When you don’t want to do something any longer, it’s easy to get stuck on the thing you don’t want to do. I recently found out I had a gluten intolerance. What do you think I wanted more than ever? Yep, anything with gluten! Bring on the bread, croissants, and chocolate cake! It is how we all think. The second something is going to be eliminated, we become zoned in on whatever that thing is. We immediately panic and think about what our life will be without that thing. We then get frustrated with ourselves that our behavior isn’t where we want it to be. It reminds me of the verse:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Romans 7:15
The key to giving something up, and resolving that tension that bubbles up within us when we feel pressured to imagine life without that thing, is to begin thinking about what the replacement will be. Giving something up needs to first have a clear purpose and a desire to change. (If you missed it, make sure you read all about this in Wanting to Change) The next step though is finding a replacement.
Whenever you give something up, you will by default have a replacement. If you give up junk food, it will be replaced by healthier choices. If you give up watching TV, it will be replaced by doing more housework. If you give up gossiping, it will be replaced by richer conversations. When you give something up, something is bound to take its place. The thing is, the above examples are all ideal replacements. What happens if we are not intentional is that when we give something up, our replacement will be different, but equally undesirable. For example, you could give up junk food and replace it with extra coffee. You could give up watching TV, and replace it with social media. You could give up gossiping, and replace it with isolation.
Replacements can be tricky. The often get a bad rap, but I’d argue it’s because they are often done wrong. You see, for a replacement to be effective it needs to first be intentional. As previously established, if it’s not an intentional replacement, then we will often go astray in a different area. The second key to a good replacement is that it has to have the same reinforcing quality as the original action. Why did our unhealthy replacement examples work so well? They were equally as reinforcing.
Let’s bring this back to our kids now. How many times do we tell them to stop doing something, and provide no replacement? Yep, I’m guilty. Telling them what they can’t do without telling them what they can do is defeating. This is where we hear the term, “teaching moment” We need to be teaching them the better choices. We need to be teaching them what a different choice could be, not just telling them to stop. Secondly, how many times do we offer a replacement, but it’s not nearly as reinforcing as the thing we asked them to not do? Yep, guilty again.
Let’s go through an example. If your child begins shouting to their friends to wait for them while in the library, our first response would probably be, “Shhh, we can’t yell in here.” The problem with this response is that it doesn’t meet our replacement criteria. It does not provide them a replacement behavior, and being quiet does not have the same reinforcing effect as shouting. Do you think they will be quiet? Eh, maybe. However, if we tell them, “We can’t yell in here, but you can go over there and catch up with them” that has a much higher probability of being effective. We provided a replacement to the yelling (walking to them) and it has some reinforcing qualities because they have access to the friends (which is why they were yelling in the first place)
Bad habits are often rooted in the idea that the habit provides more reinforcement than the replacement. I’d encourage you to find replacements for your kids that are equal in reinforcing qualities. Need some ideas? Go check out this FREEBIE I created just for you!
If you’re having a difficult time finding equally reinforcing replacements, don’t beat yourself up over this. This can be quite the difficult puzzle to solve. Great Mamas ask for help, and I’d be honored to help you walk through this. REACH OUT TODAY!