Backward Chaining

One of the most dreaded tasks here at the Wright house has long been the nightly bathing of our girl-child. It has been a major source of frustration for us all. Not only does she hate having to do it (she gets frustrated and quickly loses focus), but it falls at the worst time: the end of the day when everyone is tired from school and work and we are rushing to get everyone fed and bathed, homework done and lunches packed before bedtime while the baby has reached her fussy time and is screaming, causing the dog to start barking and me to want to throw in the towel and move us all to France where we can just splash on the eau de toilet and say to heck with frequent bathing. The easier thing to do is to just bathe her myself, letting her play under the water while I do all the scrubbing and rinsing. But since one of the main points of parenting is to prepare our little ducklings for life on their own, and since I know she is capable of self-care, she has to learn at somepoint snd with the arrival of her baby sister, so came that point. However, we soon found that the harder we pushed her, the more frustrated she (and in turn, we) became and bathtime only got worse, typically ending in her breaking down and her dad or I having to finish bathing her. I mentioned our dilemma to our beloved Dr. Le during one session and she recommended we try something called backward chaining. Basically, it just means breaking down a process into steps and teaching the steps from last to first, one at a time, before moving back to the next step, so that each attempt ends successfully, building confidence with experience. Since each attempt ends on a positive note with praise, the dreaded task becomes less dreaded for all.  Here's how we applied the theory of backward chaining to shower time. 

We broke shower time down into 12 steps. (Looking back now, we probably should have added "get into shower" and maybe reversed steps 1 & 2, but oh well.) 

Having the list written on the shower wall in bathtub crayon (washes off with a little scrubbing) has helped tremendously as my girl-child is a visual learner and also because it takes away the stress of "what comes next?" and helps her to stay focused.

 The first night, I did the first 11 steps for her and then had her turn the water off (step 12). I praised her big and she was proud that she had done well. The next night, I completed the first 10 steps for her and then she rinsed t & b (tootie & booty [step 11]), turned off the water (step 12) and received another big praise. "Hey, this isn't so hard!," we started thinking. We will continue this process, adding in one step each night, until she is doing it all on her own. We were advised to wait until we had mastered just the shower (keep things as simple as possible!) before we made a whole new backward chaining process for the "after shower" tasks of drying off, combing hair, etc. 

 To keep up with our progress and add in motivational rewards along the way , we made the chart below (I'm obviously no artist but it serves its purpose).

We drew the chart in timeline fashion and we work our way back from right to left. After she completes each step, she gets to "take ownership" of it's completion by drawing a picture of choice (checkmark, smiley , etc.) in the box for that step. After each few steps, there is a reward. After the first 5 steps were mastered, we had "UNO Night at the Wright House". After mastering the next 3 steps, she got her choice of a toy, bowling or Zen-Beri yogurt. (Last week was insanely busy so we will have our Zen-Beri date this week and then fill in that box as right now she's still owed that reward.) We are now only 2 steps away from her doing it all by herself. Tonight, I will just turn the water on for her (step 1) and she will do the rest. While I may still have to give her some verbal cues along the way, I will give those less and less each shower as I also reduce my physical proximity during the shower. I've started leaving the room instead of hovering over her and just sticking my head in at times to make sure she is still on task. She will earn a park play date with ice cream for herself and a friend when she completes all 12 steps on her own and when she does the whole shower process on her own 4 times (without verbal cues), she gets the big doozie reward of a trip to her choice of water park. 

 So far, this process has helped us tremendously and I have been excited to share because while it seems so simple now, I never would have thought of it on my own. She no longer goes straight into, "I can't do it"-meltdown mode because she has already done everything  except the 1 new task for the night and she knows it will be a simple one. If we do have trouble with a step, we just try it again the next night and don't get upset about it. The main thing to remember is to keep it positive!