Experiences Never Forgotten

Many things have changed in the past twenty five years when it comes to how to discipline a child. There has even been television shows on how parents can't control their own kids and have to have someone come in and tell them how it is needed to be done. In most of these cases, there is an abundance of negative reinforcement, a lack of positive reinforcement, and almost no punishment. Most kids today are controlling their parents rather than the parents controlling them.

Positive reinforcement is any pleasant consequence of behavior that leads to an increase in that behavior. In other words, if a child done well cleaning his room, it would be positive reinforcement for the parent to give him the child a hug. There are three important factors when it comes to positive reinforcement as follows: 1.) Timing- Reinforcement must follow the positive behavior. 2.) Consistency - Reinforcement every behavior. 3.) Properties of Reinforcement - Reinforcement must be something the object likes and enjoys. As a small child, I can remember my parents always giving me 5 dollars for every "A" I had on my report card. This was a positive reinforcement for me to do well on my next report card.

Negative Reinforcement is to remove or avoid a negative event by closing a behavior. An example of negative reinforcement is hitting snooze on your alarm clock to keep it from going off at a certain time. Negative Reinforcement is characterized by two words escape (cause the negative event to stop) and avoid (keep it from happening). When thinking back to a negative reinforcement event in my life, I remember crying over bubble gum. The first few times my mom, just give me the candy to avoid my crying, but it later led to our next topic, punishment.

Punishment is the opposite of reinforcement, a negative consequence for a behavior which leads into a decrease. For example, the following are punishments: Jail time, time out, fines, taking away