Giving rewards for the right reason

When Cynthia started looking after her foster child, she had to learn a lot about autism and his other needs. In this week’s blog post she is talking about how she went back to basics to start from scratch, diagnosing, pinpointing and un-picking the issues and to change them, introduce strategies and promote positive behaviours. A part of this was giving rewards for the right reason.

Prior to my foster child being placed with me he used to have a chocolate biscuit or sweet for every task he did. For example he would demand a chocolate biscuit for having his breakfast, and thiswould then go for everything throughout the day.

In the first week I carried on giving him what he was used to so that I could observe the behaviour properly and work out how I was going to go about changing it. It was a bit like the TV show “wife swap”. Then, when it felt like he could handle the change, gradually I stretched the biscuits for two tasks instead of one, and then three tasks for a biscuit, and five – six tasks for the day for one big chocolate biscuit. I illustrated this by doing a picture for his wall.

He now knows about working towards rewards and holds out to the end of the day for his two unsweetened biscuits before going to sleep. In my next blog post I will talk about how I added in a routine that suited him and the household.