The Competitive Advantage
Using competition to foster cooperation amongst siblings.
One of the principles in cognitive behavior therapy is to assess the individual’s strengths and utilize them in treatment. The therapist can also harness the client’s prominent personal characteristics in adaptive ways, such as using a lawyer’s proclivity for debate in helping him “debate” the negative voice in his head, or applying a scientist’s persistence in finding solutions to help her look for evidence against a particular negative belief she might hold. Traits that may be problematic in some contexts become adaptive when strategically applied as tools for change.
Being close in age, my children tend to be competitive with each other. This, as you can imagine, generates a lot of conflict. Like primates, they fight over scarce resources (that’s MY toy!), superior genes (I’m taller!), and social status (I get to sit next to Mom!).
I first noticed the advantages of competition when my younger child started to potty train. Her older brother had been completely uninterested in using the toilet up until that point, and no amount of shaping, rewarding (ok, bribing), or cajoling had moved him closer to that hallowed throne. It had been 2 years of dedicated effort. Once he saw his little sister in the bathroom, he was fully, and I mean fully, potty trained in one week. Not even an overnight pull-up. “How can I use this to my advantage?” I thought.
The Quiet Game was the first successful use of harnessing their competition to my advantage. We play The Quiet Game in the car when I can’t take the bickering anymore. It starts with a simple, “Ok, we’re going to play The Quiet Game. Ready, set, now!” The first person to talk loses. The last person quiet is the winner. We have driven many, many peaceful miles with The Quiet Game, hence I capitalize it to give it the respect it deserves. My husband is invariably the first one to fold.
The competitive fighting my kids began with eventually evolved into the dreaded sibling pattern of bickering. As they neared the tween years, my husband and I began to refer to them behind their backs as The Bickersons.
How would a Clever Behaviorist Mom decrease bickering and increase cooperation in naturally competitive kids?
And thus was born The Kindness Competition. It sounds like an oxymoron, but hear me out. When the kids are being mean to each other and I can’t curtail it any longer, we play The Kindness Competition. Everyone starts at 0, including me. A mean comment or deed is -1. A kind comment or deed is +1. For example, at the dinner table, offering to share your dessert earns you a point, offering to share your lima beans doesn’t. Pinching your sibling loses you a point. So does yelling at your kids. There is no prize other than the inherent reward of being the winner.
What I like about The Kindness Competition is that it not only decreases the undesired behavior, it also encourages pro-social behavior, and allows them to learn from our modeling. It’s a win-win, which is rare in competition.
The trouble with The Kindness Competition is that it takes constant, consistent attention and effort, and who has the time or mental bandwidth for that? So, while we still activate a kindness contest on occasion if we need a focused reset, what has emerged from The Kindness Competition is the adoption of kindness as an intrinsic family value. The kids know they are expected to be kind: to each other, to others, and to themselves. Now, it often takes only a gentle reminder — Was that kind? — to get their behavior back on track.
