The Difference in Between

No pictures here, just a small, illustrative story about the differences between Cody and Cordelia.

For the last year or two, Cody has been in the bad habit of biting and chewing on his fingers. It's gross. We've tried gently correcting him, but that's never worked. We avoided making it a negative focus, because since it's probably born of anxiety that might as well have added to the problem. So three weeks ago I decided to try to break him of the behavior with a positive system of rewards.

I told Cody that if he could go a whole day without biting and chewing on his fingers, I'd give him $3. Initially he was excited, but then he told me that it seemed like a daunting task. So I told him that I never expect perfection from him (a filthy lie) and that since he's six years old, if he could just avoid biting his fingers fewer than six times in a day, he would get the $3. And then, to sweeten the pot, I told him that whenever he could string together two consecutive days, he'd get a bonus dollar. He was hugely excited and I told him that this system was for all day long, even when he was at school, and that I'd just trust him to keep track of any slip-ups.

Of course, he tuned out to be completely trustworthy. At the end of each day he'd report to me how many times he forgot about chewing his fingers at school. On only one or two occasions did he fail to earn his dollars. He was so pleased with himself, and with his growing pile of money.

Then this morning, on the way to school, he announced to me that he thought that we didn't need to do the rewards system anymore because he had kicked the habit. I told him I was so proud of him. And then he said, "But I really liked earning dollars. Maybe I could take my dollars and buy a lawnmower and then I could mow the grass for all of our neighbors and they would give me checks?" I assured him that he was too young for mowing lawns just yet, but that we would find other entrepreneurial possibilities for him.

* * *

Late last week I decided to try to put Cordelia on the rewards system, too, to help her get out of her (incredibly annoying) habit of whining and throwing mini-tantrums whenever she's displeased. She was thrilled at the prospect. Luckily, she never does that behavior at school. I say luckily, because there is absolutely no way--no how--that would trust her to self report.

But where Cody looked at the system as a way to achieve a goal in cooperation with his loving parents, Cordelia was casing the system for weaknesses. To wit:

On the first evening when she crossed the threshold of whining instances which resulted in her losing her $3, her immediate response was, "Well since I've lost the dollars anyway, I'm just going to whine the entire rest of the night."

I hadn't packed for that.