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Raising a moral child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a moral child

#11

Post by fit2rule »

cstavish wrote: post #9
jawns wrote: post #4

The experiments this op-ed describes are really neat. I especially like the one that demonstrates the importance of "practice what you preach." Here's another cool experiment related to social/moral development, which you can perform on your own kid: Have two grown-up friends each show your baby a toy. The first friend should offer the toy to your kid but then retract the offer and keep the toy to himself. The second…

Who would have thought that 21-month-olds are predisposed to Kantian ethics?

Philosophy: how does it work?

Hint: its true even if babies haven't figured it out yet.

Re: Raising a moral child

#12

Post by sharemywin »

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

Re: Raising a moral child

#14

Post by amirmc »

Reading this, I'm pretty sure I can apply it to adult contexts too. Think about all the cases in organisations where 'values' are touted but the behaviour of people tells you how you really get ahead. Everything here is useful if you care about the organisational culture you want to create.

Re: Raising a moral child

#15

Post by jaegerpicker »

sharemywin wrote: post #12

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

I think it's large point was that instead of talking about actions as a one time item, it's better to help the child craft an identity of a moral person. IE make about who they are not what they did.

Re: Raising a moral child

#16

Post by sergiotapia »

taybin wrote: post #13

Oh good. More ways I can mis-raise my child. I complimented the object instead of the subject in a sentence! Oh shiiiiiiit. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-par...

Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a parent, every single time I read something about 'raising your kids X', Dr. Lipschitz (from The Rugrats) comes to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI

Re: Raising a moral child

#17

Post by mcv »

Man, I just learned to compliment actions rather than talent, and now I have to do it the other way around.

I get why, though. Moral actions are choices. Being smart isn't. If you praise a kid for being smart, he won't be able to choose to be smart. Instead, he'll assume he's smart and won't have to work so hard. I suppose praising an innate tendency to work hard might be more effective.

Re: Raising a moral child

#18

Post by mherdeg »

sharemywin wrote: post #12

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

Sure, so the author's advice boils down to:

(1) If your child does something good,

DO tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does good things (praise character).

DON'T let them think that they're merely a person who did a good thing (praise behavior).

(2) If your child does something bad,

DON'T tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does bad things (shame).

DO tell them that they did a bad thing (guilt).

The situation is vaguely reminiscent of that old social psychology favorite, "fundamental attribution error", which is about how when other people do bad things, we blame internal traits, but when we do bad things, we blame external factors.

Re: Raising a moral child

#19

Post by jawns »

mherdeg wrote: post #18
sharemywin wrote: post #12

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

Sure, so the author's advice boils down to: (1) If your child does something good, DO tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does good things (praise character). DON'T let them think that they're merely a person who did a good thing (praise behavior). (2) If your child does something bad, DON'T tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does bad things (shame). DO tell them that they did a…

This is a good breakdown, but to address sharemywin's question:

When you tell your child "don't be a cheater," the focus is on character. You don't want them to do things that a person with bad character does.

When your child cheats, on the other hand, you say, "I'm disappointed, because I know you have a good character, but your action didn't reflect that." So, the focus is on the bad action, rather than the character.

Is some of this mere semantics? Possibly. If a person who does bad things can be a person of good character, and a person who does bad things can be a person of bad character, then how do we tell the difference between a person of good character and a person of bad character except by their actions?

But, if we're merely talking about what strategy is effective, then we can indeed say to focus on character when praising and on the action when admonishing.

Re: Raising a moral child

#20

Post by VLM »

mcv wrote: post #17

Man, I just learned to compliment actions rather than talent, and now I have to do it the other way around. I get why, though. Moral actions are choices. Being smart isn't. If you praise a kid for being smart, he won't be able to choose to be smart. Instead, he'll assume he's smart and won't have to work so hard. I suppose praising an innate tendency to work hard might be more effective.

Some of the article seems more obvious if flipped around... watch some teens/kids tease each other, you'll hear a lot of language along the lines of one kid defining what the other kid "is", not much oblique talk about the success or failure of one individual purchase of clothing to match their current little tribal affiliation. Enforcement of conformity is enforcement of conformity, regardless of the morals/ethics of the conformity itself, so a study of it is incomplete if it only includes the behaviors of the happy sunshine people or only includes parent/child interactions.

The interesting part of the article was the quantitative analysis of experimental evidence, not so much that evolution seems to have produced a species that's pretty good at tribal-scale interpersonal dynamics and learning everything by copying superiors. The qualitative analysis seems obvious given the model, so good experimental numbers indicates the popular qualitative model is likely correct.

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