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Raising a moral child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a moral child

#121

Post by bildung »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #115
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

>Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. That is not modern parenting, that's just parenting. Aside from some fringe philosophies (Summerhill for example) I have yet to come across any seriously taken historical example of parenting advice that is not focused on shaping children into something the parent desires, even if that is a very…

> That is not modern parenting, that's just parenting. Aside from some fringe philosophies (Summerhill for example) I have yet to come across any seriously taken historical example of parenting advice that is not focused on shaping children into something the parent desires, even if that is a very loose mold.

Try Emile from Rousseau. In general, what you are describing is the difference between the sciences of pedagogy an psychology. In one sentence, (since the enlightenment) pedagogy tries to find the optimal conditions for humans to develop their true self, while psychology usually observes a misguided development and tries to find a treatment. Psychology therefore has to have some model of what constitutes normality to compare against. These specific studies and treatments are easy to write about as a scientific journalist or parenting literature author. It's telling that practically none of the parenting books I've skimmed through are based on pedagogy.

(that's no dismissal of psychology at all, but you have to use the right tool for the job).

Re: Raising a moral child

#122

Post by bildung »

nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

> 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.

Absolutely. And be consistent, that's the one main important result of developmental psychology for parents. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory and grep for Bowlby.

> 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.

They are smart as in emotionally smart. And that heavily depends on trust in the social environment they are able to build from experience. A child having made consistend experiences of trust will have it easier to develop a model of self-efficiacy, and that in turn is fundamental for learning other things about the world. The emotional experiences are fundamental - but harder to see than a kid talking early or similar.

Re: Raising a moral child

#123

Post by thesigil »

aaronem wrote: post #109
thesigil wrote: post #36

Hi, 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 aw…

Either you're doing a lousy job of putting Harris's thesis across, or the thesis itself is gibberish. Whichever is so, you would've added more to this discussion by not posting this comment at all, than by doing so in its current state. (And, having just spent a year in academia and seen "methods of science" firsthand, I can only assume the suggestion they be applied to questions of morality represents a blatant grab…

Thanks for pointing out that am doing a lousy job of putting across Dr. Harris's work, :) And I think that is mainly because of the way am putting the thought experiment across without a lot of premise being set, which is clearly set in the talk he gives. Many people misunderstand that non-existence of free will means everything is predetermined, which is not the case we all know. It does not matter if you have a lot of skills, but it matters if you use them. It does not matter if you have not understood some subjects, rather than blaming someone else about it, it matters if you improve on them. And he is not the only one whose work lead to the conclusion of free will being incoherent, there are many other biologists who prove the same. Now what is remarkable about Sam's work is that he also takes care of proving that the illusion of free will is also an illusion. When Harris is saying methods of science being applied to look at morality, he is not the first one to propose so, there have been many prominent schools of thought, to name one Hindu philosophy, which have also spoken the same. The way Harris is speaking about methods of science is that every individual can apply it for themselves and see it for themselves. There need not be any investigating authority other than the privacy of our mind :) I have applied methods of science myself to what Harris is saying and then coming and posting here. Please do not criticize him or his work without even looking at it :) Methods of science mean that results of an experiment being verifiable by all.

Re: Raising a moral child

#124

Post by hrktb »

nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

The first half is very common sense.

An other common sense thing: you don't magically get the child at 5, there's this long long process from the baby that can't feed himself and is pretty close to resistive clay on the moral point of view, to the 2 years old that becomes pretty good at understanding what's going around, the 3 years old that can do and think so much more by himself, to the 5 years old who's quite socialized etc.

There's many many stages, the kid has limited abilities, and and you actually have go teach a lot of things, not just sit you kid on some watch tower and wait for him to understand. For a long time he just won't get it if you don't make an effort to teach him. This is where you'll want advices on what ways you can teach him, what 'works' and what doesn't.

Re: Raising a moral child

#125

Post by roel_v »

nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

I don't want my children to be like me, I want them to be better than me. I can try to be what I want them to be (said otherwise: I can try to be what I want myself to be, or what I should be), but acknowledging my fallibility and proactively anticipating flaws in execution in the 'lead be example' strategy seems to be more grounded in reality.

(think of it this way: how many athletics coaches tell their athletes 'just run as fast as I do'?)

Re: Raising a moral child

#126

Post by yardie »

Loughla wrote: post #91
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

That's exactly right. All this parenting 'help' is just fueling our thoughts that kids aren't really people, and need to be bent to our will. That's not accurate. Kids are little people. Ignorant of many things, but they're little people. My wife reads these 'how to raise your kids' posts and books and crap, and all it does is make her feel as if she is a terrible parent because he wasn't signing at 10 months and isn…

I had the same worries when my son was a baby. He only learned a few signs. And since no one else knew what they meant it quickly dropped to the wayside. He's far more eloquent at speech and writing then I was at his age. Getting all As except in graphing still bothers me to this day. He is not a genius nor does he care for maths like I did. He is also trilingual which completely blows my mind. This he got from his mother.

And yet I feel like a bad parent because we don't have the resources to enroll him for all the activities his friends do. One event particularly stands out from my own childhood. I tried out for the wrestling team and when I brought the paperwork home my mom said I couldn't, we didn't have health insurance.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Being good at something and then being told you can't because you don't have the right paperwork.

Re: Raising a moral child

#127

Post by prestadige »

roel_v wrote: post #125
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

I don't want my children to be like me, I want them to be better than me. I can try to be what I want them to be (said otherwise: I can try to be what I want myself to be, or what I should be), but acknowledging my fallibility and proactively anticipating flaws in execution in the 'lead be example' strategy seems to be more grounded in reality. (think of it this way: how many athletics coaches tell their athletes 'ju…

Trying to get somebody to live the sort of life you want for them is a potentially harmful mistake. Why not pay attention to one's performance as a parent, and learn from that?

Re: Raising a moral child

#128

Post by nevinera »

roel_v wrote: post #125
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

I don't want my children to be like me, I want them to be better than me. I can try to be what I want them to be (said otherwise: I can try to be what I want myself to be, or what I should be), but acknowledging my fallibility and proactively anticipating flaws in execution in the 'lead be example' strategy seems to be more grounded in reality. (think of it this way: how many athletics coaches tell their athletes 'ju…

Your children are not going to copy your skills and abilities, they're going to imitate your decisions, conscious and unconscious.

If you're an athletics coach that tells your athletes to run as fast as they can, and you personally half-ass it around the track and have a bit of a beer gut, then you're doing a bad job.

Re: Raising a moral child

#129

Post by nevinera »

hrktb wrote: post #124
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

The first half is very common sense. An other common sense thing: you don't magically get the child at 5, there's this long long process from the baby that can't feed himself and is pretty close to resistive clay on the moral point of view, to the 2 years old that becomes pretty good at understanding what's going around, the 3 years old that can do and think so much more by himself, to the 5 years old who's quite soc…

Of course you don't sit them on some kind of 'watchtower' and wait for him to understand. You interact with them. You play with them, you cook with them, you build with them, you talk with them, and you read to them.

You never have to 'teach them things', they need to learn things from you. There's an enormous world of difference there.

Of course you should help him accomplish his objectives, and you should certainly do so with an eye toward the techniques or approaches he'll need to use to accomplish them on his own. There's a lot he doesn't know yet. But teaching technique and suggesting approaches is fundamentally different from attempting to impart characteristics and habits.

Re: Raising a moral child

#130

Post by nevinera »

bildung wrote: post #122
nevinera wrote: post #39

Modern 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 wi…

> 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. Absolutely. And be consistent, that's the one main important result of developmental psychology for parents. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory and grep for Bowlby. > Your kids are way smarter than you think. They…

Authentic actions by a stable individual are inherently consistent. Whereas forced behaviors that are intended to be consistent rarely are.
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