when you ask them to clean up? Are you tired of doing work that they should be doing themselves or having to yell and nag them to get them to put even mediocre effort into keeping their room clean? Well, if this or a similar issue is of concern to you, stay tuned for this episode of the Just Seven Steps podcast. 

Intro: Welcome to the Just Seven Steps podcast with Robert Schramm, a board-certified behavior analyst, educator, author and developer of the Seven Steps to Successful Parenting. For more than 20 years, Robert has been teaching parents and professionals how to support children and developing the values and priorities necessary to live a successful life. In this podcast, you’ll hear from some of the biggest experts in the fields of education, parenting and behavior analysis. So buckle in and get ready for a wild ride where you’ll learn to be your best in just seven steps. 

Robert: Welcome to the Just Seven Steps podcast. I am your host and the developer of the Seven Steps to Successful Parenting, which you may also know under the name The Seven Steps to Structural Motivation. My name is Robert Schramm, and I am so happy to be here with you today on this, the next episode of our journey into sharing these all important just seven steps with the world. Whether you’re a parent looking to help your child live their best life or a professional charged with the education of children with or without disabilities, you will find a ton of help and information here, all filtered through just seven steps. In today’s episode, we are going to focus on a topic that may be of concern to many of you. It is one that I get questions about all the time and is one I currently am working on with my own kids. That is getting your kids to keep their bedrooms clean. Now everyone has a different expectation level for their children when it comes to room cleanliness. I’ve worked with families that expect their kids to make their beds every single day, to not ever leave the room with anything on the floor, and to bring their laundry down to the laundry room and on a specific schedule. And I have other families that just want their kids to clean up their things once a week, or at least when they’re having guests over to come visit. Well, regardless of the level of cooperation and cleanliness that you hope to have. Like anything, they are going to be obstacles you will have to learn to understand and then hopefully overcome. 

Robert: So one of the first questions I like to ask when someone comes to me for help with a problem is who is it that will ultimately benefit from the behavior we are wanting to see occur? To some degree, this question’s a bit perfunctory because if the child was going to strongly benefit from the behavior, it’s it’s not likely there would be a problem related to it. But let’s assume we don’t know the answer to this question. And any behavior might not be occurring because of one of two things. The child either cannot do the behavior because they don’t understand the direction or have the skills necessary, or they won’t do the behavior because the effort level involved in doing the behavior outweighs any benefits they get from completing it. In the science, we call these two factors the SD or the MO and SD stands for discriminative stimulus, meaning that when you give an instruction like, I need you to go clean your room, that they know what you mean and how to respond to it. The MO stands for motivating operation, refers to their desire to do the actual behavior. Don’t worry. You don’t need to know those terms or even that they exist. What you need to know is that if your child understands what you mean when you say, please go clean your room and they know how to clean their room, then the problem is not with the SD or can they do it, but rather the problem is related to motivation or will they do it? Now, if your child doesn’t know how to do the skill, we have a teaching issue. However, for this to be an instructional motivation issue, we would assume that the child can do what we’re asking, yet they’re just not doing it solely due to motivation. And then this leads us back to my first question. Who would be benefiting from the room being clean? Well, if the answer is clearly that the child would benefit the most, then one would be able to assume the child would be doing the behavior if they knew how or why. But in most cases, when looked at it reasonably, it becomes clear that the Met that the clean room is far more important to the parent than the child. And this really is the crux of the problem. If your goal is that your child will clean their room, then your goal should be come finding a way to get them to want to clean their room. You see, the reasons that are meaningful to you are not likely meaningful to them. Your room will look nicer, it’s more hygienic and likely won’t move the needle for them. You’ll be able to find things when you need them or your stuff will get stepped on and broken. Might have some truth to it, but if it was enough to overcome that desire, your child has to avoid the effort involved in cleaning. It would already be working for you. So if your child has the ability to clean their room. And cleaning their room benefits you more than them. And it also doesn’t benefit them enough to make the work effort worth it to them. Well, then we have to start figuring out how are we going to best motivate this behavior? 

Robert: Now motivation comes in many forms, but luckily we can separate some of it out in two forms and give them different value judgments. For example, motivation for something in the moment comes from a desire to earn some form of reinforcement that might be available. But remember, we already tried this. And the room looking neater or being more hygienic aren’t acting as reinforcers for this behavior. Without natural reinforcers that are automatically in place and working to help your kids desire to keep a clean room. Currently, we have to find a way to reinforce this behavior through alternative means. If you see my free workshop available on the Just Seven Steps website, you might have heard my discussion about the differences between positive and negative reinforcement. But assuming you haven’t, I’ll quickly go over them now. Oh, since I mentioned it, that workshop is called How to Get Your Kids to Listen Without Raising Your Voice or Nagging, and it can be found at www.justsevensteps.com backslash workshop. Anyway, back to the difference between positive and negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is the removal of an aversive situation after a behavior occurs that gives that behavior, purpose or value. It is a situation where the behavior itself serves the purpose of reducing a stressor or an annoyance and therefore becomes more likely to be used again in similar circumstances. In general terms, there’s nothing wrong with negative reinforcement. Let’s say I’m distressed about a big presentation I have to do. And by right by writing my PowerPoint. I remove the stress and anxiety I was feeling. This would be a perfectly natural example of negative reinforcement in the wild. I had something that was bothering me. I behaved in a certain way and that thing bothered me less, making me more likely to behave in that way when I’m bothered by a presentation again in the future. There may also be some natural, positive reinforcers that occur when I complete my behavior of completing the PowerPoint presentation, I might start to have positive feelings of accomplishment. I might begin feeling good about myself and excited about the chance to share that information with others. I might even begin to feel good about the anticipated praise or goodwill that this presentation will likely garner. All of these things would likely be considered forms of positive reinforcement for the behavior, making that behavior more likely to occur again in the future. But even with negative and positive reinforcers at play, the only way to determine if there is enough value on the behavior is if you see it more often in the future. 

Robert: So back to the question of the day. How do I get my kid to clean their darn room? There may be both negative and positive reinforcers naturally pulling at this behavior already as well. But if the behavior is not increasing, then we can’t say it is actually being reinforced. The next best thing we can do is try to figure out if there are any other forms of natural or near natural reinforcers that we can find, identify or make available. Maybe we can add some parental loving praise. Maybe due to a clean room the child can have more friends over or a sleepover on the weekend. These types of reinforcers would likely help connect the behavior of cleaning with more positive outcomes that might continue on beyond when we’re directly trying to teach the child to make better behavior choices. Now, these two examples of positive outcomes would fall under the heading of positive reinforcement because they would be things that were added to the environment after the room was cleaned rather than subtracted or removed from it. There are some negative reinforcers you can add as well that somewhat unfortunately consider near natural. What I’m talking about here is attempts at persuasion. You or your spouse might try to get your child, your kids to cooperate. Maybe you will give them your instruction and then begin to repeat it over and over and over again until they do it. Or maybe you raise your voice or begin yelling or putting your child down for not doing it. Using this, as is an attempt to get your kid to decide to clean their room, is a pretty typical path parents might take, but they generally don’t realize is that what they’re using here is negative reinforcement, but it’s also a specific bad kind of negative reinforcement. Yes, that’s right. Just like we have foods that offer us good fats and bad fats, we can have good and bad and negative reinforcement. I consider any form of reinforcement where you have to set yourself up as the aversive or the annoying stimulus as a as a bad reinforcer. Because even if you can get what you want, your child has to see you as a negative or the problem that needs to be escaped or avoided. And then when they do clean their room, you just leave them alone as the reinforcer. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I have a choice, I’d rather avoid anything with my kids. That makes me the annoyance. Especially the annoyance that they want to avoid or escape being around. And luckily there is a better way that’s available to us in most situations. That is using positive reinforcement. There’s no need to make ourselves an aversive before the behavior or remove our annoyance after the behavior to get things done. We can just come up with known positive outcomes that your child would see as worth the work of cleaning their room and make that available after the behavior occurs. Well, we already talked about more natural examples of this sort of reinforcement. You ask your child to clean their room, and when they do, you announce that they can now have a sleepover with their friends on the weekend because their room is clean. But this sort of consequence, if it’s not available to you mean, we can always consider less natural, positive reinforcers, including access to any enjoyable item or activity your child might want to participate in after their room is clean. Maybe you decide to take them to the community pool for the afternoon, maybe to McDonald’s, or you play their favorite board game or card game with them. And any of these items might work as positive reinforcement. As you may know that your child strongly desires them. However, the only way to know for sure if they truly work is to make them available after they have finished cleaning their room and see if it makes them more likely to do so. The next time you either ask them or better yet, the next time, then the room needs to be done whether you ask them or not. So remember. When you use the bad form of negative reinforcement, you are setting yourself up as the bad thing to be avoided by the behavior. When using positive reinforcement, you actually set yourself up as the giver of good things after the behavior. And this means the behavior is becoming more likely. But as an added bonus, you are being more regularly seen as a positive by your child, making them more likely to listen to you with other instructions as well. 

Robert: So the real difference between negative and positive reinforcement is not what happens to the behavior. If you’re using reinforcement in any form, the behavior will start to increase. But and this is a big but if you’re using positive reinforcement by adding something beneficial after the behavior, you’re also pairing yourself as a positive, making your child more likely to want to be with you and to cooperate with you in the future. And that’s no small added benefit. Think about how important and powerful that is. Nag become a negative. Your child wants to avoid, offer positive benefit after the behavior and become a positive and someone your child wants to spend more time with. Like it or not, these are just the facts of reinforcement. And rather than try to deny them. The better we understand them, the better we and our kids can benefit from them. I think it’s important at this time to mention that although we are talking about determining reinforcers to use and supporting a child’s desire to choose behavior that they might otherwise want to avoid, we’re not talking about making deals or promises. This is a big misunderstanding about the concept of reinforcement. Just because earning a trip to McDonald’s after cleaning your room might be a form of positive reinforcement that could be successful and increasing that behavior. It doesn’t mean that for it to work, you need to state upfront that the child will get McDonald’s if they clean their room. In fact, it’s usually best if you can learn how to avoid using if then statements. Our goal is not to negotiate or promise your child good things, but rather to find ways to make sure that their good behavior pays off for them somehow when they use it. Their ability to know or to not know what they can gain in advance of the behavior truly has nothing to do with the concept of reinforcement. So if you want your child to begin to clean their room without you having to nag and yell, then you need to make sure that when they do use the behavior in question, they’re able to come into contact with experiences that make them say, Wow, I’m glad I did this. And if you’re doing it right, they’re also going to be saying, Wow, I really appreciate my mom or dad because they always make sure that my life is filled with these good things. Let’s pretend that you determined that your child’s favorite thing to do is to be able to watch a sitcom with you in the evening before bed. You can make that half hour sitcom contingent upon their room being clean. So it can become a routine. You do 30 minutes before you’re going to be able to watch sit down and watch the sitcom. You set an alarm that reminds you to remind your child to go check their room when the half hour is up. You can do a final check to make sure the room is clean to your liking. And if it is, you watch the sitcom together. But if it isn’t, you have to be willing to either not watch it together or not watch it at all and save it for the next evening. There’s a reminder that good behavior choices lead to good outcomes in life, and that keeping a clean room is, in the view of this child’s parent, an important good behavior to develop. Don’t be fooled. However, reinforcement can only occur after behavior. It cannot occur before. So telling your child that you will watch a sitcom with them if they promise to clean their room later is not likely to lead to the type of response that you’re looking for. Well, not in the way it would if you were waiting until after the room was clean to offer forms of actual reinforcement. Remember, there is a reason Grandma never let you eat dessert before you had your dinner. Okay. Of course, if the child would be more motivated by a movie or McDonald’s dinner as a reinforcer, you could choose to use that as well. But unless you’re prepared to give them McDonald’s and or a movie every single night, you may have to change the game a bit. Perhaps you only check the room once a week. Or perhaps you check the room every night. But they earn a token that when they add it to the additional tokens, they can use it to buy McDonald’s or a movie ticket. 

Robert: And don’t forget, if you are not getting your goal met and the room was remaining unclean, but now it is getting cleaned regularly and you’re comfortable giving your child access to McDonald’s or a movie or a sitcom. Well, then you’re not only going to start seeing the behavior you want, but you’re also about to become more appreciated as you’re the one that’s supplying access to the preferred reinforcement. The number of families that I see who let their kids watch sitcoms, movies and eat McDonald’s as part of a regular life. But do not attach these consequences to positive behavior choices. They’re still giving their child the same amount of these activities that you would be, but are also dealing with kids who are not listening and are not able to benefit from the reinforcing value of those items or activities. These families choose to give their kids the same benefits and rewards, but rather than use them for their child’s benefit, they instead resort to raising their voice or nagging or punishing their kids for not cleaning their room instead. Another important consideration is the total work output required. How much time, effort and work does your child need to put into cleaning their room? If it is a half hour job, you may not need as much reinforcement to make the job worth it over time. However, if the job will take 3 hours, it might be too big of a job for any single or even multiple reinforcers to start to take effect consistently. Now I’m quite aware that the reason it’s taking longer and work is more involved is likely a direct negative consequence for having refused to clean the room for a longer period of time. But that just goes to show you that positive reinforcement for cleaning is likely a more consistent and easier to implement consequence than using punishment in the form of greater and greater workload. One additional thing you can always consider when your task is too great for any reasonable amount of reinforcement to effect, it is to find a way to minimize the workload to a more acceptable level and then reinforce this smaller workload. This might look like changing the instruction from clean up your room to put your toys away on Monday, clean off your desk on Tuesdays and Thursdays, put your laundry in the hamper on Wednesdays and Saturdays and make your bed on Fridays because the daily output expected is less. The amount of value earned would likely need to be less to act as a meaningful reinforcer, ensuring that we’re going to see the behavior that we actually want to see. And once your child is successfully engaging in the behavior on a regular basis, you can then start to increase those expectations slightly over time to increase the workload, often without increasing any additional reinforcement. Perhaps you could start to add making the bed to the expectations daily, along with the schedule for cleaning the desk, the floor, putting the clothes in the laundry room, etc. And with anything else, you can always choose to add some opportunity cost to not engaging in the behavior as well. This is usually less beneficial to us overall, so it should be considered as an additional alternative consequence to strong reinforcement rather than a stand alone plan. Adding a cost to the plan that we discussed earlier of watching a sitcom with Mom each evening could have an additional component that says, When we when the work is done, you can watch the sitcom. But when it is not, you have to give your mom a phone until the next morning. This combination of positive benefit for engaging in the behavior and a non-preferred cost for not doing it might give you the motivational pull you need to start getting the behavior on a regular basis without complaints from your child, or you having to prompt, to nag or yell to get them to listen. If you continue to add praise and show your child that having a clean room is more beneficial and that they can find things easier, have more friends over, you can use their desire to gain the sitcom and not lose their phone to begin to increase their ability to experience those more natural reinforcers as well. The expectation through the behavior principles is that the child who chooses willingly to participate in an activity like cleaning their room and gains lots of positive reinforcement for doing so will begin to have a better and better feelings about the process of doing that task. They will also begin to find ways to do the task more economically, get connected with the natural reinforcers that we hope will take over control of that behavior in the future, all while building a more positive set of feelings about their interactions with us. 

Robert: So using positive reinforcement really is a win win situation for those of us who understand how to use it and what our goals are for using it. It is also a horribly missed opportunity for those who choose not to benefit from it and then focus on negative reinforcement and or punishment instead. So what are some prerequisites to being able to make a positive reinforcement plan based on the seven steps? Well, first, you need to be aware of all the likely many things your child values and might want to do on a daily basis so that you can pick from those items and make them available as additional reinforcement. After you see the behavior you’re looking for. You need to be willing to show your child that in general, you are a positive in the environment and are happy to be fun and offer fun things to them, even if sometimes that means they may not get those things after bad choices. You need to determine if the task itself is too large or complicated to be affected by the available reinforcement. And if it needs to be split into smaller tasks for success and then grown over time. You can do that. You need to make sure that whatever you develop as a positive behavior plan has the ability to be earned when the skill is achieved and then not available when the skill is not. And you need to be able to learn to be okay with the result whether they choose to clean their room or not. What this means is that getting angry or frustrated when your child doesn’t choose the task you want is actually counterproductive. When you put a plan in place that has all the motivational tools it needs to be successful, you have to be willing to let the child experience both sides of the equation. What it’s like when they do clean their room and what it’s like if they choose not to. If we do a good enough job of putting enough motivation on both sides of this equation, we should expect to see the behavior more and more. However, if we get upset and yell or argue when we don’t see it, we’re adding all kinds of additional stimuli to the post decision environment, and this may begin to cloud whether or not the plan is actually working. So there is no expectation that a consequence is going to immediately result of the behavior of interest, only that if you continue to use it, you will begin to see that behavior more and more over time. So what are some important items or activities your child would love to have access to on a daily basis? And which of those might you be willing to provide your child when they’ve clean their room? Can you make sure they get enough of these items in return to make up for the difficulty or work effort of the job? Can you make sure they don’t get enough of these on days that they choose not to do the job? Do you need to split the job into smaller tasks or make it more reinforcer friendly? And can you set all of this up with the idea that when you’re done, your child will see that cleaning their room on their own is a valuable and worthwhile activity and be happy to do so regularly based on their current desires. If so, you’re in a great position to start seeing your child choose to clean their bedroom on a regular schedule that suits you and your family, and you’ll be able to avoid the desire to get angry, raise your voice, or nag your children to get them to engage. If you are struggling to achieve these concepts and developing a plan, maybe you’d benefit from direct 1 to 1 help from a behavioral in your local area who can walk you through the process and help you to find a set of contingencies that set the table for your child to want to clean their room as much as you want them to keep it clean. 

Robert: And that brings us to the end of another great episode of the Just Seven Steps podcast. Thank you for taking the time to join me today for sharing our links with your friends and family. If you enjoyed this podcast, then come check out my online community where you’ll learn how to improve your relationship with your child or clients in truly meaningful ways. Right now, you can join me for a free online workshop at just seven steps dot com backslash workshop where you’ll be given the practical and effective parenting strategies you’ve been craving. And you’re ready for more. You can also join my online parenting course at rates discounted, especially for my podcast listeners. Go to just seven steps, icon back slash workshop for the free workshop and all the details. I can’t wait to see you there. Now go enjoy your kids. They’re going to be adults before you know it.