Psychologist: Some people contend that children should never be reprimanded. Any criticism, let alone punishment, they say, harms children' s self-esteem. This view is laudable in its challenge to the belief that children should be punished whenever they misbehave, yet it gives a dangerous answer to the question of how often punishment should be inflicted. When parents never reprimand their children, they are in effect rewarding them for unacceptable behavior, and rewarded behavior tends to recur.
The view that children should never be reprimanded functions in the psychologist's argument as a statement of a position that the psychologist's argument is designed to establish as true.