Once in a while, I read a book that I just feel compelled to write about. Now, granted, many of the books we review here on urbanmoms.ca are generously donated to us by publishers (which allows us to offer so many amazing book giveaways to our members), but we do frequently review books that we feel our members really need to know about, even if we do it on our own nickel.
Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor (published by Random House) is one of those books. it was originally recommended to me and my husband by a psychologist for behavioural issues our daughter was experiencing. “Don’t prejudge it,” she said as she handed over a loaner copy.
I’ll admit, at first it was hard for me to take the book seriously. It is – mostly – written for people who are training animals; primarily dogs. The author is a renowned dolphin trainer (okay, getting closer, anyway). There were many times when I thought, dripping sarcasm, sure, I’ll just clicker-train my kid to sit and heel. That’ll be swell! But as I persevered, I came to see that, indeed, we are all animals deep down inside, and anyone can be “trained” to adopt new and better behaviours, while also being “trained” to drop bad or undesirable behaviours.
Yup, seems good ol’ B.F. Skinner and and his operant conditioning were right after all (ring, ring: drool, drool) – to a point. Granted: we’re all animals and even the dumbest of us can be trained (Pryor gives an example of training crabs in her laboratory); conversely, even the smartest of us can be conditioned to exhibit specific behaviours on specific cues (to wit: tap your water glass with a knife during a noisy reception and watch the crowd go silent almost immediately).
However, by far the most important and consistent message this book has to offer (for new puppy owners right on up to parents of poorly behaved ‘tweens) is this: positive reinforcement works. Consistently and quickly. And conversely: punishment almost never works; at least not consistently.
Sounds obvious, I know, but I challenge each of you to take a good hard look at most of your parenting behaviours over the next few days. Do you consistently (as in, ALWAYS) recognize and/or reward good behaviours that you want to see repeated? I didn’t think so. In fact, many people believe that those behaviours don’t need to be even recognized, because they should be taken for granted: Suzy made her bed this morning? Big deal. It’s expected. Well, guess what? If you want Suzy to continue to make her bed, consistently, on time, well and happily, you need to recognize her (at the time!) for having done it.
I know when I took a good, hard and most importantly, honest look at my parenting, I found that I was always giving corrective feedback – in other words, telling my kids what they did wrong, what not to do, what to stop doing, etc. etc. It’s exhausting and it gives the home environment and the ultra-important parent-child relationship a negative tone. Since I switched over to reinforcing every positive behaviour I observed (in the moment), things have gotten a lot happier around here. And we haven’t been having the same fights about going to school, or doing homework, or helping around the house. Heck, even the sibling fighting has gone down significantly.
Hugs and kisses are up, praise is up and conflict is down. And that’s something I can get behind, dog-trainer or not.
Hmmm,
Interesting. I agree that punishment doesn’t work. I’m not so sure about the rewards. Granted, my kids are very young and it’s too soon to try this out with them, maybe. But as a teacher in the classroom, rewards don’t work for very long either. Essentially, motivation has to be intrinsic. How that happens? Magic question. I really like what Alfie Kohn says, but it’s often impractical in the classroom. I really don’t think that punishments OR rewards work in the long term though…with humans that is. So, where does that leave us in terms of strategies? I think that being loving parents, reasoning with our children, letting them learn from their mistakes (within safety reasons) is the best we can do.
My ten year old collie has exhibited new behaviours lately. Aging issues? I’m not going to shoot her, but this book would at least help me understand my best friend.