Rewards Work Better than Punishments

Coursera provides some current and well-developed courses such as this one taught by Leonard Hamilton and Dan Ogilvie. In the course Soul Beliefs, and in this particular lecture about behavioral inhibition, Dr. Hamilton explains that we need to demand less behavioral control in children. This is the last few points of his lecture. 

 "And in parenting and teaching, to give the kids a break. 

That children don't really respond well to punishment because their brains don't do punishment very well. And a lot of developmental psychologists have this credo that the way to successfully raise a child is to catch them being good. 

Because if you can catch a child being good and reward that they'll keep doing that. If you catch a child being bad and punish it, they don't yet have all the brain mechanisms that allow them to withhold that response. So a new way of understanding good behavior and bad behavior based on what we know about the brain and how it develops."

https://www.coursera.org/learn/soulbeliefs2/lecture/vgY1t/biology-of-thou-shalt-not-part-c