“Call the police! Call the police!”
This is what you’d expect in an emergency: a desperate call to authority, a plea for help, rescue, or protection. Indeed, the police are called upon to intervene in many situations, including episodes of threat, violence, domestic disputes, and dangerous or bad behavior.
In the efforts to quell trouble, police intervene to restore order and safety. All too often, they become embroiled in controversy, overreaction, and responses that exacerbate the problem or introduce new ones. Increasingly, we hear stories about misuse of power, struggle for control, and the solution becoming worse than the problem. There are protests to overhaul policing and reallocate community resources.
My message is not about policing in the law enforcement domain (though it is in the parental domain). I want to discuss and provide solutions for issues involving terms sometimes associated with law enforcement, but here addressed to family discipline and parenting—terms like threat, violence, domestic disputes, and dangerous or bad behavior. We will also refer to control and power struggles, resource allocation, discrimination (of responses) and avoiding the solution becoming worse than the problem.
These terms and concepts have widespread relevance in the management of human behavior, and there are interesting parallels between community and parental intervention. First, let me share with you a curious verbalization disclosed to me by a frustrated parent during one of our counseling sessions.
In revealing desperation about his son’s obstreperous behavior, this parent said, “I thought maybe I should call AT&T.”
Call AT&T! Wow—I hadn’t heard that phrase before in the context of bad behavior.
However, I knew what he meant. He was implying a curtailment of his son’s phone privileges, enforced by virtue of “big brother” technology. Call AT&T! I informed him that he could switch on and off cell service very easily online to any account he owned. I urged him to acquaint himself and practice this move, even if he had to call AT&T for help learning how. This led us into a broader discussion—one I engage in routinely with parents about shaping and controlling their children’s behavior.
The key to successful behavior modification is the implementation of learning theory and behavior principles in the practical context of everyday life. This is what I preach, teach, and practice. Yet, it remains a challenge to educate even highly intelligent, practical adults in the rudiments of nurturing and controlling desirable and undesirable behaviors (read my article and watch my videos: Parents’ Guide to Setting and Enforcing Consequences and The Joys and Hurts of Parenting), using principles that work when properly and consistently implemented.
Most people are familiar with the concepts of rewards and takeaways. But, a passing familiarity (often with erroneous understanding) is not enough. I hear from parents constantly the desperate complaint, “All he cares about is his phone and his computer.” Naturally, the parents rescind these dear privileges and devices (often in angry response to misbehavior), only to have it backfire in reciprocal resentment and lack of desired behavior change and even the child doubling down on resistance and rebellion.
From a practical perspective, the child feels unreasonably “punished” and lacks definitive (and attainable) behavior expectations and timetables for regaining his devices. Parents will often take away the phone for days, weeks, or “until the behavior and attitude improve,” thereby leaving the child in the lurch about exactly what is required and how soon he can achieve this and be restored. From a behavioral learning theory perspective, the paradigm of takeaway and earnback is typically lacking in specificity, step-wise shaping, and the scheduling of the privilege return as reinforcement.
In plainer language, the child has to have opportunity to earn back the phone within hours to a day for small cumulative steps of cooperation. Taking away the phone should not be punishment, but rather a response cost. Just like the interest on your credit card or a parking ticket is a (predictable) cost for behavior or infraction, losing phone access is a cost tied to specific and predictable transgressions. By manipulating phone access (yes, “Call AT&T,” so to speak) on a routine and predictable basis, parents can pair-associate phone privileges with small and cumulative improvements in behavioral compliance.
For example, suppose your child has outbursts or talks disrespectfully. You could establish a parameter for his earning and maintaining access to his phone. You should set up the rules such that infractions result in immediate shutoff, followed by a clear and tangible path to recovery:
“Johnny, you argued, complained, and spoke disrespectfully. The consequence is that I’m turning off your phone and internet access. After you have shown cooperative behavior for four hours (including no disrespect or acting out) and then issue me an apology for this specific behavior, I will turn back on your access.”
Think of this as defunding the smartphone whenever behavior veers out of control as a means of shaping and encouraging compliance. The key is scheduling the access to service quickly and frequently so the child learns that he and his behaviors determine his privileges (dependence, reward, reinforcement). If you make the response cost immediate (that is, the cost for transgression) and the restoration available relatively quickly upon fulfillment of clear and easily satisfied expectations, it’s more likely that the child will be motivated to try and cooperate, as success is readily attainable.
However, in frustration and lack of understanding, many parents will take away the phone for weeks. In so doing, the child’s anger and frustration will mount, as his hopes of getting the phone back loom far and hazy in the ill-defined future. Resentment, self-pity, and hopelessness then usurp motivation and successful cooperation.
The key to shaping desired behaviors and reducing undesired behaviors lies in reinforcing (encouraging through workable payoff consequences) small steps very soon after they are demonstrated and by imposing response costs (restrictions or paybacks) tied clearly to transgressions. Given the importance of phones to kids—and the easy online manipulation of service access—strategically defunding the smartphone is a handy and very useful tool in modifying behavior.
The range of available “rewards” that will motivate appropriate behavior is far broader than parents realize. (In my behavior management counseling sessions, I teach parents how to expand these reinforcements and adapt appropriate schedules to change behaviors.) Nonetheless, parents often feel boxed in by the exclusive devotion they observe in their children to digital devices as “the only thing that’s important to him.”
So: use what the child values as leverage; but use it judiciously and with scientific planning. Because of their tenacious attachment to cell phones—which I’ve come to call stem cell phones, as they seem to grow attached to the person and blend into the persona—defunding and refunding the smartphone becomes a powerful means of organizing and controlling behavior instead of simply responding to it with negative emotions and ineffective overkill. Predictability, clarity, immediate consequences, and low threshold repeated opportunities for success and restoration will teach the child that getting or maintaining what he wants depends on faithful and consistent compliance with what you want.
Establishing conditions, parameters, and boundaries that teach people what they can get away with, under what circumstances, and with what results is known in psychological jargon as discriminant learning. So, start discriminating (teaching behaviors) with more love and effectiveness.
This is all well and good—unless you are confronted by truly dangerous behaviors. There are times you should call the police, especially when safety is threatened.
If, on the other hand, you have questions about your bill for services provided by the ever expanding corporate parent, perhaps you should call AT&T.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
