Help for the afflicted

Karen A left this comment today:

Yikes! Somebody needs to stop me! (I'm in major procrastination mode--I'm supposed to be writing a paper.)

This is your lucky day, Karen A!

It just so happens that I, too, have been in major procrastination mode for lo these many moons, and I have found the answer:

the Premack Principle

The Premack Principle sounds like something you already know, but it isn't.

Sure, sure, we all know positive reinforcment is a good thing.

We all know we should put first things first.

What we don't know -- what I didn't know, at any rate -- is this whole business about reinforcement hierarchies. To wit: there are tons of things you don't want to do, and a bunch of things you do want to do, and these things can be ranked.

Then, once you've ranked them, you can pick something you don't want to do -- any old thing you don't want to do, not just the one big thing you don't want to do (in my case: stay up all night and write my book) -- do that one thing; then pick something you do want to do and do that.

And here's the miracle: after you've done this for a day or two, you start to want to do the things you don't want to do.

Not only that, but the Premack Principle works with your middle school child, the one who thinks the problem with parents is they constantly threaten to take away rights from their children.

Seriously.

Take it from Jon Bailey and Mary Burch:

Basically the Premack Principle involves setting up the rules in the house so that the preferred behavior (watching TV) is used as a reinforcer for the nonpreferred behavior (helping with chores).
p. 3

Translation: no "break" after school.

The "break" after school has been sacrosanct around here. C. needs a break after school. That's the concept. He's been at school all day; school is hard; he needs a break.

This summer the after-school break made a seamless transition into the after-camp break. C's been hard at work playing tennis all day; he needs a break when he gets home.

Which means C. comes home, plops down on the sofa, and begins playing video games with Christian, leaving me to nag, order, demand, and, yes, threaten to take away rights.

And that's just the beginning. When I finally get him to the table, we have negotiating.

If I do Megawords I'm not doing Vocabulary Workshop.

If I do decimals I'm not doing word problems.

Etc.

That's all over now.

Last Tuesday or Wednesday, I squelched the after-camp breaks. By the weekend things were running so smoothly that on Saturday morning C. came into my office at 10:30 a.m., sat down, sighed, and said, "What do I have to do?"

Then he pitched a fit, but still. By noon he had done everything I wanted him to do.

He was amazed. He kept saying to Ed, "I'm done with my work."

And Ed kept replying, "Doesn't it feel good to get it over with?" (great attitude, that!)

Sunday morning I got up and started awarding myself mental points for doing things I didn't want to do. I was banking my points, saving them to spend on doing things I did want to do. This turned things I didn't want to do into things I did want to do (points!) which got a little confusing because if I wanted to do something I didn't want to do because I would get points if I did it, didn't that make it something I did want to do after all and thus something I shouldn't be getting points for doing?

This put me in mind of the possible urban legend about the one-question essay exam some Harvard psych professor was said to have given his class, namely: what is a stimulus?

I decided not to worry about it. I was tearing around the house looking for things I didn't want to do that I could go ahead and do right then and there before we had to get to church. Points!

En route to church I explained the Premack Principle & the point system to C, who took it to heart at once.

Then, in church, we wrangled over how many church points (church being down there with word problems in C's reinforcement hierarchy) he was now losing for rudeness and failure to attend to the sermon.

When we got back home he had one don't-want-to-do facing him, which was to read a page of the Bible. This task is the result of a negotiation we'd had a couple of weeks before, when C. had said he shouldn't have to work on Sundays, and Ed backed him.^* So I said, Fine, you don't have to work on Sunday if you read the Bible, and Ed didn't have the nerve to intervene on that one.

C. also needed to mow the lawn, but since he gets paid to do that, and since it was his idea to start mowing the lawn, lawn-mowing was somewhere in the middle of his hierarchy.

He read one page of the Bible practically the instant we got home.

Then he mowed the lawn.

Then he lay down on the sofa, snapped on his video game, fixed me with the wolfy smile of the victorious, and said, "I have all my play points for the rest of the day."

..................................

I will be back tomorrow with Dick Malott & his online book on procrastination.

Chapter 3: "How to Get Yourself to Write."


^* Have I mentioned Ed is Jewish and agnostic? People will do anything not to hear middle schoolers fighting with their moms about word problems.