I got an email yesterday from a reader that felt yesterday's post was akin to bribery.

Rob wrote - "It seems in order to get our children to do what we want them to, we have to bribe them. I don't see how this approach is any different than paying our kids to act the way they should act anyway. I wasn't given rewards for behaving the way I was expected to and I turned out pretty good. Don't you think you are making it harder on your children's future with this type of "discipline"?"

I can see Rob's point, but I'd like to clarify two of my own.

First off, two of my three children are from different dads and I came into the picture after they were raised a different way. I was also missing from my daughter's life for a few years and so much like a step-parent, I have to walk the thin line of disciplining them without trampling on everything they've ever known.

Second, despite this "handicap", my girls have shown a desire to improve their behavior, much of which I feel is due to treating them with more love and respect than they were previously getting. Through a combination of positive reinforcement, praise and rewards, I have watched them grow substantially.

I was raised by the hand (read: belt) and by GP (general principle) and often felt my parents to be hypocrites. Despite turning out pretty good myself, I often rebelled in extreme ways as a child and felt out of place and unaccepted much of the time.

As parents, there are no hard rights or wrongs and we learn as we go. I'm no exception to this rule, and only share what I have seen work (or not work) in hopes of helping each of us become better fathers.

One of the most important things we can do as parents is to observe how our punishments affect our children and change them accordingly. A good start is to understand different discipline tactics, especially positive and negative, which I've outlined below.

Positive Reinforcement: Your child is asked to clean her room. She cleans it with no fuss as asked, and receives a treat.

Negative Reinforcement: Your child is asked to clean her room. She cleans it with no fuss as asked, and now doesn't have to do some other chores.

Positive Punishment: Your child is asked to clean her room. She doesn't clean her room as asked, and now has to clean her room and another chore in addition.

Negative Punisher: Your child is asked to clean her room. She doesn't clean her room as asked, so you take away television privileges for the rest of the week.

I tend to discipline with positive reinforcement, but you need to analyze whether or not the actual target behavior in fact increases or decreases over time to figure out which is best for your child.

To find out more about positive reinforcement, check out these frequently asked questions.

Discussion Points:

* Do you agree or disagree with positive reinforcement?
* Do you think positive reinforcement is too easy on children or perhaps reinforces bad behavior?
* Do you think we learn discipline from our parents?
* Do you discipline your children the same way you were disciplined?
* Do you have any suggestions you’d like to add?