IANAP, however, the entire concept of performing 'experiments' on your child is repugnant to me.
Raising a moral child
31–40 of 159 posts
Re: Raising a moral child
#32I 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.
The way I look at it, it's that the admonition, "don't be a cheater," is stated BEFOREHAND, before any cheating has taken place. The child then still has the opportunity to make being a "not-bad" person (i.e., a "good" person) a part of his or her identity.
If, on the other hand, the child had already cheated, you would express disappointment in that the supposedly good child had displayed uncharacteristic behavior.
Re: Raising a moral child
#33The 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…
This book looks awesome. Grabbing one tonight thanks for letting me know about it!
Re: Raising a moral child
#34Oh 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...
My personal experiences doesn't lend me to think much about news articles regarding such studies.
Re: Raising a moral child
#35Oh 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
I would say that, no, parents should not be expected to internalize all of the thousands of different things we're finding out about the best ways to raise kids. It's far too much to know, and the knowledge is currently too tentative. But, it's also pointless to bring that up every time a new study comes out, because these things are good to know. That's probably why the GP is catching downvotes.
Re: Raising a moral child
#36Hi, I am not a parent, but I think I have to put across this point of the way of looking at morality being independent of "free will", because "free will" is an illusion and the illusion of "free will" is also an illusion. The non-existence of free will should not be confused with fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism. Morality and love and compassion can still be quantified without free will. What goes away are actually the negative feelings like hatred, anger and pride and shame.
Let us take a simple thought experiment. Let me ask you to choose a book. Let us make it simple, let us remove all the books that you do not know about, and just consider the books that you are aware of being great. If you have already chosen one, drop it as it is wrong, don't ask me how, but I know, and this time be sensitive to the process of choosing a book. This is the most freest of choice that you ever will get to make, so free will better be here or else it is no where. Do you observe that there is a certain gap from the time I ask you to pick a book, and then there is certain gap and then suddenly there are a list of books in your mind. There is no way you can explain why you didn't think of The Godfather even though you know it is a great book. Let us say you thought about Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman and Seven years in Tibet. You have just finished one book in the series of Harry Potter and you are not interested in reading fiction again, so eliminate that, then you are only left with Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and Seven years in Tibet, say you like reading biographies so you chose Seven years in Tibet and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, now when you have only these two options and there is no coherent opposition that is present in the system, only then comes the free aspect. There is still no way you can explain why you did not think otherwise, of choosing another book in the series of Harry Potter and reading more fiction. So where is the free will here? All of this still does not eradicate the feeling of love and compassion we feel and does not make everyone guilty by reason of insanity.
All of this is much more well articulated by Sam Harris who holds a Ph.D in neurobiology and graduate in Philosophy. He talks about the delusion of free will at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk
Here is another piece of his work where he promotes scientific thinking and argues that moral questions are best pursued using, not just philosophy, but methods of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape
Re: Raising a moral child
#37IANAP, however, the entire concept of performing 'experiments' on your child is repugnant to me.
Why?
Re: Raising a moral child
#38Man, 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.
Your comment really made me stop and think. It does seem like a contradiction at first: when your child does something good praise their character not their action, when your child does something well praise the action rather than calling them smart or talented.
After some thought though I can see it as consistent since when they do something well you can praise them for being hard-working (character).
Re: Raising a moral child
#39Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. 'Tricks' and 'techniques' abound, and every other article is about 'teaching' your child to achieve/empathize/compete.
You know what works extra- extra- well? Be the kind of person you want your kids to be. Treat them like a decent person treats other decent people and that's the behavior they will learn.
Your kids are way smarter than you think. They know what you're doing, they know you're trying to encourage certain behaviors, and they eventually know how to manipulate you much more effectively than you know how to manipulate them.
Quit treating five-year-olds like they're some kind of resistant clay, and you have to cleverly shape them into the person they're going to be. That kid is already a person. Treating him like a puppy to be trained will certainly affect his personality and behavior, but the largest impact will not be the one you intended. You're teaching them how you want them to be, and you're also teaching them that the way to get what you want is to manipulate people into giving it to you.
Re: Raising a moral child
#40Oh 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...
My personal experiences doesn't lend me to think much about news articles regarding such studies.
>I love [...] science
>So guess what I think about these studies.
My guess is that you think your experience alone is not statistically relevant.