> Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away.
We adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago and this was the exact advice we were given for how to train her. Puppies and little kids are remarkably similar, and the key to training a dog is not to "punish" them when they do something wrong (they'll just get scared of you), but rather to reinforce the good behaviors, reward them when they listen, and essentially just ignore them when they don't.
In practice, after a year, this technique has worked great. Our puppy listens to us, respects us, and despite being absolutely crazy, will drop everything if she hears us call her. We didn't even need to train her to avoid eating the baby's toys since I think she understood that she received more praise when playing with "her" toys.
Our baby is only six months old so we'll have to report back in a decade as to whether this approach works well with kids too. :)
We adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago and this was the exact advice we were given for how to train her. Puppies and little kids are remarkably similar, and the key to training a dog is not to "punish" them when they do something wrong (they'll just get scared of you), but rather to reinforce the good behaviors, reward them when they listen, and essentially just ignore them when they don't.
In practice, after a year, this technique has worked great. Our puppy listens to us, respects us, and despite being absolutely crazy, will drop everything if she hears us call her. We didn't even need to train her to avoid eating the baby's toys since I think she understood that she received more praise when playing with "her" toys.
Our baby is only six months old so we'll have to report back in a decade as to whether this approach works well with kids too. :)