In the world of child development everyone has his or her way of parenting. With that being said there is a proper way and an improper way. As children have developing brains with developing minds, they can't always make very good judgments when it comes between right from wrong. Children cannot always take responsibility for their actions; they need guidance from people. Often times, parents regulate unacceptable behavior and actions from children by traditional operant conditioning. Others regulate their children by reinforcement. When it comes down to it there is a difference between operant conditioning and reinforcement. There are issues associated with general punishment on children and ways it can be harmful. Furthermore reinforcement can be incorporated into teaching a child good behavior with knowing the correct strategies to imply on parenting.
To begin with, Operant conditioning is a term discovered in by B.F. Skinner through the work of Thorndike in 1938. Ciccarelli K Saundra & White, J Noland. (2015) Explained that Skinner found Thorndike's work was a way to demonstrate all behavior as the key to learning. The key to the entire concept of Skinner's reinforcement is to strengthen the chances of something to happen or not happen again. Ciccarelli K Saundra & White, J Noland. (2015) Also states that reinforcement is suppose to be a pleasurable consequence to the organism such as giving yourself a drink when your body tells you that you are thirsty (P. 187). Another way to look at operant conditioning is to think of it as the voluntary behavior that people and animals do to operate in the world. When people do things voluntarily, they usually do it to either get something they want or avoid something they don't want. In operant conditioning learning bad and good behavior depends on what happens after the action taken – the consequence. Ciccarelli K Saundra & White, J Noland.