For one full day, record all your child’s successes. Every time your child does something that results in success make a note of it. We’re not going to write down the failures, since no-one wants a list of all the things they did wrong or had trouble with. Share the list of successes with the child if he shows an interest in what you are doing. At the end of the day, consider whether it seems to you that the child experiences mostly successes or mostly failures. Think about way you could increase the opportunities for success and reduce the opportunities for failure and frustration.

One way that you can help tip the balance towards success for your child is to spend some time each day teaching specific skills that your child needs to be successful. But where to find the time? You may be spending a lot of time managing behavior. That is, telling your child what to do, when to do it, what not to do, giving corrections and generally wrangling to get through the day. For one full day, keep a record of the number of times you find yourself starting to manage some behavior that your child is doing (or not doing). Each time to start to manage, first go to the fridge and put a tally mark on the sheet you have placed there. At the end of the day you will have counted how many times you found yourself in management mode. Try to think about this and where in all that time you could carve out 5 or 10 minutes to work on a specific tag point that you identified in Part 1 of this course.

Fill out this sheet for a week, and include a tally mark for each time you have a teaching session. Over time you will see the time spent managing going down, while the time spent teaching goes up.