Providing and constraining choices: a food court success story

When my kid began attending a program that included a weekly visit to a mall food court, I was a little bit concerned. Although my kid has a somewhat balanced diet, he does love his junk food. The prospect of him capitalizing on the chance to consume his ultimate favourite (KFC) weekly was enough to make me think we'd need to find another program for that particular day, which would not be a trivial exercise. Somehow I hit on the idea of revisiting the old "token economy" systems we used in his youth. I made a list of all the food court outlets that he could conceivably find something he would be willing to eat (this took a little research). I then set out those choices on a grid, with a column per week, and set a general rule of requiring a four week gap between visits to one particular establishment. It looked like this:

I found that as long as he knew it was possible to have his most desired thing, and that there was a specific date he could access that thing, he was willing to make other choices. Each week he'd chose from the list and I'd confirm that he wasn't "double dipping", as it were. Most astoundingly, he began to add possible eating locations to the chart, perhaps because of the choices he observed others making. Has he slipped up? Of course, but only in the early days. I can't describe how happy it makes me to have him report on eating something I honestly never knew he would. It appears that the almost obsessive desire for something can, in him at least, be satisfied by the assurance that it will be possible to have that thing, on a specific date. He may also be making broader choices due to peer pressure (particularly the example set by the group leader, who he very much likes and admires). On a side note, and presumably entirely due to peer pressure, he takes a picture with his phone of all restaurant meals these days. I find it simultaneously hilarious and charming when we eat out together to see him carefully position his food so he can photograph is just so, as if it was a unique dining experience to be recorded for posterity rather than, you know, a chain restaurant's 100% predictable output..