Parents or caregivers can use every activity during the day for them to  learn something. For skills that the child knows it may be just a matter of inservicing or teaching him a skill. For children that do not have the skill it may be he needs some demonstrations or prompting and fading to learn the skill. 

Parents might begin by designing a schedule or writing down what they will do for the day. For example in the morning preparing breakfast, getting dressed and making lunch. The child can be motivated and prompted to help perform these skills. If he does not know how to make a sandwich you can prompt him with verbal instruction or demonstrate how to make a sandwich. All of the skills in the morning can be taught rather than doing them for your child and a reinforcer after completing all these task such as music or television can be given to maintain the skill. Social praise should also be paired with the skill. The advantage to the parent or caregiver is that if you teach the child to do these skills then the parent or caregiver has less to to during the morning and more time for getting themselves ready.

This type of training and reinforcement should be done wherever the child goes during the day with the parent or caregiver.  For example, if you go to the gas station they might help with opening the gas cap or holding the handle to give the gas.  If you go to a bank the child might be asked to get a deposit slip for you, open a door, hold your purse while you are making a deposit. 

If you count every opportunity during the day you have to teach your child it will probalby be a very large money. If you wait to teach them things after work or at night you will have a couple of hours. If you teach them skills throughout the day his progress in learning basic skill will be multiplied significantly! Before you know it your child will be the helpful, independent person you always hoped he would be!

The New Year is a good time to set positive expectations and goals for your child each year.  Some of these goals are for his school behavior, some are for his behavior at home and some might be for the future!
Children usually seem to live up to your highest or lowest expectations. Therefore it is a good idea to set reasonable but high goals.  If you do not expect high goals then they will assume that it is acceptable and that they will still receive the child's usual reinforcers even if he does not perform as high as your child might be capable of performing.  

At school parents should set some standards and the reinforcer that the child will receive. By definition the reinforcer is something your child wants and will increase his good behavior.  For example, if your child likes outings to restaurants. If he does well at school with his grades during a particular week and there are no reports of behavior problems he might earn an outing to a restaurant your child loves. 

At home it is good to have more frequent reinforcers set up since you are usually there to give them out. For example an activity schedule for the child with specified behavior to perform in order to get the reinforcer is helpful.  Parents should try to expect no behavior problems so that the expectation is very high for that evening in order to get a story read in the evening for example.  Also, expecting higher level skills like sharing, preparing food for others, helping other siblings is a good idea. Provide a strong reinforcer for these high expectations such as computer games or other games for example if your child likes these items. Also, pair the reinforcer with some praise which is specific to his character. Soon your child will believe he is a generous, affectionate, helpful hardworking person if you expect that from your child!:)