Suppose your employer announced that the company was adopting a new system in which you will work for the next twenty years for no salary and then receive $400,000. Would you continue working there? Why do athletes become “flabby” during the off-season? How many women do you know who worry in November what they will look like in a bathing suit next summer? Does reading this article allow you to avoid doing something else?
Believe it or not, your behavior is strongly influenced by its conesquences. Furthermore, consequences which closely follow behavior have a greater effect than those which occur much later. Adam ate the apple because the apple was “now”, and now is what counts! Abstinence, on the other hand, was not followed by anything immediate– he was a victim of poorly arranged consequences. “Plan ahead”, “consider the alternatives”, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, are phrases which reflect the importance of properly arranged consequences.
Teaching discipline is an interesting illustration of this principle. When a mother tells her seven year-old to get out of the pool, now, or he’ll be sick next week, why does the child protest? And school: I once knew a fourth-grade teacher who issued over two thousand, “sit down!” commands to a child in one week. But why should that child have followed the rule? What was the consequence for doing so? How many parents declare war on their kids every night at bedtime? Arranging for positive consequences to immediately follow the appropriate behavior might help.
Consequences generally consist of two types of events: Rewards and punishment. The latter is the prototype for most institutions of our society– law, religion, education and family. When was the last time a police officer pulled you over and said, “Gee, that was a terrific right turn you just made!” How many street signs in New York City tell you where you can park? What would you think if the Courts sent you a thank you letter for being a law abiding citizen each year? Religion uses long-term punishment to monitor appropriate “humbleness” and “guilt”. How many of the Ten Commandments tell you what you should do instead?
In education, rules primarily relate to what should not occur, and teachers spend substantial amounts of time “catching students being bad.” After all, no one has time for disruptions in a large classroom, and punishment often provides swift and sudden changes in the situation…for awhile. So, too, for the mother who can get her child to stay by her side in the supermarket by bellowing some threats, followed by a good swift paddling. Perhaps the same would apply to the child in the pool with the purple lips; or the “late-night” kid.
Unfortunately, punishment frequently produces unwanted emotional side-effects, and recurrent undesirable behavior. In law, that may be useful as it generates income from repeat offenders; But when teaching discipline in school or at home, punishment too often is just a vehicle for expressing one’s own frustration. And, of course, the “problem” reoccurs. Now, here’s a useful principle: When something you are doing is not working, stop and do something else…imeediateluy! 
Those of you who are content with disciplining through punishment alone as you are getting  the intended outcomes can stop reading here. Apparently, you are able to stop the unwanted behavior from recurring. Therefore, through punishment , you have found something which works. It is not necessary to read any further. However, those who are not quite that fortunate may find the following suggestions useful:

1. Catch flies with honey, save the vinegar for your salad ! Reward is not bribery and it gets better results than punishment. We’re not talking “major-league” contracting here. Praise and privileges work well. When in doubt, find out what your child likes to do or have and follow appropriate behavior with that consequence. At times punishment is necessary and effective, but only in conjunction with reward for appropriate behavior. Punishment, alone, does not encourage the preferred behavior.
2. Carefully identify the behavior you desire–not the behavior you wish to stop. The emphasis is on positive instances of behavior. “Negation” exists only in language, not experience. What does the phrase, “the dog is not chasing the cat” look like?
3. Establish a contingency . That is, a relationship between a behavior and its consequence. “Grandma’s Law” states: First you clean your plate, then you get dessert. If you do “x”, you can have “y”. Plug in the desired behavior and consequence. Get more of what you want by “catching” your child being good.