How to Teach Good Behavior in Children Using the Token System

The token system is a behavioral management system used to reward children for good behavior and requires them to "pay" for bad behavior. Although it was originally intended to manage children with ADHD and other behavioral problems, it is a superb tool that can keep any kid on task. Parents get tired of nagging, repeating and reminding the same things time and again. With the token system, children are motivated by various rewards to stop and think about what it is they are supposed to be doing.

Things You'll Need

• Tokens
• Container
• List of chores and behaviors
• Designated rewards

Instructions

1. Gather the tokens and the container and set them side-by-side in a visible area. Keeping the container in sight is a gentle reminder for the children of what they are trying to accomplish and also allows them to monitor their progress.

2. Make a list of the behaviors and actions you are targeting. Some examples are eating breakfast in the time allowed and cleaning up the eating area, making their bed before school, taking out the trash, yelling at a sibling and forgetting to turn in homework.

3. Now assign value to each of those items. Some things on the list are good and some are bad so you want to apply positive value to the good behavior and negative value to the bad behavior. For instance, you might assign two tokens each to cleaning eating area, making bed and taking out trash, while yelling at a sister or forgetting to turn in homework results in losing two tokens. Assign higher value to bigger behaviors. Mowing the lawn might be worth ten tokens while hitting a sister results in losing ten tokens.

4. Decide what rewards are to be exchanged for the good behavior tokens. Attaching rewards that cost money is not a good idea because it somewhat puts limits on the amount of good behavior the child can be rewarded for. This is because there are limits to how much money you have and how much you can spare to hand out. Time spent doing favorite activities, being excused from a daily chore, or a favorite dessert are great treats kids love that don't cost a lot of money.

5. Make a chart that clearly illustrates the tasks and behaviors, as well as the values and potential rewards. An easy system for a gamer, for instance, is to have each token represent one minute of video game time.

6. Monitor your child's behavior to add and subtract tokens accordingly. Depending on the particular system, rewards can be tallied and exchanged daily or weekly. But don't make the child wait longer than that because it is easy for a child to lose sight of the prize if he isn't reminded the reward is real. In this example of tokens exchanged for video game time, the minutes earned each day are redeemed the next day because by the time the day is over and all points have been given, it is too late for playing video games.

Tips & Warnings

• In this system each token is worth 1 point. But anything can be used as a token and they can have different values. For instance, you could have 5 different colored paper clips and assign them values of 1, 5, 10, 25 & 100.

• Stay consistent even when it seems like it is not working. If you let it slide because you are tired one day, the child will not take it seriously.

• Kids are normally very excited about this for the first week or so but there is usually a short period where they rebel against it. Don't mistake that for meaning it's all over. It is just a growing pain and if you stick with it and ride out the token deficits that are guaranteed to come, everything will fall back into place again, the child will become productive again and you will all enjoy it.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish