Six Forms of Punishment Part 2

The next two forms of punishment we'll talk about are unrelated consequences and response cost. An unrelated consequence is the punishment of a child's inappropriate behavior with something that's totally unrelated to the behavior. For example, if a child doesn't take their shoes off as soon a they walk in the door, they have to do the dishes by themselves. The consequence isn't logically related to the behavior which makes the approach ineffective. It can also misfire because it may not bother the child that they have to do the dishes by themselves.

The form of punishment called response cost involves taking away something the child previously earned. The response cost approach is most effective when used with positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior and when a child doesn't lose everything they earned by a small offense. When a child loses everything they earned they come to not bother to earn anything. For example, if a child gets a star on their chore chart every time they do their chores, but a parent decides to not give them the star even though they did the chores they were responsible for doing and the parent takes the star away because the child forgot to put their dirty clothes away after taking their bath this is a response cost punishment.