Suggestions For Raising Children In America

(And Other Democracies)

 

Rearing children in America, i.e., a democracy, means trying to raise individuals who are self-directing.  The whole idea is that children control themselves, rather than us controlling them.  A good many 18 year olds are floundering because they have not learned to be self-directing.  Recently, the enormously influential and successful actor/entertainer Bill Cosby has come to the fore addressing the need for strong parenting. 

 

However, most of our homes utilize a system of Praise and Punishment.  Praise can be just as discouraging as Punishment.  Both are based on someone outside ourselves evaluating our actions.  How we feel about ourselves is much more important.

 

We are going to go over some concepts now involving Locus of Control, some Learning Theory, Behavior Management Techniques, and Psychic Economy.

 

Finding out where the power is in yours or your child’s life can be simplified (it’s called Attribution Theory or Rotter’s Internal-External Locus of Control).  Do we attribute the things that happen in our lives to our own efforts or to something outside ourselves?  A simplified model follows:

 

                                                                         Internal            Ability             Effort

                             

                                   

                                                                        External            Difficulty           Luck               

 

One way to figure this out is to take a sample of something you or your child (if old enough to write) has previously written, or multiple samples of things said.  Analyze these samples in terms of the outcomes being described as attributed to one’s own ability, effort (things about the person) or Task Difficulty and Luck (things outside the person). 

 

Another example would be if your child made an “A” on a test.  They could say, “I should have, I’m smart enough!” (Ability) or, “I should have, I studied a whole week!” (Effort) or, “It was an easy test!” (Task Difficulty) or, “I just marked “C” to everything!” (Luck).

 

While we need to recognize Task Difficulty and the role of Luck in our lives, it is our Ability and Efforts that we can manage. 

 

An aside here is that it is our mood (long term emotional traits) that determines what happens to us in life.  Trying to cope with your thoughts will keep you up at night, because thoughts only last from moment to moment. 

 

Punishment is a bad thing.  A very, very bad thing.  There is a similar but more effective technique, Negative Reinforcement, particularly when paired with Positive Reinforcement.  It follows.

 

 

Some Of The Problems With Punishment

 

1.   You often say what you don’t want, not what you do want.  “Stop that!”  “Quit that!”  “Leave that alone!” 

“Don’t do that!”  We don’t say what to do in its place.

 

2.   It only suppresses behavior (as long as you are around to punish, it doesn’t occur; turn your back or leave,

      and it is right back at full strength).

 

3.   It oftentimes punishes the punisher.  You might have looked forward to taking your child somewhere nice or

      seeing them get something they especially wanted.  Now you

     can’t because they’re “on punishment.”  You also have to cope with their sulking.

 

4.  Punishment only extinguishes a behavior if it is severe.  There could be dire

     consequences to severe punishment (injuries to the child, yourself) or reports made to

     Child Protective Services.

 

5.  Oftentimes you punish good behavior as well as bad.  “Just wait till I get home, you’ll get a whipping you

      won’t forget!”  In the meantime, the child may be totally compliant, which also gets punished.

 

6.   It evokes the “Fight or Flight response” hardwired into our nervous system.  Punished children either

      withdraw (“learned helplessness—anxious, or depressed by some theoretical schemes) or attack.  If they

      attack, it may be passive aggressive (i.e., its not what they do, its what they don’t do—they forget, lose

      things, don’t finish things, give you partial information, put things off to the last minute).  Or it may be overt

      aggression—stealing, lying, runaway, fighting, drugs, etc.

 

7.  Punishment involves someone controlling the child rather than the child controlling themselves.

 

So, how do you get around it?

 

If you Give your child something your child considers pleasant, that is Positive Reinforcement.  If you Take Away something your child considers pleasant, that’s Punishment.  If you Give something unpleasant (e.g., spanking, a grounding, or a time out), that’s Punishment.  If, however, you Take Away something unpleasant, that’s what we call Negative Reinforcement (I’ll explain in a bit).

 

Reinforcement, whether it is positive or negative, increases the likelihood of a response.

Punishment decreases the likelihood of a response, but it has the identified drawbacks.

 

Your child is supposed to put their dirty clothes in the family hamper each day.  Everyday they fail to do this.  Day after day, this begins to make you more and more angry (this emotion itself tells you something, which I’ll address below).  On Wednesday, you’re fed up so when you notice their dirty clothes on the floor, you tell them to go to time out for 30 minutes.  This is Punishment.  If, instead, you said, “This is Wednesday and I see your clothes are on the floor from Sunday.  I want you to stop what you’re doing and go sit in the time out chair until you can come tell me:  1) Where we agreed they are supposed to be taken and, 2) your plan to do this now and in the future without requiring reminders.  This is Negative Reinforcement.  The child getting out of the chair is not dependent on the clock ticking, it is depending on their doing something, i.e., changing their behavior.

Another example of Punishment v. Negative Reinforcement is the child that you have indulged.  You have given them everything they have asked for, bought them what ever they wanted, and they are sulking.  They are unhappy and you cannot make them happy. 

 

Punishment again would be “I’m tired of your whining, pouting, brooding, sulking.  Go to time out until I say you can come out.”

 

Negative Reinforcement would be “I’m tired of your whining, pouting, brooding, sulking.  Go to time out until you can come out and say something pleasant.  Again, their coming out of time out is not based on an arbitrary time that you impose, but on their behavior changing.

 

These interventions can be analyzed with the following chart:

 

                                                                                                Pleasant                  Unpleasant

 

                                                                              Give     Positive                Punishment

                                                                                           Reinforcement

                                   

                                                                              Take    Punishment          Negative

                                                                                                                        Reinforcement                

 

 

 

Borrowing from Dinkmeyer and McKay’s Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP Parenting program) is a model to use your emotions to determine what is going on between you and your child.

 

 

                                                            If You Feel:                      Your Child’s Goal Is:             Your Child Feels:

 

                                                              Annoyed                                   Attention                         Annoyed & Ignored

 

                                                              Angry                                     Power, Control                   Angry because they think they are over-                                                                                                                                                                               controlled or out-of-control

 

                                                              Hurt                                       Revenge                                   Hurt

  

                                                              Disappointed;                                                                   Disappointed;

                                                              Discouraged;                                                                    Discouraged;

                                                              Like giving up                         Lower Expectations            Like giving up

                 

 

 

Psychic Economy

Your mind can productively input, store, and process a limited amount of information.  Your “psyche” is affected by the breadth and depth of your “phenomenological field” (personal resources, the combination of your personality, intelligence, familial background, life circumstance and life experiences). 

Since there is only so much of you to go round, there are several institutions existing in society to help people cope.  These include Government, Family, Religion, Education, Economics (work), Language (e.g., reading), Arts, Recreation, and Healthcare.  Analyze your own family’s involvement in these and where you’re over-involved and under-involved and adjust your life accordingly.  Try to fight only those battles you think you can win.  Save much of the rest to help nurture yourself and those around you.

  

Summing up,

 

“Catch your child in the act of doing good” and ask them how they feel about what they’ve done.  Once they affirm they feel good about it, only then add that it makes you feel good, too.  This reinforces they’re being able to bring about good feelings in themselves without waiting for others being around to validate them, and that they can bring about good feelings in others.

 

When you experience the same emotion as another person (such as you child), we call that empathy (not sympathy).

 

Tell your child what to do as well as what not to do.

 

Ask your child to tell you What they did, not Why.  This makes communication very clear.  Most of the time they will answer “Why did you do that?” with “I don’t know.”  Guess what?  Probably they don’t know.

 

“What did you do?“ “I didn’t put my clothes in the dirty clothes, as promised.”  Then, as above, you say:

“This is Wednesday and I see your clothes are on the floor from Sunday.  I want you to stop what you’re doing and go sit in the time out chair until you can come tell me:  1) Where we agreed they are supposed to be taken and, 2) your plan to do this now and in the future without requiring reminders. 

 

Do your best to treat your child with respect and they will respect you. 

 

We hope you find these techniques helpful.  Please feel free to save this webpage as a document.  Print it and share it with others if you wish.

 

References:

Dinkmeyer, Don Sr., McKay, Gary, D., and Dinkmeyer, Don Jr. (1997).   The Parent's Handbook: Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP).  Atascadero, Ca:  Impact Publishers, Inc.

National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, US Dept. of Education http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/dropout/ExecSumm2.asp

Rotter, Julian. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcements, Psychological Monographs, 80, Whole No. 609.

Schaffer, Donald.  Personal Communication:  1995.

Seidman, Alan.   The Center for the Study of College Student Retention (CSCSR)