It’s a question that reader Carl is grappling with:
Carl and his son
I know it’s been a [week] since the last note in your parenting discussion, but I have a three-year-old son, and something he did earlier today made me wonder about how to positively reinforce a particular behavior. I know from first-hand experience that positive reinforcement works. It’s easy enough to apply the technique when he does something I want him to do like letting me change him from his pajamas into clothes in the morning before nursery school without kicking and screaming, but what about when it comes to something I don’t want him to do?
He likes throwing things—toys, pillows, books, whatever. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing it out of frustration or anger, but just because sometimes it’s fun to throw things. I understand where he’s coming from, but how do I positively reinforce a behavior when the behavior I want to reinforce consists of not doing something impulsive?
I’m not a parent yet, so if any readers with young kids have good advice for Carl, let us know. Perhaps he can glean some wisdom from this piece by Elissa Strauss, who writes about parenthood for Slate. She is “having a hard time buying” the theory of positive reinforcement advanced by Alan Kazdin, whose interview with Olga spurred this discussion thread. Strauss talked to some childhood psychologists, including Ross Greene:
Greene agrees with Kazdin that parents should avoid punishing bad behavior, though takes it one step further and says they should avoid praising desired behavior as well. Both responses are “cut from the same bolt of cloth” and incapable of fixing any underlying problems, he says, since children “habituate to punishments and satiate to rewards.”
Instead, parents should create what he calls “collaborative partnerships” with their children, in which they help the child develop the skills they need to overcome their behavioral issues. “We need to shift the role of the caregiver from a behavior modifier to a problem solver,” Greene said. “You can teach your kids so many things when you are not tied to using rewards or punishments.”
Of course, kids might not always feel like collaborating. The same can be said for parents, who, while hopefully more emotionally mature than their offspring, can still lose it sometimes. For those moments, I was happy to learn, taking a time-out for everyone can be the best choice. “Parents get tired of talking and get impatient and lose emotional sobriety too,” said Carl Pickhardt, a writer and child psychologist. “Part of the purpose of the time-out is for the parent to cool down, gather your wits together, and think about what you want your kid to learn from the encounter.”
Here’s some more advice from an expert, Atlantic reader Jim Elliott:
As a parent and as a developmental services professional (former special education teacher and social worker, currently regulating developmental services on behalf of the state of California), I have some thoughts on parenting and discipline:
Positive reinforcement alone is not useful, in my opinion. Kids need discipline, by which I mean a consistent set of rules that are consistently and fairly enforced. Responses should be proportional to the actual incident that occurred. We save timeouts for hitting or disobeying. If you are a consistently involved and attentive parent, you will find that a tone change is sufficient for many instances.
Positive reinforcement is a behavioral theory that had a lot of traction back in the early oughts in special ed. My response then, as now, is “No, they need to know when something affects someone else negatively.” As a parent a decade later, I find there’s not a lot of cultural acceptance of disciplining others’ kids, so mere social pressure isn’t going to work for you. And you want to address those problems before they become a social issue at school.
In my experience, school is an avenue for discovering social dynamics. So, while not all children become bullies, they are all inclined to group-selection, ostracism, and discovering their power over other people. For example, my wife (a speech therapist) has a simple rule in forming her social skills instruction groups: no uneven numbers; someone always gets left out otherwise.
“Negative reinforcement” exists if that’s the only reinforcement you give, because at that point attention is the point. Kids are thirsty to discover cause-and-effect and know their place in the world. Absent attention and positive reinforcement, they’ll lap up the negative reinforcement. Discipline isn’t negative reinforcement. Denying someone your attention is only powerful if you give them your attention normally.
Your child says something hurtful to you and you deny them the love and interaction you usually give them? That’s powerful discipline. It’s not negative attention. Somehow, the idea of negative attention became this idea that punishment and scolding were bad. That’s just wrong.
Anyone who believes that Alan Kazdin’s technique is “radical” has clearly never trained a dog ... or any other animal for that matter.
His method is essentially what is known in the behaviorist world as positive reinforcement, negative punishment training. It involves rewarding behaviors that you want to increase and removing rewards for those that you want to decrease. A fundamental tenet of this approach is to identify predictive triggers for problem behaviors and to change the resulting behavior by changing the consequence.
For some reason, it is so much more intuitive for people to understand with dogs:
For example, if a dog is jumping on you when you get home, instead, immediately ask your dog to “Sit” and reward the sitting. Eventually, the dog will choose to sit rather than jump on you—without you asking.
And, yet, when you apply this same principle to children, people think it’s “radical”! B.F. Skinner was a little radical, I admit, but his theories and evidence have been around for over half a decade. Come on, people. Get with the times! This is old news!
P.S. I'm not surprised by the emotional backlash against this idea of positive reinforcement based behavior modification. The concept is not radical, but it disallows people from satiating their anger by using forceful punishment. For some reason, people are really attracted to punishment. Dog trainers and animal behaviorists are constantly fighting the same battle. You only have to turn on your TV to watch celebrity “dog trainers” to see what I mean.
Foremost among them is Cesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer (brilliantly portrayed by South Park in the clip seen above). Millan is actually in the news right now for allegations of animal cruelty, but the charges seem dubious. Here’s a video summary of the story that shows a snippet of the infamous scene:
The full rehabilitation scene, culminating with the hilarious and heartening image of a pig walking a dog, is here to watch.
This next reader, Becky, circles back to the initial dissent from reader Ethan, who disagreed with Kazdin’s technique by arguing that sometimes “sticks” are necessary, especially to prepare kids for when they grow up to encounter the real—often brutal and unfair—world:
Ethan doesn’t understand how learning works, or the difference between children’s brains and adult brains. How do you get your child to use a potty? By offering positive reinforcement when he gets it right. Punishing your kid for going in his diaper won’t teach him bladder control. It will just make him afraid of you.
But do adults expect praise and a cookie when they go potty correctly? Do mentally competent adults defecate on the living room rug, if they believe they won’t be punished for it? No, because they are adults.
“Real consequences for disobedience in life,” says Ethan ... but people who break rules as children are, statistically, more successful as adults, not less. Consequences work best when they are natural and congruent with the way the world works. So if you don't do your homework, you get an F. That’s a consequence, meted out not by a punishing parent but by the logic of how school works.
“Obedience” is a terrible reason to do almost anything. Raising obedient children bequeaths them poor coping skills for adult life.
A person who grew up in a fear-free home is still going to take seriously an armed officer of the law barking orders, to use Ethan’s example, because they live in the same world as the rest of us. But they are less likely to remain in an abusive work situation or relationship, because it does not feel normal to them to be punished by someone they respect or love.
If you recommend any other good approaches—and ones that don’t involve spanking, as we’ve previously debated—please share. Update from a reader who emphasizes reasoning with a young child:
Spanking may achieve short term results, but ultimately just builds resentments and sets the stage for rebellion and the collapse of the parent-child relationship in the adolescent years. That was me.
An individualized approach based on a child’s temperament and level of maturity is crucial. As a first step, the child’s feelings need to be acknowledged even if they seem ridiculous. Help the child calm down if they're upset; it’s impossible to reason with them otherwise. Explain why you think the good behavior is better in the long run. The goal is to convince. (By all means, show appreciation for good behavior, but be careful not to go overboard to the point that they expect praise for even basic manners). Repeat as many times as necessary—this is the frustrating/grueling part, but coercion and shaming don’t work well in the longer term.
They say the human brain isn’t fully developed until age 27. Even thereafter I think we all need steering towards good behavior from time to time!
Another reader touches on the disappointment method:
I don’t know how my grandmother did it; she has never to my knowledge shouted or screamed at anyone. If you heard her speak to you in a quiet, resigned voice, you felt terrible about what you were doing. And you stopped.
In hindsight, I think it is about the grown-ups’ self regulation. If my emotions are in check, I can distinguish between the child expressing a genuine need to eat slowly versus my frustration at not being able to wrap dinner up. I can step back and evaluate how important a child’s stubbornness is in the larger scheme of things and pick my battles more wisely. Kids learn from your demeanor and probably pick up the same equanimity.
I have not been able to reach that zen state, yet. Probably wont, ever.
Speaking for myself, the use of corporal punishment on a child should be something of the nuclear option of discipline. I was spanked three times that I remember vividly, even to this day. And all three of those times I had done something that directly endangered myself or another. Looking back, if I had been in my father’s place, I would have reached for the physical option too.
Because of how rarely spanking happened in my childhood, it was always given the weight it deserved. On the spectrum of possible discipline methods, this is the one that spoke in absolutes: What has been done is completely and unambiguously unacceptable. To hit a child is a very serious thing, and it should be treated as such. But to me, it’s when it becomes the go-to option of discipline that it crosses into abuse and it ceases to be a drastic corrective so much as punishment pure and simple.
Like so many other things, when one decides it is necessary to step beyond the norms, they should have a very very good reason for doing so, and be willing to take ownership of the action.
Another reader draws a distinction based on age:
I think spanking is necessary for very small/young children. They don’t have the ability to reason. What you say to them makes little sense. If your child is sticking his figure in a socket, you you need to tap his hand, every time he does it. The slight sting will be a reminder that will save his life.
However, when children are able to communicate and understand logic, talking and consistently enforcing consequences is the way to go. Spanking is useless and mean after a certain age.
We had pretty good luck with timeouts in disciplining our sons, but our daughter just got increasingly hysterical in timeout. Finally my husband got fed up and spanked her. Like magic, the episode was all over and things were good again. I guess it provided closure.
Then we discovered that if you turned her over your knee, laid your hand palm up on her rear, and spanked your own hand, it had exactly the same effect. A faux spanking was as effective as a real spanking! I think, after we had done this a few times, by the time we got to the faux spanking everyone was laughing.
This reader’s email is much less funny:
The doomsday clock of spanking is currently set to three minutes until midnight. Like the original, I hope to never see it tick upward, but I have only so much patience.
Over the weekend, our almost-three-year-old took us on a tour of all things pouting and tantrum and stubbornness and the like. I don’t want to spank, but I’m running out of peaceful options. At what point does the needle tip?
I totally agree with the reader who spanked to get their kid to keep out of traffic. The risk-reward is obvious. But what about for the less obvious?
Last night during dinner was when we ticked up from 11:56 to 11:57. She kept making this pouty face and refusing to eat. I ended up sending her to bed hungry, a lesson in self punishment. But it was close. A large part of me wanted to give her one good slap and reset her circuits.
One day I may, but not yet. Three minutes to midnight.
😬 Update from a reader who elaborates on the emoji:
I have never felt the need to write in to one of these discussions, but the “doomsday clock of spanking” gave me chills. This person sounds like the kind of terrifying parent I grew up with, the kind who lashes out in anger over developmentally-normal behavior, the kind of parent who simply cannot comprehend that a child might have feelings, thoughts, and needs.
A three year old is plenty old enough to decide if she is not hungry, and if her body was in fact telling her it did not need food, what did she learn by receiving anger and punishment from her parents? She learned her parents are jerks, that’s what. She also learned that you should force yourself to eat even if you don’t need food in order to avoid bringing down the parental pain. Your lack of patience and lack of other ways to deal with a normal three year old are not valid reasons to slap the poor child around.
If she doesn’t want to eat, who cares? Leave her plate out and she can come back if she gets hungry later. Done. There’s no need for the parent to get upset or have any reaction at all other than “okay dear, your food will be here if you change your mind.”
I really feel for this young girl, and I hope she’s okay.
So far the consensus in the inbox is a resounding “no” to that question, which was sparked by reader Carly’s staunch opposition to spanking, claiming it sexualizes children. This reader, J Hollis, has the strongest counterargument:
For survivors of actual child sexual abuse such as myself, making spanking equivalent to what is done to children when they are sexually assaulted is kind of revolting and not a little offensive. I’m not a proponent of spanking, but Carly’s reasoning here is specious.
The butt is, objectively, not a sexual organ (neither are the breasts, technically), and the breast parallel doesn’t work well either because prohibitions on breast exposure are only applied to females and are not universal across space and time.
Additionally, the reasoning that “because it would count as sexual harassment for adults it must for children” is similarly problematic. It is generally the case that bodily autonomy for children is limited relative to that for adults, in a number of crucial regards. Much as it would be inappropriate to spank an adult, it would be inappropriate to dress them, or to wipe them after they’d used the restroom, or to help them wash their hair. Some of these activities involve exposure of or contact with the sex organs—and yet we would not thus argue that they contact sexual abuse.
Moreover, not every kind of contact with actual sexual organs is sexual in nature. Or if it is, the nature of my relationship with my ob/gyn is not as professional as I’ve been imagining.
This reader believes that intent is the key factor:
The argument that spanking should be considered a sexual assault is preposterous. It is important to look at motive, as well as whether or not sexual gratification is being obtained from the act. You may consider spanking to be a physical assault, but to label it “sexual” is wrongly suggesting that sexuality is defined by anatomy.
On that note, another reader:
If we’ve learned anything in the last 50 years of sexual history, it’s that every part of the body can be sexualized for different people. And on the flip side, the common practice of a friendly pat on the butt in sports demonstrates that not all contact with the buttocks be coded as sexual.
Similarly, another adds, “Given how blithely common foot fetishes, there seems to be no coherent standard by which the buttocks, a non-genital region of the body, could be considered sexual without ruling the entire human body as a sexual region.” This last reader, Sasha, zooms out a bit:
It is worthwhile to note that what constitutes a “sexual offense” varies greatly by culture and legal jurisdictions, even within the United States. A few examples of things that are considered “sex offenses” in some places but not others within the U.S. are: public urination, public nudity, private nudity, oral sex, anal sex/sodomy. Additionally, the age of consent is 18 in some places and 16 in others … one could go on and on.
So my argument to Carly is, spanking is only a sexual offense if you can convince a decent portion of your neighbors and government that it is. Personally, I think that turning spanking into a sexual offense is actually SEXUALIZING the infant or child where there wasn’t a notion of sexuality before.
Update from one of the top Notes contributors, Jim Elliott, who drills deeper into the “intent” argument (he comes from the perspective of a “parent and as a developmental services professional—former special education teacher and social worker, currently regulating developmental services on behalf of the state of California”):
Great googly-moogly, Carly is just ... so wrong. The American Psychological Association defines sexual abuse as “unwanted sexual activity, with perpetrators using force, making threats or taking advantage of victims not able to give consent.” While many definitions are very broad, what is unmistakable about all of them is that there is a sexually gratifying intent to it.
Under Carly’s seeming definition, two kids playing doctor are nascent sexual predators. Context is a thing, and it’s not entirely solipsistic. There’s only one meta-study that I’m aware of that links spanking with sexual “problems” in adulthood (Straus, 2008), and it has a lot of problems of its own, not the very least being that there’s a lot of confounding variables that are hand-waved away—and some definition problems to boot—with respect to his findings on coercion and “risky” sexual behavior (which he defines as not using a condom). As well, his finding that people who are spanked are more likely to enjoy masochistic sex as adults requires a whole lot of conflation of various sexual behaviors and frequencies under the label “masochistic” and is drawn from a pretty limited sample size.
This is not to endorse or even declare neutrality with respect to spanking. In my experience both as a parent and a professional, it’s useless with respect to correcting the child’s behavior. Spanking is parenting by fear; it provokes compliance withinin single environments, at best. It doesn’t actually correct behavior when it's successful, just whether or not the behavior occurs in the presence of the parent. And that is just useless parenting.
“One example [of acceptable spanking] would be a little kid messing around with his sister. You have to stop that instantly; it’s a sex offense, and they do prosecute little kids for it.”
I really don’t think sexually abusing your son to stop him from sexually abusing his sister is the right approach. Therapy would be a wonderful alternative.
While the buttocks is not a sexual organ, it is a sexual part of the body, similar to women’s breasts. Children are not sexually mature, but that does not mean they are incapable of feeling sexual sensations. Spanking can greatly interfere with a child’s sexual development, modesty, and their understanding of bodily autonomy. Spanking an adult would be considered a sexual offense and it should be the same for children.
I understand how hard it is for some to come to terms that one of the oldest child rearing practices is wrong, especially if you were also spanked, but we need to drop this practice for the better of society.
Also, if your response is “I was spanked and I turned out fine,” then I have to counter with the fact that you think hitting a child is okay, and I would not say that is fine.
Olga has a really popular interview this week with Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center, who advises parents not to punish their kids in any way, not even time-outs, let alone more controversial methods like spanking. Here’s how Olga sums up Kazdin’s outlook:
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.
But reader Ethan doesn’t buy it:
My disagreement with this method is that it conditions children to expect praise for doing almost anything beneficial, even just less violent versions of negative behaviors like a tantrum. While this might work well through adolescence to moderate things, college and/or life beyond the home rarely comes with such rewards for doing what is expected of all members of society. Raising children with the “carrot” and without the “stick” might be effective within the artificial confines of youth, but the adult world involves far fewer external “carrots” and much harsher “sticks.”
The extreme example? Few police officers offer praise for obedience if you’re told to “get on the ground” or “put your hands above your head,” but you can guarantee that there are severe consequences if instead you choose to disobey. That might not be right or fair, but it’s real, and that for me is the huge hole in this article’s suggestion.
There has to be a balance; if children never learn that there are real consequences for disobedience in life, parents might be setting them up for failure.
Your thoughts? Drop us an email. Another reader, meanwhile, shifts the conversation to corporal punishment:
I see spanking as something you do when patient, reasonable efforts are likely to be dangerous to the health or welfare of your child or someone else.
One example would be a little kid messing around with his sister. You have to stop that instantly; it’s a sex offense, and they do prosecute little kids for it. Another would be burning down the curtains. Your kid sets a fire and you can’t let him set another one while you gradually teach him it’s wrong. You need there to be zero more fires set.
And reserving it for extreme misbehavior also maintains its effectiveness. A kid who gets spanked all the time grows inured to it and it’s less effective when it’s needed.
This reader has a dramatic alternative to spanking—and some weirder ones, too:
I never spanked my kids. My ex-wife did, but my observation was that it only made things worse.
Our oldest was a rebel without a cause, who really could get worked up. When she did, and my ex-wife spanked her, she only got more wound up. My approach with her was something many have told me was much worse, though I hardly think so—as I would infinitely prefer a cold shower to being hit—yes, the cold shower.
Sometimes it involved my own self in clothing getting soaking wet to pull it off. It had a perfect record of immediately changing her mood. Worked every single time.
Of course that was when she was still under six. One time, when we were camped out, she started bopping me in the nose. This was the one time I did hit her. She would not stop, though I asked her many times. Finally, without really thinking, and certainly not as punitive, but as a purely self-defense mechanism, I bopped her nose back. She was shocked. And she never hit me again.
My younger daughter was an entirely different case: an extremely sensitive, goody goody, girly girl. Just being in trouble would wreck her for hours. And truth be told, she rarely got in trouble—a kid of easy-peasy proportions. Neither my ex wife nor I could ever bring ourselves to laying a hand on her.
As they got older, I had a number of methods that my kids found—how can I put it—annoying. The younger one sometimes had a propensity to pout. If she pouted more than once in a day, I would mark them up. The following morning, for each of the previous day’s pouts, before brushing my teeth and after having coffee, I would put my mouth on her nose and breathe. This worked, and after one summer of this, she never engaged in pouting again.
If they acted out around meal time, I would do a rendition of my “no whining and dining allowed” melody in the scratchiest, most out of tune voice I could conjure. (nowhininganddining, nowhininganddining, nowhininganddining allowed!)
I also would spend some time at the lectern, lecturing. They found this so annoying that both at one time or another pleaded for me to just hit them and get it over with.
For more reading on the question of whether to ever spank or not, check out a piece Andrea Nair wrote for us a few years ago. A reader at the time recalled a frightening experience:
Years ago, I was walking down a busy boulevard holding some heavy bags, with my two-and-a half-year-old daughter by my side. She became entranced with chasing pigeons and suddenly darted out into the street. Thankfully, there was a lull in the traffic, and I grabbed her out of the way.
I explained very carefully and firmly that cars were dangerous and that she was never never to run into the street. I asked if she understood, and she nodded. However, when we resumed walking, she started laughing, slipped from my hand, and ran RIGHT BACK INTO THE STREET! She thought it was a game.
And she was nearly killed by an oncoming car.
Although I’m against corporal punishment, I spanked her on that occasion. It came as quite a shock to her, and she never ran into the street again. I’m not advocating routine spanking, but yes it is sometimes (rarely) okay to spank a child. Would anyone take issue with this example?
