"Do You Train Kids, Too?", Part 2

The training techniques at Koinonia are not species-specific. The principles I teach families to use with their dogs are the same principles used with marine mammals, cats, horses, exotic animals, and even butterflies! So, yes, I could "train" other humans if I wanted.

Most of the time, we're primarily interested in changing the behavior of those around us, but what about ourselves? Although not as neat and tidy, some of these principles can also be used to "self-train."
Disclosure: my interest in self-training is very casual and limited. I'm not going to dive into the possible social, moral, and ethical implications of self-training except to say that as a Believer it is often a struggle for me to keep moralism/behavior and sanctification in their proper places.

The most common form of self-training that I practice is some version of the Premack Principle: high-probability behaviors reinforce low-probability behaviors. I've been doing this stuff for as long as I can remember (well, at least since about middle school when my school work began to be more self-directed). I could give you a number of different examples of how it works, but we'll focus on one instance in particular for this post.
January 2017. I had a banking appointment that I was not looking forward to. By default, I'm an introverted home-body and if there's a way to do it online, that's my first choice. Such was not the case with this chore. So I made myself a little deal! Do the appointment and then you can go get an Iced Tea Latte from The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to celebrate. I enjoyed my Latte (high-probability behavior) and completed the task (low-probability behavior).
My Mom used to do a version of this when my sister and I were little. When we went to the doctor for vaccinations, she would take us to Wendy's for a Frosty afterwards. 

Another dog training principle that I use on myself is management. Management is a HUGE concept in dog training. It means structuring the environment so that it's easy for the dog to make the right choice, and hard for them to make the wrong choice. It's very important for success because it prevents all the training from coming undone between practice sessions.
I recently challenged myself to quit consuming electronics right before bed. For just one week, my goal was to not use my phone to surf the web at bedtime. I knew enough about myself to realize that if the phone was on my nightstand, I wouldn't be successful. Here's where management comes in! Instead of carrying my phone upstairs and relying on self-will, I decided to leave it downstairs when I went up for the night. Aside from a couple of extenuating circumstances, I've been on track for several weeks!

Do you use rewards or management with yourself or your kids?