Still saying no, Huh?

Parents who want to modify their children’s behavior will begin with task analysis. Therefore, the request to “clean your room” will now involve discrete steps:

• Pick up all your clothes off the floor
• Put all t-shirts, socks, and underwear, hmmm! Put all the clothes in the white basket at the end of your bed
• Make your bed
• Put all your sneakers and shoes on the lower shelf in the wardrobe
• Put all your toys in the red basket
• Put all your electronic games in their cases and put them on the shelf under the television
• Roll up each game controller and place it next to the game console, oh they are wireless so just place them on shelf next to that darn infernal machine
• Pick up all your trash and place it in the Redskins’ wastepaper basket
• Take all the plates, cups and cutlery to the kitchen and place them in the dishwasher
• Etc.

Perhaps “make you bed” may still be too vague and that too can be analyzed into:

• Put your pillow at the end of the bed under the window
• Pull the comforter until it covers all of your bed
• Etc.

The number of steps in the task analysis will depend on age of the child or adolescent and the nature of the task. The younger the child and the more involved the task, the greater the number of discrete tasks. I believe, in the business world, this is called micromanagement. For the business minded amongst parents, imagine an employee who does not shape up and is facing termination. The firm needs to put in place an action plan or provide some type of managerial supervision. The assumption is that the firm has invested in this employee and it ought to do all it can to salvage the person. The assumption ought not to be to cover all bases in order to avoid being sued by the employee or his or her workers’ union. This is the point, I believe, where any similarities between a behavior modification plan for a child or adolescent and an inefficient employee in a business model ends as, despite all desperate yet temporary wishes, parents cannot terminate their children. Nor have children, to my knowledge, formed their own children’s union. I jest because it is late and I am sitting in my office during spring break, while some of my colleagues are visiting quaint parts of Florence in Italy that seem to be frozen in time or sipping mojitos as the sun sets on the Pacific Ocean and dolphins frolic a safe distance from the shore.

The amount and duration of resistance will be addressed in the next blog entry. I hope I have whet your appetite sufficiently.