Background. More than several times, research has underlined the important role of early childhood development for school success. Previous study suggested that the first five years of life are important for self-regulation development. Children with low self-regulation in the preschool years tend to have low academic outcomes in school. Self regulation is an ability to act appropriately with social standards and to regulate one’s behavior. Preschoolers with high self-regulation are reported to be more well adjusted in the environment. The self regulation its self was learned by children in home settings with their significant others. Thus parenting discipline is an important aspect of strategies to disappoint inappropriate behavior and to increase self-regulation in early childhood. Nowdays, most of parents involve caregiver for taking care their children. Children spend most of the time with their caregiver more in the meal, study, and play time etc. There are interconnected between socialization and internalization to the child’s experiences within close relationships particularly to discipline settings. Children start to internalize their caregiver rules to regulate their socialization. Children should be competent in controlling their self  such as initiating, maintaining, and making decision with environment’s requests. Indicating, there is the lack of knowledge’s caregiver to teach and increase discipline behavior. This research assumed that caregiver has important role in shaping child’s discipline behavior. The intervention program include two steps that first intervention for caregiver’s skills in consequence caregiver can improve children’s discipline behavior. The behavior modification used to shape desirable behavior. Positive reinforcement is used to increase amount of the desirable behavior while discipline is to support generally structured daily routines and recognize self-regulation. This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of behavior modification in order to improve discipline in early childhood (children aged 4-5 years), particularly using positive reinforcement.

Methods. This study used single-case subject design (N=1) and A-B-A’ design. The  caregiver in this study is a female and late adulthood. The child in this study is a 4 years and 5 months old male. A multiple-baseline across the behavior design will be used to evaluate this intervention. The behavior will be evaluated in meal and play time. Data instrument will use observational sheet, reinforcement inventory, and observational behavior checklist from Miltenberger (2012). The caregiver will be provided with 2-days training for a total of 4 hours. The training material topics include characteristics of early childhood, learning process of early childhood, discipline, and behavior modification principle. After training, caregiver will apply the behavior modification in 18-days. The intervention will include 3-phases; baseline phases, intervention phases, and evaluation phases. During baseline sessions, there is no treatment for the caregiver routines. During intervention sessions, caregiver will apply behavior modification in 12 days following guideline provided. After intervention sessions, researcher will observe and follow up in 3 days.

Results. Analysis of the effectiveness in this intervention will be using statistical and qualitative analysis. Statistical analysis will use Wilcoxon signed rank test to determine the significance of difference between baseline and evaluation sessions. During intervention, the participant’s knowledge, emotion, and behavior will be recorded with qualitative data analysis. This intervention is still on process.

Conclusions. Results of assessment indicated role of caregiver in child’s discipline. Furthermore,  this intervention is still on process to demonstrate the effectiveness of behavior modification principle.

Added-Values. These findings will highlight the importance of caregiver’s behavior in interaction with early childhood. Using behavior modification can be taught to develop discipline in early childhood (as preschoolers). The intervention program may lead some parents to aware of accessible and coherent goals in discipline, in order to collaborate making discipline behavior with the caregiver.

Keywords: discipline; early childhood; caregiver; reinforcement; behavior modification;

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