From Helpless to Hero: Promoting Values-Based Behavior and Positive Family Interaction in the Midst of COVID-19

Abstract

Parents managing their home environments during government-ordered stay-at-home periods are likely to need new skills for occupying their children’s time with activities that promote health and emotional well-being. Moreover, parents and children know they need help managing these circumstances. Perhaps for the first time, behavior analysts hold the reinforcers for increasing parental involvement in effective child-rearing practices. In fact, behavior analysts can help parents enlist their children in managing the household by framing their behavior in terms of hidden superpowers. In the current article, we argue that behavior analysts have a range of tools to offer that are grounded in evidence-based principles, strategies, and kernels—or essential units of behavioral influence. When combined into scheduled daily practices and invoked by children taught to see their use of the tools as nothing short of heroic, these practices function as “vaccinations” that inoculate families against toxic and unsafe behaviors.