Growing up my parents never let me fall behind in schoolwork. In second grade I remember I was not doing well in most of my subjects. I was uninterested in science, reading and social studies. After my first report card came out and my parents saw that I was getting Cs and Ds they were very upset. They obviously wanted this to change, so they began thinking of ways to try to change this behavior. I was not allowed to watch TV for two weeks until I started doing better in school. The negative punishment made me do all of my homework and assignments and soon enough my grades were improving. However, I was still not doing well on tests and quizzes. After taking away TV for a little while my grades improved to a higher C.
My dad decided that he wanted to try something new and told me on my next report card for every B I got he would give me 10 dollars and for ever A he would give me 20. As a 7 year old I was extremely excited that I had an opportunity to earn money. I accepted his offer and started catching up on all my work. Positive reinforcement was much more effective in shaping me to start doing better in school.
By the time my next report card came out I was doing much better and school and only had one C. I had started raising my grades to mostly Bs and when I received the money I was extremely happy. My sister took me to the mall so I could go shopping with my own money. I enjoyed shopping with my own money and was determined to continue keeping my grades up.
When I got my last report card I had all As and Bs and my parents were very proud of my improvement. My dad continued to give me money for my grades until I was in the 7th grade. However, even though he stopped giving me money for my grades I still was on top of my work and did well in school. Since my dad started giving me positive stimuli at 7 years old and continued for the next 6 years I developed good study habits. I am very happy that my dad tried a form of positive reinforcement because it benefitted me in the long run and it made me a very happy child.
For me, I never had any type of positive reinforcement. My parents were firm believers of negative reinforcement. I remember that anytime i ever got in trouble or was not doing so good in school, everything would be taken away from me. No matter how well I did though i never was rewarded in any way. I feel like it was just expected of me and that is how i feel today now. However, I do not agree 100% with pure negative or positive reinforcement. For me I feel like there needs to be a nice mixture of the two.
An excellent example of positive reinforcement and negative punishment was exhibited through the use of your examples. Your dad demonstrated not only how to enforce negative punishment but also how to use positive reinforcements in order to improve a desired behavior. The correct use of negative punishment, where he banned you from watching TV was able to decrease the negative behavior of not doing your homework. When positive reinforcements was introduced through the reward of money for every A and B on your report card it was able to motivate you to be able to improve your study habits in order to get these grades. Your father was a successful parent who wanted his daughter to improve in her studies. He came up with a way to weaken what was inhibiting his daughter from attaining better grades in school and still sought out to reward the behavior he wanted to see in his daughter. He was successful not only because it worked but also because his daughter still continues to get good grades without being rewarded but rather understands the value of getting good grades.
In elementary school, my 4th grade teacher would send out biweekly reports to our parents commenting on our progress in class. Absolutely everything we did in class, whether it was good or bad was in that report. Whenever my teacher commented that I was improving in math, which I hated (and still do) my parents would be very happy. My dad would take me to my favorite candy store and let me get as many candies as I wanted. Unfortunately, whenever I received a poor homework or test grade, the visits to the candy store we taken away and I had to complete one hour of extra homework time. Whether or not I finished my homework fast enough to be able to watch my favorite TV show it didn’t matter, I had to open up my math book and review for an hour. Eventually, I started trying harder in math because I hated doing homework for an extra hour instead of watching TV. Over time, my grades in math improved so I guess it was a good thing for my dad to enforce this kind of “positive punishment.”
My parents did the same thing with me as well! When I was in middle school, I really didn’t care about whether or not I did well in class. I usually got B’s but my math was very weak and it was always borderline C/D. They would tell me to study but the majority of the time I just pretended to study. One day they told me if I managed to raise my math grades to a B and keep it until the year ended they would give me $100. Somehow I pulled it off and got my reward. It was actually really beneficial in the end not just because of the money, but I was able to enter the advanced placement class the next year.
I thought you did a great job incorporating the topic and the explanation; it flowed really well.
I was in a similar situation as you one year in middle school. My grades dropped significantly when I started the sixth grade and, needless to say, my parents were upset. They used several tactics that can be classified as punishment by removal to get me back on track. I was denied TV time during weeknights and was only allowed to use the computer for academic purposes. I also was not allowed to buy new luxury items till my grades reflected improvement. The loss of these privileges undoubtedly motivated me to get my grades up and I was able to focus on my studies. My Dad would also tutor me in math on Saturday mornings. I was not happy about missing out on Saturday morning cartoons and worked hard to do well. I would also consider this a form of punishment by application because those sessions were brutal and my Dad is a very loud and impatient teacher.
Although I was very resentful at the time, I am glad my parents were strict. I got straight A’s on my next report card. My parents’ use of punishment by removal not only allowed me to develop a good work ethic early on, but also taught me to stick to it if I wanted to enjoy the fun aspects of my life.
This brings a very good point that positive reinforcement is much better and effective than negative reinforcement. I imagine that when your parents took away the TV, you were upset and not jumping to get started on school work. However, the money brought excitement and so much more motivation to do well. We never discussed in class the better reinforcement option, but this helps to prove that positive reinforcement works much better. It simply seems more logical to want to make someone happy and motivated than to make them feel frustrated and forced.
Grace,
My parents did the exact same thing! When I entered first grade, the ground rules were laid out in a very similar fashion. Every time I got an A on my report card, I got seven dollars. Seven dollars, of course, really added up at the time. Five As meant $35, and that could buy quite a bit for an elementary school kid. I think it is interesting that your parents first used a combination of punishment by taking the TV away, and reinforcement by giving it back when you began to do better. It seems as though the straight reinforcement worked better for you than punishment. I wonder is this is a trend among kids this age. Regardless, I am happy that we both ended up doing well.
Thanks for the well written post,
Chris
Growing up my parents would use negative punishment on me for everything I did wrong. They would take away TV time, ground me, and take away dessert. Like you, I didn’t respond very well. I found myself still doing the things my parents didn’t want me to do, I just did them when my parents weren’t looking. I think if my parents would have implemented a positive reinforcement policy for not doing bad things or for doing good things, I would have been more inclined to follow their orders. Your example of your parents using money to help motivate you to get good grades was a great example positive reinforcement that accurately depicts just how it works. Good Job!
I agree with you that positive reinforcement is way better than negative reinforcement. My parents did the same thing for me when I was younger with the money and the grades. Right when they started giving me money for good grades I got way better. My parents never really punished me for bad grades so I don’t really know what the negative side of this is like, but I can say from experience that positive reinforcement definitely works! I learned a lot from positive reinforcement and would treat my kids the same way.