No spanking

Look under ‘posters & stickers’

I am pleased to call readers’ (both of you) attention to NoSpank.net. Although much of the advocacy presented there promotes parenting and teaching practices that have limited scientific bases, the organizing feature is a rejection of the use of physical violence as a disciplinary method. I support that effort.

There are at least 40-11 better alternatives, starting with teaching the child or youth what to do. More specifically and technically, here is a list of alternative methods for reducing the chances that a behavior will occur in the future:

1. Determine what environmental factors are prompting or sustaining the behavior and change them (i.e., conduct a functional behavioral assessment).
2. Differentially reinforce incompatible behavior.
3. Differentially reinforce alternative behavior.
4. Differentially reinforce other behavior.
5. Differentially reinforce lower rates of behavior.
6. Employ a non-contingent reinforcement procedure (i.e., deliver a reinforcer that is associated with the misbehavior on a temporal rather than contingency basis; this is essentially another form of differential reinforcement).
7. Remove all reinforcing consequences for the behavior (i.e., use an extinction procedure).
8. Implement response-cost procedures.
9. Use non-exclusionary time-out procedures.

Just about any basic textbook on behavior modification will provide details about these procedures, including examples of their application and references to research documenting their effects.

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