Have you ever noticed your mind having the thought Why do I keep saying the same thing over and over, and my teen still behaves the same way? Or maybe at a random time, you find your mind comes up with image after image of all the times you had the same argument with your teen? This chapter is about figuring out why your teen keeps doing the same thing over and over despite your asking her not to do so, nagging her, and even scolding her.
Within ACT, human behavior refers to everything a person does, feels, senses, and thinks within a given context. Your teen, as any human being, continues to do a behavior because something keeps the behavior going, or in behavioral terms, because something reinforces the behavior. Learning to use a behavioral framework to understand your teen’s behavior is like learning to wear a pair of glasses to understand what keeps your teen’s challenging behaviors going and what happens behaviorally between the two of you in a moment of conflict.
There are two concepts that you need to be pretty clear about: context and consequences.
You cannot understand your teen’s behaviors and your own without understanding the context in which they occur. By context, I’m referring to a specific situation in which a problematic behavior takes place. Every time we do something, there is a natural consequence for that behavior, whether we’re aware of it or not, that could either increase or decrease it the next time it gets triggered. Now here is what’s interesting to keep in mind. If the behavior in consideration increases or is augmented, it’s because the consequences acted as reinforcers. Reinforcers can be either positive, if you add something pleasurable, or negative, if you remove something aversive.
If the behavior in consideration decreases or is minimized, it’s because the consequences acted as punishers. Punishers can be either positive, if you add something aversive, or negative, if you remove something pleasurable.
Using this behavioral framework when explaining your teen’s behaviors, we could say that her behaviors are reinforced when you add something she likes or remove something she dislikes, and other behaviors are decreased, or are punished, because you add something she doesn’t like or you remove something she likes. Now, because of our upbringing, socialization, and the tricks that our mind plays with us, the words “punishers,” “positive,” and “negative” may have different connotations. But behaviorally speaking, the word “punisher” is simply a descriptor of whether a behavior has decreased or not, and “positive” and “negative” basically mean that you either add or remove something after a behavior has occurred.
Putting all these behavioral terms together, you can see how they can explain your teen’s behavior:
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
|
Reinforcer or augmenter (increases a behavior) |
Adding something your teen likes |
Removing something your teen doesn’t like |
|
Punisher or minimizer (decreases a behavior) |
Adding something your teen doesn’t like |
Removing something your teen likes |
How do reinforcers and punishers apply to your relationship with your teen’s behavior? To make it easier, we’ll refer to reinforcers as augmenters and punishers as minimizers. Let’s imagine that your teen comes home and tells you, “I’m feeling really sad because no one friended me on Facebook this week.” Your response could be, “I’m sorry, that’s hard to hear when I know you have been making an effort to connect with people.” In response, your teen feels heard and understood. In this example, it is safe to say that your response (an augmenter) has increased the likelihood that your teen will continue to tell you how she’s feeling.
Now, let’s imagine the same scenario, but this time you tell your teen, “That doesn’t make sense. You don’t need to feel down if no one friended you on Facebook. Besides, who cares about Facebook? You already have a lot of friends in your class.” In response, your teen feels unheard and quickly gets upset. Therefore, the likelihood of your teen sharing again her feelings with you has decreased because of your response (a positive minimizer: your behavior added an uncomfortable emotion for your teen, unappreciation).
Let’s take these behavioral terms one step further and see how they operate together when arguing with your teen. The scenario below puts together all these concepts by looking at what happens before (antecedent), your specific parenting response (the behavior to analyze), and what happens after that behavior occurs (consequences).
Sean is feeling angry about being screamed at by his daughter and thinks, This is outrageous. She’s so disrespectful.
Sylvia feels upset and yells back at Sean, “I hate you when you treat me like this! You’re the worst father ever. I don’t care what you think I should do. I won’t do it anyway.”
Notice that after Sean screamed back at his daughter, the immediate consequence for him was an energizing feeling, which is a positive augmenter because it’s quite likely that he will scream again to experience that energizing feeling. Now the challenge is that Sean’s screaming behavior (augmenter) had an impact on his daughter’s behavior, because she ended up screaming back at him. So now you can see how Sean’s behavior had a direct impact on his daughter’s response to him without Sean even realizing it.
Now let’s consider a different response in a similar context with this father and daughter:
Sean feels scared about losing his daughter and also frustrated. He has the thought Here it is again, the suicidal threat.
Sean feels proud of himself for how he handled the situation and relieved to not hear Sylvia insist that she will commit suicide, but instead talk about wanting to visit her boyfriend.
In this example, it is understood that Sean and Sylvia have previously fully discussed these types of statements in therapy, and Sylvia’s safety has been properly assessed by a mental health professional; however, Sylvia, like many teens struggling with emotion dysregulation, is quick to act on her emotions and doesn’t see any options besides thinking about suicide in that moment as the only way to handle the situation.
Sylvia’s mind may be hooked to the thought Hanging out with my boyfriend is the only way to manage my depressive thoughts; if I can’t spend time with him, then I will likely contemplate suicide. Sean experiences frustration and fear when he hears these statements but recognizes the impact of reacting to them on Sylvia’s behavior. With caring and compassion, he is able to respond to his daughter while still setting a limit.
The outcome is that Sylvia doesn’t make those suicidal comments threats again, and Sean experiences some relief when she doesn’t continue to make them; he also feels proud of how he handled the situation. Although Sylvia continued to insist on visiting her boyfriend for the weekend, that’s a more manageable behavior for Sean than her suicidal threats.
It is extremely important to be clear about identifying what happens after a problematic behavior, because your parenting response may simply be reinforcing a problematic behavior without your realizing it. As you can see, context, workability, and consequences are extremely important in looking at how your parenting responses, not only in moments of conflict but at all times, have an impact on your teen’s actions.
Exercise: Looking at Your Parenting Response
Moving forward and incorporating behavioral management into your parenting repertoire, do this exercise at the end of the day: grab your parenting journal, think about an argument you had with your teen, write down the antecedents, your parenting response, and the consequences, and finally see whether your parenting response is increasing or decreasing your teen’s problematic behavior. Which behavior are you reinforcing in a given moment?
The timing in which an augmenter or minimizer is delivered is extremely important for managing your teen’s behaviors; this is called a consequence schedule. A consequence schedule can be consistent or intermittent.
A consequence schedule is consistent when you deliver an augmenter or minimizer after your teen engages in a particular behavior, which is ideal and recommended. If there is inconsistency or irregularity when delivering consequences, then you’re creating what is called intermittent reinforcement. Intermittent reinforcement will simply makes things worse for you and your teen, because she won’t ever know if her behavior will be followed by a minimizer or augmenter, and therefore, sometimes she may engage in appropriate behaviors and other times she will do whatever her emotions push her to do. Here is an example of intermittent: checking your email or Facebook page, sometimes you will receive an email or there will be a new post, and sometimes nothing new will show up; because you never know when to expect what, you continue checking your email and Facebook more and more often.
Let’s apply what you learned in this chapter by putting all these concepts together in a behavioral plan to address your teen’s challenging behaviors.
Behavioral plans are just plans to address your teen’s challenging behaviors: adding or removing things your teen likes or dislikes, so you can either increase or decrease the likelihood of a specific behavior happening. Traditional parenting models have used behavioral plans as a very authoritarian tool to address the teen’s problematic behaviors; the challenge with those traditional approaches is that the more you force a behavior without making the teen part of the plan, the less she will comply with it, and the final outcome is simply more conflict in your household. Because ACT is all about creating behavioral flexibility between you and your teen, a behavioral plan is a dynamic process between the two of you rather than an authoritarian road map or a dry prescription of your teen’s behaviors. Creating behavioral plans will certainly help you be a top-notch parent, and believe it or not, it can also be fun to create them with your teen.
Let me share an example of a behavioral plan of one of the families I was working with years ago. After discussing the target behaviors with their teen, including the specific augmenters and minimizers, they decided to follow their teen’s suggestion that a consequence for him not completing his homework three out of five nights a week would be writing a five-page essay about “how important it is to spend money against gay rights.” This was a positive minimizer because, in the context of this teen’s life, he was gay and a strong advocator for gay rights, so for him to have to write an essay against his beliefs would certainly be an aversive experience that would make him think twice about not completing his homework. This example may give you a sense of how behavioral plans can be created from thinking outside of the box and how the family can engage in this process instead of it being a micromanaging tool to keep track of the teen’s behavior.
Here are the principles to keep in mind when developing a behavioral plan:
Instead of nagging, scolding, or arguing for hours with your teen about the same thing, following through with all of the above steps will help you have a solid, fun, and effective behavioral plan to address specific problematic behaviors. Moving forward, say no to nagging and yes to more enjoying each other’s company.
As you can expect, your mind will come up with all types of thoughts when getting ready to implement your behavioral plan. If your mind is having the “nothing is going to work” thoughts like Why do I have to do all this? Nothing is going to change in my house, then answer the following questions:
Using behavioral-management skills is not an easy task, especially when you’re raising a teen struggling with emotional sensitivity, but it’s not an impossible one either. Sometimes it’s natural to become a lenient or an authoritarian parent, but is that the type of parent that you really want to be? Are permissiveness or bossiness your true parenting values?
Here is the take-home message: addressing your teen’s problematic repetitive behaviors with common strategies, such as talking over and over about it, punishing her multiple times, reminding her fifty times about how she’s supposed to behave, shouting at her, using eye-rolling, or even giving her the silent treatment, will simply perpetuate the cycle of conflict and an ongoing disconnection from each other. You are both hurting, not just you, not just her. Behavioral-management skills are the alternative skills to nagging, scolding, and arguing over and over with your teen.
Looking at the context, the antecedents, your parenting behavior, and the consequences when dealing with those rocky situations will allow you to see whether your responses are effective or not. When wondering about the workability of your parenting response, ask yourself, Is my behavior helping me to walk toward or away from the parent I want to be?
Our life, as it occurs in the real world, is full of natural consequences, reinforcers and punishers, or as we refer to them in this chapter, augmenters or minimizers. Everything we do, say, or feel has a consequence. For example, if we don’t go to work, there is a consequence; if your teen fails to turn in a paper, there is a consequence. Effective parenting is about preparing your teen to face life as it occurs. Naturally, as a parent, you want to protect your teen from any painful situation; however, if your behaviors are overprotective or inconsistent, you’re not preparing your teen to face life as it happens, with pleasant and not-so-pleasant consequences; your teen will quickly learn that it’s okay to behave however she wants, and that consequences or rules are for others, not for her.
Remember that consistency is vital in learning any skill but especially when learning to use behavioral-management skills. Intermittent reinforcement, because of its unpredictability, makes it really hard for anyone, not just your teen, to change a behavior.
Finally, keep in mind that behavioral plans can be fun, and you really need to create them with your teen, as a team, not just you in the middle of the night or in the middle of a fight with your teen. You don’t have control over your teen’s behavior, but you can choose how to respond to it. Your call.