Two cheers to parks to be open in Minnesota! Hurrah! Hurrah!

But for many parents of young children, it is bittersweet. We have been cooped up all winter and yearn to be outside. But then you find yourself dreading the park because it is so challenging to get your child to leave! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

I went live on Facebook to share three PROACTIVE strategies to set your child up to successfully transition from something preferred to something else. Click here to watch that video clip.

Assume that your child is ALWAYS going to protest the transition so that you and your child are set up for success to prevent that unwanted behavior. Parents tell me that their children sometimes transition well so they don’t think about prevention because it only happens sometimes. The difficulty with this is then we are setting ourselves up for reacting to the unwanted behavior. The unwanted behavior has already occurred. Your child has already practiced the unwanted behavior, so most anything you do reactively is likely to strengthen their unwanted behavior. We are doing ourselves a disservice by reacting.

We are all about prevention at Behave Your Best! We only have so much energy to expend, so we want you to expend your energy proactively preventing the unwanted behaviors that your child displays, as opposed to reacting to the unwanted behaviors, which inadvertently strengthens the unwanted behaviors because your attention has now followed that unwanted behavior. Your attention is EVERYTHING in terms of teaching your child to regulate their behavior.

We’d love to hear how these strategies have helped you improve your child’s ability to transition from preferred activities to any other activities. Please share your experiences with our strategies!

My best,

Jamie Waldvogel, MS, BCBA

Founder/CEO, Behave Your Best, LLC