Reward charts don’t work for children

but they might just work for Practitioners!

Have you ever heard of Gottman’s magic ratio?
Dr Gottman & Robert Levenson suggest that the key to happy healthy relationships is having a perfect balance of positive to negative interactions.

The ‘magic ratio’ is 5:1
So for every negative interaction, you need at least 5 positive ones to balance it out.

This study was based on married couples, but Sandi Phoenix, Director of Phoenix Support for Educators has applied the same theory to interactions between educators and children with great success.

Sandi’s suggests that each child has a ‘love cup’ which needs to be filled. Challenging behaviour is often caused because a child’s cup has emptied (or was never full to start with) and when children are in our care, it’s our job as Practitioners to fill them back up with positive interactions.

Sandi has created a tongue in cheek sticker chart for Practitioners to remind them to positively interact with all of their children. It’s meant as a bit of fun but can provide a really visual representation of the sort of interactions we should all be participating in with children.

Head over to Phoenix Support to download your chart and to find out more about the Phoenix Cup theory and how you can apply it at your setting.