Why Punishment Isn’t Teaching the Skill You Want.

Punishment didn’t fail because you did it wrong. It failed because it was never teaching the skill your kid actually needed.

I’m Tricia Sutton, and along with my co-founder Henry Van Nostrand, we run Paws 4 Kids 4 Paws (paws4kids4paws.org), where we help neurodivergent kids build real skills — confidence, emotional regulation, communication — using a trust-first method we originally built to train dogs. And it turns out the same mistake shows up in both: punishing a behavior you don’t want, instead of teaching the skill you do want.

In this video, I’m going to show you what that looks like — and what to do instead.

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You know, if you’ve ever taken away something from a child like screen time and the exact same meltdown happened the next day, you’re not really doing anything wrong. Punishment didn’t fail because you did it wrong. It failed because it was never teaching the skill that your kid actually needed.

I’m Tricia Sutton, and along with my co-founder, Henry Van Nostrand, we run Paws 4 Kids 4 Paws, where we help neurodivergent kids build real life skills, confidence, emotional regulation, communication. We do this by using a trust-first method we originally built to train dogs.

It turns out the same mistake shows up in both:

punishing a behavior you don’t want instead of teaching the skill you do want.

So let’s start with something really important.

Punishment can absolutely change behavior in the short term. It doesn’t necessarily teach. If a child knows that losing screen time follows a certain behavior, they may decide not to do that behavior for a while.

The dog will stop doing the behavior in that moment too. They may avoid that behavior for a while or hide it from their human.

You know, that can feel like progress. The problem is what happens next, though.

What happens the next time they’re overwhelmed?

What happens the next time the transition is difficult?

What happens the next time somebody says, “It’s time to turn the game off”?

If the only lesson they learned was, “Don’t do that or something unpleasant will happen.”

Then we haven’t necessarily taught them what to do instead.

And the distinction matters enormously.

Imagine a child is playing a video game. You’ve given them a 10-minute warning, then a five-minute warning, and then, “It’s time to turn it off.” The child screams. They throw the controller, or maybe they hit the couch.

Maybe they yell, “I hate you.” And the parent responds, “That’s it. No screen time tomorrow.” The child loses the privilege.

Maybe eventually the room gets quiet, and everyone thinks, “Okay, that worked.”

But did it?

It depends on what we mean by worked. If the goal was simply to end the behavior in that moment, maybe it did.

But if the goal was to help the child eventually learn how to handle disappointment, transition away from something highly reinforcing, communicate frustration, and regulate their emotions, then we’re still waiting for the teaching part.

Because tomorrow, the child may face the exact same problem, and if the underlying skill hasn’t changed, we shouldn’t be surprised when the underlying behavior hasn’t changed either.

This is one of the biggest mindset shifts I want you to take away from this video.

Now here are a few examples of this from our own programs.

So one student in our program, a young man with ADHD, let’s call him Damiano, he kept pulling out his phone one day to, to play a game instead of working with the dog he’d been assigned.

Now, this is a dog he really likes and he works with a lot. So it wasn’t the dog.

He was extra distracted that day. I tried to get him to put his phone down and focus on the written workbook and the training instructions. As soon as I’d turn away to help somebody else, he’d pull his phone back out and start playing a game.

He wouldn’t put his phone away in our gear bags either. This clearly wasn’t working.

Another time a student, let’s call them Marca, was working with a sweet dog, Bella, trying to teach her a new trick. Marca kept jumping ahead several steps and not following the instructions to do a small part until they measured enough successful attempts by the dog to be sure that the dog was understanding and ready for the next step.

Instead, they were telling Bella, “No, do this.” Bella wasn’t understanding and was getting frustrated and so was the student. Those reprimands weren’t working and Bella withdrew and tried to stop and go elsewhere. My admonition to Marca to go back to the lesson and repeat the earlier smaller steps wasn’t working either, and so Marca also stopped engaging in the activity.

Things weren’t working for either the dog or the student.

Now another young gal, let’s call her Crystal, was working on getting a larger dog, Koyuk, to go somewhere that dog was uncomfortable going. The harder she pulled on the leash, the more the dog resisted and the more Crystal got frustrated. After pulling in another direction for a bit, Koyuk eventually just lay down.

There was no way a 70-pound young gal could get a large dog back up if Koyuk didn’t wanna do so.

Pulling tight on a leash and trying to force a dog to go somewhere it doesn’t want to go or is afraid to go, that feels like punishment to a dog. Koyuk was stronger, and there was no way to force her.

Reprimanding Crystal not to keep pulling on the leash wasn’t working either. Saying only what not to do reinforced that way of working with the dog. It didn’t show the next steps.

Now, in all of these cases, this isn’t a willpower or attention span problem. It’s a skills gap and underlying needs issue.

So, in dog training, punishing an unwanted behavior like jumping or barking or pulling, without teaching the wanted behavior like sit, calm greeting, calmly walking at your side, it just suppresses the unwanted behavior temporarily. The dog doesn’t learn what to do instead. It can also increase fear and break down the dog’s trust in you.

For dogs, instead, we need to redirect the dog and confirm the alternate behavior we want.

And for complex skills, we need to break it down into smaller steps and make sure the dog is able to do the smaller part of the behavior consistently, such as maybe five or 10 times in a row before we push forward to the next part of the behavior or the skill.

Then sometimes, we have to recognize that the dog is just overwhelmed and needs a break. Continuing to push would just be a waste of our time, and the dog wouldn’t learn anything. What’s worse is our relationship with the dog would be eroded too.

So, these same gaps show up with kids. Removing screen time doesn’t teach emotional regulation, it just removes the screen.

Pushing them to follow instructions when they can’t focus can lead to shutdowns or meltdowns.

Punishment leads to more fear and masking, as well as figuring out workarounds that give the appearance of compliance.

ADHD kids especially do not make the connection, and may not have the executive functioning skills to generalize the punishment into real behavior change

Behavior is communication.

I wanna be careful here though.

I’m not saying that every behavior is acceptable.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have boundaries, and I’m definitely not saying parents should allow unsafe or a self-destructive behavior to continue.

Boundaries matter, safety matters, expectations matter, but behavior gives us information.

It’s especially true when we’re talking about a child who’s struggling with regulation, communication, flexibility, frustration tolerance, transitions, or other skills.

Think about what a meltdown actually tells you. It might tell you:

This transition is too hard for me, or

I don’t know how to express what I need.

I don’t know how to tolerate this disappointment.

I don’t know what to do when the thing I want is unavailable.

My nervous system is overloaded.

I don’t have a strategy for this situation yet.

Now compare those possibilities with the question, “How can I just get this behavior stopped? How can I punish it so that it stops?”

Those are two completely different approaches. One focuses on suppressing the outward behavior. The other focuses on understanding what the child needs to learn.

Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. If your child doesn’t yet know how to handle a difficult situation, removing something they love doesn’t automatically give them that skill.

Taking away the tablet or phone doesn’t teach emotional regulation.

Grounding them doesn’t automatically teach communication.

Sending them to their room doesn’t automatically teach flexibility.

Yelling louder doesn’t teach them how to calm their body.

And threatening bigger and bigger consequences, that doesn’t necessarily teach them what to do the next time they’re frustrated.

You can increase the consequence without increasing the skill.

That’s the trap. You end up escalating the punishment while the actual problem stays exactly the same, and then everyone becomes frustrated.

The parent thinks, “Why isn’t this working?”

The child thinks, “I keep getting in trouble, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

The next day you’re right back to where you started.

So, instead of asking what behavior do I want to eliminate, we want to ask, “What do I want this child to be able to do?” That’s the beginning of teaching.

To overcome these gaps, we’ve seen success with building trust first, then teaching the skill.

First, we need to notice that there’s a skill gap and what we’re doing isn’t working.

We step back and look at what the child or the dog needs at that moment and what’s another way to approach it.

If it’s a behavior, we model how it works better, like pausing and demonstrating how to break down a step. It can help to ask them to pause and ask for their ideas on whether and why it isn’t working.

Then we reinforce their ideas that work, and we build on them.

We give positive affirmations and feedback about the attempts and the effort put into the attempts, not just the final outcome or the success. This actually builds their confidence.

So let’s go back to the examples from our programs.

With Marca and Bella, Marca was jumping too far ahead. She had some good success initially, and got bored with counting the smaller steps and frustrated with the seemingly slower progress as she moved ahead. I wasn’t helping Marca see the problem was that Bella wasn’t ready and was getting tired. Then , I did step in, and I modeled how to break it down for Bella into smaller steps and verify what worked. I also helped Marca see how they might get overwhelmed too if a lesson went faster than they were able to learn it.

With Damiano, he’d had a rough day and needed some dopamine to help his ADHD. Playing the game helped him de-stress and feel better, gave him a dopamine hit. He had a need and didn’t know how to communicate what he needed with me. After we talked a bit, he and I agreed to alternate between the game and the lessons, a certain amount of game time for completing a certain amount of the lesson, and that helped a lot.

So, let’s look a little deeper at the case of Crystal and Koyuk. Crystal was very focused on a leash walking activity. Focus is a great skill, right? Yes, if it’s used in the right context and doesn’t conflict with another need.

All the pulling to get Koyuk to go somewhere that made her uncomfortable was getting Koyuk overwhelmed, and Koyuk just wanted to come over to someone who made her feel safe. In that case, me.

What we did was take a break, sit quietly by Koyuk, and reassure her while Crystal and I discussed what else we could try. We also observed other students with dogs to see what was going differently.

I did not reprimand Crystal or Koyuk. By sitting calmly with Koyuk, we both rebuilt the dog’s trust and gave Koyuk a pause to decompress before we tried again.

By being careful not to judge or reprimand and not just taking over and doing it myself, I built trust with Crystal. Calmly petting Koyuk helped rebuild Koyuk’s trust in Crystal. Looking at alternate approaches also helped Crystal reduce her frustration and regulate her impatience. She saw how Koyuk lost trust when she tried to force the lesson and move ahead too fast.

When we restarted, Crystal took a smaller step with Koyuk and tried different ways to reassure and redirect Koyuk. We celebrated the effort along the way. The loose leash walking got better and better over the next few classes too, and we made sure to notice the steps and the improvements along the way.

So, behavior tells you what skill is missing. You teach that instead of punishing.

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If this resonates with you, check our schedule for programs for where we’re running classes right now. If you are local, we’d love to have your family visit to see a session. Thanks

Also, check the description below for helpful resources on this topic

Additional Resources:

• Functional Communication Training (FCT) literature — FCT is an ABA-based strategy that teaches alternative, functional communication skills to replace challenging behaviors, built on the idea that many “problem” behaviors are actually attempts to communicate unmet needs. A randomized controlled trial found FCT delivered via telehealth led to a 98% reduction in problem behaviors in children with ASD, with a large effect size of 1.57. Fisher, Piazza, Cataldo, Harrell, Jefferson & Conner (1993), “Functional communication training with and without extinction and punishment,” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 26, 23-36
  
• CHADD, “How Rewards and Punishment Work for Children with ADHD” — rewards can work well when given quickly and often, whereas punishments are generally not effective. (chadd.org) CHADD
  
• CHADD, “Adapting Positive Behavior Interventions for Children with ADHD” — Kids with ADHD need more immediate and consistent rewards to learn new behavior, are more sensitive to punishment, give up more easily when tasks feel too hard, and make more errors and miss more learning opportunities when punishment is used instead of reward-based teaching. Cites van der Oord & Tripp (2020), Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review. (chadd.org) CHADD
  
• Child Mind Institute, “ADHD Behavior Problems and How to Help” — child psychologist Dr. Anderson explains punishment loses its effectiveness for kids in a pattern of negative interaction, because they habituate to being punished so often that it stops registering. (childmind.org) Child Mind Institute
  
• SPSRQ-C validation study (PMC) — found children with ADHD+ASD showed heightened sensitivity to punishment, and the authors caution that parents, teachers, and clinicians should be careful about using reprimands with this group; also references a meta-analysis of 77 parent-training programs showing the largest effects came from programs that taught parents to actively demonstrate enthusiasm and positive attention for appropriate behavior rather than punishing the child (Kaminski et al., 2008). (PMC, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3268965/) PubMed Central
  
• PBS randomized trial for adults with intellectual disability + autism (PMC) — a large multicenter UK trial on Positive Behaviour Support. (PMC, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7158144/)

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