Who should read this chapter? Parents who want to understand the behavior of their children. Why do children do the things they do? To understand many aspects of child behavior, understanding reinforcement principles allows parents to understand why parental actions often unintentionally reward undesirable behavior in our children.

Summary: Use negative reinforcement (punishment) to discourage unwanted behavior. Use positive reinforcement (reward) to encourage desirable behavior. Partial (inconsistent) reinforcement is STRONGER than consistent positive reinforcement. Parents ideally should avoid unintentional positive and especially partial reinforcement of undesirable childhood behaviors, since by doing so, you will be encouraging unwanted behavior.

We learn to do things based on reward and punishment. This is very basic and it is almost as if we were animals. We are animals, but we are very smart animals. Kids are very smart. Even infants are incredibly smart. But since they don't talk, their intelligence is not that obvious to us. Since infants and children are very intelligent, they easily learn some behaviors through reinforcement that we as parents provide to them.

I can teach my dog to stay out of my tool shed by spanking him every time he goes in there. He eventually learns that he will get punished (something bad will happen to him) if he goes into the tool shed. Thus, he soon learns to stay out of the tool shed. Whenever a punishment is used to discourage a behavior, this punishment is called negative reinforcement.

I can teach my dog to shake hands by grabbing his hand, followed by giving him a dog biscuit. If I keep doing this, my dog learns to bring his paw up to shake hands so that he can get a dog biscuit. The reward (the dog biscuit) encourages the dog to perform a behavior. Whenever a reward is used to encourage a behavior, this reward is called positive reinforcement.

The CONSISTENCY of positive reinforcement is a factor. I could give my dog a biscuit each time he shakes hands. This represents consistent positive reinforcement. Or, I could give my dog a biscuit only sometimes when he shakes hands. This represents "PARTIAL reinforcement". While it may seem that consistent positive reinforcement is better, it turns out that partial reinforcement is stronger.

If I were a dog who liked dog biscuits, I would eventually understand that whenever I shake my paw, I get a dog biscuit under consistent positive reinforcement. Thus, I could relax and be lazy. When my master tells me to shake hands, I could take my time and lift my paw a little, and I would get a dog biscuit.

If instead, my master preferred to use PARTIAL reinforcement, my life as a dog would be more challenging. Whenever I lift my paw to shake hands, I get a dog biscuit only sometimes. This encourages me to provide a vigorous hand shake, instead of a lazy one. Since I only get a dog biscuit sometimes, I want to shake hands (paw) as many times as possible. I'm not going to be lazy about it. There's no guarantee that I will get a dog biscuit; I have to work for it.

Hopefully with my dog biscuit example, I've convinced you that partial reinforcement is stronger than consistent positive reinforcement. If I haven't convinced you, believe me when I say that there are many studies that have demonstrated this conclusively. While children are not dogs, these examples are just used to understand some basic elements of behavior. To understand some aspects of child behavior, we as parents must understand the usual responses to positive, negative and partial reinforcement. This concept that partial reinforcement is stronger than positive reinforcement is important in understanding many aspects of your child's behavior.

Another general principle of child development is that the younger years of a child are more impressionable than their later years. In other words, a lesson taught to a child at age 4 years is likely to be firmly embedded in their basic behavior, compared to the same lesson taught to them at age 20 years. For example, wouldn't you agree that teaching a child that smoking is bad for health at ages 5, 6, 7 and 8 years of age is more effective than telling them this for the first time at ages 15, 16, 17 and 18? Of course this is so. You must not lose the opportunity to make an impression on them during their early years. Be there for them and impress your parental wisdom upon them. Honesty, integrity, intelligence and sensitivity are just some of these characteristics that should ideally be presented to them in childhood.