19 November 2018
Dear child isn’t perfect with his sleep, but we’ve had some small improvements over the last week.
Dear wife has a hospital appointment on Tuesday of this week and I had to cycle in the morning. As a result I had to be out of the house early so that she could get ready and drop dear child at another parent’s house so they could walk both their child and ours to the same school.
Because this needed fine precision I bought two new alarm clocks for dear child and explained on Monday night how they worked. I drew pictures of what each would look like at 06:30 in the morning. I told dear child he could only get up to use the toilet.
The plan mostly works, but dear child still throws his bedding off his bed in the night on occasion.
I took dear child to the local park on his bike, he’s getting much better at bike riding now. He did two laps of the park, then I let him use the playground. He can now ride a bit without my assistance. He only has a bit of trouble pushing off. This is a massive improvement, he needed stabilisers a short while ago and has not used his bike much.
Today we went to two parties. I think this is too much for a single day. The carpark was hard work. I had to use my phone to try and park, then found that the automated system did not understand my pronunciation of P, it instead read it back as T, at least that’s how I heard it. Stupid computers.
This may be worth keeping for later:
There are four basic ways to correct a child’s behavior:
Positive reinforcement: Giving a reward for doing something good. “You were very good, so you may have a cookie.”
Negative reinforcement: Taking away a disliked thing for doing something good. “You were very good, so you get to stay up past your bedtime tonight.”
Positive punishment: Giving a bad thing for doing something bad. “You were bad, so I am going to hit you.”
Negative punishment: Taking away a good thing for doing something bad. “You were bad, so you’re grounded with no phone, computer, or tv.”
Spanking is a form of positive punishment. Studies have shown that spanking gets short-term results faster than other methods. However, long-term it is actually less effective than the other methods. In addition, children who were spanked tend to have more tension in their relationships with their parents, are more aggressive, and are more likely to use physical violence as a solution to their problems then children who are never spanked.
However, it is important to note that these studies tend to be retrospective; that is, they look at whether kids were spanked and how they turned out. Because of this, it’s possible that parents of kids who are more aggressive in the first place are more likely to spank, so we can’t 100% say spanking causes this. Nevertheless, the choice to spank seems to be more related to parenting style and culture than to individual kids’ behavior, so it’s likely true that spanking does cause at least some degree of negative psychological effects.
What we do know from studies on humans and other animals is that positive reinforcement works the best long-term. In other words, Susie will learn her table manners much better if she is rewarded for behaving well than punished for behaving poorly. If punishment is needed, then negative punishments such as time outs for younger children and grounding for older children are preferable to positive punishments like hitting.
Again, this isn’t just true for humans. If you take a dog training class, you will be instructed to give treats when the dog does something desired (positive reinforcement.) You will also likely be told never to hit a dog, as it makes them more aggressive. The same principles have also been shown to work in rats, birds, and other animals we have done behaviour experiments on.
In short, the only thing spanking brings to the table is it gets faster results. Other than that, it’s inferior to other methods of behaviour correction and has the potential to make kids more aggressive, which is why most modern psychologists and paediatricians are discouraging the practice.