Punishment encourages minimum behaviors-just enough to avoid punishments. Extrinsic forces work only if the outside force is present.

Punitive Schools

Visitors sense the atmosphere in a school within minutes. The students are friendly and smiling or snarling and angry. Bullying may be rampant or rare. Graffiti is absent or quite visible. There are many signs that reveal the tone in a building.

When punishment is the dominant strategy, tension is everywhere. Both teachers and students are tense. Students are tense looking over their shoulder and teachers are tense trying to be everywhere to enforce rules.

"Psychologists believe that punishment won’t work because you can never punish in a way that meets the requirements for the effective use of punishment that psychologists have defined:

• Immediacy
• Severity
• Consistency

When punishment is used to control behavior, people perform at a level just sufficient to avoid the punishment. Speed limits are an example. If the speed limit is 55, most people drive 60-63 m.p.h. because they know if they go over 65, they will be punished." [gosmallbiz.com]

Parenting With Dignity

Mac Bledsoe’s book, Parenting With Dignity, is based on investigation of human behaviors. "Buck Minor, the cowboy on our ranch, used to always say, "If you teach an animal a lesson by meanness or cruelty, don’t be surprised if the animal remembers the meanness and cruelty and forgets the lesson!" [Mac Bledsoe, parentingwithdignity.com]

Focus on Punishment

Bledsoe gives several reasons why punishment does not work. Punishment guarantees resistance to the artificial punishment—spanking, grounding, or loss of privileges. The child is so focused on the punishment that the inappropriate behavior is all but forgotten. Trying to change a child’s behavior will create resistance. Adding punishment will increase the resistance. A spanked child will be thinking about the pain, how much they dislike the parent that inflicted the pain, and how they will try to not get caught next time. The child is not thinking, "Wow. I should not have used those inappropriate words. I will turn over a new leaf and never use those words again." No. The child is thinking how they will use the words next time without getting caught. [Mac Bledsoe, parentingwithdignity.com]

Anger Toward the Punisher

When the child is punished, this allows the child to be justified to have anger toward the punisher. It gives them someone to blame instead of looking at the behavior that put them in this situation. A child that was spanked for running in the house will plan to run when adults are not around.

Effect Extinguishes Rapidly

The effect of punishment is quite short. As soon as a child is released from the consequence or when the bottom stops hurting, the behavior is likely to return quickly. The focus was not on the behavior but on the punishment. The punishment is over – I am free! The punishment cycle becomes a game of cat and mouse. "I’m going to get smarter at not getting caught."

Punisher Is Trapped

The person following through with the punishment must but be on guard at all times. The child will be testing how vigilant the enforcer actually is. In fact, a child that has broken one rule may just push the envelope to see how many other rules they can break and not get caught.

"It is not the duty of adults to create new punishments, but rather to point out the negative consequences inherent in the child’s negative actions…and to suggest positive alternatives. [Mac Bledsoe, parentingwithdignity.com]

Reasons Punishment Doesn't Work by Mac Bledsoe

Related articles: Teens Tried As Adults A Failure, Cheating Is On The Rise

Read previous articles on Educational Issues.

Copyright article 2008 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.