One of my favourite books is Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. He outlines the research evidence as to why rewards and punishments are not helpful for parenting (nor in the classroom or in the workplace). They do provide short term behaviour change, but at a cost. They can damage relationships between children and parents, they ignore the reason a child is behaving in a particular way (thus they do not feel listened to or understood). When it comes to learning they discourage risk taking (you learn more from mistakes than getting things right) and lower the childs interest in the activity, they become more focused on getting the reward or avoiding the punishment.
One of the biggest responses to this when I mention it to people is that children need to learn consequences. They need to grow up knowing they cannot go round hitting people or robbing banks! Let’s take an example. Little Johnny gets angry or frustrated whilst playing with his younger sister and lashes out and hits her. A common response may be to send him to his bedroom (or the ‘thinking step’, or even worse the ‘naughty step’) for him to think about his actions.
The chances are Johnny will not spend the time out thinking about the connection between cruelty and unpleasant consequences. He is more likely to be increasingly angry with his parents for not understanding him and why he did it (and thus is less likely to talk about his reasons or other things at other times). He may even be plotting to be cleverer as he plots his revenge on his sister.
Also this action puts the focus on Johnny rather than him understanding how his sister felt. I would have thought we want children to think how their actions may affect other people and not do them because they ‘are wrong’ and you may ‘suffer consequences’. The reason not to be a bully is not that you may get punched back or put in detention, the reason not to rob a bank is not purely because you may go to jail.
I long to see children grown up as responsible decision makers, not being controlled by short term behaviour manipulation.
I know this may be controversial, I would love to hear your comments.
Russell