A Story About a Boy Analyzed Through Behavioral Theories

A torrent of rain poured from the sky. With each gust of wind the trees bent and the tall grass pressed itself flat against the ground as if the rain was gun fire. The night sky was alive with bright flashes of light accompanied by explosions that made the residents of the small red house below wonder if the gods themselves were waging war upon one another. Timmy, the youngest child of the family gazed out the window with wonder and admiration at the destructive and ephemeral wonders of nature. In his mind he felt as though he were looking into the dark chaotic soul of nature itself and, finding it so much like his own, loved it more then anything else. Every clap of thunder shattered the peaceful atmosphere within the house as if it was a massive rock punching its way through the thin layer of ice above a pond formed in the early of winter.

Timmy felt a deep connection to that rock, the power, the satisfactory feeling that came with shattering of such perfectly planar and uniform surface. There could be nothing more beautiful Timmy began to think, but his thoughts were cut short by the shrill voice of his mother calling him down for dinner. He remained unmoving, an effigy of himself with his mind in the sky, her voice wouldn't ruin his perfect show. For a single moment everything was still. Suddenly Timmy could hear his mother's thunderous stomping up the stairs almost echoing the storm outside. As she reached his room her voice reached an almost impossibly shrill level as she chastised him for his disobedience and constant disregard of her words.

The door to his room burst open as if hit with one of the bolts of lightning outside. Timmy's mother grabbed him by the ear sending a surge of pain across the side of his face. She dragged him down the stairs almost hurling him into his seat at the table. His ear felt as though someone had lit a match beneath it, but Timmy basked in the pain and the rebellion it represented. He knew in his heart his mother would never be able to drive him into the same subservience she had his siblings who responded like dogs when called. The green mush on the plates on the table smelt like rotting leaves and bark. The mother made a gesture towards the plates the rest of the family had already cleared and looked to Timmy to obey and eat.

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The command infuriated him and with a brusque flick of his wrist he sent the plate skidding across the table onto the floor where it smashed into hundreds of pieces. Timmy took a minute to admire the now beautifully sharp shards of porcelain before getting up and walking to the window in the mud room by the front door with a blatant indifference of the shouts of his mother and father. He smiled at the ever growing intensity of the storm and the scraping sound of one of his brothers sweeping up the fragments of plate at his mother's command. The sound of the broom against the floor was akin to that of metal grinding on stone, but it was like music to Timmy's ears. Without thinking he grabbed the largest jackets he could off the rack behind him.

He pulled open the door and with all his strength threw the jackets into the rain and onto the driveway and slammed the door shut. Again the footsteps of his mother echoed through the house, growing louder as she approached. Her figure appeared in the door, a massive shadow, she appeared a demon in his eyes. Before she could open her mouth to release another barrage of punishment Timmy gestured out the window to the black mass in the drive and claimed he believed it to be the body of a man who had, upon walking up the driveway, collapsed in front of the house. Through the window fogged by Timmy's breath and air darkened by the storm she couldn't make out what the shape in the dive was and moved to the door for a closer look. The shape certainly had human features and as such she opened the door and walked closer for a better look.

As soon as her form cleared the doorframe the door slammed shut behind her. The latch made a satisfying click as Timmy forced it into place. It was like the feeling of pressing a bullet into the chamber of a revolver, exhilarating and gratifying with a feeling of power. He knew on the other side of the door she pounded and screamed, but it was lost in the roar of the storm like a single raindrop trying to be heard amongst the thousands smashing against the ground. She belonged to the storm now he thought. Timmy wandered back into the kitchen where his father roughly sent him to his room. No force was required though and Timmy walked calmly to the stairs.

As he approached he noticed his brother still sweeping the floor. In one swift motion Timmy pulled a firecracker from his pocket and tossed it to his brother. Timmy turned quickly and walked up the stairs into his room shutting the door behind him. He sat on his bedroom floor and listened to the storm as it died down and tried to pick out the screams from the howling of the wind. In the end he just appreciated the chaos for what it was. With the end of the rain a profound stillness covered the little red house. Timmy didn't like the peace and quite the end of the storm brought, but he knew the truth to it all. You can't have chaos without occasional peace or the chaos would become the routine and lose it's tumult joy. He knew that sometimes you needed to wait and let the ice on the surface of the pound reform before throwing another stone and shattering it all. And in the end, Timmy just liked to throw stones.

Timmy is a terrible child who hurts his family and is generally messed up, he needs a lot of conditioning work to get better and become a good person/child. Positive reinforcement is giving someone good stimulus when they do a desired action. Rewarding by tipping someone with money for a job well done trains them to do a good job so that they can get the reward. The first bad behavior that Timmy expresses is that he doesn't come when called to dinner. The current punishment of pulling on the ear doesn't seem to work. This behavior might be fixed by adding a harsher or more lasting punishment or offering a positive stimulus when he comes right away, for example giving Timmy desert every night he comes down when called. Eventually he would connect coming down for dinner to dessert and come down more willingly. This would be positive reinforcement because the family would be adding a positive stimulus to Timmy's life everytime he does the thing they want.

A variable ratio schedule is a schedule of a reinforcing stimulus after a random number of the desired behaviors. This prevents the conditioned person from knowing when the stimulus they want is going to happen so they need to consistently complete the task. Variable ratio reward is like a scratch ticket, every few you did you get a small reward but you never know after how many. Timmy doesn't eat his food once dragged down. In his mind the food is described as gross. An approach involving adding .preserved good food to the bad every few meals would help make the food seem less gross to Timmy. He wouldn't be able to tell before eating and would be forced to eat the food every night in hope that that night will be the one with good food added. This would at least get Timmy to eat a small amount consistently.

Positive punishment is a punishment that adds something. Spanking a child when they do something wrong is adding pain and thus positive punishment. A more violent behavior Timmy demonstrates is his knocking the plate off the table. Instead of letting him get away with it his parents should have stopped him right there and forced him to clean up the mess. They could do this by not letting him leave the room until he did, essentially a time out and chore in one, hopefully making him not smash things in the future. This would be adding the toil of cleaning and the isolation of being stuck in the room and would be positive punishment. Eventual Timmy wouldn't smash things knowing the task of cleaning them up will be added to his life if he does.

A fixed interval schedule of reinforcement is a schedule with a reinforcing stimulus after a certain amount of time. This can be used to effectively reward someone for the duration of time they do something like someone who gets paid by the hour is on a fixed interval. To prevent behaviors such as locking his mother outside, Timmy should be watched more by both parents.

In order to prevent him from tricking them like that they need to be more mindful of his actions and acknowledge his propensity towards trickery. For everyday he does nothing extremely bad the parents give him a cookie. This would be a fixed interval schedule of reward, the fixed duration of time would be a day with the reward of the cookie. This would force Timmy to be good for the entire day. Everytime he thought of doing something bad he would have to consider if it was worth the cookie and hopefully he would opt for the cookie.

Negative punishment is taking something away from a person as a punishment for a behavior you don't want. It's removing something positive, usually something related to the behavior works best. For example taking away a child's legos if they keep leaving them on the floor. In Timmy's case Negative punishment could be used to help prevent behaves like throwing firecrackers at his brother by taking away his firecrackers when he uses them improperly.

Taking away his firecrackers would not only deter him from committing the action again for fear of same punishment but would also temporarily prevent him from using firecrackers all together. This would be effective negative punishment if administered quickly after the bad behavior because it would remove a desired stimulus and prevent the behavior. Timmy is a very bad child because he smashes things and generally disrespects and hurts his family and needs some conditioning to become a better child.

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