6 ms·

Freakonomics: Game Theory and Child-Rearing

40 points by cwan 16y ago

johngalt 16y ago
Good way to teach the kids to team up against the parents. There isn't some secret to raising kids. Just create good/bad consequences for good/bad behavior. Make sure they understand you love them, and your goal is to teach them to be good. Their behavior is simply choosing the method in which they are taught.
- synnik 16y ago
  But there is a secret: The goal is not to raise good kids. The goal is to raise good adults.
  - bartonfink 16y ago
    I have a daughter on the way in May, and of all the parenting books I've read to try to prepare, that may be the most insightful thing on the subject I've seen. You just floored me. Good f'ing show, sir - good f'ing show.
    - wazoox 16y ago
      If you want another free, sincere advice : what you say doesn't matter, only how you behave, because the children just imitate you. For a start, never, ever lie to children, or try to trump or manipulate them.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    That's the problem with parenting: you don't know if you've done it right until your kids are 25.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >The goal is not to raise good kids. The goal is to raise good adults. This sounds like an empty aphorism to me. I don't want my kids to be just good adults I want them to be good kids too. I don't mean good in the sense of undemanding behaviourly or conforming or that sort of thing I mean I want them to be fulfilled as much as possible in their childhood too, happy. Someone just accused me of being unnecessarily argumentative so I'm wary of that. But, really one does have to define what a good adult is and consider what you mean to obviate by "not [raising] good kids".
    - synnik 16y ago
      I find it to be far from empty, and it helps me in my decisions. shrug Raising good adults does not preclude raising good kids, so I do find your response to be a bit combative. Just because you have one clear goal in mind does not mean that other goals are not achieved along the way. I don't really want to get into details of how I apply this concept to my parenting -- my reason for posting was exactly the opposite. I want parents to stop (for a moment) focusing on the details, stop worrying about specific techniques, and look at the bigger picture - what are you really striving for over the next 5, 10, 20 years with your kids? And are your current actions supporting that?
      - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
        >Raising good adults does not preclude raising good kids, so I do find your response to be a bit combative. It's the "not to raise good kids" part that turns me off. Surely it should be "to raise good kids _and_ good adults"?
  - johngalt 16y ago
    Of course the idea is to mature them, but what does maturity mean? How do you reach that point? Do you think my method won't get you there?
    - synnik 16y ago
      I think your statements are accurate. I was not disagreeing with what you said, just pointing out a deeper goal behind it.
- chc 16y ago
  Does your method have 100% effectiveness in creating good and productive adults? Because otherwise it seems like there is room for improvement. It's also rather vague, while effective parenting is distressingly high on specifics. The "secret" (if you would call it that) described here would appear to fit your description — there's a bad consequence for fighting and a good consequence for apologizing.
  - johngalt 16y ago
    Until little Johnny(kid1) figures out that being stuck in his room is more palatible to him than it is to little Susie(kid2). Then he wins every disagreement by fiat. Gaining power over your sibling wouldn't be described as a bad consequence to most children.
- btilly 16y ago
  Do you have kids? I always wonder that when I see someone handing out simplistic child rearing advice. The truth is always more complex. And most parents come to understand that. First piece of complexity. We don't want kids to just follow the rules. We want them to understand them. Which means that you don't just train them to follow your rules, you need to explain your rules. Second piece of complexity. Small kids have non-obvious needs around learning about boundaries by crossing them repeatedly. It is not as simple as "the kid is behaving badly". This is a necessary learning process. Therefore you need to deliberately set up boundaries that you expect to be violated repeatedly. Crossing those should have very reliable consequences (this helps the kid learn where the boundary is), but not serious ones. Third complication. Adults have limits as well. As much as we might wish we were perfectly patient people whose tempers never fray, we aren't. And kids will discover those buttons. Part of good parenting is finding ways to keep yourself from being pushed too far. (Big, big hint. Most really big blow-ups happen when one or all parties are short on sleep. Be aware of this and compensate.) I could go on at length, but I hope I've made my point. Just training kids with operant conditioning is not sufficient to be a decent parent.
  - johngalt 16y ago
    Yes I do have kids, and I wonder the same thing about people that are overly complex about a process that's quite simple. Show me a parent that sets up complicated rules for themselves and I'll show you a parent that's trying to rationalize. The parent that looks at their kids and says "I think I'll manipulate my two children to punish each other" is abdicating their role. Many will retreat in the face of a tantrum, and advance on kids that behave. Consider the parent that pushes their straight A student for "another" extra curricular activity, or the parent that helplessly offers bribe after bribe as their child runs wild in a public setting. I've even seen the consequences entirely dependent on the mood of the adult, and the behavior of the kid is secondary. Both your first and second point agree with the focus of my comment. (First point) Teach the rules by (Second point) having consequences. Third point is easily inferred, because I focus on the child's behavior determining consequences, not parental behavior.
    - btilly 16y ago
frossie 16y ago
There is a ton of evidence that people will give up individual gain in order to punish bad behaviour. The classic example is A gets given $100. He can choose to split it with B any way they like. B can accept the offered deal or refuse it, in which case nobody gets anything. From simplistic game theory B should accept any offer (for example $99 for A, $1 for B) since B would have more money than he had before, which was nothing. In practice with real people, anything below a 60-40 split gets rejected. People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game With kids there is an even bigger factor in play - control. Normally, a child is not able to punish its sibling. Under this adult-administered scheme, the child actually has the power to send its sibling to its room! If you know how kids crave to be able to control their situation, you realise this must be like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rolled into one. A long-winded way to say: I am so not surprised, and mildly confused as to why the Freakonomics blog would be.
- d0mine 16y ago
  Related: people are thiefs (on average) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI And btw, there are plenty of opportunities for a child to punish its sibling by manipulating an adult proxy or by themselves
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way. Whither free will? Some people will not give up personal gain to punish someone’s "anti-social behaviour", have they not also evolved? I think they just make a decision based on their point analysis.
- notahacker 16y ago
  In this case it's not just about inflicting punishment on the sibling; it's also about not admitting fault or showing weakness (which saying sorry, and especially agreeing to say sorry first) appears to do. From the view of an angry kid, this is quite possibly worse than the punishment itself so the incentives are quite different from the classic prisoner's dilemma.
btilly 16y ago
Interesting coincidence. My daughter got her first timeout yesterday for hitting her brother. The "game" she wanted to play with me last night was to give me timeouts.
- aerique 16y ago
  How do you deal with that? I always get mildly annoyed when my 4yo daughter does that, but I feel that is not the right way to go about this.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    I sit them on "the step" (which is any step in a quiet place where they're supposed to think about their actions). Hence I get told "you've got to sit on the step" when they don't like one of my edicts for some reason. I simply challenge their dislike, if I am wrong (illogical, false premise, unnecessarily tedious, or whatever) then I apologise and we continue. Generally they do not want to listen to [my] reason as it compels them to accede although I am [shock horror] proven wrong occassionally (at this stage it tends to be on matters of fact). I guess I could get in trouble when they argue for a democratic right or somesuch at which point they learn about parental autocracy ...
ekanes 16y ago
My favorite comment from the article, and something I'll be trying on my kids: "Our kids played upstairs in a bonus room. If I heard fighting I’d go upstairs and break it up, then proceed to find all kinds of things that needed to be cleaned. The bonus room was always a mess. It didn’t take many iterations of that process before I started hearing fighting, then “shhh! Do you want dad to come up here and tell us to start cleaning up?!"
- evolve 16y ago
  Yep I've done this myself with the kids. Classic stuff!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dsulli 16y ago
Awesome - someone should expand this idea into a book!
warrenwilkinson 16y ago
One comment said their son did well at piano, causing their daughter to give up, causing the son to stop in sympathy. I don't have kids, but I thought maybe if they tied each child's reward to how well their siblings did. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of incentive structure?
vitaman 16y ago
I'm sorry to see the non-critical acceptance of punishment, even a time-out, as an appropriate or effective parenting option. The Case Against Time-Out http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_haiman.html http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_haiman.html 22 Alternatives To Punishment http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/22_alternatives.html http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/22_alternatives.html
blasdel 16y ago
It is time now to talk about The Wheel: http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you-probably-think-this-post-is-about-you#1588699 http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you-probably-...

40 points by cwan 16y ago

Good way to teach the kids to team up against the parents. There isn't some secret to raising kids. Just create good/bad consequences for good/bad behavior. Make sure they understand you love them, and your goal is to teach them to be good. Their behavior is simply choosing the method in which they are taught.

synnik 16y ago
But there is a secret: The goal is not to raise good kids. The goal is to raise good adults.
- bartonfink 16y ago
  I have a daughter on the way in May, and of all the parenting books I've read to try to prepare, that may be the most insightful thing on the subject I've seen. You just floored me. Good f'ing show, sir - good f'ing show.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    If you want another free, sincere advice : what you say doesn't matter, only how you behave, because the children just imitate you. For a start, never, ever lie to children, or try to trump or manipulate them.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  That's the problem with parenting: you don't know if you've done it right until your kids are 25.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >The goal is not to raise good kids. The goal is to raise good adults. This sounds like an empty aphorism to me. I don't want my kids to be just good adults I want them to be good kids too. I don't mean good in the sense of undemanding behaviourly or conforming or that sort of thing I mean I want them to be fulfilled as much as possible in their childhood too, happy. Someone just accused me of being unnecessarily argumentative so I'm wary of that. But, really one does have to define what a good adult is and consider what you mean to obviate by "not [raising] good kids".
  - synnik 16y ago
    I find it to be far from empty, and it helps me in my decisions. shrug Raising good adults does not preclude raising good kids, so I do find your response to be a bit combative. Just because you have one clear goal in mind does not mean that other goals are not achieved along the way. I don't really want to get into details of how I apply this concept to my parenting -- my reason for posting was exactly the opposite. I want parents to stop (for a moment) focusing on the details, stop worrying about specific techniques, and look at the bigger picture - what are you really striving for over the next 5, 10, 20 years with your kids? And are your current actions supporting that?
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >Raising good adults does not preclude raising good kids, so I do find your response to be a bit combative. It's the "not to raise good kids" part that turns me off. Surely it should be "to raise good kids _and_ good adults"?
- johngalt 16y ago
  Of course the idea is to mature them, but what does maturity mean? How do you reach that point? Do you think my method won't get you there?
  - synnik 16y ago
    I think your statements are accurate. I was not disagreeing with what you said, just pointing out a deeper goal behind it.
chc 16y ago
Does your method have 100% effectiveness in creating good and productive adults? Because otherwise it seems like there is room for improvement. It's also rather vague, while effective parenting is distressingly high on specifics. The "secret" (if you would call it that) described here would appear to fit your description — there's a bad consequence for fighting and a good consequence for apologizing.
- johngalt 16y ago
  Until little Johnny(kid1) figures out that being stuck in his room is more palatible to him than it is to little Susie(kid2). Then he wins every disagreement by fiat. Gaining power over your sibling wouldn't be described as a bad consequence to most children.
btilly 16y ago
Do you have kids? I always wonder that when I see someone handing out simplistic child rearing advice. The truth is always more complex. And most parents come to understand that. First piece of complexity. We don't want kids to just follow the rules. We want them to understand them. Which means that you don't just train them to follow your rules, you need to explain your rules. Second piece of complexity. Small kids have non-obvious needs around learning about boundaries by crossing them repeatedly. It is not as simple as "the kid is behaving badly". This is a necessary learning process. Therefore you need to deliberately set up boundaries that you expect to be violated repeatedly. Crossing those should have very reliable consequences (this helps the kid learn where the boundary is), but not serious ones. Third complication. Adults have limits as well. As much as we might wish we were perfectly patient people whose tempers never fray, we aren't. And kids will discover those buttons. Part of good parenting is finding ways to keep yourself from being pushed too far. (Big, big hint. Most really big blow-ups happen when one or all parties are short on sleep. Be aware of this and compensate.) I could go on at length, but I hope I've made my point. Just training kids with operant conditioning is not sufficient to be a decent parent.
- johngalt 16y ago
  Yes I do have kids, and I wonder the same thing about people that are overly complex about a process that's quite simple. Show me a parent that sets up complicated rules for themselves and I'll show you a parent that's trying to rationalize. The parent that looks at their kids and says "I think I'll manipulate my two children to punish each other" is abdicating their role. Many will retreat in the face of a tantrum, and advance on kids that behave. Consider the parent that pushes their straight A student for "another" extra curricular activity, or the parent that helplessly offers bribe after bribe as their child runs wild in a public setting. I've even seen the consequences entirely dependent on the mood of the adult, and the behavior of the kid is secondary. Both your first and second point agree with the focus of my comment. (First point) Teach the rules by (Second point) having consequences. Third point is easily inferred, because I focus on the child's behavior determining consequences, not parental behavior.
  - btilly 16y ago

frossie 16y ago

There is a ton of evidence that people will give up individual gain in order to punish bad behaviour. The classic example is A gets given $100. He can choose to split it with B any way they like. B can accept the offered deal or refuse it, in which case nobody gets anything. From simplistic game theory B should accept any offer (for example $99 for A, $1 for B) since B would have more money than he had before, which was nothing. In practice with real people, anything below a 60-40 split gets rejected. People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game With kids there is an even bigger factor in play - control. Normally, a child is not able to punish its sibling. Under this adult-administered scheme, the child actually has the power to send its sibling to its room! If you know how kids crave to be able to control their situation, you realise this must be like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rolled into one. A long-winded way to say: I am so not surprised, and mildly confused as to why the Freakonomics blog would be.

d0mine 16y ago
Related: people are thiefs (on average) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI And btw, there are plenty of opportunities for a child to punish its sibling by manipulating an adult proxy or by themselves
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way. Whither free will? Some people will not give up personal gain to punish someone’s "anti-social behaviour", have they not also evolved? I think they just make a decision based on their point analysis.
notahacker 16y ago
In this case it's not just about inflicting punishment on the sibling; it's also about not admitting fault or showing weakness (which saying sorry, and especially agreeing to say sorry first) appears to do. From the view of an angry kid, this is quite possibly worse than the punishment itself so the incentives are quite different from the classic prisoner's dilemma.

btilly 16y ago

Interesting coincidence. My daughter got her first timeout yesterday for hitting her brother. The "game" she wanted to play with me last night was to give me timeouts.

aerique 16y ago
How do you deal with that? I always get mildly annoyed when my 4yo daughter does that, but I feel that is not the right way to go about this.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  I sit them on "the step" (which is any step in a quiet place where they're supposed to think about their actions). Hence I get told "you've got to sit on the step" when they don't like one of my edicts for some reason. I simply challenge their dislike, if I am wrong (illogical, false premise, unnecessarily tedious, or whatever) then I apologise and we continue. Generally they do not want to listen to [my] reason as it compels them to accede although I am [shock horror] proven wrong occassionally (at this stage it tends to be on matters of fact). I guess I could get in trouble when they argue for a democratic right or somesuch at which point they learn about parental autocracy ...

ekanes 16y ago

My favorite comment from the article, and something I'll be trying on my kids: "Our kids played upstairs in a bonus room. If I heard fighting I’d go upstairs and break it up, then proceed to find all kinds of things that needed to be cleaned. The bonus room was always a mess. It didn’t take many iterations of that process before I started hearing fighting, then “shhh! Do you want dad to come up here and tell us to start cleaning up?!"

evolve 16y ago
Yep I've done this myself with the kids. Classic stuff!

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

dsulli 16y ago

Awesome - someone should expand this idea into a book!

warrenwilkinson 16y ago

One comment said their son did well at piano, causing their daughter to give up, causing the son to stop in sympathy. I don't have kids, but I thought maybe if they tied each child's reward to how well their siblings did. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of incentive structure?

vitaman 16y ago

I'm sorry to see the non-critical acceptance of punishment, even a time-out, as an appropriate or effective parenting option. The Case Against Time-Out http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_haiman.html http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_haiman.html 22 Alternatives To Punishment http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/22_alternatives.html http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/22_alternatives.html

blasdel 16y ago

It is time now to talk about The Wheel: http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you-probably-think-this-post-is-about-you#1588699 http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you-probably-...