Karissa Mace

CAST 477: Strassburger

Final Research Paper
26 July 2016

CAST FINAL PAPER

Discipline means punishment inflicted by way of correction and

training, whereas reward means something given or received when

doing a good deed. After have dealt with 30 children or more for the

past three months, it was noticeable that each individual child reacted

differently to a punishment for that particular child to understand what

they did was wrong. Children react differently to a disciplinary

strategy, depending on their age, family background, and mental

health.

To help understand what works best when disciplining or

rewarding children, the paper will explain what the most effective

disciplinary techniques are. Then, the paper will explain why reward

strategies work well with children. Lastly, the paper will compare the

disciplinary/reward strategies used at Kids Klub with the research

found.

Disciplining Children
 Discipline is the base for the development of children building

their own self-discipline which helps the child fit into the real world.

Discipline is not demanding children to obey; it is positive, effective

teaching that helps guide children to walk down the right path. To be

able to discipline a child, it all falls back on to what the familys

lifestyle at home is like. A huge part of disciplining children is how

involved their parents are as well as how responsive and demanding a

parent is. According to McKinney, Morse & Pastuszak (2016),

Parenting styles may be simplified by using two dimensions:

responsiveness and demandingness. Authoritative style, characterized

by high levels of both dimensions, has repeatedly been related to

positive outcomes for youth (p 3). Children react more to adults who

sit down and talk about the situation and consequences rather than

the adult yelling to get their point across.

Rewarding Children

Rewarding (positive reinforcement) is helpful for children to

understand the difference between what is right and what is wrong. If

children are only punished for their negative behaviors and not

rewarded for their positive behaviors, the child will establish falsified

cause and effect and eventually the child will act out in a negative to

get the attention they want. Whereas, rewarding children for their

positive behaviors, children will seek out positive actions to get the
attention they need. Strang & Pollak (2014) found, developmental

continuity in reward-related enhancement of cognitive control states,

through investigations on reward and decision-making, they found that

across development, reward improves cognitive control. These studies

also suggest that the neural mechanisms responsible for the

behavioral improvement associated with reward may change across

development. In order for a child to develop a behavior with positive

actions that hopefully become a habit, their actions need to be

positively encouraged/noticed for that action to stick.

Kids Klub

According to the research above, Kids Klub needs to better their

disciplinary strategies. Something that I have noticed while working

with Kids Klub is the lack of respect the children has for the staff. I

believe this does come down to how authoritative, demanding, and

responsive the staff is with the children involved with the program, but

it is not all the staffs fault either. I feel to better the disciplinary

policy, the staff need to actually follow through with the policys

instructions there provided for us. Most of the time, to deal with

consequences, staff will just have a child sit out for 5 or ten minutes,

depending on the severity of the action involved. With that being said,

I feel that the time-outs given to children do not necessarily teach

them what they did was wrong, and they just go about their lives with
the same mindset as before. Though towards the end, the staff has

gotten better about taking it more seriously. During a field trip, a

couple children were not listening or behaving properly and did not

care what the staff had to say, so the end result was that those

particular children were not allowed to attend field trip days anymore

for they could not handle coming along.

When talking about rewarding children for their positive

behavior, I believe that Kids Klub does a good job at rewarding the

children involved in the program. The reward system Kids Klub is

designed for the staff to notice those children who go above and

beyond of what is expected of them. When a child is seen doing a good

action, they receive of ticket for their good deed. Then during

lunchtime, snack time, or movie days on Fridays, the children can cash

in their ticket for a snack of their choice. Kids Klub also has a raffle

ticket box; children who receive tickets can put their ticket into the box

to hopefully receive the big prize at the end of the summer program.

For example, a child picked up garbage in the bathroom while another

child asked him why he was picking up garbage because you only

receive a ticket when a staff member sees you, and his response was,

I do not care, I am picking up the bathroom because it is dirty and

needs to be picked up. As this was all happening, a staff member was

outside the bathrooms and heard the whole conversation and thought

the child definitely deserved a ticket. From this example, it goes to

show that even when children are rewarded for their good actions, it

teaches them to always go above and beyond even if there is not a

reward, which turns into a habit for the child and becomes apart of who

they are.

Overall, on the disciplinary side, even though the staff has made

some progress with standing firm, they could be a little more

authoritative and demanding. This was definitely a good experience to

expect what is to come in the future when dealing with children

organizations.

WORD COUNT: 969

References

McKinney, C., Morse, M., & Pastuszak, J. (2016). Effective and

ineffective parenting: Associations with psychological adjustment in
emerging adults. Journal Of Family Issues, 37(9), 1203-1225.
doi:10.1177/0192513X14537480

Strang, N. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2014). Developmental continuity in

reward-related enhancement of cognitive control. Developmental
Cognitive Neuroscience, 1034-43. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2014.07.005