Introduction
Several approaches are utilized to nurture good child behavior: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. In my childhood, I experienced various practices employed by my parents, and I can recall both positive rewards and positive punishment as the most memorable experiences. While all approaches can be effective in inducing socially appropriate conduct in children, I found positive punishment to be the most effective.
Positive Reinforcement
Positive rewards are the first method for teaching children to distinguish between good and bad. Reinforcement is an event that follows an action or behavior and influences whether it will occur again and how frequently. An activity that is rewarded is more likely to occur. In child behavior, positive reinforcement often involves providing an enjoyable reward for encouraging good actions in a given context (Weis).
For example, the mother may want her child to express gratitude and deliver apologies. She rewards the child with sweets or more playtime when the child properly uses the phrases “please” and “thank you.” The children whose behavior is positively reinforced will be likelier to say “please” and “thank you” without being asked than a child who receives no rewards.
Negative Reinforcement
In contrast, negative reinforcement is often used to emphasize the avoidance of undesirable actions. This approach involves removing an unpleasant stimulus to encourage positive behavior. For example, my mother hid my toys if I did not put them away after playing; it motivated me to clean up to avoid losing my toys. Thus, while both positive and negative reinforcement aim to increase positive behavior, positive rewards do so by adding something pleasant, while negative ones do this by removing something unpleasant.
Positive Punishment
Another approach to eliciting children’s good behavior is positive punishment. A punishment typically refers to the consequences that follow a particular behavior and decrease the likelihood of repetition. Positive punishment involves reducing behavior by providing an adverse stimulus (Weis). A youngster who does something wrong and receives a spanking as a result is an illustration of this. This unpleasant action guarantees that the youngster will not repeat the undesired behavior.
Negative Punishment
The final method is called negative punishment for children’s behavior. Negative punishment involves removing the typically existing reward. For example, one might deny the child dessert after supper. Another scenario is depriving someone who does something unwanted of watching television for a week (Miller). In other words, negative punishment involves the withdrawal of something good. In contrast, positive punishment implies an unfavorable action toward the child to induce acceptable behavior.
Personal Experience
Based on my experience, positive punishment is the most effective of the four types of rewards and punishments. My parents used this approach the most frequently, mainly involving verbal reprimands. Although I did not like it and feared it, it turned out to be effective in teaching me to distinguish right from wrong.
My experiences align with research evidence that shows that positive punishment in the verbal form helps reduce off-task behavior in children. Yet, although both positive and negative punishment are effective in the short term, they can lead to adverse effects such as a lack of persistence and decreased engagement in activities (Van der Oord and Tripp 593). I can confirm this since sometimes I did not engage in certain behaviors merely because I feared punishment.
Conclusion
Positive punishment seems better than negative punishment because of its longer-lasting effect. I can illustrate it with an example from my childhood: I used to be attracted to plug sockets as a toddler. Negative punishment – removing me from the socket – did not work because I continued approaching it later. I realized that electricity is not for play only after my mother harshly reprimanded me on the spot. Thus, positive punishment is the most effective, but it should be delivered right after the misbehavior to create a connection between the misdeed and the punishment in the child’s mind.
Works Cited
Miller, Matis. The Uncontrollable Child: Understand & Manage Your Child’s Disruptive Moods with Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills. New Harbinger Publications, 2021.
Van der Oord, Saskia, and Gail Tripp. (2020). “How to Improve Behavioral Parent and Teacher Training for Children with ADHD: Integrating Empirical Research on Learning and Motivation into Treatment.” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, vol. 23, pp. 577–604.
Weis, Robert. Introduction to Abnormal Child and Adolescent Psychology. SAGE, 2022.