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The common philosophy in child-rearing has long been to punish a child when they misbehave. Unfortunately, the parents often forget to praise the child when they act as desired. The result of this is a child who has personality problems and one who has difficulty forming meaningful relationships. Overt punishment can have many damaging side effects.
Punishment is stronger and longer lasting than reinforcement. If you have a specific task which you wish a child to do, and when they do the task bad, they are punished, then when they do it well, they are mildly reinforced, and they will complete the task mediocre. Technically, the correct approach to this situation is still punishment, however it is a variation there of. If you simply express your dissatisfaction with the child when the achieve poorly, this will often remedy the situation.
Let me attempt to make this a little bit more clear. Imagine that your child has problems with mathematics. When they get an F on their math test, you take away their allowance for a week. Next time the child goes to take a test they will be nervous about failing the entire time they are test taking. The end result will typically be a C or a D on the test. However, through behavioral modification, an A or B can be achieved.
Here are the two prevalent strategies for dealing with the above situation: The child’s allowance can be on a sliding scale. Their allowance amount depends on the grade they get on the test. The higher the grade, the more money they will get. The other strategy is simply to tell the child that when they get bad grades, below passing, you don’t feel very proud of them in that respect. Then you offer them something for an A grade, and something of lesser value for a B grade.
B.F. Skinner advocated against using punishment. Reinforcement is a much better psychological tool, and simpler to utilize. When you weigh the side effects which are possible with punishment, versus the possible success of reinforcement, the choice is clear. In certain cases, punishment is necessary, but only after reinforcement oriented behavior modification has repetitively failed.
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