I'm 19, and I work with kids in 2 primary settings: Sunday School at my church (2 hours a week all through high school, maybe 100 different kids total), and as a martial arts instructor (~3-7 hours per week all through high school, 500+ different kids total.). The age range is 4-12 usually. I work with older kids too but I tend not to understand them nearly as well. Sunday School is a mostly open environment. There are roughly 45 minutes within a 2 hour service where they are expected to sit down and listen, and the rest of the time they can pretty much do what they want (with the standard 'be nice, share, don't do anything dangerous' set of rules). The martial arts school is much more formal and restricting. Kids are given time to be creative, but mostly we keep them occupied doing explicit activities.

I have little experience in a home environment. This hadn't occurred to me before, but you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

> when I've attempted to be understanding of a child’s misbehavior it has usually resulted in being taken advantage of. There is no longer any 'real' consequence to misbehavior (to the childs mind) other than being talked to and empathised with; that this, contrary to your suggestion, breeds a total lack of respect.

That's a fine line that a lot of people struggle with, and I'm having trouble explaining myself. The thing about respect is that there is a difference between demonstrated respect and internal respect. The key with being understanding of a child's misbehavior is doing it to earn the child's internal respect. The next steps with that child is to show them constructive ways to spend their energy, instead of destructive ways. This is more complicated, because you may have to invent exercises for the child (such as, find a way to do x as fast as possible). In my martial arts school, one of the most common ways to handle boredom/misbehavior is to let the bored kid teach a student who doesn't fully understand the curriculum yet. It usually works because the kid feels responsibility, feels challenged, and feels appreciated. (and usually we pair them with someone younger who we already know they enjoy being around. We wouldn't pair them with a kid they are known to quarrel with).

> If you did what you wanted then you've already had your reward. So what are you reinforcing by adding further reward? The notion that they should continue to do whatever they like and that only narcissism - by which I mean self-pleasing behaviour - is really worth while??

Ultimately, yes. But you couple it with teaching that the bigger long term reward is better than the smaller quick reward. And then, you couple it with a constructive activity. Being constructive feels good. Being appreciated (presumably derived from being helpful) also feels good. So you show that to a kid. And you give them ways to be constructive and helpful that doesn't have them sitting in class bored because they already know the curriculum.

Furthermore, being disapproved of feels bad. Even if you are not upset with misbehavior, there are most likely other people who are upset with the child's misbehavior, and this feels bad. When a child misbehaves, s/he is most likely not misbehaving because it feels good. S/he is probably misbehaving because it feels less bad than being bored or conforming to something they don't like doing. Again, this can be solved by showing the child something they can do that is entertaining to them and also not misbehaving or destructive.