How Safe Preschools Should Punish Students
What does punishment do?
When a child does something wrong, they must be punished. Right? Maybe not. Parkland Children’s Academy feels the same way with their safe preschool approach. Research done by Alan Kazdin, PhD, and his colleagues at the Yale Parenting Center has shown that negative types of discipline such as spanking or time-outs do little to actually change behavior. They don’t teach why the behavior is wrong or what the better alternatives are, to the behavior. Mostly, punishment simply makes the person in the authoritative position feel better, as if they are making a difference, but they actually aren’t.
What are the alternatives?
Preempting bad behavior can allow the teacher to start changing behavior. Kazdin has shown that if a child is identified to have a specific way of misbehaving then you can work with the child to alter this behavior. He uses the example of a tantrum. If the child is violent and does into full meltdown, then taking the child while they are in a good mood and working on tantrums can start to change them. Tell the child that you want to play a game and say they can throw a tantrum, but within some rules, such as no violence. The child will see it as a game and play along. Afterwards congratulate them on the good job.
After a few sessions of these mock scenarios, the child will have a real tantrum and you will notice that it wasn’t as violent as it used to. You can then acknowledge this, even though the child threw a tantrum they were better than they used to be, so they did well.
When a child does something wrong, it is easy for a teacher to see this and then punish it, but what about when a child does something right? Is the child praised? More often than not it goes unnoticed, because humans notice negative behavior much sooner than positive behavior. This attitude can cause children to act out and behave badly. So when you are trying to change behavior even minor changes for the better should be acknowledged and praised. The child will latch onto this praise and attempt to do better. Often a cycle of misbehavior and punishment can just aggravate the situation.
Why do they work?
Children need to be taught what is a good attitude and what is a bad attitude. Not that being angry is bad and you must always be happy. They need to be shown that it is okay to be angry and upset, and that they can behave well even when they are unhappy. By practicing techniques of displaying anger in a good way, the child internalizes these behaviors. Then when they do become angry they can draw on these good techniques instead of the violent or destructive ones. If the teacher or parent praises them for being angry in a good way, the child feels loved and realizes that this a better response then when they become destructive.
This method of positive reinforcement is used by Yale Parenting center for all the children they work with, because it simply gives better results than punishment, and therefore it should be used by all preschools.