[Tichy]

Do you think kids should be trained like pets? It seems a lot of people do, they also think they own their kids somehow. Sad...

As I said in another comment: personally I hope my kid will end up doing what is right because he believes it the right thing to do, not because of fear of punishment.

Not saying that punishment is never necessary (I am not sure). Obviously it works, because people (and animals) can learn from pain. You learn if you touch the stove that it is hot and will burn you, so you will not touch it again.

Smart people might realize that their parents or society punishing them is not quite the same as a stove burning them, though. The one is a law of nature (heat burns), the other is just man made laws that can be resented and broken. Once you have installed that resentment against society and obedience in a person, you might have a real problem on your hands.

[minitrollster]

I do not think that kids should be trained like pets. They are more intelligent and react to a more nuanced approach. My point about punishment just means that bad actions should be sanctioned and good actions rewarded.

My parents never physically punished me, but as soon as I was old enough to understand what was going on, just knowing that I'd disappointed them would make me feel extremely bad. There's no resentment there. They taught me how to behave in a way that is acceptable in society and if I misbehaved I was aware that I was wrong. Hopefully that's how everything would go.

But as always, there will be bad apples (and good ones, too). What do you do when someone's such a sociopath that they don't care when they hurt other people? That's when I believe that punishment should be carried on by the society and not the parents, in the form of jail, probation, juvenile court, etc.

[Tichy]

Sure - I think if people endanger other people, they should be locked away. In some (most?) cases we don't know how to "cure" criminals yet.

[philwelch]

> Do you think kids should be trained like pets?

Is there any empirical evidence that operant conditioning doesn't work on humans?

[Tichy]

I am pretty sure it works, my question is do you want it for your kids?

[philwelch]

Operant conditioning isn't actually harmful, as long as you're not operant conditioning your kids into doing harmful things or into not doing important things.

[Tichy]

Well it seems to go against my values. I want my kids to think for themselves, not merely be executors of my authoritarian commands. I am not their boss.

[philwelch]

Children are not small adults. There's a point in their lives when not throwing temper tantrums in public is what you want out of them and they're just not mature enough to negotiate with reasonably. This is also the age where hopefully you're going to have to install some sort of conscience, since kids aren't really born with one, either.