Hi
On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Michael Sylvester wrote:
> one of my students mentioned that she controls the temper tantrum
> behavior of her son by simultaneously throwing her own temper tantrum.
> According to her,when her son sees her throwing an imitative more powerful
> tantrum,her son stops. She thinks that tantrum behavior has to do with
> the need for power and when her son sees that he is unable to
> win the battle of tantrums,he gives up.
> Sounds interesting.
One of the many insights of behavioural approaches is the need to
document the long-term consequences of responses to inappropriate
behaviour (i.e., behaviour you wish to reduce). In a classroom,
for example, a loud reprimand actually leads to an increase of
the behaviour (over the long term), whereas a soft reprimand
leads to a decrease. But the immediate effects might not reflect
this important difference. So the critical question for this
student is not whether the child stops right away, but whether
the occurrence of tantrums decreases in the future. She might
very well be increasing the occurrence of tantrums (e.g.,
modelling throwing a tantrum, perhaps her child stops because he
finds her tantrums reinforcing so his tantrums could increase,
and so on).
Best wishes
Jim
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James M. Clark (204) 786-9757
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L05D
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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