Punishment Decoded: How Children’s Understanding of Punishment Changes with Age
Written by Riya Gill
Parenting, whether it’s your first time or not, is never easy. You constantly contemplate if you are teaching your child the right lessons and if your child understands these lessons. Picture this scenario: It’s a busy Friday afternoon, and your five-year-old squeezed their juice box too hard for the fourth time this week.
Frustrated, but trying to keep your composure, you consider your options - should you give the talk about using gentle hands yet again? Remove the idea of juice boxes all together? Send them for a time-out? As all these possibilities run through your mind, you begin to consider not only which consequence fits best with the lesson you are trying to teach, but if your five-year-old will be able to understand the punishment at all.
As children grow, their ability to interpret emotions changes with their experiences (Leitzke et al., 2024). Younger children (3-5 years old) are still developing the ability to reason through emotion. This means that they rely heavily on contextual cues, such as tone of voice, rather than facial expressions, when evaluating how others feel.
For example, if you respond to a spilled juice box with a loud voice and a serious expression, your child will base their reaction on your tone and the situation, rather than your facial expressions alone. In contrast, older children (6-10 years old) may pay closer attention to your facial expressions and verbal explanations to understand the “why” behind how you feel. As children develop the ability to reason about emotions, they also become more aware of fairness in punishment. Lee and Solomon’s (2025) research suggests that younger children may react more emotionally to immediate consequences, whereas older children begin to see punishment as a tool for maintaining fairness. Taking on this nuanced view, older children are less likely to support harsh punishment and more likely to approve consequences that provide a balance between learning and an appropriate response from their parent. A key finding suggests that older children see punishment as necessary, but they don’t always favour the person delivering it.
To further elaborate on the research mentioned above, between the ages of six to ten, children develop the ability to understand that punishment shapes behaviour; however, children’s acceptance of punishment depends on whether they see it as justified and appropriate. For example, positive punishment - adding an unfavourable stimulus, such as extra chores, may be viewed as fair if it is seen as a logical consequence for their actions. Similarly, negative punishment - removing a favourable stimulus, like losing extra playtime, might be accepted if the child believes it aligns with their behaviour.
When children perceive punishment as a way to teach rather than a method of control, they are more likely to accept it as fair. Ultimately, Lee and Solomon (2025) found that children's perception of a punishment's fairness may have a greater impact than the punishment itself, as their interpretation of its meaning influences their emotional response.
So, the question remains: do children understand the “why” behind their punishment? The answer to this question is not one-size-fits-all, according to Slagt and colleagues (2016), who found that temperament (emotional reactivity to the world) plays a vital role in how children react to punishment.
Younger children, who are still learning how to manage their emotions and think through situations, may struggle to see punishment as a way to learn. Instead, they often focus on the immediate discomfort of seeing their parent unhappy with them. Older children, conversely, are better at understanding the purpose behind punishment - especially if they feel that it’s fair. However, age may not even serve as a predictor for your child’s reaction - some children are naturally more sensitive and may take punishment more personally, making it harder for them to see the lesson behind it
In case a box of spilled juice is in your near future, try to remember that how children respond to punishment depends on their age, sense of fairness, and temperament. Tailoring your response with these elements in mind can make your message more meaningful. Most importantly, remember that parenting is tough and you are doing the best for both you and your child!
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References
Lee, Y., & Solomon, L. H. (2025). Not all punishment is equal: The effect of punishment severity on children’s social evaluations. Developmental Psychology, 61(2), 311–322. https://doi-org.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/10.1037/dev0001845
Leitzke, B. T., Cochrane, A., Stein, A. G., DeLap, G. A., Green, C. S., & Pollak, S. D. (2024). Children’s and adolescents’ use of context in judgments of emotion intensity. Affective Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-024-00279-5
Slagt, M., Dubas, J. S., Deković, M., & van Aken, M. A. G. (2016). Differences in sensitivity to parenting depending on child temperament: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 142(10), 1068–1110. https://doi-org.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/10.1037/bul0000061
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The blog posts are for informational and educational purposes only. The posts should not be considered as any type of advice (medical, mental health, legal, and/or religious advice). All blog posts have been researched, written, and edited by the undergraduate students and alumni of the Lifespan Cognition Lab. As a teaching and research-based lab, we encourage all lab members to help make knowledge more accessible to all communities through these posts.
