7 ms·

I appreciate the ideas of this article (and book). It's a hard to digest one and possibly controversial as well. But at least with raising children, it does see

by nstart 8y ago

I appreciate the ideas of this article (and book). It's a hard to digest one and possibly controversial as well. But at least with raising children, it does seem to work. Especially in the negative way. There's a pattern parents are supposed to follow now. When a child does something undesirable, you criticise the individual action. When they do something desirable, you praise the overall quality. Eg - Child attempts to pull glass off table. Instead of calling them naughty or careless, we explain to them that doing things that could break glass is dangerous to them and the people around. When a child picks up their toys and puts them back where they belong, we say "thank you for being so helpful", or "thank you for being so neat". At least anecdotally, calling children mischievous tends to have this kind of reinforcement on them where they then start to adopt the label of being mischievous. Admittedly, I don't know if it's just confirmation bias. It could be me thinking of their behaviour differently by avoiding any labels in my head too.

ThomPete 8y ago
If that was the case we would live in a very different world. Discipline is necessary for children, they cant reason, why something is supposed to be in a certain way, so speaking to them like they do at an age of 5, is the real danger here. As they grow older and understand more complex concepts you can start to educate them on the nuances and reasons but in my experience, they will automatically start asking you at the right age and you should be able to just use that as your trajectory IMO.
- specialist 8y ago
  Any of us could talk about parenting strategies ad nauseum. I have no greater wisdom. I'll just share two bits of advice I found helpful. And one belief. Most young humans don't misbehave. It's their job to explore the world, test boundaries, learn. It's the parent's job to preserve the boundaries. Reassure the child the world is safe and predictable. Stuff like bed time rituals are super important to keeping everyone sane. Ages 0-8, imprint your child with your values. Ages 9-12, have fun together. Ages 13-25, keep them alive. Cognition is social. We resonate off each other. Model the behavior you expect, your kids will pick it up.
  - ghotli 8y ago
    hey you know what, this really resonates with me.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    yup 7.30PM in our house and we eat together most of the time make our own food (from scratch and involve the kids in making sure they help out) and we give them more and more responsibility plus allow them to get hurt (free range). This sounds normal to a lot of people but in New York it's not that normal. How they will turn out we will see :)
    - specialist 8y ago
      Ya, that's one thing I did get right. My son always helped me in the kitchen. At first, it was just help by "washing" the vegetables. What kid doesn't like to play in the water? He'd eat anything he helped prepare, even if he didn't like it much (eg mushrooms). Because he had a relationship with his food. Now he's quite the foodie. Makes serviceable Phad Thai, curries, etc. Another house rule was "One 'No thank you' bite". I didn't make any of the kids choke down foods, like my parents did to us. But they had to try everything at least once. They were often happily surprised.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        Yup, that's the rule here to. Also, my boys get to decide what to eat once a month and help to do it. Ther is just one rule. They can't choose the same which means we got the burgers, lasagne, pasta with butter and parmesan and curry chicken out of the way fast :)
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  Are you a childhood development or cognitive behavioral specialist? Can you point me to your CV or simply list a couple of the papers you've published?
  - jexah 8y ago
    You might have better luck if you attack the substance rather than the authority.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Your comment is non responsive. Telling your child they are bad people is not discipline.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    ? How am I telling them they are bad people? Not sure what you are talking about.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  I’m not really sure what you mean by “discipline”. Anecdotally, as the parent of a not-quite-2-year-old, I have found that when I treat 2- to 4-year-old kids at the playground with basic human respect, and pay attention to their interests and feelings, they end up following me all around subsequently (and e.g. running over to me when they see me the next week, wanting to show me their toys and tricks, ...), as if they were craving non-controlling non-judgmental human interaction they otherwise were not receiving from other people they interact with on a regular basis. Watching other parents and caretakers, there are a substantial proportion who constantly deny kids’ feelings, tell them what they are supposed to feel and think, baby them by doing things for them that they could do for themselves, prevent them from doing not-very-risky things ostensibly for safety reasons, pointlessly force them to do irrelevant things they don’t want to do, etc. YMMV.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    Thank you for asking. I don't mean "discipline" in a physical way of course. I simply mean that I am not going to explain to them why they are not allowed to do certain things or why I want them to do certain things when they are too young because they don't' understand why. I was responding to the idea that you need to explain to kids why or we would get mischievous kids. With regards to the feelings. It's not as simple as you seem to portray. Kids will use that to get things their way there are plenty examples of parents who accept all their kid's emotions at face value and end up running around being controlled by their kids. So a balance is needed. And yes I agree that they should do as many things themselves which also for our kids means getting a lot of bruises for falling down from things (within reason obviously) It's all about balance. Don't deny your kid their emotions when they are real but "call them on their bluff" when they are not. That's my approach at least.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      > I simply mean that I am not going to explain to them why they are not allowed to do certain things or why I want them to do certain things when they are too young because they don't understand why. You might be surprised. Even when kids don’t fully understand the explanation, they can understand tone of voice, and might still appreciate that the adult has reasons for acting and is trying to explain instead of making decisions capriciously. The act of explaining also forces the adult to think about the reasons for their decisions, which gives a chance for reconsideration when the decision was in fact arbitrary. Finally, explaining things gets both parties in the habit of talking about their feelings and decisions instead of expecting everyone around to guess them and then getting mad when they are not understood. (For a simple example, if we just read the same book 3 times in a row, and I want to read something else, I can either (a) explain that I am bored with the book and need some variety to keep my sanity, and let the kid pick the next book, or (b) realize that I don’t actually care which book we are reading, and just dive in for time #4; either of those is better than just “we aren’t reading that book again, we are reading this one” which is just a unilateral decision.) > With regards to the feelings. It's not as simple as you seem to portray. Kids will use that to get things their way there are plenty examples of parents who accept all their kid's emotions at face value and end up running around being controlled by their kids. For instance, when someone falls down and is fussing, either “oh get up, you are fine, that didn’t hurt” or “oh my gosh! you must be really hurt! let me smother you in kisses and make it better!” are telling the kid what to feel/think, and if the response doesn’t actually match the severity of the fall, then this is quite confusing for the kid. A better response is “are you alright?”; then the kid can decide if they are actually just surprised, or if they are in pain and want comforting, or if they are seriously injured and need more significant help. Again, anecdotally, I have observed that the parents who get run over by their kids tend to be the same ones who are consistently ignoring or denying the kids’ feelings (or sometimes largely ignoring the kids’ existence unless they are misbehaving). Demanding things and throwing tantrums is one of the few ways the kids find to get the attention they crave. Accepting someone’s feelings doesn’t mean giving them whatever they want. It just means listening to what they are actually saying, and then responding to that in an empathetic way (a good start is to just echo back what they are saying or what you think they might be feeling). To any parents out there: I recommend the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.
mherdeg 8y ago
> There's a pattern parents are supposed to follow now. When a child does something undesirable, you criticise the individual action. When they do something desirable, you praise the overall quality. I have been seeing this advice a lot lately. I wonder whether some of the value of that you get from following this advice as a parent is that you consciously decide to minimize the impact of the fundamental attribution error (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error). Being on the receiving end of that kind of error can feel unpleasantly unfair and can hurt your relationship with the person who makes it ("when X bad thing happens to me, I was unlucky; when it happens to you, it's your fault for being unprepared").
- specialist 8y ago
  I missed that parenting memo. I will share a tip that seemed to work pretty good, most of the time. All negatives can be stated as a positive. For example, instead of "Don't run!" maybe say "Please walk". Takes a lot of practice. The biggest change, of course, is in me (ourselves), a shift in attitude, trying to figure out positive vs negative reinforcement.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Not all negative actions have positive replacements. * Please don't lick your knife. * Please stop asking for X as I've already told you we can't afford it (I sometimes do offer to help them find a job though, or suggest an entrepreneurial idea; depends if it's a short term demand or a long-term or capital item.) You could create a dummy action (distraction/redirection), which I see often -- it seems needlessly passive to me. One could say "please take care with your knife" but that assumes the child knows what "care" means which is often a bad assumption with a child. One could also give the child a rubbish knife to remove the risk (I'd rather they have usable tools). With commands like "don't run" by using the more passive "please walk" one is limiting unnecessarily. "Please skip, or jog, or walk, crawl, roll, sidle, shuffle, hop, shimmy, or ..." sometimes it's better to be direct (but maybe not always). FWIW, you're getting your psych terminology mixed up AFAICT: "Please walk!" is a negative reinforcement, it's an admonishment to increase an action. "Thank you for walking" would be a positive reinforcement (only if they're already walking). In contrast "Don't run!" is a positive punishment, an admonishment to reduce an action. For completeness, a negative punishment would be taking away something to reduce an activity, maybe stopping smiling at a child when they misbehave. I do agree it's good to reinforce desirable behaviour. One of the things that's difficult about being poor is finding no-cost pleasant stimulii for reinforcement. One can easily use food, which I think is possibly one of the factors in the obesity crisis.
paganel 8y ago
> When a child picks up their toys and puts them back where they belong, we say "thank you for being so helpful", or "thank you for being so neat". They’re just kids, it’s ok to let them have their toys in disorder on the apartment’s floor, that’s what toys are for, for playing, “keeping things in order” defeats the whole purpose of “playing”. Granted, I don’t have kids, but when I was young my parents didn’t push me at “tidying things up” and I feel that was good for me, because I had more time to let my imagination run wild. For a young brain imagination and whatever it is that stands behind the idea of playing are more important than the domestication tendencies like forcing children to “keep things in order”.
- scottLobster 8y ago
  I was raised under a similar thought process, had zero chores in general among other "freedoms", my mom in particular cleaned up my every mess. It left me with vast problems regarding organization and discipline well past college, that I'm only really now getting over at age 30. Sure there is such a thing as oppressive amounts of structure, but rest assured my kids will have reasonable chores and a strong reinforcement of "when you're done with something, put it back where you found it". Imagination should be encouraged, but not at the the expense of execution. Good ideas are cheap, it's the ability to implement them that really makes a difference.
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  In psychology, trait conscientiousness correlates strongly with success. To the extent conscientiousness might be taught and reinforced through ideas like you should put away toys you're not playing with anymore, perhaps it should be encouraged.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    I don't think any serious psychological study would correlate anything with something as abstract and undegined as "success". Is there a way to win at life?
    - 8y ago
xorcist 8y ago
> At least anecdotally, calling children mischievous tends to have this kind of reinforcement on them This is especially clear to me among older kids and younger teenagers, who have already taken on themselves social roles in the groups they belong to. If they already see themselves as the one who gets in trouble in the classroom, for example, calling them out on it isn't very helpful. One thing that might work is finding something they care about and giving them positive reinforcement and larger responsibilities (this is key) regarding it. It is not a panacea in itself, but it is a good peg to hang up some mutual respect on.

by nstart 8y ago

ThomPete 8y ago

If that was the case we would live in a very different world. Discipline is necessary for children, they cant reason, why something is supposed to be in a certain way, so speaking to them like they do at an age of 5, is the real danger here. As they grow older and understand more complex concepts you can start to educate them on the nuances and reasons but in my experience, they will automatically start asking you at the right age and you should be able to just use that as your trajectory IMO.

specialist 8y ago
Any of us could talk about parenting strategies ad nauseum. I have no greater wisdom. I'll just share two bits of advice I found helpful. And one belief. Most young humans don't misbehave. It's their job to explore the world, test boundaries, learn. It's the parent's job to preserve the boundaries. Reassure the child the world is safe and predictable. Stuff like bed time rituals are super important to keeping everyone sane. Ages 0-8, imprint your child with your values. Ages 9-12, have fun together. Ages 13-25, keep them alive. Cognition is social. We resonate off each other. Model the behavior you expect, your kids will pick it up.
- ghotli 8y ago
  hey you know what, this really resonates with me.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  yup 7.30PM in our house and we eat together most of the time make our own food (from scratch and involve the kids in making sure they help out) and we give them more and more responsibility plus allow them to get hurt (free range). This sounds normal to a lot of people but in New York it's not that normal. How they will turn out we will see :)
  - specialist 8y ago
    Ya, that's one thing I did get right. My son always helped me in the kitchen. At first, it was just help by "washing" the vegetables. What kid doesn't like to play in the water? He'd eat anything he helped prepare, even if he didn't like it much (eg mushrooms). Because he had a relationship with his food. Now he's quite the foodie. Makes serviceable Phad Thai, curries, etc. Another house rule was "One 'No thank you' bite". I didn't make any of the kids choke down foods, like my parents did to us. But they had to try everything at least once. They were often happily surprised.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      Yup, that's the rule here to. Also, my boys get to decide what to eat once a month and help to do it. Ther is just one rule. They can't choose the same which means we got the burgers, lasagne, pasta with butter and parmesan and curry chicken out of the way fast :)
InclinedPlane 8y ago
Are you a childhood development or cognitive behavioral specialist? Can you point me to your CV or simply list a couple of the papers you've published?
- jexah 8y ago
  You might have better luck if you attack the substance rather than the authority.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Your comment is non responsive. Telling your child they are bad people is not discipline.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  ? How am I telling them they are bad people? Not sure what you are talking about.
jacobolus 8y ago
I’m not really sure what you mean by “discipline”. Anecdotally, as the parent of a not-quite-2-year-old, I have found that when I treat 2- to 4-year-old kids at the playground with basic human respect, and pay attention to their interests and feelings, they end up following me all around subsequently (and e.g. running over to me when they see me the next week, wanting to show me their toys and tricks, ...), as if they were craving non-controlling non-judgmental human interaction they otherwise were not receiving from other people they interact with on a regular basis. Watching other parents and caretakers, there are a substantial proportion who constantly deny kids’ feelings, tell them what they are supposed to feel and think, baby them by doing things for them that they could do for themselves, prevent them from doing not-very-risky things ostensibly for safety reasons, pointlessly force them to do irrelevant things they don’t want to do, etc. YMMV.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Thank you for asking. I don't mean "discipline" in a physical way of course. I simply mean that I am not going to explain to them why they are not allowed to do certain things or why I want them to do certain things when they are too young because they don't' understand why. I was responding to the idea that you need to explain to kids why or we would get mischievous kids. With regards to the feelings. It's not as simple as you seem to portray. Kids will use that to get things their way there are plenty examples of parents who accept all their kid's emotions at face value and end up running around being controlled by their kids. So a balance is needed. And yes I agree that they should do as many things themselves which also for our kids means getting a lot of bruises for falling down from things (within reason obviously) It's all about balance. Don't deny your kid their emotions when they are real but "call them on their bluff" when they are not. That's my approach at least.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    > I simply mean that I am not going to explain to them why they are not allowed to do certain things or why I want them to do certain things when they are too young because they don't understand why. You might be surprised. Even when kids don’t fully understand the explanation, they can understand tone of voice, and might still appreciate that the adult has reasons for acting and is trying to explain instead of making decisions capriciously. The act of explaining also forces the adult to think about the reasons for their decisions, which gives a chance for reconsideration when the decision was in fact arbitrary. Finally, explaining things gets both parties in the habit of talking about their feelings and decisions instead of expecting everyone around to guess them and then getting mad when they are not understood. (For a simple example, if we just read the same book 3 times in a row, and I want to read something else, I can either (a) explain that I am bored with the book and need some variety to keep my sanity, and let the kid pick the next book, or (b) realize that I don’t actually care which book we are reading, and just dive in for time #4; either of those is better than just “we aren’t reading that book again, we are reading this one” which is just a unilateral decision.) > With regards to the feelings. It's not as simple as you seem to portray. Kids will use that to get things their way there are plenty examples of parents who accept all their kid's emotions at face value and end up running around being controlled by their kids. For instance, when someone falls down and is fussing, either “oh get up, you are fine, that didn’t hurt” or “oh my gosh! you must be really hurt! let me smother you in kisses and make it better!” are telling the kid what to feel/think, and if the response doesn’t actually match the severity of the fall, then this is quite confusing for the kid. A better response is “are you alright?”; then the kid can decide if they are actually just surprised, or if they are in pain and want comforting, or if they are seriously injured and need more significant help. Again, anecdotally, I have observed that the parents who get run over by their kids tend to be the same ones who are consistently ignoring or denying the kids’ feelings (or sometimes largely ignoring the kids’ existence unless they are misbehaving). Demanding things and throwing tantrums is one of the few ways the kids find to get the attention they crave. Accepting someone’s feelings doesn’t mean giving them whatever they want. It just means listening to what they are actually saying, and then responding to that in an empathetic way (a good start is to just echo back what they are saying or what you think they might be feeling). To any parents out there: I recommend the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.

mherdeg 8y ago

> There's a pattern parents are supposed to follow now. When a child does something undesirable, you criticise the individual action. When they do something desirable, you praise the overall quality. I have been seeing this advice a lot lately. I wonder whether some of the value of that you get from following this advice as a parent is that you consciously decide to minimize the impact of the fundamental attribution error (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error). Being on the receiving end of that kind of error can feel unpleasantly unfair and can hurt your relationship with the person who makes it ("when X bad thing happens to me, I was unlucky; when it happens to you, it's your fault for being unprepared").

specialist 8y ago
I missed that parenting memo. I will share a tip that seemed to work pretty good, most of the time. All negatives can be stated as a positive. For example, instead of "Don't run!" maybe say "Please walk". Takes a lot of practice. The biggest change, of course, is in me (ourselves), a shift in attitude, trying to figure out positive vs negative reinforcement.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Not all negative actions have positive replacements. * Please don't lick your knife. * Please stop asking for X as I've already told you we can't afford it (I sometimes do offer to help them find a job though, or suggest an entrepreneurial idea; depends if it's a short term demand or a long-term or capital item.) You could create a dummy action (distraction/redirection), which I see often -- it seems needlessly passive to me. One could say "please take care with your knife" but that assumes the child knows what "care" means which is often a bad assumption with a child. One could also give the child a rubbish knife to remove the risk (I'd rather they have usable tools). With commands like "don't run" by using the more passive "please walk" one is limiting unnecessarily. "Please skip, or jog, or walk, crawl, roll, sidle, shuffle, hop, shimmy, or ..." sometimes it's better to be direct (but maybe not always). FWIW, you're getting your psych terminology mixed up AFAICT: "Please walk!" is a negative reinforcement, it's an admonishment to increase an action. "Thank you for walking" would be a positive reinforcement (only if they're already walking). In contrast "Don't run!" is a positive punishment, an admonishment to reduce an action. For completeness, a negative punishment would be taking away something to reduce an activity, maybe stopping smiling at a child when they misbehave. I do agree it's good to reinforce desirable behaviour. One of the things that's difficult about being poor is finding no-cost pleasant stimulii for reinforcement. One can easily use food, which I think is possibly one of the factors in the obesity crisis.

paganel 8y ago

> When a child picks up their toys and puts them back where they belong, we say "thank you for being so helpful", or "thank you for being so neat". They’re just kids, it’s ok to let them have their toys in disorder on the apartment’s floor, that’s what toys are for, for playing, “keeping things in order” defeats the whole purpose of “playing”. Granted, I don’t have kids, but when I was young my parents didn’t push me at “tidying things up” and I feel that was good for me, because I had more time to let my imagination run wild. For a young brain imagination and whatever it is that stands behind the idea of playing are more important than the domestication tendencies like forcing children to “keep things in order”.

scottLobster 8y ago
I was raised under a similar thought process, had zero chores in general among other "freedoms", my mom in particular cleaned up my every mess. It left me with vast problems regarding organization and discipline well past college, that I'm only really now getting over at age 30. Sure there is such a thing as oppressive amounts of structure, but rest assured my kids will have reasonable chores and a strong reinforcement of "when you're done with something, put it back where you found it". Imagination should be encouraged, but not at the the expense of execution. Good ideas are cheap, it's the ability to implement them that really makes a difference.
Consultant32452 8y ago
In psychology, trait conscientiousness correlates strongly with success. To the extent conscientiousness might be taught and reinforced through ideas like you should put away toys you're not playing with anymore, perhaps it should be encouraged.
- mijamo 8y ago
  I don't think any serious psychological study would correlate anything with something as abstract and undegined as "success". Is there a way to win at life?
  - 8y ago

xorcist 8y ago

> At least anecdotally, calling children mischievous tends to have this kind of reinforcement on them This is especially clear to me among older kids and younger teenagers, who have already taken on themselves social roles in the groups they belong to. If they already see themselves as the one who gets in trouble in the classroom, for example, calling them out on it isn't very helpful. One thing that might work is finding something they care about and giving them positive reinforcement and larger responsibilities (this is key) regarding it. It is not a panacea in itself, but it is a good peg to hang up some mutual respect on.