Role of Parents in Praising Their Children for Doing Good Discussion

For your initial post, from an operant conditioning perspective, why is it important for parents to “catch kids being good” and praise them? Why is this difficult to do? What are parents conditioned to respond to?

For your reply, how could parents overcome the difficulties raised by your classmate’s post above? Please be specific and use reinforcement principles in your answer.

This is my classmate’s post:

“The article explains how the parents are passionate about their kids. More than anything else, children want and need the attention of their parents, and they will do anything to get it. Praise is the positive attention and approval children crave from parents. Unfortunately, we often tend to give children negative attention only when they are doing something we do not like and miss opportunities to give them positive attention (praise) when they do things we want them to do. For example, we might not acknowledge a child who is sitting at the table eating dinner with the family. But if that child is running around the dining room instead of eating, we are all over him or her for misbehaving. In addition, parents should start giving more attention to the child’s positive behaviors so he or she starts associating that attention with doing something good. Parents can use verbal praise to do this; these statements might sound something like this: “Great job being gentle with your sister,” or “Thank you for keeping your hands to yourself even when you are mad.”

On the other hand, praise teaches kids which particular behaviors are appropriate and good to use. Simply saying something general like “Good job” does not let children know exactly what to do again next time. For example, praising a child who has a difficult time staying seated by saying, “I like how you are staying in your seat,” lets the child know exactly what he or she did and that he or she is able to do it.

Giving praise strengthens the relationship between children and their parents because children start to recognize that their parents see the positive things they do, not just the negatives. It’s much like the relationship in a marriage. If Mom cooks dinner every day and Dad never acknowledges it, but one time says, “This doesn’t taste good,” do you think Mom feels good about herself, wants to cook again, or has good feelings about Dad that day?”