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> 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 reinf

> 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.
- tent 10y ago
  I think the idea isn't so much that punishment doesn't get results, but rather that those results come with side effects. Usually, this is some harboured anger, or avoidance of the parent. Yes, punishment gets changes behavior, but it's not always a 100% positive change. It should have been phrased better in the article.
  - im3w1l 10y ago
    You're projecting your own reasonable beliefs onto the article. It really was as stupid as SiVal said. It follows the rules of political correctness: Any evidence supporting a taboo idea must the denied. Any advantages of a taboo practice must be denied.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Calling out something for "political correctness" (or any one of another dozen or so convenient shorthands for political footballs) is a lazy argument. I'm sure there are things you disagree with in the article. What are they? Why? Do you have something more to add to the point SiVal made? Personal experience? References to research? Add something constructive to the discussion.
    - crummy 10y ago
      I think the article is talking about this here: "You don't try to suppress— “Don't give me attitude for all I've done for you!” What research shows is that it will lead to escape behavior on the part of the child. It will lead them to avoid you as soon as they get home from school and it will model negative interactions toward you."
- llukas 10y ago
  Punishment always changes behavior only when you're looking/enforcing. You'll never know if you police kid enough. Is that your goal?
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
ramparrt 10y ago
Keep on at it. My partner and I fostered rescue puppies (mainly larger breeds) for several years before having kids. We taught bite inhibition, toilet training and general manners to umpteen puppies using positive reinforcement while they were in our care. We've used remarkably similar techniques on our children now aged 3.5 and 1.5yo. Every child is unique so YMMV but we have been very happy with the way our kids have responded to our approach. Getting angry seems to just stimulate fear in our kids which shuts down communication and halts any opportunity for them to learn something positive from a challenging situation. I want a child who can communicate and is expressive. It's a long game so I feel like having a child who learning to communicate when they're 3 is more likely to communicate when they're a teenager facing bigger, real world problems. Good luck with yours
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  We are also firmly on the positive reinforcement / attachment parenting camp. It does work wonders. That being said, especially with kids older than ~3, we believe some form of negative consequences for bad behaviour are necessary. Especially if they e.g. push or hit another child. And I don't mean using physical punishment, more like "I'm taking this toy away from you now". The important thing is that the child is old enough to understand what they're doing is wrong, and that the consequence is relatively immediate. Also, being angry is an emotion kids need to learn about. This means (IMO) it's OK for a parent to be visibly angry sometimes, as long as you are able to remain a good role model while angry. I.e. yelling at / insulting someone, hitting someone etc. is very much out of the picture. But yelling into the air "Aargh I'm so angry!!!" and then being able to cool down and acknowledge afterwards why you were angry is likely good for a child to see. Again, assuming that the child is old enough to understand, and that you discuss/explain it afterwards.
  - geerlingguy 10y ago
    > Being angry is an emotion kids need to learn about. This means (IMO) it's OK for a parent to be visibly angry sometimes, as long as you are able to remain a good role model while angry. Very true. The thing is, if you are somehow able to bottle up your negative emotions in front of your kids all the time, you're either superhuman, or you're letting them fester in some other way... Kids should learn that they have an impact on their parents' lives too, and they need to see examples of how we deal with it. Some parents get pouty and act just like a toddler until they cave and give the kid something the kid wants. Other parents get angry, maybe even raise their voice, but then take control of their emotion and apologize to the kid, but still don't cave to whatever the kid (often irrationally) desires. Physical punishment (outside of restraint, e.g. When one kid hurts another) is a different conversation entirely, of course.
GrinningFool 10y ago
> the key to training a dog is not to "punish" them when they do something wrong And yet getting caught in the act of doing something wrong and being "punished" (harsh words in the case of a dog) is remarkable effective, particularly in combination with positive reinforcement for the things done well. > 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 This works remarkably well until you have a dog for which it doesn't work. We've adopted several dogs - some as puppies, some grown - and found that most of the time, for most of the animals, these practices work. But sometimes -and for some dogs - they don't work at all, or with greatly reduced effectiveness. It depends on what drives the dog and that dog's personality. > 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. :) Yes. And no. It depends entirely on the personality of your child - and to a limited extent, your own. That's the frustrating thing about these kinds of articles (as well as dog training articles). They position themselves with such authority that we seem to be expected to believe that they're handing down a Great Universal Truth*. It's not. In my opinion, there is only one - living things (dog or child) are complicated creatures. There are so many variables unique to each living thing in your care that there's not much room left for The One True Way. [1] My favorite of these is a popular dog trainer who - with all sincerity - says that when you pull on a dog's collar, the dog will pull back because it's physics. The dog must provide an equal and opposite reaction. It's amazing how many people buy into the rationale. What the trainer advocates is perfectly fine in many cases - but I can't get past the pseudo-scientific non-logic.

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.

tent 10y ago
I think the idea isn't so much that punishment doesn't get results, but rather that those results come with side effects. Usually, this is some harboured anger, or avoidance of the parent. Yes, punishment gets changes behavior, but it's not always a 100% positive change. It should have been phrased better in the article.
- im3w1l 10y ago
  You're projecting your own reasonable beliefs onto the article. It really was as stupid as SiVal said. It follows the rules of political correctness: Any evidence supporting a taboo idea must the denied. Any advantages of a taboo practice must be denied.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Calling out something for "political correctness" (or any one of another dozen or so convenient shorthands for political footballs) is a lazy argument. I'm sure there are things you disagree with in the article. What are they? Why? Do you have something more to add to the point SiVal made? Personal experience? References to research? Add something constructive to the discussion.
  - crummy 10y ago
    I think the article is talking about this here: "You don't try to suppress— “Don't give me attitude for all I've done for you!” What research shows is that it will lead to escape behavior on the part of the child. It will lead them to avoid you as soon as they get home from school and it will model negative interactions toward you."
llukas 10y ago
Punishment always changes behavior only when you're looking/enforcing. You'll never know if you police kid enough. Is that your goal?
- SapphireSun 10y ago

ramparrt 10y ago

Keep on at it. My partner and I fostered rescue puppies (mainly larger breeds) for several years before having kids. We taught bite inhibition, toilet training and general manners to umpteen puppies using positive reinforcement while they were in our care. We've used remarkably similar techniques on our children now aged 3.5 and 1.5yo. Every child is unique so YMMV but we have been very happy with the way our kids have responded to our approach. Getting angry seems to just stimulate fear in our kids which shuts down communication and halts any opportunity for them to learn something positive from a challenging situation. I want a child who can communicate and is expressive. It's a long game so I feel like having a child who learning to communicate when they're 3 is more likely to communicate when they're a teenager facing bigger, real world problems. Good luck with yours

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
We are also firmly on the positive reinforcement / attachment parenting camp. It does work wonders. That being said, especially with kids older than ~3, we believe some form of negative consequences for bad behaviour are necessary. Especially if they e.g. push or hit another child. And I don't mean using physical punishment, more like "I'm taking this toy away from you now". The important thing is that the child is old enough to understand what they're doing is wrong, and that the consequence is relatively immediate. Also, being angry is an emotion kids need to learn about. This means (IMO) it's OK for a parent to be visibly angry sometimes, as long as you are able to remain a good role model while angry. I.e. yelling at / insulting someone, hitting someone etc. is very much out of the picture. But yelling into the air "Aargh I'm so angry!!!" and then being able to cool down and acknowledge afterwards why you were angry is likely good for a child to see. Again, assuming that the child is old enough to understand, and that you discuss/explain it afterwards.
- geerlingguy 10y ago
  > Being angry is an emotion kids need to learn about. This means (IMO) it's OK for a parent to be visibly angry sometimes, as long as you are able to remain a good role model while angry. Very true. The thing is, if you are somehow able to bottle up your negative emotions in front of your kids all the time, you're either superhuman, or you're letting them fester in some other way... Kids should learn that they have an impact on their parents' lives too, and they need to see examples of how we deal with it. Some parents get pouty and act just like a toddler until they cave and give the kid something the kid wants. Other parents get angry, maybe even raise their voice, but then take control of their emotion and apologize to the kid, but still don't cave to whatever the kid (often irrationally) desires. Physical punishment (outside of restraint, e.g. When one kid hurts another) is a different conversation entirely, of course.

GrinningFool 10y ago

> the key to training a dog is not to "punish" them when they do something wrong And yet getting caught in the act of doing something wrong and being "punished" (harsh words in the case of a dog) is remarkable effective, particularly in combination with positive reinforcement for the things done well. > 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 This works remarkably well until you have a dog for which it doesn't work. We've adopted several dogs - some as puppies, some grown - and found that most of the time, for most of the animals, these practices work. But sometimes -and for some dogs - they don't work at all, or with greatly reduced effectiveness. It depends on what drives the dog and that dog's personality. > 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. :) Yes. And no. It depends entirely on the personality of your child - and to a limited extent, your own. That's the frustrating thing about these kinds of articles (as well as dog training articles). They position themselves with such authority that we seem to be expected to believe that they're handing down a Great Universal Truth*. It's not. In my opinion, there is only one - living things (dog or child) are complicated creatures. There are so many variables unique to each living thing in your care that there's not much room left for The One True Way. [1] My favorite of these is a popular dog trainer who - with all sincerity - says that when you pull on a dog's collar, the dog will pull back because it's physics. The dog must provide an equal and opposite reaction. It's amazing how many people buy into the rationale. What the trainer advocates is perfectly fine in many cases - but I can't get past the pseudo-scientific non-logic.