The Positive Reinforcement App that Positively Works

Hey folks,

Thanks to Smiles & Frowns Dad Brad, the data dad, we are back and good to go! Everything is fine and no data lost. Thank so much for your patience!

The Smiles & Frowns Dads

To all our Smiles & Frowns parents and friends,

For the first time ever yesterday afternoon, our Amazon web server went down, and our service is temporarily down for all users. While you can still use the app fully in its offline mode, syncing will be delayed and new account creation or new logins won’t be available until the servers are back up and running. 

We’re actively working with AWS now. We don’t think it should take too long to get things back up and running, and we don’t expect any data to be lost.

While the server is down, though, we ask that you DO NOT attempt a CSR (Cloud Sync Reset) option in the Settings tab. That could result in your app losing all of its local date, so some information could get lost. If you have any specific question, you can always reach out to us at heydad@smilesandfrowns.com.

Please bear with us as we get everything rolling and syncing again. We just wanted everyone to know that we on it for you, and hope to have things back in ship shape very short.

Thanks for your time and patience!

Kindly,

Brad and Tom

The Smiles & Frowns dads

Who doesn’t like a roundup of advice, and The Week has a nice selection for you. We especially love #3, which explains the difference between punishment, natural consquences and logical consequences. Read it up!

The week’s best parenting advice: April 12, 2022

Why American teens are so sad, stop telling your kids to “be careful,” and more

We love this article from HuffPo, and the whole idea of ending the night, the week, the month… all of it… on a positive note. It’s a huge part of why our review section of the app is there… so you can replay their good behaviors to create your own rituals built around positive feelings. Thanks for the good advice, HuffPo!

The Power Of ‘Finishing Strong’ With Your Kids At Night

Take it from Glennon Doyle: The last thing you do with your kids at night is so important.

Are you ready? Are you set? Because this one has been a long time coming… 

Now your kids can submit their own Smiles and Frowns to their boards – for your approval, of course – from their own devices with new Kids Requests on our Smiles & Frowns: Kids View app!

Kids Requests is a new premium feature (just $.99 a month or $9.99 a year for your whole family!) that Moms and Pops have long been asking for. And why not? Parents know a game changer when they see one. Giving kids a little more control is a great way to engage them more, and it gets them one step closer to truly owning their own behavior. So let’s do it!

Getting started with Kids Requests is easy. Just install Smiles & Frowns on your adult devices and Smiles & Frowns: Kids View on each of your children’s devices. Then just swipe left on any child’s row on a parent device, tap on Kids View and follow the prompts to link the two. Once you’ve enabled Kids Requests, the Smiles and Frowns they can now submit on their devices will show up for approval on yours. (For detailed directions, click here.) 

With Smiles & Frowns: Kids View, your kids can always follow their progress and see their behavior lists for free. And we think that Kids Requests is a great new feature can really help your family in some big, big ways. 

If you’re a parent, the advantage is obvious: 

Your kids can now help shoulder the load! Once they start lending their motivated little hands to tracking their own behavior, it’ll help improve the Consistency of your plan without making it even harder on parents. 

At a time when the pandemic and homeschooling issues are making adults feel doubly overstressed, this can be a big help. It only takes a few seconds to approve, change, or sometimes even deny the Smile and Frown requests they submit. And it also gives a new way to talk about – and Collaborate on – good behavior. Nice!

If you’re a kid, the advantage is also obvious: 

You’re finally in control! When you do something good, you can mark it right down. No asking. No waiting. No mom or dad forgetting to give you credit. You just do that good thing and submit your Smile (or Frown) for approval, and you know you’re getting credit for your behavior. 

Which means it’s time to really dive into your behavior board, hunt around all the different ways you can earn Smiles and avoid Frowns, and start racking them up and get to earning some rewards! Again, nice. That touches on Clarity, Consequence and Challenge, rounding out our all-important 5C’s.

But there’s also something that’s less obvious. 

My neighbor is a teacher, and she has talked with me several times about the idea of self-reflection. The ability to hold a mirror up to yourself, follow your own progress and learn from what you see is a core skill that helps kids build self esteem and critical thinking. Kind of a holy grail. Enter Kids Requests…

Now that your kids can immediately “reward” themselves by submitting their own Smiles & Frowns, they get a little more control over their own behavior. Which we parents can lean into. Praise them for engaging in the process. Encourage them to explore all of the Smiles on their board to find new ways to be good. We hope  that Smiles & Frowns Kids Requests gives you a powerful new way to help your kids learn to recognize and reflect on their own behavior in a more active way. 

The Dads over here… we’ve always said that ultimately, Smiles & Frowns is simply a tool to help your family turn good behavior into a great conversation. We hope this new feature gives you a great new way to make that happen.

Good luck out there!

Tommy G, one of the Smiles & Frowns Dads

Positive Parenting – 8 Tips to Discipline The Happy Way – Parenting For Brain

Positive parenting a parenting and disciplinary philosophy that emphasizes mutual respect and utilizes positive instructions

As we’ve mentioned, we want Smiles & Frowns to be more that just another rewards chart. We want it to be the best tool out there for making good behavior a great conversation and collaboration between you and your kids. That’s why we talk about the 5Cs of Positive Behavior, and why we also thought you might be interested in some of these positive parenting tips from Parenting for Brain.

Like a lot of parents out there, the Dads here at Smiles & Frowns have been heading towards the new school year with a real dose of distance learning anxiety. When we searched distance learning to help our own kids, we saw a tidal wave of ideas – 22 Tips! 12 Tips! 9 Tips! – but nothing really simple or actionable. Yeah, it’s super stressful. 

So, Dads being Dads, we went into fix-it mode. We read articles, talked to teachers and just looked for a way to give parents a good place to start. And that’s how our SPREE™ Distance Learning board was born. It’s available now with our latest update.

What is SPREE? It’s simply a plan to help kids build good habits for managing Space, Preparation, Routine, Engagement and Excellence – the five common threads we saw for distance learning success. 

Ready for us to break this new behavior chart down for you, Dad Style? Maybe it’ll give you a good place to start!

SPACE:  A dedicated learning space isn’t a luxury… it’s a necessity. Even if it’s just a seat at the end of a table that your student can turn into a positive, personal destination for success. So the Smiles and Frowns here help kids create a dedicated SPACE specifically built for learning.

PREPARATION:  Class time is much shorter and less frequent online. It’s hard to catch up if you don’t show up ready to go. So these Smiles and Frowns are meant to help strengthen their PREPARATION skills, so they log in ready to learn each day.

ROUTINE:  One of the biggest downsides of home learning is that kids start to lose the daily patterns – from waking to dressing to eating – that keep them going. So these Smiles and Frowns help kids stick with a ROUTINE that will keep them on a dependable road to results

ENGAGEMENT:   When you’re not physically there to ask a question or join a discussion, it’s natural for participation to slide. It really takes active work on this one, so the Smile and Frowns here are support active ENGAGEMENT so kids lean into their studies instead of laying back.

EXCELLENCE:  Finally, it’s important that kids still set goals and keep their expectations high. It’ll be easy for lose focus and treat distance learning like some strange vacation. But while we’re here, these Smiles and Frowns help encourage a mindset of EXCELLENCE every day.

And, like all Smiles & Frowns boards, you’re free to start here and customize things however you like. Whatever works, works:)

Sol, ready or not, it’s time to take this year on. To all the parents everywhere, we wish you the best this school year. Even if you don’t use Smiles & Frowns, we hope that building some strength around these key areas might help your family in 2020 – and beyond. 

Please take care of each other and stay safe out there! 

Kindly,

Brad and Tommy G

The Smiles & Frowns Dads

Improve Your Child’s Behavior Problems With Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement, in the form of praise or rewards, can be the most effective way to change kids’ behavior.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on our next release – which will make customizing your boards even easier – we thought we’d start sharing articles that are in sync with Smiles & Frowns and our 5Cs of Positive Behavior: Clarity, Consistency, Consequence and a sense of Challenge. So without further ado, this one from verywellfamily.com is a great place to start. Stay tuned for more, and please sign up for our monthly round-up to get articles emailed to you!

Hello world, and welcome to Smiles & Frowns! What started off as a real Mom and Pop and Three Crazy Kids story has lead to a super easy-to-use new app – loaded with unique features – that we hope can restore a little more peace and quiet to the lives of parents everywhere.

If you are parent, you’ve been here before. On some fridge, on some wall, at some time, you’ve put together some kind of rewards chart to help get your kids on the road to better behavior.

We put ours front and center, right by the front door where it couldn’t be missed. Made a big old frame. Nailed it to the wall. So when ours started losing steam, which we found out they all do at some point, we had no choice but to tinker, toy and try to figure out why.

So we just kept working it, in full view of everyone who came in through our door. That’s how we came up with our Smiles – Frowns = Spending Power formula. How we got to the 5 Cs approach. How we created new features we didn’t see anywhere else. And how it all started working long-term.

Over the years, people seemed to love the little board we called Smiles & Frowns. Other parents definitely wanted to use it. Teachers we knew wanted to try it. And more than a few thought we should turn it into an app, which seems to have found you now.

Is Smiles & Frowns the tool you’ve been looking for? We certainly hope so. And if you do like it, please point other parents you know in our direction. They more people that join in, the better we can make Smiles & Frowns work for you!

Thanks, and good luck out there…

Tommy G

At the heart of Smiles & Frowns is a simple formula that matters a lot: Smiles – Frowns = Reward-buying power. To tell you why it matters, I have to back up a bit.

When it was time for us to start working on behavior with our kids, we instinctively wanted to take a “positive” approach. Most parents do, right? So we started out by simply trying to encourage the good behaviors, givingSmiles that could earn rewards.

But something was definitely missing. What about those things – like burping the alphabet at 110 decibels at the dinner table night after night – that you just can’t ignore? You want to do something to recognize that moment, but you still don’t want to be negative.

Well, that’s when we decided to make it so kids could earn both Smiles and Frowns, and we’d let the difference between the two become their reward-buying power. Suddenly, something clicked. Suddenly, the kids really started wanting those Smiles and worked hard to get them.

Why? Because we had unknowingly created an economy of behavior, which really changed everything.

Now, Smiles and Frowns were working together to create an actual, predictable value across all of their behavior. A real consequence was now being tied to their all of their actions in a way that added up, so they started owning them more.

(We’ll take more about Consequence, which is one of our 5 Cs, in later posts.)

Smiles & Frowns also became a game kids could easily understand. They realized that their behavior could make spending power that can go up or down, and quickly started maximizing their Smiles and minimizing Frowns to get more rewards.

And now, we had a way to mark bad behaviors, but still keep everything in the land of positive reinforcement. Nothing was ever taken from them (a negative reinforcement thing) unless they took it from themselves. The power was all theirs.

And so they set to it. They simply began to do more of the good things and less of the bad things, so they could earn more rewards, which then positively reinforced… doing more of the good things and less of the bad things. How about it?

Smiles – Frowns = Reward-buying power. It’s a simple formula that means a lot.

Install Smiles & Frowns and see what you think.

https://goo.gl/CnkB40