Transcript Discipline

DISCIPLI
NE
To produce a child is simply a matter of
biology. To “parent” a child is a difficult role to
fulfill.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a Pyramid of
Human Needs, an hierarchy of needs critical to survival.
It is the parent’s job to help meet these
needs of their child:
1. The child has physical needs of food,
water, shelter
2. The child must feel and be safe from
harm
3. The child must feel love, a sense of
belonging; acceptance
4. The child must feel a sense of self-worth
5. The child must strive to be “all that they
can be” (fulfillment/ self-actualization))
In order to help the child satisfactorily meet these needs throughout
their lifetime, the parent must provide guidelines for
One of the most challenging
aspect’s of the parent’s job is
discipline.
Discipline is “the task of helping
children learn to behave in
acceptable way within the family
and within society”.
The ultimate goal of discipline is to help children
achieve self-discipline… the ability to control one’s
own behavior.
With excellent guidance, children gradually begin to
understand why certain actions are right or
wrong…developing a conscience!
An adult can discipline a child without having an “attachment” to that child,
but a strong bond between the parent and child is very effective… making
the process of disciplining easier.
1. Communicate
your respect to your child in word and deed each day.
2. Listen and respond to your child’s feelings as well as their words.
3. Model and teach courtesy, patience, kindness, thoughtfulness, honesty,
loyalty, responsibility, fairness, and forgiveness.
4. Give your child age-appropriate responsibilities at home. This solidifies
their sense of worth in a measurable way.
5. Recognize, acknowledge, and praise your child when s/he makes an
effort to do something good. Make a big deal out of it!
6. Avoid destructive expressions of anger such as insulting, sarcasm,
shaming. Try to discipline with dignity.
1)
While parents can be
friendly, they should not
be a friend.
2) They need you to be an
authority figure who lets
them know where the
boundaries of acceptable
behavior are.
3) Trying to be his or her
friend will only undermine
your authority as a parent.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in a
small Pennsylvania town.
-Originally studied English.
-Masters in psychology in 1930.
(Harvard)
-Doctorate in 1931.
(Harvard)
-In 1945, he became the chairman of the
psychology department at Indiana University.
He was renowned for his theories on human behavior...
the basis of many of today’s discipline methods.
B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant
conditioning.
While operating on the environment, an organism will
encounter a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing
stimulus, or simply a reinforcer.
This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the
operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the
reinforcer.
“the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the
nature of the consequence modifies the organisms
tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
Imagine a rat in a cage. This is a special cage (called,
in fact, a “Skinner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one
wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to
release a food pellet into the cage.
The rat is wandering around the cage, doing whatever
it is rats do, when it accidentally presses the bar and - presto! -- a food pellet falls into the cage! The
operant is the behavior (pressing the bar) just prior to
the reinforcer (the food pellet).
In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at
the bar, hoarding a pile of pellets in the corner of the
cage.
A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results
in an increased probability of that behavior occurring
in the future.
Skinner
discovered that
if you reintroduced the
reinforcer after
having removed
it, the operant
behavior
resumed more
quickly than it
had originally
developed.
At one point in his experiments, Skinner decided to reduce the number
of reinforcements he gave his rats.
The rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate. This is
how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement!
To encourage or produce a specific
behavior, continuous reinforcement
must be used initially.
Once the pattern of behavior-followedby-reinforcement appears quite well
established, the reinforcement does not
always have to be used. The desired
behavior will continue with only
intermittent or variable reinforcements.
An aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus,
something we might find unpleasant or painful. An aversive
stimulus is commonly referred to as punishment.
A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased
probability of the behavior occurring in the future.
Statistics show that
behaviors change more
quickly with the use of
punishment than with
the use of reinforcers,
BUT more permanently
with the use of
reinforcers rather than
punishment.
The reinforcements we have referred to in previous slides are
“positive reinforcements”… in rats this might be a food pellet; in
children it might be a desired stimulus such as praise.
There are also “negative reinforcements”. These are not necessarily
the same as punishment. The child’s behavior changes in order to
stop an existing punishment or aversive stimulus.
Example:
1. The child does not like the parent
to nag them about taking out the
garbage.
2. The child takes out the garbage.
3. The parent stops nagging.
Shaping is a method of “successive approximations.” First, you reinforce a
behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired, then you reinforce
variations that come a little closer to what you want.
Application: I want my child to help put away
groceries when they are brought home every Friday.
What steps might I take to “shape this behavior”?
Example: A little boy is afraid to go down a
slide. He gets picked up, put at the end of the
slide. He jumps off and is showered with
praise. He is then picked up and put a foot or
so up the slide and slides down: more
praise. Eventually, he can be put at the top of
the slide and slide all the way down and jump
off. His behavior has been “shaped”.