You're not kidding. I'm on my tenth viewing, and his delivery of "A knife!!!!" *still* gets me.

I know right? He's gonna make a great surgeon one day with those knife skills!

Decision tree:

You spot Timmy running with a sharp object.

How do you respond?

a. "NOOO!!!" (proceed to chase down Timmy)
b. "Cool! Can I see it?"
>b

...Timmy approaches and offers the knife, smiling.
You take the knife(negative punishment), then decide how to respond:
a. (positive reinforcement) "Good boy! Now please never do that again, okay?"
b. (positive punishment) *Spank Timmy.* "Bad boy! Don't run with knives ever again!"

>open mailbox, take everything

Am I doing it right?

>b

I wanna see where it goes.

...After a brief spanking and sending Timmy away, the rest of the day was uneventful in your mind. Most just had a good laugh about Timmy's antics, though you had a moment of real fear that there would be a hospital visit. You gave yourself a pat on the back for pain and danger averted.

Timmy did not understand the danger he was in, however. In fact, much like many children who are given similar lessons early in life, he resented his punishment and only wanted more to do with knives.

The next time Timmy found a knife, he didn't have his mom around to scold him. He did learn that knives...HELD IN FRONT OF MOM... meant spankings, but not much else.

"Research also shows that it does not actually weaken a person’s behavior when punished, it simply suppresses it. If a teenager or child fears being punished, they may continue to do the undesirable outcomes away from the “punisher”; in essence, they don’t like the punishment, but they may still enjoy the behavior itself (APA & Smith, 2012)."

As a five year old, Timmy had many similar incidents with his teachers. Each time he was caught and punished, he only learned new ways to hide what he was up to. It became a game for him; the absence of punishment became its own reward.

As a 10 year old, Timmy came home from school smelling kind of funny. Mom suspected and found the worst of her fears in her backpack: a floppy bag full of drugs.

Timmy would eventually move out at the age of 17. Where he ended up, mom wouldn't be able to find out -- he was off the grid to her after moving to Portland. One thing, she knew for sure -- he had a knife with him. And drugs.

Jesus Christ poor Timmy what have I done

Hey, AdHam Neu'man, check out my Halloween video, I was thinking of you when I was putting it together!

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=162879

*****

Yes.