Satiation When Possible

Satiataion When Possible

Using Satiation refers to the method of letting your infant or young child get tired of some misbehavior. Any time your child behaves to produce a novel or new consequence which is only temporarily rewarding, with repeated exposure, the behavior and its consequence will become boring. When this happens, the child is satiated on that particular novel stimulus consequence and does the behavior that produces it less and less. This is likely to result, only if you do not accidently reward that particular behavior.

One common complaint about very young children is that they love to play with TV or radio dials and light switches. They also like to slam doors, or pound on pots and pans with spoons, etc. These exploratory responses normally do not continue for long, so if you can discipline yourself to ignore the behavior, your child will slowly satisfy his curiosity, learn what is to be learned from the experience, and move on to explore other things. Of course, you man not wish to use the satiation approach with all irritating behaviors, or in other peoples homes. You will certainly not wish to use it with behaviors that can damage things or are dangerous. When in someone elses home, most hosts will be willing to do a certain about of baby proofing during your stay, if you asked them.

Many parents accidentally turn their children, who are only satisfying a temporary facination, into fanatics who spend nearly all of their time playing with dials and switches. When this happens parents are oftne then driven by extreme irritation to use excessive amounts punishent.

The problem is that parents accidentally reward the very behavior they wish to eliminate through their immediate attention and mild reprimands or spankings, which would likely go away on its own. To allow satiation to work, you must not provide any form of attention which might reward the activity. This even includes cross looks and scolding.

Dr. Tom