Addicted to Teasing

Q: Our 5-year-old son loves to tease his 7-year-old sister—and when I say, love, I mean it’s nearly constant throughout the day. We’ve tried time outs in his room when he teases her but that hasn’t slowed the taunting. Part of the problem is that he can so easily get under her skin with a comment, and I can tell he loves getting a rise out of her! What can we do?

A: Your son has become addicted to teasing. Right now, he receives lots of attention when he teases his sister—both from her and you. And children who get attention for doing something will keep on doing it until you step in with an offer he can’t refuse (a la the Godfather Principle, attributed to John Rosemond).

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The easiest way to address this is to institute the ticket system for teasing. Write down (or use illustrations if he can’t read yet) three target behaviors related to teasing, such as name-calling, put downs, etc. Post that sheet on the fridge along with four tickets (squares of cardboard or construction paper). Each day, he starts out with a clean slate of four tickets—essentially, his margin of error. Every time he teases his sister, he loses a ticket. All you have to do is call the infraction and have him remove the ticket from the fridge.

When he’s used up his “free” quota (i.e., all four tickets), then he’s confined to his room for the rest of the day and goes to bed directly after supper--and make supper early than usual. This system works because you’re not talking about the teasing with either child—you’re only calling the infraction in a calm tone.

It’s likely that he’ll race through his tickets at first because he’s not learned how to control his tongue. But if he’s like my sons, the thought of being indoors during this glorious springtime will drive him to figure out how to stop teasing. As he progressives and starts losing fewer tickets, you should take away a ticket at a time, to tighten up his margin of error gradually. When you get down to one ticket, you can suspend the program, as you can’t expect perfection.

As for his sister, tell her that you are handling it, that she’s not to tattle-tale about the teasing, and that her brother is younger and therefore needs more time to learn self-control. You don’t want her gleeful at his mistakes, so make sure you don’t accidentally appoint her in the role of victim, thereby placing him in the role of villain.

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