Reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning The common philosophy in child-rearing has long been to punish a child when they misbehave. Unfortunately, the parents often forget to praise the child when they act as desired. The result of this is a child who has personality problems and one who has difficulty forming meaningful relationships. Overt punishment can have many damaging side effects.
Punishment is stronger and longer lasting than reinforcement.
If you have a specific task which you wish a child to do, and when they do the task bad, they are punished, then when they do it well, they are mildly reinforced, and they will complete the task mediocre. Technically, the correct approach to this situation is still punishment, however it is a variation there of. If you simply express your dissatisfaction with the child when the achieve poorly, this will often remedy the situation. Let me attempt to make this a little bit more clear. Imagine that your child has problems with mathematics.