The rat dragged her weary flanks along the wire mesh. All the cages are the same, she grumbled. A sour hunger gnawed at her stomach. The food dish had been empty that morning.
Suddenly she stopped. Two lights came on in the wall opposite. One red, one green.
This is getting interesting, she murmured. She sniffed suspiciously and then butted the green button with her nose. A faint whistle carried through the air, a hidden door opened, and a sticky lump of food was flung into the centre of the cage.
Food! she rejoiced, and devoured it without hesitation. The green button was butted a second time. Again a whistle, and a second lump met the same fate.
Now this is what I call living. What about a drink to wash it down? She turned an enquiring look at the red light. Let us give it a chance.
Her plump paw pressed the second button confidently. In the next second she was hurled violently against the far side of the mesh. The whole floor seemed electrified.
He shocked me, the filthy man! she screeched. And from that point on she took care not even to glance at the red light.
The domestic laboratory.
Two hundred metres away, in a spacious house, a senior psychologist was pleading with his four-year-old son. Sweetheart, you promised to tidy your room.
The child continued staring at the screeching television and turned a lazy eye towards his father. Don't want to.
The father continued in pleasant tones. It is your responsibility to tidy your room, darling.
The child detached his gaze from the screen, turned a who-even-counts-you expression towards his father and shrieked: I said I don't want to! The message was underlined by a cruel hurling of a cup of juice at the wall.
Something snapped in the psychologist. With one decisive stab of the remote he switched the set off. No television until morning. Do you hear?
The wails of response were not slow in coming, but the father remained firm. All that evening the screen stayed dark — except for the standby light, still flickering red.
Now, the point of the parallel is not that children are rats, and it is not an argument for harshness. It is an argument about three properties that determine whether a consequence teaches anything at all.
It must be immediate. A consequence delivered hours later attaches to nothing; the child experiences it as arbitrary unpleasantness rather than as a result.
It must be clear. The child needs to know precisely which behaviour produced it — which means one sentence, not a lecture.
And it must be delivered without anger. This is the part parents find hardest and it matters most, because an angry punishment teaches the child something entirely different from what you intended: not that the act was wrong, but that you can be provoked.
The rat learned in two attempts. She was not frightened of the researcher, and she did not conclude anything about herself. She simply learned which button did what — which is all any consequence should ever be asked to teach.