First, Then

Imagine that you sit down to watch a movie. You pop yourself a bowl of popcorn to go with it…maybe your favorite toppings, whether salt and butter or marshmallow or Parmesan cheese or something else…you pick up the remote, hit play, and get ready to watch the movie while eating your popcorn. Then somebody takes … Read more

We Are All Part of the Team

A friend shared a story with me, and with their permission, I’m sharing it here. Their child was 5 years old and in their class at school, they had a clip behavior chart like many schools have. The clip chart was space/sky themed to be cute. Everybody started on a star, and if they “behaved … Read more

A Behavior Plan

I sat in on a behavior plan meeting one time where the adults were somewhat baffled. All the “usual tricks” hadn’t worked for the child: reward charts, earning privileges, stickers, etc. Finally what they agreed as a team to put into the behavior plan was that this child would respond best if given “unconditional positive … Read more

Stars and Rainbows

(From the archives of my own personal FB page, a story from when I was an early therapist. I would do some things differently now, but I still appreciated the story.) *** I have a kid who I see every week at the same time. He’s usually working on the same in-class spelling worksheet, and … Read more

Reward Charts

Two people have asked me questions about reward charts in the last week or so, so that seemed like a reasonable question to answer next. The reason for both of them asking it was because I put “reward charts” — i.e., you do x, you get a sticker on your chart (and often when you … Read more