Educating Without Reinforcements or Punishments
Surely, as a parent, you’ve stopped to think about how to educate your child. Will reinforcements and punishments be positive or counterproductive? Let’s see what the Montessori Method says about educating without reinforcements or punishments.
Perhaps you’ve asked yourself this question: “If I punish my child when they do something wrong, will I be making them more insecure?” But you also may think: “If they do things right and I reinforce them, they may repeat the good behavior or positive action only to receive the reward.”
According to Montessori, you can educate without reinforcements or punishments. Keep reading, as this article may help you!
Keys to educating without reinforcements or punishments
Organize your home environment
In the Montessori method, it’s very important to prepare your home so that your child can learn independently through real experiences.
It’s important to establish it right from the moment your child starts coming into contact with the environment that surrounds them. As they grow, they’ll need advanced material to learn letters and numbers. All this is essential to the development of their innate curiosity.
Provide them the autonomy they need
Accompany your child in their learning. Give them the space they need to develop their own autonomy, make mistakes, and learn from them. They’ll need to make mistakes to be able to unfold effectively in the real world, both in childhood and adulthood.
Without reinforcements or punishments but consequences
When you’ve established the foundations for educating your children under the Montessori method, you can start talking about reinforcements and punishments.
This method, based on respectful parenting, believes that we shouldn’t mention the word “reward” or “punishment” under any circumstances. We must talk about consequences, depending on the children’s actions. For example, if your child doesn’t want to pick up their toys after playing with them.
- Punishment. “You didn’t pick up your toys when you had to do it and, for that reason, you can’t watch TV and you have to go to bed soon.”
- Reinforcement. “As you picked up your toys, I’ll let you see some television for a while before bed.”
- Consequence. “If you pick up your toys when you finish playing, you’ll have some time to watch TV. If you take all your toys out and don’t pick them up after playing, you’ll take longer and you won’t have time to watch TV. Instead, you’ll have to go to bed right away.”
This example makes it clear that, in the end, you’ll get the same result. If the child does what they have to do, they can watch TV before bed but, if they don’t, they won’t be able to because they won’t have time.
Here, what changes is the way you say it. Thus, the child doesn’t see it as an obligation but as something they need to do to have enough time to watch TV or play.
Advantages of educating without reinforcements or punishments
Increased motivation
The child decides to do things for themselves and not because someone has repeated orders to them several times. Thus, you favor self-discipline, responsibility, and self-motivation.
Increased satisfaction
When your child realizes that they can do routine things without any punishments or reinforcements, they’ll feel very proud and satisfied.
The child’s individual capacities are stimulated
Educating through consequences is helpful to stimulate their capabilities, as you give them the opportunity to be as autonomous as they can.
Boosts their self-esteem
It’s shown that educating through consequences is helpful to boost children’s self-esteem and self-confidence.
Strengthens cooperation
Children feel collaborative when they do the tasks they’re able to at their age, and this will strengthen communication, affection, and cooperation in the entire family.
As you can see, educating under the Montessori Method means educating happy and confident children with great self-esteem who feel they can help their parents. Educating without reinforcements or punishments is possible, as you saw in this article. Do you know what path to follow now?