Why We Need to Treat Our Brains Like Toddlers If We Want to Make New Habits

 Anyone with kids or who spends time around kids knows how important it is to stick to your guns when you make rules. You give in once and it’s so much harder to get them to listen to you later, right? Let me give you a recent example from my life. I can’t even remember when this started, but some time ago I let Allison sit on my lap during dinner because she wouldn’t stay on her own chair and eat. Guess what’s been happening most nights since then? Allison starts sitting on her own chair, but quickly gets bored and climbs on my lap and I eat the rest of my meal around her head. But she is eating, so I’ll take it as a half win. We have tried many things to get her to sit back on her chair like me sitting on the other side of the table, talking to her about how mommy needs to eat on her own, or how she’s a big girl and she can sit on her own chair. And it will work for a few minutes, then she stops eating and gets bored, and starts trying to climb on me. And because I want her to eat, after a while I give in and let her sit on my lap.

That’s the key point here. I give in. Yes I’m totally the weak link here, but let me explain a bit about where I went wrong and why it’s now super hard for me to change our new dinner pattern.

Our brains are really efficient at learning, in some situations. Our brains learn best with repetition. When we get the same information over and over again. We are the worst at learning when the results are inconsistent. In psychology we call this variable reinforcement. I do an action and I get what I want some of the time, but not all of the time. We know that this is the hardest kind of learning to change because of the inconsistent reinforcement.

Let’s go back to Allison’s dinner chair choice as an example. If the first time Allison wanted to sit on my lap I said no, then put her back on her chair, she probably would have tried again. So the second time I again say no and put her back on her chair, and the third time I do the same thing and so on. It’s not going to take her long to figure out that trying to get onto my chair isn’t going to work so her brain will decide it’s not worth the effort and she would have just stayed on her chair. But that’s not what I did. Facepalm again here.

What really happened was the first time Allison climbed on my chair I let her. So her cute little brain got reinforced and said hey that worked, let’s do it again tomorrow. So she did. I probably tried to resist briefly on day 2, but then she would have put up more of a fuss and I eventually gave in. Same thing the next day, and so on. All I taught her was that if she doesn’t get what she wants at first she should just keep complaining until Mommy eventually gives in. Because I was inconsistent in my response it’s even harder to get her back on her chair than it would have been if I had been consistent and said no every time the first few times she tried.

You can probably all think of an example like this from your own kids. Sometimes it’s easier in the moment just to say yes to the extra treat or staying up late, or whatever it is, even though every parenting book we’ve ever read tells us how important consistency is. Well this doesn’t only happen with kids, our brains work this way as adults too, which also makes it hard to change our habits as adults.

Here’s a common example. How many times have you set a goal of going to the gym tomorrow? Then the next day comes and you say “I’m too busy, I’ll go tomorrow”, and then maybe you do go the next day. But then the next time you plan to go something else comes up that takes priority or you don’t feel motivated to go. Over time our motivation flounders. This totally makes sense if we understand how the brain learns. Our brains love consistency, just like they did when we were toddlers. Each time I make an excuse not to follow through with my goal of going to the gym I’m teaching my brain that my word doesn’t mean anything (something like how Allison doesn’t believe me when I say she can’t sit on my lap at dinner). How can we ever expect our brains to stay on track with our goals if we don’t trust our own word!

Here’s my tip for goal setting. Start small and build a positive learning/reinforcement pattern for your brain. Rather than setting a goal like go to the gym every day, maybe my goal is to go every Wednesday. The more Wednesdays in a row I go, the stronger my brain learns this habit and the more likely I am to keep going. Think of your brain like a toddler when it comes to new habits. Consistency. Consistency. Consistency!

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