In his book, Family First - Dr Phil provides you the parent with 7 tools for parenting. I highly recommend reading his book and learning about all these tools and how you should use them.

In this article we are going to talk about Tool 4 - Parenting with Currency or I like to call it parenting with consequences.

The concept behind this is very simple:

BEHAVIOR IS SHAPED BY CONSEQUENCE.

This simple statement has a scientific basis and behavioral psychology or behaviorism is a major field in psychology field in psychology. The fathers of behavioral psychology and or learning are Pavlov, Thorndike and Skinner.

Changes in behavior (i.e. learning) follow the Law of Effect. E.L. Thorndike defined this law which says: "behavior that is followed by satisfying consequences will be more likely to be repeated and behavior that is followed by unsatisfying consequences will be less likely to be repeated"

The concepts are simple. Applying these concepts is not as simple. In his book, Dr Phil takes 28 pages to cover this tool. So, I will not be able to cover it in that depth here. I will provide you with the basics, and would encourage you to read books such as Dr Phil's Family First or "Kids are Worth It" By Barbara Coloroso - which is the book I learnt parenting by consequences from!!

Basically, behaviors can have two types of consequences - one is a natural consequence and the other is a logical consequence. Natural consequences result from the one's own actions. Logical consequence is also a result of behavior, but is imposed by others.

So, when it comes to potty training, the behavior of sitting on the potty chair and trying to go in the potty will have a natural consequence of going in the potty and not in the training pants. The natural consequence may take a while to surface and may not have the same "satisfying consequence" to the child as it does to the parent. So, as the parent, you will apply logical consequences to behaviors that will help guide your child in his potty learning.

As your child practices the behavior of sitting on the potty, he experiences a logical consequence for this behavior - which is a reward from his parent. The reward may take the form of verbal and physical praise i.e. words of encouragement and hugs & kisses or stickers on a potty training chart or whatever you the parent decides on for a reward. Either way, your child will likely repeat the behavior if he finds the consequence satisfying.