Methods of Behaviour control

What training procedures are used to regulate the child’s behavior and to control what he or she learns?

PUNITIVE METHODS: Parents disposed to intimidate and ridicule their offspring, using punitive and repressive measures to control their behavior and thought, may set the stage for a variety of maladaptive patterns. If the child submits to pressure and succeeds in fulfilling parental expectations, he or she is apt to become an overly obedient and circumspect person. Typically, these individuals learn not only to keep in check their impulses and contrary thoughts but also, by vicarious observation and imitation, to adopt the parental behavior model and begin to be punitive of deviant behavior on the part of others.

Should these youngsters fail to satisfy excessive parental demands and be subject to continued harassment and punishment, they may develop a pervasive anticipatory anxiety about personal relationships, leading to feelings of hopelessness and discouragement and resulting in instrumental strategies such as social avoidance and withdrawal. Others,faced with similar experiences, may learn to imitate parental harshness and develop hostile and aggressively rebellious behaviors.

CONTINGENT REWARD METHODS: Some parents rarely are punitive but expect certain behaviors to be performed before giving encouragement or doling out rewards. Youngsters reared this way tend to be socially pleasant and, by imitative learning, tend to be rewarding to others. Often, however, they may acquire an insatiable and indiscriminate need for social approval.

INCONSISTENT METHODS: Parental methods of control often are irregular, contradictory, and capricious. Some degree of variability is inevitable in the course of every child’s life, but there are parents who display
an extreme inconsistency in their standards and expectations and an extreme unpredictability in their application of rewards and punishments. Youngsters exposed to such a chaotic and capricious environment cannot learn consistently and cannot devise non-conflictive strategies for adaptive behavior; whatever behavior they display may be countermanded by an unpredictable parental reaction.

To avoid the suspense and anxiety of unpredictable reactions, some children may protectively become immobile and noncommittal. Others, imitatively adopting what they have been exposed to, may come to be characterized by their own ambivalence and their own tendency to vacillate from one action or feeling to another.

PROTECTIVE METHODS: Some parents so narrowly restrict the experiences to which their children are exposed that these youngsters fail to learn even the basic rudiments of autonomous behaviors. Overprotective mothers, worried that their children are too frail or are unable to care for themselves or make sensible judgments on their own, not only succeed in forestalling the growth of normal competencies but also, indirectly, give their children a feeling that they are inferior and frail.

These children, observing their actual inadequacies, have verification of the fact that they are weak, inept, and dependent on others. Thus, these youngsters not only are trained to be deficient in adaptive and self-reliant behaviors but also learn to view themselves as inferior and become progressively fearful of leaving the protective womb.

INDULGENT METHODS: Overly permissive, lax, or undisciplined parents allow children full rein to explore and assert their every whim. These parents fail to control their children and, by their own lack of discipline, provide a model to be imitated, which further strengthens their children’s irresponsibility. Unconstrained by parental control and not guided by selective rewards, these youngsters grow up displaying the INCONSIDERATE and often TYRANNICAL characteristics of undisciplined children.

Having had their way for so long, they tend to be exploitive, demanding, uncooperative, and antisocially aggressive. Unless rebuffed by external disciplinary forces, these youngsters may persist in their habits and become irresponsible members of society.

Sigmund Freud: The Psychodynamic Perspective

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was born in 1856. As the oldest child of an adoring mother whose belief in her son’s destiny never flagged, Freud KNEW HE WOULD BE FAMOUS.

Naturally attracted to science and influenced by Darwin, he settled on a medical career and spent a period of time involved in pure research. Eventually, practical necessity intervened, and Freud began a more applied course, specializing in neurology and psychiatry.

Freud’s first theory of neuroses was the idea that behind every neurotic conflict lies a FORGOTTEN CHILDHOOD TRAUMA. Such memories are said to be repressed. Motivated to forget what it knows, the mind defends against the
painful experiences by actively excluding them from conscious awareness. The past cannot be rewritten, but its impact can be contained.

He elaborated his insights into what is known as the topographic model, the idea that the mind has an organization or architecture. At the foundation lies the UNCONSCIOUS, a mysterious realm consisting of everything that we cannot become aware of by simple reflection alone. The unconscious is the only part of the mind that exists at birth.

Just above the unconscious lies the PRECONSCIOUS, which consists of everything that can be summoned to consciousness on command, for example, your phone number.

And finally, there is the part of the mind that forms our waking lives, which we call CONSCIOUS AWARENESS. According to Freud, the desire to bring satisfaction to our unconscious instincts continues to be the main
motivator in human behavior throughout the life span. (President Obama's sister has just walked in. Unless you know her, nothing in her creation or demeanor would give her away).

We have seen previously that Avoidant personalities, (for more click the label normality abnormality and go to avoidant personality), deeply desire close connectedness to others, but also feel a sense of shame about themselves so profound that very few such relationships are possible. Instead, avoidants retreat into a shell where they can at least be alone with their humiliating defects and deficiencies.

Compulsive and negativistic personalities wrestle with issues related to the obedience versus defiance of authority. Compulsives express this conflict passively by overconforming to internalized superego demands; on the surface, they appear normal and in control, but beneath, they are taut, anxious, and ever circumspect of their own conduct.

The negativistic personality expresses conflict actively by vacillating between loyalty and insubordinate sabotage. KNOWING THE OUTCOMES THAT OTHERS SEEK, THEY WORK SUBTLY WITHIN THE SYSTEM TO BRING THE PLANS OF OTHERS TO RUIN or at least CAUSE THEM GREAT FRUSTRATION.