No matter how much you adore your child, when he or she starts to whine, your irritation level climbs and your adoration level falls. When kids whine, it’s an all out attack of undesirable behavior that makes most parents crazy. Enter operant conditioning skinner.
If you’re looking for a good, healthy way to get your kids to stop whining, you need to know that yelling at them probably won’t work and neither will giving in to them. If you give in to whining, it will make them stop whining for the moment, but it will also let them know that whining works. Operant conditioning Skinner style says that if you a reward a behavior of an organism, then you increase the probability that the specific behavior will be repeated. It will get them what they want, so they’ll use it again and again.
Instead of giving in or losing your temper with your child to make them stop whining, you could use Operant conditioning, Skinner style.
B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory says that all behavior is a response to certain stimuli, and because of this, you can change behavior by changing stimuli. Skinner said, “When a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence of having this behavior is called a reinforcer.”
Can you see where B.F. Skinner was going with this? In parenting, Operant conditioning Skinner style can work to reinforce a child’s poor behavior or good behavior. It will work both ways. How exactly can you use B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning to teach your child not to whine?
Operant conditioning Skinner style works by using consequences to modify behavior. So if your child whines to get a toy or to have dessert before dinner and you give in, he or she sees that the consequence of whining is getting something they want.
If, on the other hand, your child whines and you either turn a deaf ear to the whining, not saying anything or giving the whining any acknowledgement, or if you give the child a negative consequence for whining such as a time-out and don’t give them what they’re whining for, you’ll teach them that whining produces unwanted results for them.
The eventual result will be that they will stop using whining as a way to get something. This is a very simple, yet effective parenting technique. You can pair this method for stopping the bad behavior of whining with rewarding good behavior.
You can teach your child that when he or she doesn’t whine, good things will happen – not necessarily that they will get the toy or be allowed to have dessert before dinner, but good things nevertheless.
Simply saying, “Thank you Amy, for helping me shop for your little brother’s birthday gift,” can reward a child’s good behavior. Keep praising them with words like, “I loved having you with me to do this” or “Thanks for helping prepare dinner, Emily – that was fun”
An encouraging word is often an excellent way to use operant conditioning Skinner style to reinforce good behavior and to teach your kids the difference between good and bad behavior. B.F. Skinner said that behavior that is rewarded is the most likely behavior to be repeated. This is a valuable lesson to learn in parenting. Using operant conditioning Skinner style is one of many good ways to gently, yet effectively teach your children good behavior patterns.
Recap
Skinner said, “When a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence of having this behavior is called a reinforcer.” In parenting, this means positive, positive, positive. To put operant conditioning Skinner in a nutshell: Offer focused encouragement to specific good behaviors. But this approach to parenting by itself is inadequate and even cold. To see more of the heart of authoritative parenting see Steps for Change.
