Hi, welcome! Today I am going to talk about how children learn social behaviors, especially how they learn lessons from the family, which is the most basic unit of our social structure. There is a lot of discussion these days about how families are changing and whether non-traditional families have a good or bad effect on children. But it’s important to remember that the type of a family a child comes from is not nearly as important as the kind of love and support that exists in a home. There are three ways by which children acquire their behavior, through rewards, punishments and finally modeling. In today’s lecture, let’s first discuss rewards.
A reward can be defined as a positive reinforcement for good behavior. An example of a reward is when a parent says if you eat your vegetables you can have ice-cream for dessert or parent might say finish your homework first then you can watch TV. Most parents use rewards unconsciously because they want their children to behave well. For example, a parent might give a gift to a child because the child behaved well or parents might give a child money for doing what the parents asked.
