Growing up I was told by my parents that I “enjoy” negative reinforcement. Stuff like you don’t learn unless we take away stuff from you or berate you to do something. But now that I’m older, it doesn’t seen like it matches the traditional definition and it was more negative punishment. Having the concept simplified would help a lot.
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Not sure this is how your parents are using it, but the distinction is usually that negative Reinforcement refers to an effort to pair some unwanted behavior with an unwanted stimuli to determine the behavior, while punishment is a generic term for penalizing someone for something they did.
So, for example, if every time I bite my nails I poke myself with a pin, I am trying to use negative Reinforcement to bite my nails less. If, when someone sees that I have been biting my nails they scream in my face and ground me, I am being punished for biting my nails.
There’s some overlap, of course, but it’s different in application and goal. Reinforcement is about behavior and usually instant and as minimal as possible to get the result you need. Punishment is often more maximal and based on some idea that a person can just stop doing things if the consequence is negative enough.
It’s also possible your parents meant “negative attention” which means doing bad things on purpose in order to provoke others and so get attention from them, even if that attention is negative.
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