24 ms·

No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

• davedx 10y ago
  Positive reinforcement is hardly "radical".
  • DanBC 10y ago
    It is in the context of the US where violence against the child is common place; widely accepted; even if the parent has used a weapon to do so; even if it's not a parent but a school[1]; and where there's no hope that hitting children will ever become illegal. [1] a weirdly large number of schoolchildren are still hit in the US.
    • dom0 10y ago
      Hitting children is legal in the US?
      • codingdave 10y ago
        No. Child abuse is taken seriously in the US, and hitting children in schools with get people fired, if not prosecuted. I'm sure it does still happen, but that does not mean it is widely accepted.
        • icebraining 10y ago
          "According to the Department of Education, over 166,000 students in public schools were physically punished during the 2011–2012 school year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...
          • codingdave 10y ago
            While that is a large number, it is less than a half of a percent of the entire student body of the USA. As I said, it happens. But isn't the norm. Also, If you are going to cherry pick quotes, try the last 3 paragraphs of the Overview section, which talk about how it is not widely accepted, and the efforts to outlaw it. Or, just this one: "Most urban public school systems, even in states where it is permitted, have abolished corporal punishment. "
            • icebraining 10y ago
              I'm not cherry-picking, I'm highlighting, but leaving the link so that people can judge for themselves. I mostly made the reply because your post implied that it was something that a few rogue teachers did (as it inevitably happens in any country), especially to people not used to a decentralized schooling system.
            • mcv 10y ago
              It's an enormous number. Less than a half percent is still nearly one in 200. That means it either happens in most schools, or it happens a lot in some schools. Just once would be an outrage in most western countries. The fact that there's no outrage about this in the US, shows that it's accepted. Maybe not everywhere, but in enough places to reach this big number. The fact that it's permitted at all shows that it's accepted. And that's just the school. If it's this accepted to do it at school, how common is it really at home? But I suppose it fits the general American love for harsh punishment. I think it's also the only western country that still has the death sentence, and it has more people in prison than any other country in the world.
        • sidlls 10y ago
          Regarding schools that's on a state by state and district by district basis. It is very legal for a principal or other officers of a school to use corporal punishment if the state and local laws permit it.
        • jessaustin 10y ago
          This definitely depends on where you live. I don't know if it's still called "swats" like it was when I got hit (with a long wooden paddle!) in school, but any poll taken around here would find a majority in favor of corporal punishment in educational settings.
        • dom0 10y ago
          Since you are only talking about schools (also in the replies) I take it that it is legal at home, yes?
          • codingdave 10y ago
            Abuse is not legal. Physical discipline is legal. Drawing the line between the two is up to the court system.
            • johanneskanybal 10y ago
              And pretending there's a difference is ignorance.
              • cpburns2009 10y ago
                Pretending there isn't a difference is ignorance.
            • mcv 10y ago
              According to other commenters, even belts and paddles are apparently legal. That is well beyond "normal" spanking and deeply into abuse. But in many countries, even "normal" spanking is considered abuse, exactly because it's so easy for parents to cross that line in anger.
      • sidlls 10y ago
        In some sense, yes. The line between "punitive corporal punishment" and "assault" is blurred in deference to parents' judgment. So it's legal for a parent to spank their child with their hand or even a weapon such as a belt. It stops being legal once "lasting" physical injury (e.g. welts, bruises, broken skin) occurs. We have a very barbaric "society" here in many respects.
      • ecopoesis 10y ago
        It depends on the state. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html
      • DanBC 10y ago
        Yes. There isn't a single US state where corporal punishment by parents is illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporal_punishment_in_the_home#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporal_punishment_in_the_hom... > Corporal punishment of children by parents or other legal guardians is legal in the United States and social acceptance is generally high, through allowances made for "moderate physical discipline" (using this or similar language) in most states' laws regarding assault, criminal battery, domestic violence and/or child abuse. Whether an instance of corporal punishment exceeds these bounds is usually decided on a case-by-case basis in family court proceedings.
        • codingdave 10y ago
          Delaware. http://statelaws.findlaw.com/delaware-law/delaware-corporal-punishment-in-public-schools-laws.html http://statelaws.findlaw.com/delaware-law/delaware-corporal-...
          • DanBC 10y ago
            Thank you! It's too late to edit my comment.
  • manmal 10y ago
    I agree that it shouldn't, but it is. I need only talk to my mother, she has some very strange ideas of how to raise kids, explaining a lot of my knee-jerk reactions when communicating with my own kids.
    • madgar 10y ago
      My mother told me recently that my six-year-old nephew's personality was already set in stone, and his occasional bursts of energy were proof he needed "tough love" and "a wake-up call," including changing schools. She also seems to have forgotten that my father hit us with his belt. Very strange indeed.
  • eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    It is in any a violent and punitive society.
• carsongross 10y ago
  It's thought to be very adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint. If you have a partner, significant other, or a child, if they do 10 nice things, that 11th one that you didn't like, you're going to really be all over. One wonders how, if it doesn't work, it was so adaptive.
  • bglazer 10y ago
    One perspective on this comes from game theory and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In some cases the optimal strategy is "tit-for-tat". If your opponent defects and sells you out, then the best strategy for the next round is to retaliate and defect in response. [0] Obviously this is simplified, but it shows how a mechanism for identifying opposition could be advantageous. In the social environment of early humans, maybe this made sense evolutionarily, but is now inconvenient in the different situations in which most people live now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner.27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterate...
  • tonyarkles 10y ago
    From a survival point of view, a false positive (identifying something as threatening) is way less threatening than a false negative (misidentifying something threatening as non-threatening). See a shadow move in the trees? Acting as if there might be a tiger is better for your survival than assuming it's just the wind.
  • toor2 10y ago
    Organisms adapt to reproduce, not to foster positive social relationships
• biofox 10y ago
  "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. Having real choice is not the issue, humans don't feel too strongly about that, but having the feeling that you have a choice makes a difference. This was the main take away for me. It seems like it might be useful for managing employees / colleagues too.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    The other important thing is to recognise that children can't plan. If you're in a hot room and ask a child to put some warm clothing on they're not going to be able to plan for the cold weather outside, and they'll reject the clothing because they're warm. At that point you can turn it into a huge thing, or you can just take the coat with you until you get outside and they get cold. At which point you let them put it on. And if they still don't want it, well, most children aren't going to let themselves get hypothermic.
  • sopooneo 10y ago
    Or populations.
    • SerLava 10y ago
      Electorates. I'm being rather edgy.
  • jessriedel 10y ago
    I don't understand how people think this is honest. You're clearly using your cognitive advantage (or in the case of a boss, usually an organizational info advantage) to trick the other person. I remember as I grew up noticing when adults were doing this, and I resented them for it. Why would I want my kids to feel that way about me?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • 10y ago
• SerLava 10y ago
  > Let’s say you have an adolescent daughter and she says to you, “Mom, you are such a bitch. What have you ever done for me? You only think of yourself.” > The teen may be at the dinner table and just being quiet and not saying negative things. Well, when you're starting out, one of the positive-opposites can sometimes be reinforcing the non-occurrence of the behavior. And you just say, “Marion, it's nice having dinner with you, it's nice that you're here.” What that does is reinforce the likelihood that Marion will be at the dinner table and not say negative things. So, I love this here. Taming the 4 year old requires a psychological trick on the 4 year old. Taming the 14 year old apparently requires a psychological trick on the 40 year old. For the teens, the psychologist's advice is literally "Well, maybe don't be such a bitch in the first place, Mom."
  • matt4077 10y ago
    It's literally not. There's a huge difference between "being a bitch" and "not actively reinforcing the bo.nd with your child."
    • SerLava 10y ago
      The teenager is really just a petulant, kind of half-assed adult. The psychologist frames it the same way as the 4 year old, but knows it's really an entirely different ball game. The teenager actually has a functioning long-term memory, for instance. Obviously the theoretical teenager and my comment are exaggerating it, but there's truth in there.
      • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        The 4 year old also has a functioning long-term memory. Our oldest (4 1/2 now) often recounts minuscule, random details of events 6-12 months ago that neither me nor my wife had mentioned since. It's true that most adults have few memories from childhood, but that's something else entirely.
        • Elvie 10y ago
• Dagwoodie 10y ago
  This article is dangerous. On the surface it may sound good, but there is behavior so vile and harmful to the child, family or neighbors that never showing negative reinforcement is extremely dangerous with some children. It does have some merits though, showing plenty of positive reinforcement will likely reduce the amount of negative reinforcement needed.
  • adrr 10y ago
    I wonder how it equips children for the real world where there is both positive and negative reinforcement. If they only deal with positive reinforcement, will they have the emotional conditioning to deal with negative reinforcement. For example, dealing with a negative review or getting skipped for a promotion. Something we probably all experienced, getting yelled at by a manager. Anecdotally, being raised by an asian mom. I was subjected to negative reinforcement of her disappointment if i didn't do well. I attribute that to both my and my sister success because we both didn't want to deal with the shame of failure.
    • brianwawok 10y ago
      Perhaps you are conflating failure with discipline. We need to allow kids to fail, because you will fail in real life. Sports with no scores is dumb. Fairly tangential to if we yell at our kids or not.
      • BuuQu9hu 10y ago
        Sports with no scores is fun
        • quicklyfrozen 10y ago
          From what I've seen, if the adults don't keep score, the kids will do it themselves.
  • manmal 10y ago
    Please quote sources to back this up. You are proposing the exact opposite of what the article says, because of what?
• gkafkg8y8 10y ago
  What I've learned about parenting: * Your kids may grow up to act like you, so act in a way that you want your children to emulate. * Talk to them in a way and have expecations of them that are developmentally appropriate. Use your wisdom and conscience to determine how to do this. * Expect your children to have certain responsibilties and behave in a certain way, to start working for the familiy or for others when they become old enough (possibly to make their own money), volunteer to help others, and respect their parents, family, others, and themselves. Beyond that, it just depends on the situation. I've seen some bad parenting, though. It usually involves anger, psychosis, manipulation, spoiling, irrationally defending their child, drug use, etc. If you or your child is the common thread in problems, it's probable that you or your child are at fault. If you can't handle things, get outside help. And if your kid is exhibiting bad or dangerous behavior to themselves or others, get help.
• junto 10y ago
  > Tone of voice dictates whether you're going to get compliance or not. "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. Having real choice is not the issue, humans don't feel too strongly about that, but having the feeling that you have a choice makes a difference. My son has dry skin and has to have a special cream on his face before he goes to bed - normally when he's tired and terribly uncooperative. In order to get him to allow us to put the cream on his face, we often just give him the choice of which side of the face we should start with. I don't give him the choice to have the cream or not. It works brilliantly. A friend told us that tip. Awesome.
  • tgb 10y ago
    It's interesting to me that my parents did essentially the opposite for raising my sister and I: they created a spinner that would randomly choose whether mom or dad would help us get ready for bed that night. We completely accepted the decision of the spinner because that was The Way of the World.
    • GrinningFool 10y ago
      I find I have lot a easier time getting my son to accept hard dictates when I don't provide a reason - it's just the way it is. "Because I said so" is surprisingly effective[1], I think because he's learned that when I say it there is no more discussing. Reasons provide a point of discussion - and my boy will discuss endlessly anything he's given the opportunity to. Particularly if discussing the reasons means not having to do the thing he doesn't want to do. The problem I have is that I remember always wanting to know why (hell, I still do). So I have a default explain-first mentality that I've become increasingly aware I need to break. It's a hard balance to find. You want the child to know the whys of what he's doing - but you don't want each reason to turn into an endless discussion. [1] he's not happy about it, but it is remarkable effective :D
  • B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    Does he favor the Republican or Democrat side of his face? (Locke was onto something ...)
• manmal 10y ago
  My fiance recently graduated in psychology, and we have two kids. This article basically mirrors our current sentiment of how we want to raise our kids. I have one thing to add: Don't beat yourself up if you fail to do it right. After things escalated, talk to the kid honestly, tell her what you felt, and ask her what she felt. And try to do it better the next time over.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    What if the kid has no interest in talking to you?
    • manmal 10y ago
      Then let her. Would you want to be forced to talk to someone? My benchmark is "What would I feel if my father did this".
      • simplexion 10y ago
        Maybe you should think, "What would I feel if my father did this while I was screaming at him, throwing objects at him, and hitting him?"
        • manmal 10y ago
          Little kids don't grasp a situation that good. If you don't expect them to have an adult brain, it's a lot easier to deal with them. Your emotions are generated by what you think is true - if you think that the little brat is hitting you just for the lulz, then you will get very angry.
    • gohrt 10y ago
      wait, and try again later. kids don't hold grudges forever.
• sciurus 10y ago
  For more information, here is the website for the center run by tge psychologist being interviewed: http://yaleparentingcenter.yale.edu/ http://yaleparentingcenter.yale.edu/
• ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  How you modify your children's behavior is beside the point, IMO. What's really important is whether the modification is in the child's best interest, or merely convenient or beneficial to the parent. Some folks get it and won't fuck up their kids too badly, even with bad technique. Others don't and will do lasting harm, even without using abusive techniques to get compliance.
  • jernfrost 10y ago
    Good point. My dad with his behavior might have gotten me and my brother to behave. But the problem is that it permanently destroyed his relationship with us and caused issues for us later in life. I do keep in touch with my dad and care about him but I can never really be close to him because of they way he has always acted. I think people have to realize that kids also have to be kids. One can't expect them to be as quiet and well behaved as grown ups. I am very much against the popularity of French child raising as it seems to frequently create subdued children, who can sit quiet at the restaurant but who has lost the spark. I remember some fellow Norwegians married into a french family comment on how when they were at a park the Norwegian kids ran around and had fun and the French kids looked at dumbfound with: You can do that?! Can we do that as well? I assume this is not the average behavior. Or I hope, but I think it gives an idea of how you don't want your kids to end up.
• theli0nheart 10y ago
  > Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away. We adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago and this was the exact advice we were given for how to train her. Puppies and little kids are remarkably similar, and the key to training a dog is not to "punish" them when they do something wrong (they'll just get scared of you), but rather to reinforce the good behaviors, reward them when they listen, and essentially just ignore them when they don't. In practice, after a year, this technique has worked great. Our puppy listens to us, respects us, and despite being absolutely crazy, will drop everything if she hears us call her. We didn't even need to train her to avoid eating the baby's toys since I think she understood that she received more praise when playing with "her" toys. Our baby is only six months old so we'll have to report back in a decade as to whether this approach works well with kids too. :)
  • lfowles 10y ago
    The trouble with a puppy is that it's hard to know whether or not "chasing them to get $VALUABLE_ITEM out of their mouth" is a reward or not :)
    • kawsper 10y ago
      I am pretty sure a behaviourist in most cases would say that it is a punishment, and they would encourage you to try and switch $VALUABLE_ITEM for a "higher value object", which might be their favourite toy, a toy that squeaks or maybe even food if they are very foodie.
  • SiVal 10y ago
    Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. This claim (from the article) is nonsense. I've changed the behavior of my kids countless times with punishment. I realize that the attitude I am supposed to take is that when someone with Ivy League credentials espouses a currently fashionable theory that my own observations contradict, I am supposed to believe the theory and not my own lying eyes or I'm "anti-intellectual". Credentials over evidence. I'll take the risk. But I'm still interested in these theories, because I'm always looking for better ideas to try. A theory that is false overall can have useful parts. Maybe "punishment won't change behavior; reward will" is wrong, but some variation such as "lots of reward with a bit of punishment work much better than lots of punishment with a bit of reward" IS true, or is true for at least one of my kids. (But then, this weaker claim is something I already believe and it abandons the "never punish" enlightened part that was what really made it attractive to The Atlantic.) Also, theories like these, even if not true, remind me not to overgeneralize from my own observations. Their theory: Punishment doesn't change behavior. My observation: Yes, it does. So my theory: Punishment changes behavior. The truth: No, it doesn't. (As in, not necessarily) Me: Oops. So, I'll keep reading and considering, but no, the basic claim of "don't punish, because it doesn't work" is wrong even if rewards also change behavior.
• xbryanx 10y ago
  If you're implementing the 'positive reinforcement over negative' approach into your life, it's important to trust the large body of research that demonstrates its effectiveness. Be skeptical of your own internal perception of its effects. I find that when I'm working to make positive reinforcement work, the outlier failures stand out so much larger in my mind. I struggle to understand that it's working in the long run despite my infrequent emotional reactions of anger, frustration, failure, etc. There's some fascinating reading on the cognitive biases that are at play here in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
• KaiserPro 10y ago
  This is a yes, but. You must re-enforce the behaviour you want, however you can't tolerate bad behaviour. You are not there to be friends with your kid. If the child has hit you, sit it in time out. Why is this good? A) the child learns that it wastes time, and b) it puts space between you and your child. reduces the chance of antagonising each over. On the flipside you must take an interest in your child.
  • ktRolster 10y ago
    It sounds like you are giving advice on a technique without actually having experience with that technique. Maybe you should try the 'no time-out' method for a while.
• JonnieCache 10y ago
  While this is framed here as a "radical" technique, it's just BF Skinner's Operant Conditioning, which has been one of the foundations of behavioral psychology for nigh on 100 years. If you're wondering if it really works, yes, it does. One of the key elements of it, especially when using it on people, is accepting that the subject is likely to execute the behavior badly for the first few iterations, but you have to positively reinforce it just the same as if they'd done it perfectly if you want them to get better. If you can't manage this, and you get angry at them, you're jeopardising the whole thing. There's a nice clip from one of Jordan Peterson's lectures here, talking about these techniques in the context of intimate relationships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VM1UA0pCMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VM1UA0pCMQ
  • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    > One of the key elements of it, especially when using it on people, is accepting that the subject is likely to execute the behavior badly for the first few iterations, but you have to positively reinforce it just the same as if they'd done it perfectly if you want them to get better. (Good) parents all do this all the time. I think it goes as far as being instinct. E.g. the first time your child uses a spoon by himself, there's going to be porridge all over him, table, chair and floor, with a comparably minute amount going into his mouth. But you still smile, applaud and praise him.
  • kem 10y ago
    So... this is one of my pet peeves about developmental psychology. This "punishment doesn't work" mantra is rampant in the field, and it's totally unsupported by the scientific evidence. What is true is that punishment on its own is relatively ineffective, and that you need to reward desired behavior to shift it from something undesirable to something desirable. But if you read the learning literature, it's pretty clear that the most effective way to change behavior is to punish undesired behavior and reward desired behavior. The article is promulgating this ideological distortion of operant conditioning that's common in developmental psychology. Maybe there are better or worse ways of implementing punishment, and the best thing is to combine it with rewards; in fact, sometimes rewards on its own will work. But the idea that punishment is ineffective is incorrect.
• sunjain 10y ago
  This was explained very well decades back in "Punished By Rewards" - one of the most useful book I've read.
  • gohrt 10y ago
    Alfie Kohn's book is about bribes being a bad strategy, not quite about punishment being a bad strategy. The two are related, though. The article here is explaining how meaningful, relationship-building positive-reinforcement is an effective strategy. Alfie Kohn's work is easy to misinterpret -- the title of his book mentions "gold stars" as a bad idea, but misses the meaning of a gold star. A gold star isn't a bribe in the sense of an "incentive program", it's a tangible expression of appreciation* -- which is what the article here argeus in favor of. *as long as the star is its own reward, not some sort of currency used to buy rewards.
• dang 10y ago
  (Edit: I'm detaching this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101402 and marking it off-topic. That example wasn't a clear enough one to make the point about, because the commenter wasn't being snarky or doing anything particularly wrong. Maybe next time it comes up more clearly I'll try again.) I know it's nitpicky, but please don't use quotation marks when you're not quoting, and especially not when putting words in someone's mouth for rhetorical effect. (That generally isn't a great thing to do either, but was harmless in this case because you did it to praise, not denounce.) We ask this, partly because the internet is stateless and text fragments are prone to misinterpretation, but also because it's one of those things that subtly degrade substantive discussion.
  • danellis 10y ago
    Who is this "we" you're asking on behalf of?
    • imron 10y ago
      You realise dang helps run HN right?
      • benchaney 10y ago
        Obviously he didn't, that is why he asked.
        • imron 10y ago
          Fair point.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • danellis 10y ago
        No, I had no idea. How would I have known that if he didn't say?
    • 10y ago
• msimpson 10y ago
  It's kind of ironic that this is the most apt way to train pets, as well.
• marcell 10y ago
  Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. I suspect much of this advice depends on your child's temperament. Tips that work for one family will not work for another, and it will even vary between kids in the same family. For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side.
  • andrewfromx 10y ago
    haha exactly. I love when really smart people write articles about dealing with children and then you discover they are non-parents themselves. Or, they are work-a-aholics and never interact with their own kids 24/7 like full time parents do.
    • WWLink 10y ago
      I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.
      • andrewfromx 10y ago
        sure, musk has 5 kids! how much time does he get with them vs. work I wonder.
        • coldtea 10y ago
          When you have that kind of money you have 10 babysitters, nannies, assistants, cooks, cleaners, drivers etc. And you can get a day off almost whenever you want too.
          • maxxxxx 10y ago
• Mz 10y ago
  Choice increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice. Oh, ha ha ha. Maybe for some kids, but not for most high IQ kids. They tend to not fall for that, recognize they are being gamed and "what's good for the goose (parent) is good for the gander (offspring)." So let the games begin! Because they will take that and run with it. That sort of manipulative crap isn't even good parenting. It's a nice trick sometimes, but it is often badly misused by parents who have no real intentions of doing right by their kids and are just trying to figure out what's most convenient for the parent.
• nitwit005 10y ago
  This sort of thing needs a part 2: "What to do when you child sees through your tricks". I'm not joking about that one. It will happen. Even pets figure out some training techniques, causing them to stop being effective.
  • gohrt 10y ago
    Ideally, at that point the child is smart enough that you can reason with them, and at that point your "tricks" (aka civilized behavior) has made enough of a molding effect on their personality and relationship with you.
• simplexion 10y ago
  Why do so many of these child psychologists not have children of their own? Edit: This is hyperbole. I am talking about this particular child psychologist not having children. I understand it doesn't mean he might not have a great understanding of how a child's mind works but it means he has never had the stress of raising a child and knowing how hard it is to keep your cool with them. Especially when they are as energetic as my own children.
  • yarou 10y ago
    Why are so many economists broke?
  • bbcbasic 10y ago
    > Why do so many of these child psychologists not have children of their own? They know what they'd be letting themselves in for
  • kabouseng 10y ago
    This is an incredibly powerful comment, I was just looking to see myself if this psychologist have children of his own and came to the same conclusion that he doesn't. The absolute arrogance to not have children of your own but preach to others how they should raise theirs... -edit -> and be in your late seventies, having long forgotten what it is to raise kids or see your peers raise their own kids.
• hyperpallium 10y ago
  How can this be applied to internet forums? In the early/ier days of HN, one response to an unsubstantiated comment was "Can you elaborate?", which shows interest, respect, and gives guidance - instead of a blind downvote (numerically negative feedback).
• JamesHurburgh 10y ago
  I couldn't read more than a paragraph of this article it's so ridiculous. The idea that positive reinforcement is a radical idea? Ridiculous. The idea that you can ignore destructive behaviour until it goes away? Ridiculous. It's about addressing the situation. As a parent the best thing is when I get to positively reinforce my child's behaviour, because it means I've seen them do something wonderful. (Helping a sibling, taking initiative, etc.) But if I didn't stop them when they are throwing toys at their little brother or sister then we've got bigger problems.
  • hajile 10y ago
    That's the core issue. Lots of bad habits don't lend themselves well to only positive reinforcement because the habit itself provides a positive reinforcement to the individual. They'll continue to do whatever because it's fun even if it's self-destructive in the end.
  • JamesSwift 10y ago
    You captured my thoughts on this as well. Positive reinforcement is great and all, but there needs to be an options for a "stick" rather than always a "carrot". Your example is good, but also when they are acting out in public especially if it affects others around them.
• bsder 10y ago
  "No negative reinforcement" is what gives us kids that run screaming around in restaurants and stores. Sorry, I disagree with an absolute ban. As a parent, I think that there is something far more important than positive or negative reinforcement. In my opinion, the fact that the child should believe at a very deep level that you are far more stubborn than they are is the single most important thing. Without that, the child knows they can avoid the consequences altogether.
  • desireco42 10y ago
    Yeah, they need to be sure you are crazier then them and you will followup on most things you promise.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    >"No negative reinforcement" is what gives us kids that run screaming around in restaurants and stores. Sorry, I disagree with an absolute ban. The whole point of the article is that those children lack positive reinforcement, and that if the parents were paying attention to the children when the children were good the children wouldn't end up screaming in a restaurant.
• manarth 10y ago
  So much of this sounds like "control". > "it's BF Skinner's Operant Conditioning" > "Choice increases the likelihood of compliance" > "There are a whole bunch of things that happen…and you can get the child to comply" Most parents would want the best for their child, but there's a massive gulf between wanting the best for someone, and using psychological tricks to force them into complying with expectations.
  • striking 10y ago
    Where do you draw the line between "psychological tricks" and just "wanting the best for someone"? And is it possible to unintentionally play a psychological trick on someone? And frankly, what would you do instead? Let your kid run wild? Brand helpful parenting knowledge as "psychological tricks" and decide to do whatever feels intuitive instead?
  • AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Make no mistake, you want control over everyone around you. Even if it's simply to control them from doing something undesirable to you. Headphones control how someone can interact with you. How you dress/act forces control on how people respond to you. We build our systems around this.
  • Retra 10y ago
    "Control" is how you ensure good decisions are being made. You don't get the best for your child without controlling what they get.
• employee8000 10y ago
  My youngest is not motivated by rewards or punishment. He just doesn't care. If I reward him with something good, he will accept it, but the loss of the reward will not motivate him to do things. Similarly he won't like being punished but the punishment won't stop him from doing things that he wants to. His teachers told us the same thing, which creates problems because when he decides he wants to misbehave, there's nothing that will motivate him to behave until he chooses to behave. I don't spank him, but I'll give him timeouts but I've come to terms with the fact that he is motivated by different things than other kids. The techniques in the article won't work for my child at all. Hopefully he will mature and we can reason with him in other ways.
• anotherhacker 10y ago
  Anyone who writes this kind of stuff needs to disclose that: 1) They are a parent. 2) They have used their suggested technique on their own children.
• tzs 10y ago
  > Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away. The first sentence as written is incomplete. Of course punishment changes behavior. This is well established through a long line of experiments going back to the 1940s or earlier. To complete the sentence, there should be a "permanently" added to it somewhere, since the association between the punishment and the behavior wears off over time. The association between positive reinforcement and behavior also wears off over time, but that is easy to maintain by occasionally rewarding the good behavior. You don't have to reward it every time. You might reward frequently when trying to to teach the good behavior and then you can decrease the frequency. I think a good way to think of reward and punishment is that reward encourages repeating the behavior that is rewarded, whereas punishment encourages not repeating the behavior that is being punished. When you punish a bad behavior, that doesn't necessarily lead toward good behavior. It could simply lead to different bad behavior. That's not to say that there is no room for punishment of bad behavior. Rather, it should depend on how bad the behavior is. If the behavior is something that is very bad, in the sense that it seriously harms people or animals or causes major economic damage, then punishment might be appropriate. For instance, if you have a kid who has taken to lighting cats and dogs (or smaller children) on fire, then severe immediate punishment might be appropriate, to get that behavior to stop now. That gives you a window until the association between the bad behavior and the punishment wears off to try to reward enough good behavior that the kid won't have time to go back to the bad behavior later.
• beedogs 10y ago
  Wow. Add The Atlantic to the growing list of sites I'll never visit anymore, thanks to what must be the world's most obnoxious ad-begging landing/redirect page I've seen in my entire life. Totally objectionable.
• 3131s 10y ago
  I live in a very poor Asian country where most every parent has never given a single thought to behavior theory or been exposed to the whole parenting industry. It's mostly just feed your kid, let them run around unsupervised with other kids outside, and have the oldest child handle certain responsibilities like getting everybody to school on time. Having worked with kids back in the US and here, the contrast in behavioral problems and social anxiety is so markedly different that it's definitely shaped the way I'll parent my own children. The kids here are much less needy and so much more confident and independent, whereas I can barely spend two minutes around a western kid without getting royally annoyed. My own parents were very hands-off and I plan to be even more so.
  • caseylabs 10y ago
    I have to agree here. I lived in a tiny village in Laos for 4 months a few years back, and I have to say, the six year-olds were more mature, independent, and emotionally sophisticated than some 16 year-olds I knew back home. Favorite slightly-related story: while teaching a class of 8 year-olds one day, a student in the back opened up his desk, and pulled out a machete. My heart stopped for a beat. He then proceeded to sharpen his pencil with the machete, then place it back in his desk. Man, I miss Laos. Anyways, the North American trend to never leave your kids unattended really seems to have stifled their independence and ability to strive on their own, and it's so evident when you travel to some developing countries.
    • sabujp 10y ago
      You know one thing poor asian countries don't have? Laws, HOAs, enforcement of those laws, and child protective services. See what happens in the US when you leave your underage kids unattended in a $public_location in a well-to-do-upscale neighborhood.
    • op00to 10y ago
      That's great and all, but is it possible that extended "childhood" is essential for being better adjusted in the western world? I wonder how many machete wielding 8 year olds grow up to be competitive in university.
• andrewclunn 10y ago
  How to get your kids to do the right thing, convince them that it's the right thing to do. Child too young / stupid to understand moral or ethical questions? Try not to fuck them up too much while you hope they grow out of it. That's what all these things boil down to. I get that a huge part of good parenting is not letting the, "Why don't you understand?!" frustration get to you. All this advice comes from a place of not wanting parents to beat their kids. The experts should perhaps realize that their own conescending, obviously taken too far advice only serves to make parents not trust them. Of course seeing that would require that they understand the human psychology they insist underlies their advice.
• sabujp 10y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_motivate_people_by_giving_them_choices_even/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_mot...
• johanneskanybal 10y ago
  That this could be considered "controversial" 2016 is just mind blowing to me.
  • inimino 10y ago
    You think parenting is a solved problem?
• eltoozero 10y ago
  My Mom "fined" me, taking away or reducing my allowance. If all the punishments I could have endured, this really worked.
• AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  The most successful, caring, well educated and thoughtful people I know came from the worst upbringings. They grew up in households with abusive parents, homelessness as a child and general chaos. At the same time the biggest burnouts, felons, drug-addicts and the like that I know personally (and in the statistics) came from ... the worst upbringings. They grew up in households with abusive parents, homelessness as a child and general chaos. On the flip side, most of the people I know who were raised in peace, calm, consistent love, and wealth are generally pretty middling and while they live a fine life aren't really making huge impacts as I see from group 1 above. Maybe it's that the story isn't as compelling so we don't read about those as much. Chalk it up to sampling error. From a social scientist perspective, group 3 is the ideal upbringing because it's consistent and the lower bound outcome is generally still desirable. However there is just something about the ridiculous struggle that seems to either make diamonds or spent coal. From the perspective of population distribution for groups 1 and 2 it's overwhelmingly spent coal that comes out, but that 1% that becomes diamonds are really spectacular.
• e-we 10y ago
  What? Would this be news to anyone 2016?
• kriro 10y ago
  Step 0: Always treat your kid like an actual human being (apply Kant). Step 1: Identify if your kid leans introvert or extrovert (lemon squeeze at a very young age seems to work but it shouldn't be hard to figure it out with other methods). Step 2: Structure the reward structure accordingly. Guess what, some kids want to go to the zoo and some kids would rather play with Legos by themselves. Hot fixes like providing choices to give an incentive to go outside seem a bit broken to me. I'd much rather provide a good reason to go outside (or figure out that the child actually wants to stay inside and...stay inside). tl;dr: If in doubt spend more time with the child. I feel very strongly that as a parent the thing you should optimize for is "will this allow me to spend more time with the child?" If you are already in a rush in the morning to make your important meeting there's a fundamental flaw in your approach.
• c3534l 10y ago
  I recall there was a bit of a reaction against the strictness of Victorian parenting in the 1800s that advocated essentially this. That children are precious little things who should be allowed freedom and not be punished. Those kids were known to have serious impulse control issues as adults and often had difficulty working in structured or formal environments like offices or courthouses. So it strikes me that if you're never going to give time outs for uncontrolled and inappropriate or destructive behavior, then you need to replace it with something significantly more powerful than what is being offered in the article. I think the psychologist is taking the position that positive reinforcement is better than negative and taking it to an extreme that I have a seriously hard time believing will be beneficial to the long-term mental health of the child.
• dpandey 10y ago
  The core of the article is hard to disagree with: positive reinforcement is much more important effective than punishment. But what if the kid just doesn't want to do what you want to reinforce? Just repeating your preferred choices aren't going to work. Kids are not stupid: they can tell that you're just trying to ignore what they want and push your choices. They'll frequently resist either actively or passively. My approach to my son is: I praise him when he does something that looks right to me. When I disagree, I argue and reason with him like an adult. I try to project him on the receiving end to show how he's being unreasonable. A large part of it is just understanding the kid's temperament and style of thinking and finding out effective ways of dealing with it through experimentation. A lot of empathy. When they see you're trying to understand their frustration they become more thoughtful. This article has many good ideas but generalizing them sounds like an immature approach.
• riffraff 10y ago
  I don't understand: how do you reinforce behaviour that is the default? Do you tell your kids every minute "I appreciate you didn't break the window/throw the glass on the floor/pour milk on the carpet/put play-doh in the washing machine"? I get that it works for clearly delimited things like "put on your clothes properly" or "don't make a mess during dinner" but that doesn't cover 90% of the time that I need to tell my daughter "don't do that" :( .
  • Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    Some behaviors - as with throwing toys and pouring out milk - are normal and will pass. In the meantime, you can do things such as notice when milk is still in the cup and point out, with a silly voice, that you are pouring the milk into the cup because milk likes to be inside of things. Just occasionally, not constantly. Then just remind her when it gets on the floor, and tell her the negative consequences (as is age appropriate). You can have her play with play-doh in a safer space and with more oversight - showing her how to be neat about it while you two play.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    You reinforce good behaviour by paying a lot of attention to your child when they're being good. Children crave attention. If you don't give them that attention when they're being good they'll be bad.
• Elvie 10y ago
  It's not about punishing, it should be about discipline - discipline comes from teaching - we should be teaching our children in every situation and not punishing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_discipline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_discipline "The word discipline is defined as imparting knowledge and skill, in other words, to teach" I have a nearly 5yo and a nearly 2yo and i have to admit it has been tough, but we have managed without time outs and punishments and spankings I grew up afraid of "the slipper" and "the wooden spoon" and don't have a good relationship with my parents and do not want that to my children we practise time in, instead of time out when you leave the child by themselves and they don't have the maturity to realise what they have done wrong, we remove them from the situation and sit with them and explain what the issue was after they have calmed down - as talking to them mid-tantrum will not have any effect as they won't be able to process anything we say
• agentgt 10y ago
  We are about 3-4 days (due the 7th) away from having our first child and this article is a terrifying reminder of what is to come. I have a rather good temperament and equanimity (ironic given the above) but my wife despite being brilliant sadly does not (in all other things she is superior to me). Luckily we have a very good behavioral therapist and or already familiar with the psychology of punishment/reward. That being said my wife's biggest fear is having a child with the same temperament as she does.
  • shoover 10y ago
    Respect the responsibility but don't fear the outcome. These things don't happen overnight. No matter your kid's temperament or how you do as parents, it all develops one day at a time over a very long time and you have essentially infinite opportunities to learn and adjust. Congrats and enjoy :)
• ivanhoe 10y ago
  This is possibly a good long term approach, but what to do when you need to put the situation under the control quickly, and kids just don't cooperate? I had such experience when my 4yo kid was at some point fascinated by kitchen stove, turning the gas knobs on/off. It's just something that you can't slowly teach him not to do, you need to draw the line right away, for his own safety. You can't reason with kid that small, and it's too dangerous to let him learn the lesson by trying, so you just have to scare him out of it.
  • MarkMc 10y ago
    A workmate once told me that he found his young son fiddling with the dials next to a hot stove. So he took his son's hand and briefly placed it on the hot part. The son ran away crying but he learned his lesson.
    • ohyoutravel 10y ago
      This is what rational me says I should do, because it makes sense. But I can't imagine my wife understanding, and the questions at pre-school, etc. Assuming it was a small burn, because that's what would cause a child to cry. Plus I might hate myself for doing it. It's a short jump from "I touched my son's hand to the hot stove to teach him it's bad" to CPS knocking on my door.
      • mcv 10y ago
        Intentionally burning your kid is not good. Also, you run the risk of teaching them that it's mom or dad that's dangerous, rather than the stove. If you're willing to burn them, let them do it to themselves. If not, then teach it without hurting them.
    • mamadrood 10y ago
      That's a good way to build trust with your son. And to be a decent human being. But, sarcasm aside, there is a huge line between scaring / yelling at your kid and physical harm and this is way over the line.
  • 10y ago
• kstenerud 10y ago
  What this teaches your kid is that there are no consequences to selfishness and antisocial behavior.
• rm_dash_rf 10y ago
  Have kids. Validate their feelings. Set boundaries. Enforce boundaries. Talk with your kids. Teach them. Don't try to change them. Embrace them. Spanking and timeouts are not required for this.
• balabaster 10y ago
  Having only read part of the article and having gone through toddler years with 2 kids having ADHD and ODD my only insights are: Get good at child psychology the art of manipulation. You're a team against the kids - keep up a united front, regardless of your marital situation. If you don't learn to manipulate those kids into doing what you want, they will very quickly learn to manipulate you into doing what they want. If you don't consistently maintain a united front, they will play one of you off against the other, every. single. time. and one of you will become the enemy they hate and the other their best friend. This isn't fair to the parent that ends up the enemy and is detrimental to their relationship. Some kids are easy going laid back and compliant. Most of them have their own free will and will largely do what they want, regardless of what you want them to. Get used to not having complete control at all times, because if you try and maintain control at all times, one thing I can guarantee is that your kids will feel powerless and ultimately begin to despise you. Give them compassion and understanding and try to give them enough rope to run without hanging themselves. YouTube has plenty enough videos to scare the crap out of them from doing stupid shit that will hurt or kill them. It's also got a great many videos that will inspire and educate them. It's a great tool. Use it as liberally as you need. I can count on one hand the number of times my kids have been spanked. They're now 8 and almost 7. Those spankings yielded almost zero result and reflects more on my inability to maintain control of myself under the stress they put me under than their behaviour. All it did was exacerbate already intolerable behaviour. Did they deserve it? Yes. Did it yield the result I wanted? No. Should I have held my temper? Probably. The fact that it didn't yield the result I wanted says it was a futile exercise. It didn't teach them anything, they didn't respect me for it, they feared me for it. Do I want my kids to fear me? Absolutely not. Plus, they were some age less than 8 and 6. They're expected to act out. They're kids. I'm an adult, I should be able to control myself better - and I largely do. No amount of framing decisions to stimulate cooperation work. No amount of forcing them to comply works. Neither one of them seem to have any sense of guilt unless they think they've really hurt you and you show them real honest vulnerability... and you can't show that card too often or they'll just think you're unable to stand up for yourself and then they'll never learn to respect you. Okay, so there's not so much advice there. But I'll tell you, every kid is different. Some tools work on some and have counter effects on others. You need an arsenal of techniques and you need to pick and choose them for each situation, like a Marine, you don't take the same tools into every operation, you pick the best tool in your arsenal to complete your mission. Sometimes spanking will work on some kids, other times it will just make the situation ten times worse. Sometimes timeout will work, other times it'll just drag out the torture for both of you. Sometimes shutting down the argument and dictating how things are going to happen is the only way. Other times, you just have to pick your battles and say to yourself - does the outcome of this situation even really matter? Why do I feel the need to argue and enforce my will here? If you're worried about how they dress reflects on you, let them watch shows like "What not to wear" so they learn a sense of style. But honestly, they're kids, does it really matter? Their friends will tell them if they look like an idiot. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing. Sometimes the easiest path is just relinquishing control of everything inconsequential and only controlling the things that really matter: Don't let them hurt or kill themselves or anyone else and don't let them damage or destroy anything that doesn't belong to them.
• agarden 10y ago
  I like some of the ideas in this article, but brushing off punishment as ineffective seems short-sighted. For parents with kids who end up at a clinic because of problem behavior, punishment is ineffective. There is a selection bias going on here. Punishment, as noted in the article, is the first go-to for most parents. In situations where that works, they don't end up at a clinic for problem behavior. If the first go-to for parents were offering shallow choices and rewarding desirable behavior, clinicians would probably find that problem behavior can't be solved that way. They might even be finding that the most effective way to deal with problem behavior is to just punish it immediately and decisively. In other words, there is a large toolkit to be used to solve behavioral problems. Different tools work in different situations.
  • jernfrost 10y ago
    I agree that punishment sometimes has to be used. But I think the reason why they emphasized why it didn't work, is because punishment is the go to tool for parents almost no matter what you tell them. Despite know all this advice I easily fall into the trap myself, and I see clearly how inefficient it usually is. Punishment is often the simple way out when you are too tired to really put the effort into doing it the proper way. Making sure you observe proper behavior and complement on that requires more effort. If I got a good amount of energy I am also usually able to convince my child to go with what I want them to without shouting, or threaten with punishment. But that often requires more imagination and when you are tired and worn out, there is no energy left to be imaginative.
• jernfrost 10y ago
  Many interesting comments here. I think to a large part I came to the conclusions in this article myself by trial and error. I agree as someone said here that you have to really become a student of your child. Don't just try the same old rubbish that doesn't work. Try other approaches and make mental notes of what works. I don't naturally get angry, so I simulated anger just to see if it worked. My experience is that anger and scolding sort of kind of works but is very inefficient and often has diminishing returns. You reach a point where simply getting more angry doesn't work. Quite the opposite it just makes things worse. I was positively surprised by how much more efficient positive reinforcement was. Just a little bit could often create a lot bigger change than lots of screaming and shouting could produce. The problem is that it is often far more complicated to do. It requires more thinking, because it is not always obvious what the opposite of the bad behavior is and when you should praise. E.g. my second child would go ballistic on the changing table. It became almost completely impossible to put him there because he had so many negative associations from being held in place while being changed. I realized I had to make it into a positive experience. My solution was to bring him there when he didn't need clothing or diaper changes and only put him there to do fun things. Gradually I got him to think positively about lying on the changing table, and then I could actually start praising him for complying with getting changed. But just realizing I had to take him there to do something entirely different from what the purpose of the changing table is wasn't obvious to me at first. So my advice is, try to figure out how you child thinks. A lot of this comes down to having empathy with your child and seeing the world from their perspective. Once you know that you can more effectively employ various best practices.
  • nojvek 10y ago
    > So my advice is, try to figure out how you child thinks. A lot of this comes down to having empathy with your child and seeing the world from their perspective. Once you know that you can more effectively employ various best practices. Wow, this is very well put.
• coryfklein 10y ago
  As a parent of 3 boys, something the article doesn't mention is that "time out" is very often not used as a punishment, but just as a strategy to help the parent gather their senses. When you have several kids screaming and breaking things, it's extremely unlikely you'll have the mental capacity to react in a positive healthy manner. Separating the children and doing a 5-minute time out gives just enough time for me to breathe and gather my senses. Then I'm much more likely to follow up with positive parental strategies. Usually something like, "Oh you stayed in your room quietly for the whole 5 minutes! Great job, I love you so much. Give me a hug. I'm sorry daddy was so stressed and we had to do a time out. Why don't we read a book to help us all feel better?" That kind of 5-minute break + positive dialog almost always results in a 180 degree change in mood in the house.
• guest2143 10y ago
  This book really helped me address problem behavior: https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Stories-Challenging-Behaviour-Perrow/dp/1903458781 https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Stories-Challenging-Behaviour... When you can sing a couple and the kid puts away their shoes, it makes it feel like magic.