lege training have learned that if behavior modification is used over an extended period of time with the same children, its effectiveness is likely to diminish. The fact that we do have some turnover in staff and children alleviates the potential for "habituation," to borrow a term from conditioning.
It is also necessary to train parents to pick up their children on time at the end of the day. As might be expected, most parents drop off the children on time, but several parents are chronically late. Parents are told that it is unfair to the staff and the children if they are late in picking up their kids. Since the children must be supervised at all times, the staff cannot merely quit at the end of the day when there are still kids to be picked up. In addition, we have to be very careful that children get picked up by an authorized person. We cannot assume that a relative or friend whom we have never met is authorized to take them home. Thus, getting the children back into the hands of their parents or guardians is a big responsibility at the end of the day. The staff is tired and ready to go home, but we sometimes have to wait as long as a half hour for late parents.
The staff has adopted a version of the token economy to encourage desired behaviors among students. For example, in order to reward students who get to, and depart from, daycare on time, we award tokens. These tokens are meant to reward a constructive activity, whether it be punctuality in this case, or cooperativeness while playing (as we will see later). Every time the children are punctual, they receive a token. The younger children don't readily make the connection between getting rewarded and punctuality, so we try to give the tokens to their parents, in their presence. The parents know that their kids can exchange the tokens for toys or privileges later on, so they are generally cooperative and punctual.
If we label the above scenario with cl...