Reinforce positive behavior not negative for a high-impact result

“No matter how many times I tell him not to climb on the table he keeps doing it!”
“No matter how many times I tell her to use her fork she still uses her hands!”
“No matter how many times I remind my wife to close the kitchen drawers after using them she still leaves them open!”
Odd isn’t it? Why can’t people respond to a simple request? Why do they ignore it and carry on doing the wrong thing? Well actually it’s your fault.

Brain programming
How is it your fault? You are your spouse’s spouse. That makes you a brain programmer. You are also your child’s parent and that makes you an ultra brain programmer. What you say to these members of your household not only affects them emotionally but it also affects them physically. What you say and when and how you say things cause physical processes to occur in their brains.
For example you cause their brains to be wired in certain ways which means that you cause them to learn certain things. If you clap every time a baby waves near you you will find that he is waving more frequently. The clapping occurring at the moment of the wave reinforces the waving behavior. This reinforcement is a strengthening of the hand-waving neural pathway (“wire”) in the infant’s brain.
Two strategies for strengthening a neural pathway are practice and reinforcement. The first time you do something (like play a song on the piano) you create a little neural pathway — a skinny wire — in your brain which records the steps involved in creating that action. The next time you do it you add another wire. The next time another and so on until you’ve created a superhighway of wires for that activity.
Now the path is firmly established and “cars” (electricity) can zip along easily. Through practice you have created a behavior that can now occur automatically without the need for conscious planning — you can play that song without looking at the music.
Reinforcement — any kind of attention — can speed up the learning process adding extra wires “for free” without additional practice. Clapping for the baby’s wave is an example of using attention to add free wires.

wire right
What are you attending to in your house? Most of us like to attend to problems. This strategy works well with objects. If I can discover what’s wrong with the vacuum cleaner then I can fix it.
However it backfires with humans. Unlike vacuum cleaners humans have brains that crave attention. Attention — of any kind — tells the brain to add some free wires to whatever it is currently doing. So if your child is climbing on the table and you give him some high-intensity attention (scream run over glare and lecture) you are accidentally wiring his brain — loading on wire after wire after wire to his little first wire called “climb-on-the-table.”
Similarly if you look at talk to reprimand and/or instruct your daughter while she is eating with her hands you will have loaded up a slew of eat-with-your-hand wires. You can get your spouse wired to his or her bad habits in the exact same way.
So how can you stop the climbers sloppy eaters and drawer-openers who live in your house? Give attention to the target behavior — the behavior you want — while you remove or strictly minimize attention to the offensive behavior..
For instance don’t say a word as you swiftly remove the little guy from the table. Place him in the right place to play and once he’s there lay on the attention! “Here is where we play right here on the floor. Good for you little guy. You know just where to play don’t you? You deserve a big hug and kiss for playing where you’re supposed to!”
Don’t even think of talking to that girl when she is eating with her hands. Just hand her the fork and lay it on: “Hey look at you — eating with cutlery! What great manners you have! I think that deserves an extra slice of dessert for everyone don’t you guys agree?”
And finally: “Sweetheart thank you for closing that drawer. I really appreciate it; you truly are the best!”
Now go on out there and do some powerful intentional wiring on the ones you love!