Our biology comes fully equipped for assignment of positive and/or negative reinforcers within children. Parents often miss the moment that a self-correcting mechanism is in play within their child and complicate matters with unnecessary asignment of additional reinforcers.

Reliance upon internal reinforcers ensures that reinforcement will occur in the absence of authority figures. Reliance upon internal reinforcers ensures that their assignment is part and parcel of an evolving value system that will serve a child well in later life.

Internal reinforcers may be ‘cognitive’ or ‘emotional’.
Cognitive reinforcers are often verbalized or may be inferred by observation of an act, e.g. a flash of eye contact. Anecdote: This week, as I played with a boy of 7, he moved one action figure towards another saying, ‘Idiot!’. He glanced at me and commented, “I don’t know why I said that.” I said nothing. The child does often call people names with a kind of ‘nastiness’. He caught himself in the moment and effectively ‘pulled his verbal punch’. This is not a time to comment. I left well enough alone. He is developing a value system, is self aware and personally inclined to ‘break the habit’. 

Emotional reinforcers are often evident; a child may blush, embarassed or ashamed as a result of his own act. A child, seeing harm caused by himself or herself, might tearfully apologize.

The science: What I call an ‘experiential data base’ evolving within a child is a self organizing system. If adaptive strategies do not serve the system well, they will be ‘less likely’ to emerge as ‘templates for action’ in the future.