Introduction to Easy Child

The Evians have two children; Natasha who is 12 yrs. old and Tyler who is ten yrs. old. Mr. and Mrs. Evian both work full time. Natasha is a ballet dancer and is in the school’s play. Tyler plays little league baseball and loves to go snowboarding. The Evians have their hands full between working, driving the children to their activities, and all the other daily routines. The Evians’ lives are hectic, and both parents are often in a frenzy trying to maintain structure and order in the family. While they have implemented behaviors that are expected from the children, they found it hard to keep track and enforce the behaviors. The children do help on occasion with extra things, and the incentive is usually monetary based. Negative behaviors are enforced with some form of punishment, but it is usually inconsistent and often not followed through. Thus the negative behaviors occur more and more, and the punishment becomes less harsh as the parents begin to feel accustomed to the children’s behaviors. Though they are good kids, doing well in school and involved in healthy activities, they don’t see the reason to follow through on expected behaviors or push to do anything extra. Discipline for the negative behaviors is too inconsistent and quickly diminished that they also don’t take time to even evaluate their own behaviors and continue to act them out with little to no reflection on the possible consequences.

The Evians are not a family from far away chaotic planet. In fact, they match the growing number of families who deal with the same issues. In a time and a place where things move almost equal to the speed of light, days pass quick and often chaotic. Days are packed with endless tasks; errands to run, bills to pay, cleaning, cooking, helping with homework, driving children to their activities, and so on. Whatever our daily lives we are consumed with, having a balanced structure and consistency with discipline and rewards for our child’s behaviors are vital in simplifying family life and providing a structure for the children. An organized and consistent system is essential to create structural model for both children and parents. By providing a tool with expected, extra, and negative behaviors, and following up with consistent rewards or a lack of, both children and parents can benefit from the structure.

Easy Child had created this program in which both the child and parents can mutually benefit. In using the program with your family, you would first create 1) behaviors that you expect from your child, 2) behaviors that are not acceptable, and 3) extra behaviors that are not expected but give your child an opportunity to achieve higher level and/or make up for the points lost from the unacceptable behaviors.

The behaviors created for your family should be tracked on a daily basis. Consistency and enforcement is one of the biggest keys in your family’s success with the program. Each behavior has an appropriate point value assigned. Negative behaviors are followed with negative points. Daily and weekly total points from your child’s expected, extra, and other behaviors will determine what level they have achieved.

In each level, children would receive privileges ranging from no privileges to very special privileges. Children can achieve some privileges by simply following the family rules (Expected behaviors). They can, however, achieve higher level by working on their Extra behaviors. On the bottom level, a child will have no privileges because the child did not follow the family’s set expected behaviors. In the lower levels, the privileges should be very basic and apply to all members, such as watching TV, having friends over, going over to friend’s houses, etc. Once your child has reached the higher levels, the privileges should pertain more to the child’s individual persona thus making them more special. To reach the highest level, your child will have to perform extra behaviors and display more effort. Tracking behaviors and following up with your child’s overall results with either appropriate privileges or enforced consequences will set a model for the child’s way of approaching life, and help keep family life running smoother, amongst all of the other commotion in life.

The Evian family was thrilled at a chance to make their lives simpler. They jumped at a chance to implement a model that not only helped them as busy parents, but created a model for their children’s view on the importance of decision making and evaluating all results; positive and negative, creating a model for them that allows themselves to be the judge in their success in the program.

The Evians created expected behaviors for the each child, and behaviors that would not be tolerable at any point in their family. They also created a list of extra behaviors that the children were not required to do, yet would give the children extra points and push them further up in the level system. (And of course, it will help the family.) After creating common and individual behaviors for the each child, they then sat down with them to come up with a list of privileges that would be both appropriate and meaningful to them. Associated with lower levels, the privileges they came up with were basic: watching T.V., playing with friends, how long they could play with friends, playing video games, playing on the internet, and using the telephone. At higher levels, they placed more special privileges. Because Natasha enjoys dance, gymnastics, reading, plays, slumber parties with her girlfriends, eating at her favorite Thai restaurant, and painting, the Evians incorporated these things at appropriate levels. At her highest level, with hard and extra work on her behaviors, Natasha can obtain the chance to see a play at the local theatre or spend the afternoon at an open hours gymnastic studio. Tyler’s list of things he enjoyed were: watching sporting events, snowboarding, eating at his favorite Italian restaurant, skating at the local skate park, watching movies, and going to the science theatre. At highest levels, Tyler can obtain the chance to spend the day at the local science museum, skate at the local skate park, or going to the local mountain to hit the slopes.

At this point, the children were excited at the idea of obtaining these special privileges. The Evians successfully have gotten their children excited to start the program while steering them from associating all rewards with a dollar bill. The Evians tracked all behaviors on a daily basis. Both parents had access to view the data and were now both always conscious of what was going on with their children. The first couple of weeks were an eye opener for the children. Each child strongly wanted the obtainable privileges but hadn’t had a chance to evaluate where behaviors placed them on the level system yet. Through finding out the effects of missing out on privileges they could have obtained, they quickly changed by complying with expected behaviors, helping out with extra things, and not engaging in unacceptable behaviors. Within weeks after each child began to see the correlation between their behaviors and the privileges, behaviors began to change. The children were completing expected behaviors, helping out on things they weren’t expected to do, and thinking twice about committing behaviors the family set as unacceptable. The children began feeling good about having achieved goals that were rewarded with privileges they earned. They felt good about the positive reinforcement and consistency from their parents. They developed a deeper respect towards their parents because they now had discipline and structure using a positive approach. (This is usually a subconscious effect!) The parents enforced and tracked the behaviors, ultimately leaving them in control, and at the same time, children still had the opportunity to make their own decisions on what they wanted to achieve.

The potential for endless results using Easy Child ultimately lies in the enforcement and consistency of tracking all behaviors, followed by the appropriate privilege or punishment. Easy Child’s vision is to use a positive approach to get your child enthusiastic in making thought-out decisions regarding their behaviors and the results stemming from each behavior. This conscious evaluation of each decision would greatly help in a child’s future.