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From what I know: - The subtle interactions of the parents with the child during very early child hood can have a big effect on the child. - It's possible for
by dathinab 4y ago
From what I know:
- The subtle interactions of the parents with the child during very early child hood can have a big effect on the child.
- It's possible for parents to unknowingly partially pass trauma to their children, likely through such subtle interactions.
- Even post very early childhood (but still in childhood) the subtle behavior patterns of their environment can have a massive impact.
- Sometimes seemingly mundane random events can have a major impact on a child.
- The behaviour of adults is often massively related to their child hood, through potentially in subtle ways.
If that is true thinks which are hardly measurable (subtle behaviour pattern and random events during child hood can) have a huge impact on a adults behaviour. (Hardly measurable as anyone non-trained to recognize them will mostly only recognize this behavior patterns subconscious).
I personally (from experience/what I read/what I heard from others) would say that many such things have more influence then the "raising strategy actively chosen by the parent" (assuming it's decent, non abusive).
Under the assumptions that this is true studies which try to evaluate raising strategies (and e.g. comparing them to genetics) are pretty much impossible to do , as long as the strategy doesn't have extreme drastic effects, and from what I know the only strategies with extreme effects are such which extreme negative effect, i.e. child abuse.
Interestingly the given bullet points do very well explain .. a lot.
From the vicious cycle around slums or "dangerous" black neighborhoods in the US.
To why an adopted child then the non adopted similar aged children from the same parents (from some parents trying to see the child as their own, but subconsciously slightly failing resulting in subtle behavior differences in mimic and gestic to other people, family members or foreign people having a subtle different behaviour. Children notice that, subconsciously, especially during early child hood. And it might, sometimes affect them majorly in subtle ways.)
- dash2 4y agoSo, how do you know these things? If they're so subtle and hard to measure, it seems as if questions of causality would be very hard to answer.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y agoAdditionally, the decision to go to therapy and deal with your own issues so you can be a better parent is a conscious parenting decision, which would never be taken if "parenting doesn't matter".
- trey-jones 4y agoThere's no doubt it's very hard to answer. If it were easy, would it be such a contentious issue and worthy of debate here? I am a parent of 3 (ages 5-12) and anecdotally I can say that I am occasionally surprised to notice some behavior that my children have picked up, and it's difficult to know whether it's genetic, because they are biologically mine and I am also one their primary environmental influences. It seems that studies of adoptees and other circumstances that involve non-biological parents as mentioned in the article can provide better answers in this regard. Also the notion of "spoiling" a child through lack of discipline doesn't look like an old wives' tale to me. There are some wisdoms that have come up through the ages that are correct. Just look around - I try not to criticize parenting styles that are different from mine, but letting your phone babysit your kid is lazy, and you're going to reap the behavioral consequences for that, if you make that decision. It does matter the decisions that you make as a parent, and it does affect who or what your child becomes. Some interactions are probably subtle, but some are also obvious.
- dathinab 4y agoCorrect, it's hard especially proving it true (or false!). But you can analyses many aspects of it in isolation, e.g. short term reactions of very young children to subtle subconscious mimic and gestic from people around them. Similar you can somewhat study how trauma is passed onto future generations in some cases. You can also study how can e.g. realize a subconscious fear of the parent related to something then tend to develop that fare, too. Etc. Etc. In the end you basically end up with many puzzel prizes which happen to fit very well together, but due to the limitations of science you can't prove that they fit. But there is no indication that they don't fit and logical reasoning says it's very plausible so acting on the assumption of it being right is quite reasonable.
- jtr1 4y agoI’m reading “Parenting from the Inside Out” right now and it dives into a lot of the ideas you’ve mentioned, looking at how memories and self-narrative formed in early childhood, but also how they inform adult responses to the experience of parenthood.
- em-bee 4y agothere is a joke that says: it's useless to raise children, they just copy their parents anyways. so consciously parenting really means being consciously aware of my own behavior and what i model for my kids, because that is what they will learn. and being aware how my own childhood affects my own behavior is a big part of that.