Bit of an old thread, but I was thinking about this.
One of the most frustrating unintended consequences of not following a reward/punishment model of child raising is the ridicule it engenders. Ridicule that I don?t dish out to parents who fall into the behaviourist model of childrearing. I don?t mock people who have used Supernanny style tactics ? even though I have my reasons for believing that approach is ineffective and short-termist.
- You are seen as a hippy not living in the real world
- You can only possibly have one obedient girl child
- You probably will homeschool
- You cannot establish effective boundaries
- You negotiate for hours about every single choice
- That your child cannot form relationships with authority figures in a different mode
- That you can never take charge and put a child to bed/brush teeth/leave the house
- Your child will become a self-centred, spoilt brat (yes, the language people use is quite vivid, it obviously upsets some people)
I suspect confirmation bias plays its part in how people view this. They know, or suspect, a parent of following this approach (it is not a theory any more than the behaviourist model is a ?theory?) and see the child behave badly, baulk at doing something, or seek ?lengthy? explanation.
But all children do this to some extent, some of the time. You would have to monitor an awful lot of a given child?s behaviour in controlled settings to really know if is ineffective parenting, a lack of boundaries, or a child simply being challenging (as they all are at times).
But if you have followed one path, the temptation to look at someone doing something quite differently, see so-called ?undesirable? behaviour in the child, and put it down to that. It validates your own (no-doubt) excellent parenting. This is rife in the realm of parenting, where there is no proven right way to do things.
In real life I think some parents do explain, respect, take into consideration, their children?s feelings instinctively. They may not sweat the small stuff. They may not use time outs and reward charts and shout ?BECAUSE I?M IN CHARGE?. They may understand that their child is more emotionally intelligent and sensitive than some give them credit for.
But that?s not to say the idea of constant praise, rewards and punishments isn?t deeply ingrained in our culture.
I will defend Kohn to an extent. He comes under a lot of flak ? some of which I do agree with -- and is viewed as a bit of a media tart. But he has an important point to make; behaviourism has more or less been discredited by modern psychology but it still forms the basis of how we raise children, treat employees and educate our children. That lag is hard to understand.