According to one famous American sociologist, the birth of newborns into the world is a systematically repeated invasion of barbarians. Newborns do not have morality, they cannot behave in accordance with social needs, they are not familiar with the system of moral and other norms of this society. All this is taught to the child in society and, above all, in the family. There are many forms of education based on both conscious and subconscious perception, and among these various pedagogical techniques, the first place, of course, is known from ancient times. the principle of reward and punishment, which will be discussed in this article.
Consider first punishment. It is practically impossible to bring up a child without the use of some form of punishment, except purely theoretically, so to speak, on paper. There are, however, forms of punishment that do not contribute to the achievement of the goal. On the other hand, some forms of punishment, although they provide the desired result, can nevertheless cause severe damage to the child’s personality.
All types of punishment can be divided into two groups, one of which combines forms of punishment based on deprivation of parental love (in professional terms, these are separation punishments), and the second type of punishment is based on pain sensation, more precisely, on the fact that the fear of pain will not allow the child to repeat unwanted actions. Thus, here, too, the educational effect is ultimately achieved through the child’s feelings. In the first case, this is love or the child’s fear of losing her, in the second, correct behavior is due to the child’s fear of being punished painfully.
Both of these forms of punishment have been used since time immemorial. If we put the child in a corner, send him to another room, do not talk to him, or experience other similar forms of punishment, we build our calculation on the child’s fear of losing parental love; if the child is beaten, he receives physical punishment. But the classification of types of punishment looks so simple only at first glance.
Consider first the first form of punishment based on the fear of losing love. Such punishment is designed for the existence of love between parents (educators) and children. The child must feel that he has something to lose. Thus, only the educator whom the child loves, whose love he wants to keep, can apply punishment based on the fear of losing this feeling, and its loss can cause serious pain and frustration to the child. If there is no such mutual love, punishments of this kind will be ineffective.
As for physical punishment, the situation here is much simpler. All people (and animals too) are afraid of pain, although some admit it, while others do not. Physical punishments, especially strong ones, can have a certain effect on anyone. The only question is whether it can be called education. It’s more of a training. With strong physical punishment, any animal can be taught to any behavior, people have been doing this since ancient times, moreover, children are often “trained” in the same way. Strong physical punishment always or almost always achieves the immediate goal. If we want a child not to do something, with strong physical punishment we will certainly achieve this, at least for a while. This form of education and, in general, all types of rewards and punishments in psychology are called reinforcement: the desired form of behavior is reinforced by reward or punishment. In the first case, they talk about positive reinforcement, in the second — negative.
Despite the effectiveness of physical punishment, psychologists do not recommend resorting to this method for two very serious reasons. One of them is that behavioral change under the influence of physical punishment occurs almost exclusively in the presence of the person who punished the child. Thus, such punishment is unsuitable for the conscious formation of the morality of the child. In other words, the child will first look around, and if he does not notice near the person who punished him, he will immediately “sin”. A child will not «sin» only if in the presence of this person he is threatened with physical punishment.
The second reason why corporal punishment should not be used is that it negatively affects the personality of the child. Corporal punishment develops undesirable character traits in children. The systematic use of strong physical punishment can break the will of the child, turn him into a submissive, dodgy personality, unable to develop his own, independent position and make independent decisions.
But it happens quite the opposite, which also has many examples, because a child is like a spring, it can be compressed, but it still tends to slip out of your hands. Therefore, it may also happen that in the behavior of a child who was kept in check by constant physical punishment, a phenomenon manifests itself in adolescence, which is called protest in psychology, in other words, the spring breaks out of the hands, and this results in a pronounced negative behavior. At the same time, the child comes into conflict with everything that up to that moment was an integral part of his life, first of all, of course, with his parents. Parents become, as psychologists say, a negative model for the child, and then whatever they do will be obviously “bad” for the child, just because this something is done by the parents. Previously positive values are reborn in the child’s mind into negative ones, and, conversely, negative values and character traits can become the subject of imitation.
Punishing children with the fear of losing parental love can be compared to atomic energy. If misused, such a punishment can cause very great harm, and, conversely, its wise use can be very effective. You can achieve what you want if two important conditions are met. One of them is that When punishing a child, the educator must every time make him feel that he loves him even when he punishes him for a certain period of time by depriving him of his love. At the same time, the child should feel something like that, although in this situation he could lose this very important love for him, since he deserved such a punishment, but, fortunately, this love cannot be lost. The second condition reinforcing the effect of the first is that Punishment should not apply to the entire personality of the child as a whole, but only to that particular case of behavior for which he is punished in this case.
In connection with the question of the application of punishment in the process of raising a child, many less significant factors can be noted, the correct or incorrect application of which can also affect the result of punishment. The most important of these factors is the question of when a child can be punished. It has long been known that if a child, especially a small one, is punished long after the offense has been committed, the punishment has no effect.
Imagine that a mother with a child enters a crowded tram. The child does not tolerate the crowd, it irritates him, in addition, he has not seen his mother all day, and ultimately the child begins to whine, act up and behave very badly. In turn, the mother is ashamed, mainly because the child behaves badly in front of strangers, and she is embarrassed to punish him here, and then the mother quietly says to the child something like: “Wait, let’s come home, I’ll show you …” Half an hour later they are at home. Like any good mother, she will first wash and feed the child, and when everything is in order, after 2-3 hours after the scandal in the tram, the mother punishes the child. In this case, the punishment will not be a negative reinforcement of the child’s misbehavior on the tram, since these events are so separated in time that he is not able to somehow connect them. Ultimately, the child will consider this punishment undeserved, unjustified, it can cause antipathy in him, a manifestation of aggressiveness towards his parents, but will not have any effect on the manifestations of “bad behavior”, for which, in fact, the child was punished!
It is known that at an early age, punishment will be truly effective if it is not applied after the offense, but coincides with it or precedes it by a moment. In this case, of course, it would be more correct to speak not about punishment, but about prohibition. A lot of children under 2-3 years old are constantly next to their parents, who can really effectively stop the unwanted actions of children by grabbing their hand even before committing an offense and explaining that this should not be done. There is a logical and natural explanation for the fact that such punishment is very effective.
Suppose a child is reaching for some very expensive item of interest to him, but one of the parents grabs his hand, says “no” and resolutely removes the child’s hand from this item. After two or three repetitions, there will come a moment (obviously, all parents had to watch this), when the child reaches for the same object, the parents have not yet managed to stop him, but the child’s hand has already stopped in the air, and he himself unexpectedly, repeating the intonations of the parents’ voices , says «no» and removes his hand. In other words, we can say that a parental prohibition arises in the mind of a child even before he has committed this or that act, misconduct.
If the parents consistently punish the child after the misconduct (we are talking about young children), just the opposite happens. In this case, the child commits a misdemeanor, and the thought of punishment in his mind arises only after that, because in real life the punishment followed only the misconduct. These feelings, called feelings of guilt, remorse, often manifest themselves in a child’s life in a very complex and painful form. Recently, psychologists have received a lot of confirmation that the punishments following the commission of misconduct by children play a very significant role in the formation of the so-called personality inferiority complex. In this category we include people who systematically stumble in the same place.
One of the characteristic representatives of this type of people is a child who, after committing a misdemeanor, immediately runs to adults and confesses everything. Usually educators evaluate such behavior very positively, seeing in it only a virtue, although this is not always the case. The nature of this type of children is manifested in the expectation of punishment after committing a misdemeanor and in the fact that this punishment relieves the internal tension of the child. It is very difficult to decide in which case such children are more punished: if they are punished or if the offense is left unpunished. Regardless of this, a child of this type will soon again commit a misdemeanor and will again admit it himself.
Another type of character is characteristic of people who resist temptations for a long time, but if they do not resist, then they almost do not feel guilt. Such a position can be characterized as «causing fire on myself», that is, I am responsible for what I did, because I could no longer resist the temptation. Of these two different characters, the second seems to be more attractive, positive, and, apparently, the formation of such a personality is also very seriously influenced by the temporal aspect of the application of punishment.
Later, starting from the age of 4-5, the moment of punishment gradually loses its significance, since the mental development of the child allows him to mentally connect the offense and punishment separated in time. Starting from this time, some delay in punishment can give a positive result. After committing a misdemeanor, a very significant internal tension accumulates in the soul of a child, and therefore some delay in punishment can be a very effective measure.
It is desirable to supplement lenient punishment with a certain alternative for the child. Usually children are forbidden to do what they are very drawn to. But if we impose a ban on these actions, or, speaking in the language of psychology, negatively reinforce them, we should also take care that, as far as possible, direct the actions of the child along an acceptable path so that they are to some extent similar to prohibited. For example, if a child cut his mother’s dress with scissors, trying to sew clothes for a doll, you should not only forbid the child to do this in the future and punish him, but also teach him how to handle scissors, give material with which he could work calmly and diligently. This is the principle of «soft punishment plus an alternative.»
If, in order to punish a child, parents use the so-called temporary deprivation of parental attention and love, behind which there is a feeling of constant and enduring parental love that is tangible for the child, and, in addition, strictly observe the basic conditions for choosing the moment of punishment (especially in early childhood) and, to the extent possible, systematically provide the child with the possibility of alternative actions, in this case it can be said that the parents have chosen the correct system of punishments.
Now let’s turn to the question of rewards. Two forms of behavior are generally encouraged. One of these forms is the right action in one area or another. (A child can do something well and be praised for it. In school life, parental approval is usually associated with a good answer or praise from the teacher.) The second form of behavior is moral behavior, that is, the form of behavior that is expected from the child parents, especially in critical situations.
Why is it necessary to distinguish between these two forms of behavior? First of all, because any successful activity, action has one feature that is often forgotten — this is a feeling of success, which in itself is a kind of reward. If a child succeeds in something in early childhood, the success gives him such a strong sense of satisfaction that this success can be regarded as an innate, automatic encouragement. But such innate encouragement is not characteristic of moral behavior, because every society and every era has its own morality, and moral behavior is not born with a child at all, it needs to be learned, and therefore the encouragement of correct moral behavior is the responsibility of the educator.
If successful actions or smart behavior are inherently inherently rewarding, the question arises: is there any need for some other, additional encouragement? To complicate matters further, additional rewards can cause severe psychological costs that society does not notice as clearly as a severe flu. Severe psychological costs are barely noticeable at first, and as a result, the quick reaction of parents or caregivers is delayed, and as a result, these costs can become even more dangerous than severe influenza. What is meant by this?
For clarification, one experiment on animals can be cited. The caged chimpanzee was given a very difficult lock for a monkey. The monkey tried for a very long time and patiently to open it, and at last she succeeded. The monkey was very happy, he did not receive any additional rewards and felt only joy that he managed to open the lock, solve this riddle. Similar experiments with different designs were carried out repeatedly, and the result was always the same: the monkey did not give up his occupation until the problem was solved. However, from the moment when the monkey who opened the lock was rewarded with a banana, he agreed to mess with another, new lock only on the condition that a banana was prepared for him. This means that additional, extrinsic rewards have overwhelmed the significance of the feeling of inner satisfaction associated with the feeling of success and which is the basis of human behavior.
Every child from early childhood strives for competence in his environment, tries to know the objects of the outside world, learns how to handle them and cannot free himself from the craving for manipulating objects. To be convinced of this, it will be enough to observe the actions of a child of 1,5-2 years old, his desire to feel everything, to know everything and to understand everything. And the child cannot refuse to study with different objects until he finds out for himself their essence, purpose, functions, until he learns how to handle them correctly or almost correctly. The use of external rewards can be exactly the way that wean the child from this very important thing for a person.
Think about it, is it possible for a child to cheat at school with his friend because of his innate desire for success? A child will write off only if he is concerned not with his own knowledge, but with an A and the bicycle or cu that is due to him for an A. And in this situation, the child’s own knowledge does not bother, because otherwise the five received for written off work will depreciate in his eyes. Thus, we can see that the child, who in early childhood possessed this so important human quality, is gradually taught by external rewards that all his actions should be rewarded from outside. That is why rewards must be used very carefully, especially in cases where they are associated with the child’s manipulative or intellectual actions, and not with the reinforcement of his moral behavior. Personally, I think that all gifts for academic excellence should be discarded, with the possible exception of a book or other little thing that the child will receive from the parents at the end of the year.
Gifts are another matter entirely. A gift is always and under any circumstances given to a child as he really is — good and bad, in other words, a human personality with all its positive and negative sides. Rewards are given only for good behavior. This should be emphasized, if only because today it is not uncommon for parents to save even Santa Claus only for good children, while saying that he knows all the good guys who need to bring a gift. Among the usual statements of parents, the formula very often appears: if you behave well, you will get something on your birthday. Gifts should not be used for certain educational purposes, because the gift should serve to ensure that parents and children rejoice at each other, this is what gifts are designed to express. Naturally, these relationships are mutual, the child also makes gifts to parents, regardless of whether they are “included” in the lists of Santa Claus as good dad and mom or not.
Encouragement does indeed serve the purposes of education, but this means can be truly effective only if it is consciously used, if we maintain in the child the stimulating effect of a sense of our own success and reinforce it with our joy, a sense of satisfaction. The specificity of the relationship between parents and the child, his dependent position excludes the possibility that the feeling of success is perceived by the child very sharply if the parents do not sympathize with his actions and do not share with him the joy of success.