Let’s punish the kids, give them rewards.

Everyone has heard of the age old adage “ Spare the rod and spoil the child”. Is that always the case one must ask? If you look back at the punishments admonished, have they always worked? Usually stemming from your reaction to the situation, it is mostly anger on your part and it does solve the situation temporarily. But has your child NOT done the same said bad behavior again. Nine times out of tens this is the case, our children are serial rule breakers. So once again why engage in this vicious cycle of emotionally exhausting behavior, shouting, screaming, punishments and eventually the parent who feels worse than the child. Don’t get me wrong I have done my fair share of screaming, ear pulling and bottom smacking when really pushed to the edge. But the reality is that it hasn’t worked and I’m just tired of it all.

I wanted parenting to be like the “Ingalls” family on Little House on the Praire, all fun, laughter, rolling down hills in utter familial bliss, where the parents are to always be obeyed and the children are models of extreme good behavior. Crash, bang and stop the Little House on the Prairie theme song, my home front version is drastically different. Children run amok, I usually run after them screaming threats and punishments. But enough is enough, for peace and harmony to prevail I am willing to try a totally different approach to my self-made conundrum of parenting strife and that revolves around reward parenting. According to a school of thought known as “parenting through your heart”, punishments, threats and timeouts are infact futile attempts at parenting and do more harm than good. Punishments are unpleasant consequences we enforce on our children when they have done something wrong in the return that they will not do it again. Whilst threats are made to frighten children of consequences that could happen to them and timeouts are forcing children to be isolated in their own emotional hurt. In retrospect, when you look back at the choices of admonishment, I myself am shocked. We emotionally scar our children in the hopes that their behavior will conform to our expectations.

As an adult how would I feel if the above punishments were adhered on me?.Just because one is a child, does not mean threats and ultimatums are acceptable modes of behavior to suffer through. A possible solution to the problem, reward based parenting. It is simply rewarding good behavior. A child behaves well, gets rewarded through a gift or praise. A child behaves badly, we calmly explain how they will not be rewarded. HA…I hear you say, she’s gone loony it won’t work. Obviously we will have to adjust our rewards and praise given according to the age of the child.

Rewarding and praising children is just common sense parenting. When good behavior is recognized and acknowledged children wallow in the feel good factor of it all. When the much sought after reward is not received because of bad behavior or disobedient behavior children will soon adapt to it. There might be skeptics who say this sort of behavior is only extrinsic based and doesn’t come from within the child But when children grow up with this sort of behavior it becomes a mode of thinking, the desire to do well, please yourself and others. Of course as the parent one must be wise in the rewards and promises given. But it would probably be more effective and less emotionally stressful than screaming and shouting orders. As a parent who is on a constant search to get things right or to make my parenting days less hazardous to my health and well demeanour, I am willing to try anything. For the sake of some peace and harmony lets give reward parenting a chance.

By Mayuri Jayasinghe