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No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

theatlantic.com

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Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#211

Post by [deleted] »

SiVal wrote: post #65
theli0nheart wrote: post #38

> Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away. We adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago and this was the exact advice we were given for how to train her. Puppies and little kids are remarkably similar, and the k…

Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. This claim (from the article) is nonsense. I've changed the behavior of my kids countless times with punishment. I realize that the attitude I am supposed to take is that when someone with Ivy League credentials espouses a currently fashionable theory that my own observations contradict, I am supposed to believe the theory and not my own l…

[deleted]

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#212

Post by inimino »

jessriedel wrote: post #54
pappyo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any cognitive advantage that is abused will be seen as manipulative, absolutely. The way to make "the illusion of choice" work is to be selective about it. You start out by giving the 4 year old the illusion of choice (the jacket or the sweater), but what you're really doing is coaching the child to make appropriate decisions. After a few times, you won't have to give the child the choice anymore, because they will k…

You're justifying it as being in the child's (or employee's) interest, but you're not actually denying the transgression. Lying becomes less worse when you lie for someone else's benefit but (1) that doesn't make it not lying, (2) the other person can still rightfully resent it, (3) you generally shouldn't trust yourself to only lie in another's interest. Regarding the last one: I often see normal, reasonably good pa…

> I don't like the fact that adults did this to me when I was a child.

I'm curious to know more about this. Was it cases like "the jacket or the sweater" or was it something more serious?

If your parent distracted you from not getting ice cream by giving you a toy, would you be OK with that? Basically you are distracting them because they don't yet have the cognitive awareness to distract themselves.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#213

Post by cheald »

marcell wrote: post #62

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 ye…

> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side.

Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential.

Incentives and punishments that work with one don't work with the others; we have to really become students of our children to understand what they do and don't respond to, and to parent them accordingly. If my sample size of 3 is any indication, trying to fit children through a one-size-fits-all mold is going to fail miserably.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#214

Post by cheez »

maxxxxx wrote: post #113
marcell wrote: post #62

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 ye…

That's the problem with one-size-fits-all methods. Kids are just different and what worked for one child doesn't necessarily work for another child. Even if you do exactly the same thing. My girlfriend used to train dogs for a living. She always said "it's the owner's fault, not the dog's". Now we have a Chihuahua who won't listen, doesn't respond to rewards, doesn't respond to punishment. She just does her own thing…

I think it's a little of both. The thing with kids, and dogs, is that the training has to start from day 1. You let a little bit of laziness in, and they take advantage. It compounds (kind of like eating that extra slice of pizza over a few years).

I have had both kids and dogs, and trained both in pretty much the same way (don't tell their mom).

But again, that is my sample size of me.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#215

Post by true_religion »

inimino wrote: post #201
true_religion wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because it is not. If anything the opposite is actually standard.

Actually, if you read much about journalism, you will know that what is put in quotation marks and attributed to someone is to be taken rather seriously.

That's only true in journalism. Just because we link to news stories primarily doesn't mean this site has a journalistic flavor or should follow those conventions.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#216

Post by cheald »

TACIXAT wrote: post #144
paganel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s say you have an adolescent daughter and she says to you, “Mom, you are such a bitch. What have you ever done for me? You only think of yourself.” Maybe it's because I grew up as a kid in another culture (Eastern Europe) and some time ago (I'm 36 now) but do kids nowadays really call their parents "bitch"? My parents almost never laid their hands on me (the couple of times they actually did I had deserved it)…

My dad and I are very casual. We enjoy fighting (wrestling), pushing each other into strangers, tampering with food, turning car seat heaters on sneakily on a hot day. Very normal for us to call each other names when these things occur. I don't think there is anything I could say to him that he'd even blink at.

That sounds like a very healthy kind of mutual respect, even in the case of "disrespectful" names, though. It's not about the word in particular, it's about the communication of contempt behind it.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#218

Post by btrfsck »

SiVal wrote: post #65
theli0nheart wrote: post #38

> Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away. We adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago and this was the exact advice we were given for how to train her. Puppies and little kids are remarkably similar, and the k…

Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. This claim (from the article) is nonsense. I've changed the behavior of my kids countless times with punishment. I realize that the attitude I am supposed to take is that when someone with Ivy League credentials espouses a currently fashionable theory that my own observations contradict, I am supposed to believe the theory and not my own l…

My wife and I got a 5 month old border collie about 3 months ago. The approach that ended up working for us was to use positive reinforcement for almost all the things we wanted trained, and then only use negative reinforcement for one or two things we really didn't want him to do.

We chose to punish (spank/"bad dog"/shake an empty soda can with pennies inside it) for only two things: pottying in the house, and chasing/herding the cats.

We think they were good choices for the negative reinforcement because they were things we really wanted to stop ASAP, and they happened relatively infrequently, so it's not like he was being constantly punished.

At 8 months old, he's now an ideal citizen of our house.

I do think the breed had a lot to do with the success of this technique, though. Border Collies are smart (I'm told they have the intelligence of a 4 y/o?), so I think him being able to quickly learn things, and him being able to connect things beyond just one step was important.

By "connecting things beyond one step", I mean, I suspect with a less-intelligent dog you might have the problem of like, if they potty outside and then you wait to give them a treat until you're inside (because the dog is distracted by them if you have them outside) they might not get that the treat is for pottying.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#219

Post by toor2 »

carsongross wrote: post #3

It's thought to be very adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint. If you have a partner, significant other, or a child, if they do 10 nice things, that 11th one that you didn't like, you're going to really be all over. One wonders how, if it doesn't work, it was so adaptive.

Organisms adapt to reproduce, not to foster positive social relationships

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#220

Post by sidlls »

Afton wrote: post #186
analog31 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they are parents, but they're not me. I've got two kids, both teenagers now. In my view it's not just that kids are different, but that parents are different too. My impression is that most parenting advice assumes that the parents themselves have unlimited self discipline, organization, and emotional stamina.

and unlimited time. So much advice of the form: "Really sit down with the child during a tantrum. Listen to their concerns, and make sure they feel heard. Only then engage with them in problem solving.". Uh. Sure. I'll just do that. I mean, dinner is going to burn, we'll be late for swimming, and I was on my way to wipe my other child's butt before helping my _other_ other child with their homework. I can only assume…

We have both a nanny and housekeeper (not live-in, part-time), and I would never think to construct this ludicrous advice.

It's hard enough even with that help. Kids have their own minds and personalities and methods of coping with a vast world they just don't understand and can be overwhelming. One-size-fits-all suggestions such as "never punish" just trivialize how complicated little human beings really are.

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