Why Use Reward Charts?

Didn’t it feel great when as a child your teacher would give you a gold sticker for trying hard, or when she handed you a smiley face sticker at the end of the day because she noticed your politeness, or even when the doctor gave you a stamp because you were brave in his office? These are prime examples of using positive reinforcement. It’s the kind of positive encouragement that we are trying to achieve when we put a reward chart into use.

In fact using a reward chart is a much more powerful way to positively reinforce a behavior …Why?…Because the charts are highly targeted, they are specific, and the overall reward plan is related to the individual needs, requirements, and the specific behavior that you want to target with your children.

While reward charts, combined with a strategic reward plan, can be perfect for pinpointing very specific behaviors, they are also wonderful to use with very generic behaviors that us parents either want to stop our children performing, or conversely, behaviors and habits we want our children to take on board.

So in a general sense reward charts can be used for:

• Changing, establishing, or improving habits.

• Introducing and encouraging better behaviors.

• Modifying or shaping behavior.

• Discouraging inappropriate or bad behavior.

• Goal setting and encouraging perseverance and patience.

• Introducing healthy habits.

• …and any other behavior modification or goal setting aspects that are related to a reward plan.

Reward charts really are a fantastically viable, healthy, and positive way to encourage, guide, persuade, or discourage certain behaviors or habits…Things that we either want our children to start doing, or ones that we want our children to stop doing. Having the positive structure of a reward chart can dramatically help make this process successful.