Nanny 911 Discussion

Discussion No. 3- Nanny 911 This clip of Nanny 911 was about a family who had two young boys. The mother and father were having trouble controlling their son’s behavior, one with his high energy and teasing, and the other with sleeping issues. The family was evaluated by the nanny and she brought many issues to light. Some of the offenses dealt with in this episode were the father wrestling with his sons, the oldest son, Ryan, pushing his mothers buttons all day long, and the youngest son not going to bed in his own bed at night, often times screaming and crying for hours on end.

The nanny put the family to the test with her strategies to reclaim order in the home. First, she brings up two points from her nanny book. The first, which is aimed at Christopher’s nighttime sleeping patterns, has a solution of giving the boy more independence as he is getting off to bed. The dad would wait at the door for 5 minutes instead of lying next to Christopher in bed. This was a sort of weaning off strategy that eventually paid off. Next, the issue with Ryan and his mother nagging him, and he retorting with immaturity. The mother was to stop “nitpicking” and start positive acknowledgement of the boy’s achievements.

This helped create a friendlier relationship between Ryan and his mother, as he began easing up off of the immature badgering and bantering that he had previously been involved with. The type of conditioning displayed in this video segment was of course operant conditioning. The boys were being conditioned by their father in the wrestling and sleeping patterns, and by their mother in the nagging and smart replies back segments. All the conditioning was ultimately resolved when the nanny broke the cycle of the parents setting bad influences on their children. The children followed suit and began to obey their parent’s requests.

The reinforcements displayed were positive reinforcement for the boys with their baseball chart, a chart displaying good behaviors represented by a baseball for each good act. This chart is a positive reinforcement because it gave the children their freedom to enjoy their privileges as opposed to losing them. The father displayed Bandora’s “Bobo Doll” behavior by wrestling with the boys. When someone gets hurt, the father entitles the hurt boy to hit the other with a “free shot”. This behavior caused the boys to associate hitting with a form of handling situations.

This caused more fighting and issues controlling the boys further. The law of frequency was seen here with Ryan reacting to his mother’s comments on what the boys did wrong. Every time she said something, he would chime in, thus escalating the situation. His mother then would punish Ryan for his talking back, which helped to illustrate a discrimitive stimuli example. Overall, the work of the nanny helped to offer a peace and balance to the family with their problems and going forward the parents now know what to do with their behaviors and ultimately will lead to a much happier and healthier home.