Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist and definitely am not pretending to be, what I'm about to discuss I've only ever used when working with dogs and kids age 9 - 14. So use your dang noggin'. Also have no idea how it would work with girls. So...

Here is a quick post on how to correct children that have behavioral problems (and your dog, how are you letting an animal misbehave in your house you dingus?) in an effective way.

Starting off I want to address the fact that corrections only work if a few criteria are met. This is true both for kids and animals.

1) The correction matches the inappropriate behavior and is done within a relevant amount of time.

If this is done improperly either the correction will be ineffective (too weak of a correction) or will traumatize the individual youre correcting/damage the relationship you have with the correctee(too severe of a correction). There is a spectrum that is effective so don't feel like it's and exact things. If the correction is done outside of the applicable timeframe, the correctee wont internally correlate the correction and the behavior.

2) The correction is sustainable and consistent.

Inconsistent corrections will cause the individual to instead fear the person correcting them, and won't fix the behavior. Or will make the correctee decide if disobedienceis "worth it"

3) The correction is given emotionlessly (or at least without malice).

Any emotion tied to the correction will instead link the correction to a feeling instead of an action. Additionally if you are emotional it can make you overestimate the level of correction. Protip: If you can't spank your kid without getting pissed off, don't do it at all.

4) An alternative behavior is offered that leads to a positive response.

Removing the behavior without offering an alternative (in most situations) will slow down the process of behavior modification

5) Attention goading with the bad behavior is corrected without giving attention.

If a correctee is doing the behavior for attention, giving attention for the bad behavior will exacerbate the situation, likely making the behavior more common.

6) (For kids only) Have followup where you elaborate on the value of teaching themselves how to hold themselves to a standard of behavior.

Some things I want to make clear following this list, I am comfortable with the following type of corrections if it is done intentionally and thoughtfully: Pain corrections, work corrections, group shame corrections, negative reinforcement (taking freedom/comfort away), encouraging specific fears and witholding comforts.

I'll give you 2 example of this process, 1 human and 1 dog to understand how to satisfy all the requirements and what it looks like to evaluate each point based on the individual.

Example 1: Mike (One of my past mentees)

A boy I worked with in my youth group has a problem with extreme emotional overreactions. One night while we were doing a community cleanup day Mike was being teased (and was teasing back) another youth kid "B". While I'm not totally sure what B said, he made a comment that pushed Mike overboard and resulted in Mike pushing the B over and trying to fight him.

Following this we had a discussion, and a punishment was given. He had to apologize to B in front of the group. (Group Shame - he got in the fight publically, he will resolve it publically) And he had to sit out for the fun activity we were having later. (Negative Reinforcement). We also went into the rest of the year with him understanding that I was going to be being pretty diligent with him. Following this whenever he started to get too worked up (I was tasked with helping him acclimate) we practiced a few things different behaviors that let him manage his temper and emotions better.

1) The punishment was relevant to the behavior. It wasn't extreme or weak, and got the point acrossed it was an inappropriate behavior

2) Because I was the one who had to watch him, whenever he started to get overwhelmed I would first start off by attempting to catch his eye, I would escalate to give him a squeeze on his traps/back of the neck (this usually helped him snap out his funk and start doing one of our effective behaviors) to giving him a full namecall. This happened everytime and by the end of the year he had gone something like 6 or 7 weeks without incident.

3) I am pretty unattached about punishment, and will dish out appropriate corrections quick enough and to the point now that I sometimes can autopilot it. I do it every time without exception. "Not feeling good" or "someone elses fault" might be plausible excuses but I don't really care.

4) We've repeatedly discussed alternative behaviors and will same as #3 always praise him on (escalating) good behavior. Specifically on what parts I liked/we're good.

5) If he is being obnoxious to get attention I usually will have him go sit in the Youth Pastors office by himself for a few minutes. I try not to give any inflection and be very dry. "Mike, go to the yps office for 4 minutes." Then I'll just continue on what I was doing. He has almost totally stopped attention seeking behavior at Church.

6) Weve since talked about what kind of person he wants to he and how to emulate that. I've asked him if he wants me to hold him accountable to that standard. He said yes and has since being doing MUCH better at self control.

Example 2: "T" (a dog in my pack)

T really struggled with getting over excited during transition times and has a propensity towards aggressive/dominate behaviors. He would posture over other dogs, and would bite and nip during day/night transitions.

The first thing I needed him to understand was if I call his name or address him specifically he either had to A) get away from whomever or whatever he was interacting with. Or B) had to sit and lay down. So I would set up the environment for his bad behaviors to show up and would immediately follow it with my own stalking and body blocking. Invading their personal space until they have a low hanging tail, (this is a negative reinforcement because I'm taking away personal space,) and I would give them the "threat" of being physically punished (stalking is an aggressive behavior) Then I would ask them to either "come here" and "lay down" or once they got far away enough from me I would disengage. Once they would calm down I would ask them to "come here" again, then give them a treat. This is a REALLY effective way to control a LOT of dogs with just your voice.

1) Taking away personal space is a great catch-all for dogs (that you know wont be aggressive toward humans) to gently raise the level of correction to the appropriate point. Because they set the edge of where "too much" is by sitting or laying down.

2) I will do this every time T begins to escalate and he has since become one of my intro dogs because I can genuinely rely on him to listen even if the other dog were to bite him in the face. Being robotic about this is what makes it effective. I draw an extremely obvious line in the sand and he know my exact expectations for him.

3) see #2. I will stalk them and can immediately turn around and give them a treat. Like a light switch, I have no lingering feeling of anger. They get to choose when I'm no longer 'impending' towards them.

4) Because he now knows what my expectations are, if another dog starts to stress him out he will come up to me and whine - now the onus to fix the problem is on me. He is basically saying "praex, I'll give you a chance to fix it because if you don't I will by biting" and if I don't he is within his rights to bite. But again, I never don't fix it.

5) Not applicable to this situation, I can go over a good number more for both humans and dogs if you can't figure it out.

Anyways, this the way I've been able to get kids(because you probably don't really care about the dog thing) to stop being monsters. Stop being inconsistent, be emotionless during punishment, and be specifical about praise. I'd be happy to do a different write up if anyone is interested about other behaviors.