If no punishment is given, the child will be likely to do the same thing again. .
In many cases, the child doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. Lets say a child and his dad are cutting down trees to put up a fence. They clear out a path and eventually get the fence up. The next week, the kid chops down a tree on the neighbor's property. He says he didn't know it was the neighbor's property and didn't know he shouldn't of cut down the tree in the first place. The kid was just imitating what he was doing the other day. In this type of situation, the child should be only slightly punished. Maybe a talk to the kid to tell him what he did wrong. Tell him the consequences of what he did. The child should not be severely punished for something he didn't know was wrong in the first place. Now if the kid keeps chopping down trees after he has been told not to, this would call for a bigger punishment, maybe in the form of grounding.
Some parents do nothing to punish their kids. This is a bad thing. If no punishment is given, the kids will never learn and will be more likely to continue doing wrong. Kids that cause damage and get into trouble probably do so because they do not get the right type of punishment. Say the same kid as in the above chops down his neighbor's tree. When his parents find out about it they do not really care. They only tell the kid to stay off the neighbor's property. Now the kid thinks he only has to stay off the neighbor's property and has not learned the main point. How parents punish their kids does have a big effect on the child's views.
Children should have expectations set by their parents. These expectations do not have to be huge, but something that the child can handle. This will give the kid something to work for and to be proud of. Setting a goal for your child to meet is a good way to teach them things. They will learn from the experiences and hopefully value them.
