Practical Parenting - Motivation (Part 5 Rewards Programs)

2:14 This program that I worked in Actually some of you may have heard of it. It's now called Simcha Special in the Diamond Summer Program. Not Simcha special like some like High Lifeline, but it was I think it's called the Diamond Summer Program now in the Five Towns. Jared, you've heard of that program? It's called the Diamond Summer Program, and originally it was being run by L I J Hospital by a woman whose name was Doctor Mary Courtney, and she was the Talmidah Muvheket of Bill Pelham. And so she started this program. It was the first program in an Orthodox camp. I think it was a Jewish camp. And what we did is we had I believe it was. Sixteen kids and eight counselors. The kids we were taking into the program had everything from pervasive developmental disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD in the extreme, even obsessive compulsive disorder. The idea was that you could modify a behavior by having an immediate consequence, both positive and negative, to anything the kids did.

3:20 And so there was a point system. And any behavior, literally any behavior that a child engaged in, there was an immediate points consequence. So let's say of the eight counselors, there was a rotation And this rotation was that every fifteen minutes you switched who held the clipboard. So while you were holding the clipboard for fifteen minutes, your job was to take points. So if let's say Zevi Cohen was a fellow counselor, and Eli Dahan was a fellow counselor, and Yosef Tokayer was a fellow counselor, and Jared Paris is a fellow counselor, and then we have Nachi Lo who's a camper, and so Nachi Lo does an amazing positive thing. As Zevi, I see you laughing. You didn't expect me to go that direction. Zevi, Nachi Lo does an amazing thing. Perfect. So then it was Siyadu the Shmaya. Nachilo goes ahead and he does an amazing thing and he exhibits amazing sportsmanship. When a kid strikes out, he goes over to him and he puts his arm around his shoulder and he says, "Don't worry, you'll get it next time." That would be fifty points to Nachilo, and Zevi, you as the counselor, you Ellie, Jared or Yosef, you would call out fifty points to Nachilo for amazing sportsmanship. Now I would take that down. Now five minutes later, Nachi might.

4:44 Hit a fly ball to the outfield, and he might exhibit extreme frustration and use inappropriate language. As a result, a counselor might call out inappropriate language minus twenty five points, and the kids knew the point system. The counselors aren't making up the points. The point system was clear from the beginning. It was hung up. The kids knew the points. And the counselors' jobs was just to call out the points. So every fifteen minutes was another set of intervals. Why did we do every fifteen minutes? It was an amazing program. Let's say you have a kid who's on medication. And you want to know exactly when the medication wears off So you can track it. This was a computer program. There was a person who worked in the office who was doing data entry, and every hour they were collecting the points for that hour, so we would literally be able to see the spikes in the behavior and the lows in the behavior depending on where a kid's medication was holding. This way, we could get the medication adjusted perfectly. So every fifteen minutes, there was an interval change, and we would call it out. Fifteen minutes are up. The first interval of this period is over. So the kids would know, okay

5:54 And so there's an immediate points consequence. That was the first very short term reward. They've earned points now every single day. There's a daily reward. So now it's a short term reward program. They got the immediate points consequence that affirms that they've behaved appropriately, or it lets them know that was an inappropriate behavior. At the end of the day, they had personal goals. Every goal was personal. So if they hit those personal goals by the end of the day. There was a reward at the end of the day. Maybe the reward was extra canteen. Maybe the reward was getting to go for an extra swim. Whatever the reward was, there was a reward at the end of every single day. How did you know how to adjust the rewards? So the first week of camp Basically all we did was take points, and at the end of the first week, every single kid got to go on a trip.

6:51 But for the second week, they had to do ten percent better than they did the week before. Do you guys realize how brilliant that is? The reason it's brilliant is because that tells the kid you're not competing against anyone else. You're just competing against yourself. You have to do incrementally better every single week, so at the end of every week there was a long term reward, and that long term reward was if you do ten percent better than you did last week in terms of the points that you got, we are all going on a trip. If you didn't do ten percent better, you stayed behind in camp and had a regular day of camp. If you went down in points, then there was a negative consequence. So for that day, you might be working in the kitchen with the waiters or cleaning the campus. This incentivized the kids every week. They would say, 'Okay, I want to get that reward. It's going to be a great reward.' We told the kids this week we're going to Adventureland. This week we're going to ride Playland. This week we're going, and we had a larger budget because we were doing these bigger trips every single week.

7:56 So there was the short term immediate consequence of they had the points that feels good. They get that affirmation. There's a daily reward program, a weekly reward program, and then a monthly reward program. Because the summer is split into two halves, so at the end of the first half, there's a huge thing of like who won the following awards for the first half, and then again we did that in the second half, and in the second half obviously we did it like who got it for the summer. Who worked in these programs? We had two bunks. I think each had sixteen kids. If I'm not mistaken, which counselors were hired? The counselors hired to work in this program had to be the best counselors from the regular mainstream camp. So if you were an awesome color war general when you were sixteen or seventeen years old, then when you came back pochana olive, you were hoping you were chalishing to work in this program. And if you got chosen because you got an elevated salary, it was something you really wanted to do aside from the fact that it was an amazing work.

8:56 If you got chosen to do it, it was especially meaningful because it was like I'm getting to change these kids' lives and I know I'm getting to change these kids' lives. And so the counselors were amazing, and even if we were dealing with some of the most challenging kids, these counselors were so gishmak and so positive that the kids wanted to do better, and that was a really amazing part of working with the program. And I'll share with you that the only reason I'm in Chinuch today—that's an exaggeration—but perhaps the main reason that I'm in Chinuch today is because I had the opportunity to work on that program. We started off with sixteen kids. Every single one of them had been thrown out of yeshiva. That was the criteria to get in. You had to be so crazy that they wouldn't let you back into yeshiva. And by the end of the summer, every single kid had gotten back into yeshiva, except for one. That was because he had to leave camp because he physically assaulted another kid and knocked out his two front teeth. Aside from that, every single kid got back into yeshiva. Their behavior during the year was different because they trained the behavior through the rewards. Now again, I'm not a pure behaviorist, but rewards work. The timing of the reward is critical. If you promise the reward

10:10 You got to get it right away, and you got to create a system. The reward happens right away. The reward happens over the course of a day. The reward happens over the course of a week, and the reward can happen even over the course of a month. But if you tell a child six months from now. You're going to get a reward. No child has the capacity to be able to hang on that long. No eight-year-old can think eight, eight weeks, twelve weeks in advance. You can set up a weekly reward, and then four weekly rewards could become a monthly reward. And you can even make rewards for two months. But there has to be a more immediate consequence, otherwise the child doesn't feel the reward. Let's stop here for any questions, comments, or reactions, Zevi. Let's say I'll take an example that's a little prevalent to me. But what if you have a system where the kid gets a reward every three or five times, and then at the end, let's say he's learning bar mitzvah, he's so every three or five every time he finishes a reward. But what about the end? That's still six months off.

11:12 So as long as he's getting those short-term rewards along the way, it's okay because it's part of a process, and the kid can chart their process. Let's say, for example, a kid is working hard on his bar mitzvah. You want to give him a reward to incentivize him. Nothing wrong with that. And so you're doing it based on the aliyah. But you mentioned it might take him, let's say two weeks to finish an aliyah. So you don't want to just have it as two weeks because that might be too long. And I'm not suggesting you would do this with a 13 year old kid, but the reason we have stars on an oak tag is because it allows a child to track their progress. There needs to be something that the child can see something in the immediate. Like this, Aliyah was let's say thirty psukim. So we've charted that every ten psukim, we're doing something small to recognize I've achieved ten, and then ten becomes thirty, and that's where the first burst hit, and that's how you do it over the course of the thing.

12:16 But if you just do the two weeks, you might lose the kid in between. Daniel Gross. Let's say you have a reward system. Let's say it's individualized to the person. I'm gonna make up two games. I'll say Joe and Bob. So Bob is a wilder kid. Joe is not. So I say Bob. Every time he doesn't miss, doesn't kick and scream like crazy, he gets a chocolate. When they were teenagers and make I think they both would be able to understand, but when they're little, I could almost imagine Joe being like, "Well, I never kick and scream. Why am I not getting rewarded?" So how do you explain that? How do you explain that to a kid? Because I feel like a kid won't be able to get that. They'd see, all right, he's doing less work than I. What he's trying to do, I do all the time. He's getting rewarded for it. No one's giving me anything.

13:11 Right. First of all, let's take let's say that Bob is the kid who's having the. Did I get that right? Is Bob the kid having the temper tantrums? So first of all, remember that not having a temper tantrum is hard to track Right? Because it's like It's hard to reward the lack of a behavior. That was one of the values of having the point system. Let's say not having a temper tantrum. If he goes a day without a temper tantrum, we'll get a chocolate. So again, that might be hard to do for certain kids. Because let's say a kid has Just saying, let's say a kid has oppositional defiant disorder. And he literally, you give him a command, he goes the other direction, and he has a temper tantrum. So you could say to the kid, this is what we would have done in the behavior mod program that I worked in. We would have said,

14:00 We're tracking these points. Your goal is not to get any of these negative behaviors. We would have specific negative behaviors. It wouldn't just be temper tantrum. Because temper tantrum is a large thing. It's like we want, we don't want you. We're watching this hour that you get. No inappropriate language points, no physical aggression points. And then by the end of the hour, one of the counselors would go down the thing and go over the kid and pull him over to the side and go, you just did an awesome hour. And then you're getting. We might even say you're getting another fifty extra points because you did that hour. And by the way, when you do it, you'll see the kids' grin will light up from ear to ear. But that wasn't your question. Your question is now. Joe is sitting there saying, "Well, I never have a temper tantrum, right?" But your case is actually a really good case because Joe is a kid who's also in behavior mod. And so even at a young age, what we found is that kids have the sophistication to know that this is what I'm working on and this is what he's working on. So Bob is working on controlling his temper. Whereas Joe might be working on something completely different, and as long as the kid feels like you're invested in their growth too, it doesn't need to be equitable in the mission.

15:18 It just needs to be that the kid is also part of a meaningful rewards program, and this actually speaks to a point that Aaron Tuchman has made a couple of times. Which is the sibling rivalry point. Sometimes you have a kid who's acting out, and you have a kid who's like just a regular, obedient child. Sometimes the kid who's the regular obedient child might feel really frustrated by like I do everything right, so I don't get the attention. You know what I'm saying? By the way, you see this a lot in yeshivas, right? Because guys will complain. The top guys get attention because they're the top guys. The bottom guys get attention because they're screaming for that attention. But a very good middle of the road average kid who's not the best and not the worst might feel like he's falling through the cracks. That's where it becomes particularly insidious. But I do believe, Daniel, that kids do have the sophistication. As long as they feel like they're being invested in, they do have the sophistication to understand that each kid is different, and I've seen it in my own family too.

16:15 All right Zavi. So this curtails with Daniel's question, but how do you make sure that a kid feels that way? If I'm spending two hours working on this behavior program with my kid. Twenty minutes a day with the other kid. That kid sees the twenty minutes, and he understands that you're spending twenty minutes with him. He also understands that you're spending two hours with the other one. It it's it look. That doesn't feel good. It doesn't, and you're touching on a particularly sensitive point, because we always tell parents it's not quantity time, it's quality time. But it's quantity time too. And it's really hard. Let's just be very honest. If you've got. A handful of kids, and you have a job, and you have your learning, and you have your work, and you have your school, and you have your community. We are asking you guys to juggle a tremendous amount, and there's no doubt that it's a tremendous amount of responsibility.

17:19 And you're probably going to make mistakes in this area, and you're probably going to invest perhaps more time in one child than in another. The only good solution that I have for you, Zevi, is that you have to be conscious of that and really try to divide your time as much as you can. Some kids are naturally going to take up more, and some kids are going to be the less squeaky wheel. You will hear from them. They'll tell you like, yep, you don't pay as much attention to me because I don't squeak as much. You have to be listening. You have to pay attention for those cues, and you may have to apologize sometimes. And you may have to make course corrections. You know, to spend some real quantity time, not just quality time, with that other kid as well. It's nearly an impossible balance. That's I can share with you. It's certainly not an easy one. Nachi. Hasn't it been proven that a variable reward system is more effective than a fixed reward system?

18:17 When you say that, what exactly do you mean? More effective in establishing a behavior and retaining it. So it really depends on the kid. And it really depends on the program. There are a lot of combination programs that you can do. And it's true. The four basic types of reward systems. Of, I don't know if everybody's familiar Like, but if not, then. But all I'm saying is that the point here is not to get into the. You can combine a lot of these systems and that's what I was trying to show you before. That you have individualized systems that are working on particular behaviors within a larger system that's more structured. But even aside from that, the key here is the timing. That's what I'm trying to highlight. The timing of the reward. The kid cannot see into the future. That's what's critical. Right. So that's what I'm saying is that the most effective reward system is a variable interval reward system.

19:25 But isn't that sort of not because that's when they don't know when the reward is coming. So it's not clear to me that not knowing when the reward is coming is always a good thing. Some kids, especially when they're oppositional, need to know when the reward is coming. But what we try to do is throw in random awards so that they don't know, so that they are also kept on their toes. For example, let's say your trip day was Thursday. You might, let's say on a random morning, we used to do this. Let's say it was raining, so now the kids are stuck indoors. Our kids cannot be stuck indoors. So we had an additional budget. And we would say, anyone that's accrued over a certain amount of points this morning by twelve o'clock, they didn't know that we're taking them to the batting cages, which was indoors. So that's also not Intervalec. That's a fixed ratio system.

20:16 Depends again, depending on how you do it. Oh, okay. Okay. Rabo seiviter. Here's another key point that you need. What's called? Here's another key point that you need to know. Rewards programs have to be performance based and not effort based. And that goes against a lot of the things that we've said so far. Because obviously we want to reward effort and not performance. We want to let a child know that they are valuable, right, regardless of their success. However, when it comes to a reward-based program Because the idea of what we're trying to do is not to get the kid to try harder, but to get him to succeed. So you have to reward the success and not the attempt. And even though in general we have to encourage effort, here we don't incentivize effort. Rewards encourage repetition. So if you reward a behavior, then the behavior will be repeated, and that's good. If you reward effort, then the effort will be repeated, and it's not clear that just because a child has given a certain level of effort, even if that effort is more, that is going to lead to success. So we're specifically when it comes to rewards-based programs.

21:36 It's really important. You're not rewarding the effort; you're rewarding the success. And when a kid says, "But I tried really hard," you have to validate that, and you have to be sensitive to that. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they've earned the reward. Last but not least, I want to go on to the next part of the program. What's the role of the parent in this case? The role of the parent is to be a parent, and not a judge. This is a very clearly defined system. You either performed or you didn't perform. So the parent is not in any role where they have to make a judgment call. You either did or you didn't. This way, any frustration that the child may have, even though it may outwardly look like it's being directed at the parent It has nothing to do with the parent.

22:29 Because the parent is not making a judgment call. You either did or you didn't. Your job was to get an eighty-five on this test. You got an eighty-three, you didn't get the reward. Maybe you'll get the reward next time. But for this, the parent must be emotionally detached. The choice is in the hands of the child. The parent's emotions cloud the issue. This is not about a parent being frustrated. The whole point of the system is you don't have to be frustrated. Your kid either performed or he didn't perform. So if the child didn't perform, the consequence is now natural. They're not getting that reward. If the child did perform, then you have the opportunity to Be proud of the child. But you're not judging the child. You're just giving the reward. The child has earned it. So that finishes up the sections on rewards. Any last questions before we go on?

23:29 Ellie Schiff. Jonathan, you'll be next. Ellie Schiff. Do you say that it's that it's When it comes to awards, you tell your kid to get an eighty five or ninety, and they come home with one point less. Would you say that it's wrong to be like I think you know a judgment call, oh you know Emotions. Whether you know, of course, like you want your kid to succeed, so you're gonna let your emotions get a little bit in the way. But you say you know I think that I think you put in enough. For whatever it is, and like is there a limit? You'd say once it's an eighty three, it's pushing it, or eighty four is okay to do. Like, do you think there's any leeway to do that? That's an awesome question. First of all Parents have to be really smart. So you have to know. Remember, whatever you reward will be repeated.

24:25 So you have to know. Was did this meet? Even though I said ninety, the kid came home with an eighty nine. They just made a stupid mistake. So you may choose to reward that kid for the eighty nine, but then remember that's the behavior that you've rewarded, which means that's the behavior that will be repeated. Parents need to make a judgment call. Sometimes a parent could be very foolish in their judgment call, being exceptionally rigid, where it really calls for compassion, because you might turn the child off and you might do greater damage by not giving them the reward. At the same time, it does become a little bit of a game, okay, so. Ninety Eighty nine is good enough. What about an eighty eight? What about an eighty seven? What about an eighty six? Is you got to be there has to be a standard too, and that's the job of a parent is to make the decision intelligently. And by the way, we used to have this in the behavior mod program also. Let's say a kid did eight percent better and not ten percent better. So that became a conversation that the counselors would have with the therapists. We had a couple of therapists on staff, usually three or four every day

25:28 That we were working with, and we would work together as a team. Say we think that the child has reached the mark, even though the numbers don't necessarily reflect that. And by the way, the same could be true on the opposite side. A kid might do ten percent better. But sometimes we would wonder how they did ten percent better. Was that our own ego clouding the way or something else going on? So yes, Ellie, I do think there's room for leeway, but it has to be done very intelligently. It's a slippery slope. Great question, Jonathan Goldberg Shlita. Hi Rezberg. So how do you feel about giving money as a reward? Like an allowance? So an allowance is a really important question. See the challenge is this: you have to make sure that you're putting your kid in a position to succeed. So let's say You make your child's allowance reward based.

26:26 So you tell the kid you're gonna get five dollars at the end of every week that you can use towards next week if you hit the following marks. Now let's say the kid doesn't get that five dollars and now he and his friends are going out to eat but he has no money. So have you put the kid in a position where he feels that he may need to steal? Maybe there's like a tzaduka box in the yeshiva that nobody's gonna notice if he goes and takes a couple of dollars, or maybe he sees his friend's wallet. Sometimes when kids don't have the requisite amount of money, they make bad decisions because there's other pressures. The challenge with making it allowance based is that they may not have what they need, and that might create a behavior that's much worse. Now in terms of money You also have to be careful, especially depending on the kid's age.

27:19 Too much money may give a child too much freedom to do things that they should not be doing. It's not always the best thing to give money because it really depends on the age of the child and it depends on the specific child. But let's say you have kids that are going to go out and they've saved up some money. They've saved up a couple hundred dollars, so now they're going to buy things that would be illegal at their age and in some states. And you may have enabled that by giving them that money. So you really have to think. I found personally, I don't. We don't do financial rewards in our family, because the message that we try to send to our children is: if you need something, you come to us, and we'll give you money. That's the program we have. We don't give them an allowance. In my family, we've chosen not to give them an allowance. But any time the kids need anything, they come to us, and our attitude is okay. You know we all work as part of the family, so we share our money, and you can have this money. In general, our rewards programs are we try to make them a little bit more meaningful. So we try to make them more like family based.

28:23 If we as a family hit this mark, we're all gonna go out to pizza and bowling on a Matzah Shabbos like that. We try to make it a more meaningful thing than just cash, but it could be that a kid is saving up to buy something and he needs to get the three hundred dollars in cash. A parent might choose to do it in that type of situation. I just wouldn't tie it to allowance. That to me seems dangerous. Zevi, you had one last question. Rabbi answered. To say there, anybody else before we move on Simcha Shrone Shlita. Does everyone mind if I ask two questions? Sure. The first is a follow up to Ellie Schiff. If would it make sense to speak with your kid? You're gonna say, okay, I want you to get a ninety on the test, but what would you say should happen if you got an eighty nine? Maybe the kid will say, all right, no hard ninety, or maybe the kid will say, if I tried really hard but I made a silly mistake, then I'll get it. So does it make sense to have that conversation with your kid before

29:22 It could make sense. The only thing is you might be creating a situation where the kid goes great. I got it down from ninety to an eighty eight because we already made up that if it's an eighty eight, you know I'm saying if the point is you were trying to move the kid from an eighty five to a ninety, and now because you've already put in that you know that little rider over there in the beginning that an eighty eight is going to qualify, you may have undermined the The performance success from the very beginning, so I wouldn't necessarily have it right away. I'll tell you simply where I think you're making an excellent point. Now let's say the kid did get an eighty-eight. So you as the parent might emotionally detach yourself, which I again have no problem with, and you might say, okay, you got an eighty-eight, you didn't do it. Or you might choose to engage the child in a conversation, and the child might say something like, 'Actually, I tried really hard, and I'm kind of frustrated with the grade that I got. Especially, let's say it's not something like math where they just made a careless mistake. Let's say it's something like an English literature paper.'

30:27 Teachers could grade things based on the mood they're in and they're moving really fast. The teacher may not be aware of the Of the program that the kid is on, and as a result, they may give an eighty eight when they just as easily could have given a ninety. So it might be a really valid thing to have a conversation with the kid at that point and say, 'We're in a predicament. What should we do? On the one hand, there's din, and on the other hand, there's rachamim. The din is that you're supposed to get a ninety, and eighty eight is really close. And by the way, in that case, it might make a difference too, simcha, if it's a kid who we got an eighty and we moved it up to a ninety.' Right, eighty eight is eighty percent of the way there. Or if we're working from a place where the kid got an eighty five and we're moving up to a ninety, an eighty eight may not be meaningful enough to actually earn that reward.

31:18 That was your first question. What was your second question? My second question is about Rebbie's monetary policy that he just talked about. No problem. Wants to talk about it. That's for sure. What does that mean? If the kid comes and says I really want this thousand dollar dress, not a thousand dollar, like a very expensive dress they don't need, but they want it. It's not insanely expensive, but it's not something they need. How does that work? First of all, I love that you think a thousand dollars on a dress is not insanely expensive. This is why I raise my children in Eretz Yisrael. A thousand shekel is insanely expensive. I agree. You agree? Good. I'm glad you agree. It definitely does not mean that. And actually, I think it's a really important point that you're making. If a kid comes to us and says Hey, my clothing is getting small on me because I'm going through a growth spurt and we need more clothing.

32:16 That's certainly a reasonable request, and we'll take the kid shopping. If a kid comes to us and says, 'Hey, all my friends are going bowling, and I'd like to be able to go bowling with them,' would you guys Give me money to go bowling? That's a meaningful request, and depending on the situation, we could say yes or no. Obviously, our wish would be to say yes. But when it comes to, let's say, extravagant expenses or unnecessary expenses, that's a really good opportunity to talk to the child about the values that you have as a family. So it might be that you create a situation where you say, look, you really wanted that thousand dollar dress. That's important to you. And you have a behavior that you want to modify. It might be valuable to have a reward that goes along with that. With that particular reward that they want. So you have a behavior. She has a reward. So it could be. It's a good shidduch. But I wouldn't necessarily buy them the dress just because our policy is that we share our family's money.

33:21 By the way, I'm also not against allowance. I just believe it works better for our family to do it this way. I don't like the concept of a kid coming at the beginning of every week and saying "Give me my thirty shekel. Give me whatever it is that you give them for allowance." I know some of you heard thirty shekel and you're like, "I got fifty dollars a week from my parents." Okay, look, I didn't. I grew up with five bucks a week. Back in the day, when hot dogs only cost a nickel. Not a good enough joke to say there, waiter. Price likes it. That's all that matters to me. Let's move on to the next. Ezra Jacobs. Would you say there's any benefit if the kid gets an eighty-eight instead of a ninety? Would you say there's any benefit in giving him a slightly smaller reward as opposed to the whole reward he would have gotten ninety?

34:17 You could make up Shara. You could say, look, you got. Again, I think it would depend on a case by case basis. But let's say you were working on getting from an eighty to a ninety, and he got an eighty-eight. And he was supposed to get X, so you can come back to the kid and go, look. Really, we wanted you to get a ninety. We don't want to give you nothing because we saw that you worked really hard and we value that. What would you think about meeting halfway? You could have that conversation, or you could make that decision. I think that's meaningful, but again, you have to be careful because remember, the behavior that you reward is the behavior that's repeated. So you got to know that once you're minimizing the standard, expect that to be the repetition. Cause that might be good enough. The kid goes, "Yeah, I didn't need that bigger reward. Getting eighty percent of that reward was good enough for me."

35:03 But you also, again, guys, I just want to go back to this for one second because you're harping on this point, and I'm actually appreciating the fact that you're harping on this point because I think you're raising an important point, and I think the ultimate point that you're raising is maybe the mark that we asked the kid to hit, maybe it wasn't such a reasonable mark. If the kid is doing fractionally less than that, maybe we just pushed it too hard. That's also possible. And as you're making your decision, you have to ask yourself, okay We were moving from an eighty to a ninety. Maybe that was too fast. Maybe we should have been moving from an eighty to an eighty-six. In which case, getting an eighty-eight was phenomenal. So you really have to ask yourself, was your standard an appropriate standard? Because that might help you make the decision of how to reward or not to reward in those situations.

35:53 Okay. We only have a couple of minutes left, so let's just start off on the next topic because tomorrow is our last year, so at least we'll make some headway. I don't think that's a good idea. I want to be able to start fresh tomorrow. I think that we're going to get too much. Yoko. In that situation, if he gets like the eighty-eight, would it be more detrimental to not give any reward? I'm not sure how old the kid is, but when I'm toilet training my son, I give him one single chocolate chip, and he loves it. I can't if you've got a kid who's ten years old and he's satisfied with one chocolate chip, I've got to wonder what's going on in your life. I'm just using that as like. You're saying the equivalent of one chocolate chip. I'm saying like you're going up a very significantly less reward. Also, does it make a difference if you only meaning.

36:53 You only budge every now and then, meaning not the full reward if he gets eighty eight. And you see the repeats and say no, no reward this time. I think there could be something detrimental about giving a kid a reward that's basically not meaningful to them. In some cases, it might just be better to say I'm really hopeful that you're going to get it next time. But if you give a reward that's basically meaningless, you might undermine the entire reward system to begin with. You want to keep the rewards meaningful. Rabos. I will stop here for today, and I will see you for our last year tomorrow.