Quote: (11-01-2015 11:34 PM)Suits Wrote:
Quote: (11-01-2015 06:11 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:
^ The other problem with trying to be rational to control behaviour is that kids can be just as rational back.
My sister, a few weeks back, explaining to my nine-year-old nephew that lying is a bad thing and he shouldn't do it.
His response: "You told [his teacher] that we were late because of Roadworks this morning, and there weren't any. Isn't that lying?"
The back and forth went on for a few minutes until she threw up her hands and said "Yes, ok, you're right. Mummy needs to stop lying."
He just learnt he has authority over his Mother.
Or, him trying to get my attention when I was visiting a while back. My sister lectures him on the fact that he can't monopolise all my time during a visit and he has to learn to share me.
Three weeks later, him trying to tell me about a video game, she says "No. Mummy's talking to Uncle Bosch now." Guess what he tells her?
His Daddy, of course, gets to be the Bad Guy when she needs him to behave.
So, because mommy is a hypocritical moron who fails to provide a consistent example of authority, teaching kids not to lie is a big mistake?
I don't think so. The solution here is that mommy stop being a hypocritical moron. Little Johnny should still be taught not to lie.
I think you're confused about the correct approach to being rational with a child.
It doesn't mean that you treat them like an adult or talk to them like an adult. It doesn't mean you get philosophical with them.
It means that you communicate clearly with them that harming others or disrespecting authority is going to result in negative consequences.
You don't need to go into detail about why hitting other people is bad. A child simply needs to know that you can't do it and that doing so is going to result in something that they do not like.
The other big thing is cultivating an understanding of authority. A child needs to understand that when they turn 18, they can do whatever the fuck they want to, but until then, while they live rent free, there are rules they must follow.
You don't need to rationally justify those rules ethically. You just need to explain that this is the way the world works.
It just needs to be clear that participation in a community may at times require a person to follow rules they don't like.
That's as rational as you need to be.
Oddly enough, this is also the way the world works for adults. I may disagree with the posted speed limit, but if I want to be allowed to drive a car, I need to adhere to those laws.
You make a good point, though I don't think anyone is saying just tell kids the rules, and pound them if they disobey. I am going to guess you haven't had the experience of raising kids yet, and the point is that before you actually experience it, you really don't know how it is going to be.
I haven't raised kids of my own, though I did raise a couple of stepkids, and after a few months living in the same home as them, the first thing I did was call and apologize to my parents. I just didn't know how it was going to be.
Or course you explain things to them, and often. That is part of how they learn. But you don't owe them an explanation for everything, in the same way that once you have proved yourself to a friend, you don't owe him an explanation for everything because now that he knows you, it is up to him to give you the benefit of the doubt, even when you does things he may not understand or agree with.
Don't know how many time I refused to explain things to my stepkids, only telling them:
"I'm older and wiser, as you already know."
Kids aren't developed enough yet to understand benefit of the doubt, and they always think that what they want is right because they want it. It's a lot like the female hamster, come to think of it.
The crux of the matter for me, the thing I didn't realize going in, is that you have a whole life to deal with, with limited energy put aside for dealing with issues of misbehavior and discipline.
Kids, on the other hand, have all the time and the energy in the world to figure out what buttons to push to get what they want from you. They are too young to be able to love you as much as you love them, so they have no problem being absolute behaviorists, doing whatever works, whereas a parent is worried about being truly fair and loving.
The result is that parenting is a world beyond theories and plans, and very often becomes merely a war of attrition, with the kids, in many creative and often opaque ways, doing little tapdances on your nerve endings in order to get what they want.
I remember talking about how hard it was to raise kids with a guy who was smarter than me, and about ten years younger than me, and he brushed it all off in the way that intelligent young guys do, as if my problems figuring it out stemmed from my own failings, and not the the basic difficulty of the job itself.
He kept telling me, "Oh, it's not that hard, you just have to keep dropping these little logic bombs in their minds and . . ."
Hah! Logic bombs! Like kids even listen most of the time. No, they spend most of their time trying to figure out ways to wear you down, to surprise you into compliance, to extract a promise from you when you are tired or distracted so you answer before you think it through. How can you use a logic bomb on someone who isn't even listening, just pretending to agree to make you go away?
In some ways it is the same way prisoners interact with corrections officers. They have all the time in the world to figure it out, and they are sitting there, watching, experimenting, learning, and even trading techniques with their friends.
It's a war of attrition bro, and if you come home at night tired from work, you are not operating at peak efficiency in the first place, and the last thing you want is the be the bad guy and put out a fire at home at the end of the day.
You are operating at a disadvantage, and you don't EVEN LIKE disciplining anyone, kids least of all, who you happen to love by the way, and you just have to deal with it, make a decision in the moment, whether from a plan you and your girl agreed on, or something you read somewhere you half remember, or just a gut instinct in the moment and hope it works out.
And they will remember every little thing, again like a woman does, to use later. Like AB's example about the kid derailing what his mom was trying to teach him by bringing her former actions to her attention, so she feels guilty and backs down, not because she is wrong in what she is trying to teach, or because she is a bad person, but because she CARES more about fairness and not being a hypocrite than her kid does.
So the kid derails the conversation by making the mom feel guilty, and engenders such bad feelings in her that the whole point of the lesson is forgotten, and the mom just FEELS so bad that she ends up backing down just to make the bad feelings go away.
The kid is too young to care about any of that stuff yet, they haven't developed the skills, so it is just like Bosch says, the child learns that they have authority over the parent using logic. It's a war of attrition bro, from the kid's viewpoint, pure and simple. It is all just tactics and manipulation to them, and as a parent you have to teach them that this stuff won't work.
For the record, we never spanked our kid, and I am sure there are ways to discipline them using pure verbal tactics or consequences of other sorts, but in the time I was raising these ones, I never really felt like I had a handle on it, and my stepkids grew up thinking they were more important than they are and smarter too, so I wouldn't dismiss physical discipline out of hand.
As a final note, nearing the end of that relationship, I came across a book about child rearing that was absolutely awesome, though it didn't fall in line with the caring/sharing spirit of the books today. Anyone thinking of raising kids might take a look at it. Your time wouldn't be wasted. I couldn't get the woman I was living with onboard with it, so I could only use it in my dealings with the kids, but even though it had been published a while ago, there is a lot of gold in it, and it is red pill in its way.
They main premise of the book is that children are born manipulators, and that not only is this a fact, but it is perfectly natural, and it is part of the parent's job to recognize it and learn how to counter it.
The book is called "Manipulating Parents," and though out of print, is available on Amazon for very little:
http://www.amazon.com/Manipulating-Paren...0135521580
The dude who wrote it was someone who not only raised his own kids, but took in many many foster kids of all ages and ethnicities with all sorts of problems, and was successful at it.
His basic method was simple. If kids do something you don't want them to do, make sure they either aren't rewarded, or are punished for it, and if they do something you do want, make sure they either aren't punished for it or are rewarded.
I know a lot of people, particularly of a libertarian bent, will bristle at this approach, and that is understandable, though the book isn't all heavy handed authoritarianism, not at all.
The main idea is that if kids are going to manipulate you, you manipulate them back. The difference is that while they just want what they want, you want what is best for them, and should feel no qualms about controlling their environment, for the time they are living with you, to move towards the best possible outcome.
He also makes the point that you have to really love your kids, and make time for them, and make the effort really to enjoy them as people, and that is what makes them more likely to go in the direction you want them to.
And he was successful with this approach.
It is all very well to explain to kids that there is a such thing as authority, and they need to respect it. But what if they don't? What if they laugh at you? What if they agree in your presence, then wait a week and pretend it was an accident when they spilled shit all over your favorite chair?
Raising kids is a huge challenge. That is what it is.
A challenge.
There are no simple approaches. I am sure there are trained child psychologists who fantasize about strangling their own kids. As a parent you have to balance between letting them bloom as people in their full autonomy, and making sure they don't kill themselves, or terrorize smaller siblings, or grow up into monsters.
It takes guts to decide what is important to you and put it into practice, day after day, year after year, with your kids, all with the near probability that you will never be thanked for any of it.
Although years later you might get a phone call from one of your kids, trying to raise some himself, apologizing to you because he took it for granted when he was young and didn't realize what it would be like.
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