1. Do special needs children understand cause and effect and also rewards versus punishments? Do they comprehend the same way as other children?

The interesting thing is that this is not an issue. All creatures great and small have an interest in reward versus punishment to some degree. Think about the bottom of the food chain such as a cockroach. Cockroaches despise the light and live to move around in the dark hours of the night. They associate good feelings with dark and bad feelings with light. They might not think about it in those terms or even at all.

Turn on the lights and the roach goes scuttling for darkness. In a very basic sense, light = punishment and darkness = reward. The behavior of escaping from light to dark is rewarded, and so is repeated.

Roaches don't have a memory and can't be instructed like we can. Canines can be instructed because they have a wonderful memory. They know, for example, if they hear the word "stay" they will stay in place in order to receive a treat or reward.

The more sophisticated the creature, the better their memory and analytical skills, and the greater their awareness of time (i.e. that future events will happen) then the more complex the varieties of reward and punishment that can be used.

What reward and punishments should you dole out? Simple. Try first by experimenting with different rewards and punishments based on your own experience. Have a plan of rewards and punishments that will affect your child's behavior. Make sure that you are consistent. If their behavior changes then you have accomplished your goal. If it does not then take these two things into consideration:

a) either the rewards/punishments were not sufficiently motivating (again, see the book for details) or

b) your child could not build a bridge between the behavior and the reward or punishment. If you wait too long to respond to a behavior then your reward or punishment may have little or no meaning. This is most often see when dealing with younger children.

If your system doesn't seem to be effective then you need to stop and evaluate what you are doing. Make improvements and modifications. Try the system another time. Keep changing the system until you find one that works. If you are unable to find a system that works then think about the following:

You have tried all of the things you can think of and your child's behavior hasn't budged. What do you do? For example, let's say your child had PDD. You are required to complete a few hours of physical therapy with your child eacy day. However, your child doesn't want to do the physical therapy.

Richard has read the book. He has experimented with just about every reward, punishment, incentive scheme he can think of. He has tried to make the therapy more exciting and fun. But despite all of these efforts, half the time the therapy just does not get done.

What can you do to fix this? You have two options including:

a. You could become all upset and flustered about it. You get mad at yourself for your apparent failure. You feel like you are no service to your child. You want to find the magic trick that will make your child want to do his physical therapy session.

b. You stop and look at your situation. You take a deep breath and look at things realistically and logically. You are okay with the fact that half the time the physical therapy session may not happen, but this is still an improvement from how much physical therapy your child was accomplishing last year.

Which option, (a.) or (b.), will yield a better result?

The downfall of (a.) is that you will amp up your stress level which affects everyone negatively. You are not having a good time and your results won't improve this way.

Sometimes you just have to learn to live with the fact that your child may never be totally motivated to do the physical therapy. It's sad, but true. It is better to work with what you have then cry about not achieving perfection.

It is critical that you pay attention to your child's specific needs. Strive to define success off of what you are provided with and not an ideal. When you do this, you will ward off stress and the results you want will occur. If things still don't improve would you want to have: a) limited performance and we are all angry? b) limited performance and we are all happy?

Don't try to fight battles you cannnot win!