Reinforcement vs punishment: How to set boundaries

Disciplining a child or setting boundaries for positive behavior are common dilemmas that parents face while raising a child. While the newer generation of parents is doing away with age-old parenting styles of punishments to discipline a child and adopting gentle parenting methods like reinforcement for positive results, an imbalance in reinforcement and punishment may result in undesirable behavior from the child, which may not be able to distinguish right from wrong. While every child is different and there is no right way to raise them, experts do mention that it is important to strike a balance between reinforcement and punishment. Clinical psychologist Sakshi Maheswari from Niyama Digital Healthcare in Chennai delineates the contrast between reinforcement, which involves rewarding behavior to encourage its repetition, and punishment, used to decrease the frequency of undesirable behavior.