Does your statement say you gave him part of a reward (chips), but not the whole reward because of his actions or am I mis-reading it? In our house mis-behavior has consequences such as time outs, standing in the corner, or having privileges taken away, and our children seem to understand that making wrong choices such as spitting or hitting will have consequences that they don't like. It seems to me that even a partial reward is really confusing to a child, was the action wrong, or OK because I still got part of my reward?