Positive Punishment

In psychology we talked about the ways to effectively shape behavior of a child. Our book pointed out some negative effects of punishment such as:
1. child becomes aggressive towards the punisher, so they develop a mixed attitude of retaliation and avoidance toward them
2. punishing does not distinguish the behavior, it just suppresses it until the punishment is less likely. For example, a child may exhibit the bad behavior in a supermarket where a parent would feel uncomfortable spanking their child
3. punishment does not offer alternatives for bad behavior, so punishment has to be coupled with rewards of good behavior
4. child will become aggressive towards other children, so abusive parents raise abusive children
Punishment can be effectively administered though by:
1. punishing the child right after the bad behavior has taken place. Waiting too long to punish the child will cause confusion of what they did wrong
2. punishment has to be severe enough to make the child not want to repeat the action, but do not continually increase the punishment because then the child will adapt to the severity of the punishment like Chris was talking about in class.
3. punishment has to be applied consistently and both parents should punish in the same way
Source: Mastering the World of Psychology, Edition 4. by Samuel E. Wood, Ellen Green Wood, and Denise Boyd