Punishment or Praise? By Sarah Cox

Punishment or Praise?

A discussion about punishment and rewards regarding child behavior.

By Sarah Cox

Being a mother of a three-year-old has made me spend a lot of time thinking about the best ways to raise my child.  Experienced family therapists, along with research from the fields of developmental psychology, have expressed that a healthy parent-child relationship involves a reasonable balance between rewards and punishments (Oas, 2010).  The cycle that is most seemingly present in families consists of parents setting rules, child breaking the rules, and then the child is punished for making the rules.  Children receive more punishment for breaking the rules rather than receive rewards for following the rules, but what if the opposite was true?  In the society we live in, rules that are broken have consequences and very rarely is the focus on rewarding good behavior.

Research has found that using punishment as a main resource for child-rearing can have terrible effects on family life, creating a life for the child that is centered around consequences and punishment (Hardy, 2002).  Punishment limits the imagination and possible interpretations of the reasoning behind the punishment (Hardy, 2002).  Talking about the behavior and having a conversation with your child about what happened could be much more effective than punishment.

Many parents feel that punishments, whether it is through spanking, time our, or restrictions, are the only way to teach children right from wrong.  However, Instead of punishing a child every time a rules is broken, considerations could also be made to those rules by examining the contextual factors surrounding the misconduct.  Questions you could ask your child are: Has the child had enough sleep? Is he or she Hungry? What happened at school? Is there something upsetting them? What things are going on in the home? What things are going on with family or with friends? Have they simply outgrown certain rules? There are many factors that could be influencing the child’s behaviors and should be considered before punishment is enforced.

Punishment has been normalized for so long that it makes it difficult to imagine a world without such reliance on punishment.  However, relying less on punishments and focusing more on what people are doing right could completely shift how we interact with one another.  What do you think would change in your family if you traded punishment for praise?

References

Oas, P.T. (2010). Current status on corporal punishment with children: What the literature says.  American Journal of Family Therapy, 38(5), 413-420.

Hardy, K. V. (2002). To be a Healer not a Jailer: Implications for Therapists in Moving Beyond Punishment. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 2002(2), 52.