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Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told
Hugh Pickens writes "New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"
So children learn by DOING, I get it.
Man, I'm glad millions of dollars are going to these kinds of studies.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Hmm sounds like me. I also don't do what i am told and i don't plan for the future.
Seriously, given how many times I've walked outside, discovered it was cold, then remembered where my jacket is, I don't see how that process is any different from the average person. I propose a new theory to explain why a toddler would run outside before getting their jacket, Toddlers don't have weather ESP.
As for the whole in one ear and out the other thing, that's not unique to toddlers by any means. Ask any parent of a teenager, or a kid between toddler and teenager, or the teacher of a lazy college student. Where did the idea of toddlers being the only humans like that come from?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Good stuff. I think a lot of parental frustration comes from completely forgetting what it was like to be a kid. The more we learn of measurable differences in functioning between children and adults, the better. Ingrained beliefs can only get you so far.
it makes one ponder how one approach the development of AI's to.
sounds a bit like they are building up a bayesian database of conditions and actions, going more and more specific over time.
like say how cold at first will just be a generic sense of temperature thats uncomfortable (thanks to it driving the surface temperature of the outer skin below whats healthy for the cells that makes up the skin). then later one add specifics like snow on the ground, ice and other indicators. as more of these shows up, one get a stronger sense that its cold outside, and that again triggers conditioned reflexes like wearing thick clothing.
so, to turn this over to AI research, the approach may well be to start with a blank database and a collection of sensors and outputs. then one pile on a generic bayesian filter, and leave it running.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
You're pretty stupid. Science is methodological and precise to avoid relying on "common sense" because common sense often is not actually correct. Also, it's often easy for you to see ahead of time that this seemed obvious, but in fact was not. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection? Seems obvious to us now (although given the stupidity of your post I wouldn't doubt if you deny it!) but in fact took quite a long time for us to get a good theory of evolution down. Hell, it took a long time to get rid of phlogiston and the ether and "animal spirits." It took us an Einstein to get relativity!
This discovery has very applicable uses, particularly in the general processes of the cognitive processes of toddlers, brain development, and memory storage and retrieval.
Academics, practicing science, are more in the "real world" than you are, because they need rigor and experimentation. It seems anecdote and casual observation is good enough for you.
That Neanderthal comparison continuation at the bottom of the article may not be accurate. For one, we don't know if they had language. Their voice box does not appear as developed as ours, but they may have used sign-language, which may be better for hunting than verbal. And they were not necessarily "more emotional". We just don't know.
Table-ized A.I.
I really wanted to link to The Onion's "Study Reveals: Babies Are Stupid," but this is a far more critical and analytic approach to problems than most people tend to use. Blindly following rules is a horrible way to learn about anything. The best learners, in my experience, take advice into consideration, then try to see if it's good advice, and discover why or why not. Applied to the example from the summary, the kid who thinks "is it really that cold outside? Yes it is, I'll go get my coat" is going to turn out a lot better than the kid who goes straight for the coat, especially at times when the authority figures are wrong.
So they don't believe what they are told until they verify it themselves? That would make them more intelligent than most adults. Children are being told lies all the time, I can't blame them for being skeptical.
When future parents are awaiting their first child, I hope they spend some time to learn how to handle small children. I don't expect them to study and evaluate original research papers, but original research papers sooner or later (usually: later) make it into what we call the "common sense". Therefore, scientific research may indeed help.
Additionally (I didn't go into the researcher's biographies), maybe they got the idea for their project while observing their own kids.
Disclaimer: I am a neuroscientist and I indeed believe that lots of behavioral and, in fact, neurological research is utter rubbish, but this belief doesn't invalidate sound studies.
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
Absolutely not! If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round, but if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough to discover that.
You're no scientist and have no idea what scientists actually do.
HAND.
Maybe so, but weak empirical evidence. Even if you're completely accurate in describing what you see, and that assumption is often a stretch, your conditions are likely not controlled enough to isolate anything in particular--and it may conflict with what somebody ELSE sees, which opens a completely different can of worms.
It sounds like in your line of work, simply knowing that the blueprint you got handed won't work in the real world is enough. That's perfectly fine; everybody is concerned with different particulars depending on their own perspective. What you have is a conclusion: "No, you're an idiot. This is faulty." From your perspective that's important. From a scientist (or engineer's), it's a starting point: "Why is this faulty? What can we learn from it? How can we avoid the same mistake later?" Neither of you are wrong, neither of you are wasting your time, but at the same time if you two swapped positions everything would likely go to hell pretty quick.
Anecdote and casual observation are great things to direct us on what we need to study rigorously; they're not a study in themselves.
True, but that's not what this is. Hao Wu basically said (paraphrasing) "parents have known this for ages, if scientists could get any they would have known too!"
Aside from being a bit of a douchebag, his statement isn't particularly rigorous. Parents have known WHAT for ages? That children don't listen? That little kids have particular trouble listening? That's spectacular, and it's a good jumping-off point for exactly the kind of study that was done -- but it's not particularly meaningful in itself. I noticed the sky looks blue, too; that's meaningless as well. Somebody coming along and telling me about white light and wavelengths and giving me the reason WHY it's blue can be important. It chains a statement like "the sky is blue" into any number of potential discussions ranging from anatomy to physics to meteorology.
Knowing that little kids have trouble listening is interesting, and frankly even people without kids have observed that (making the little pot-shot comment about scientists not having kids distasteful,) but what's more interesting is to know WHY--the study seems to be pushing the idea that it's literally a functional difference in their brain. That's cool. Can we do anything about it? That might be useful. Why does it happen and what changes as they age that makes it stop? That might be useful too, in any number of applications and particularly for people who have any sort of learning disorders that we might find have similar physical causes and might respond to similar treatments. Is this just a lack of life experiences, or are we literally altering the way the brain works as we get older?
What your parent poster said was correct: Science is necessary to validate our observations because so many things we have "known" to be true have turned out to be false. I'm not big on name calling, and wouldn't have taken that tact myself, but saying that science wastes its time by studying things we "know" does seem illogical at best.
When future parents are awaiting their first child, I hope they spend some time to learn how to handle small children.
They can study it all they want, memorizing countless tomes of wisdom on parenting, and it still won't adequately prepare them for parenting. Nothing but the actual experience of raising a child yourself will prepare you for it, regardless of how intelligence you might be. This introduces a bit of a problem, as you probably interpret this idea to mean that no parent on this planet knows what they're doing until they learn from mistakes made along the way.
On that, you'd be absolutely right.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
No. ;)
Concerning behavioral research (my career has nothing particular to do with this, I'm a molecular biologist concerned with early brain development), there are repeatedly studies presented here on /. with crappy conclusions (and good commentaries from the /. crowd).
And I think the current study is indeed insightful, because I always become desperate when confronted with small children that simply don't listen to my arguments. Maybe I can use a different approach when handling kids in the future. (Yes, you guessed it, I'm the child-less sort of /.ter I have already described. ;))
Concerning neurological research, I won't elaborate in detail. Not that my boss would ever read /., but I'd rather stay on the safe and AC side. It works like this:
Some time later:
No, while this narrative is somewhat comprehensive and prepared for easy digestion by the reader, this is not made up. Actually, the boss' comments are somewhat more harsh at times.
And our lab is fairly well known in the research area in question, our boss has some good friends in competing labs, and since many results are not reproducible, I believe that many of the competing labs have similar standards of scientific methodology.
What could I do about this? I have found my niche where I think I can work somewhat untainted by the boss; and in some time I will leave. I know the /. crowd will shout and throw stones and evil words on me, but to bring up proven evidence that our lab's research is not as scientific as it seems at first glance, and, furthermore, to make this a public scandal, needs you to be very, very strong and committed. And since we are all small ones, those who'll make it public will lose their jobs and find no other one, afterwards. That's like it is, face it.
No more comments from my side.
Very true.
I like the idea of "it takes a village to raise a child", even though it really isn't practical these days. The good part of that idea is that half the village has probably already had kids and learned a few things along the way, and can possibly offer you some advice should you choose to listen. That's the other part of the problem - parents start out with a firm idea of how it's going to be, and won't listen to reason even when it's not working (speaking from experience :)
Also, given the smaller families these days and the lesser contact with close family once you 'leave the nest', the first real exposure a lot of couples have to a new baby is when it pops out of one of them. It's one hell of a steep learning curve.
This is pretty obvious really. What irritates me is parents who don't get it. If you accept that a 3 year old child will do something before considering the consequences then allowing a kid to run in the street, or trusting it not to touch the red hot stove is really idiotic.
I'm always angered when I see young mothers in the street letting their toddlers get 20 or 30 yards ahead or behind with no thought for the consequences. If that kid decides to run in the road, there is no way to get there in time. I've almost run over a kid like that - ran straight out from behind a parked car. Fortunately for all concerned I had already seen the kid as it disappeared behind the car. The father gave me a filthy look as I slammed the brakes on, and I was really tempted to get out and hammer him. Why should I suffer the (undeserved) guilt of killing a kid if the father was to blame. Apparently I'm supposed to care more about the kid than the parents do.
BTW, it was dark, the parked car was parked illegally, and I was driving about 20mph in a 30 mph limit. The road was 2 lanes and one way. If the kid had continued running after I stopped it would have been caught by the guy on my left passing me at higher speed.
When I was a kid my parents kept me on reins so I was never more than 2 feet and a tug away. Parents these days seem to think that is treating your kids like a dog. Stupid people. You cannot guarantee your kids safety by training when they are too young to consider their actions. No matter how bright they are.
There is no fail safe with toddlers, you have to make sure there is no fail at all (as far as possible). It is not a matter of putting the big knife on a higher shelf, it is a matter of locking the big knife away. Don't hide the gun in a shoebox, lock the gun away. Etc.
I remember when I was younger and my wife and I were first planning to have kids; we went to a parenting course and the guy giving the course (a pastor from some church or something) was explaining why corporal punishment was bad and tantamount to assaulting one's own kids.
He said that toddlers will always be toddlers; they will always do things that they have been warned against, and perhaps been punished for before, over and over again. The reason, he said, was because toddlers only remember the consequences of their actions after the action. "They don't look ahead at the consequences of the action that they might be about to commit, but rather look back after the action and realise what the likely consequence is going to be."
That was about 9 years ago!
My three year old has a piggy bank (actually it is Thomas the Tank Engine, not a pig) with about $55 in it.
I can't think of one big name financial CEO who managed to make even half that much profit.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
As any parent will tell you, the "terrible twos" are a myth. It's the three-year-olds that have the potent combination of independent ability and lack of responsibility.
I think they should name this study in honor of Bill Cosby's "I dun-no!" sketches.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I read TFA, and it sounds to me like this thing lacked a control group. They included the eight year-olds, but they don't count because this task was not new to them. Match a two-symbol pattern? Child's play (ha ha). Try something a little harder.
I've done enough OJT of adults to believe that everybody, pretty much regardless of age, fails to anticipate the pattern until the whole thing has played out when they're doing something new and challenging. I think it's very common for people not to consider the possibility that they're seeing a train until they see the caboose -- then they try to remember if they saw an engine and some boxcars first. (This is a metaphor -- I know nobody's this stupid.)
I don't think this study proves anything.
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
Absolutely not! If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round, but if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough to discover that.
You're no scientist and have no idea what scientists actually do.
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
The correct answer here is that some engineers are scientists and some aren't. Among those engineers who are scientists, there are basic scientists, whose aim it is to understand the principles of engineering, and applied scientists, whose aim it is to understand how our knowlege of engineering interacts with real world problems.
That's the cartoon version, of course, but it should clear up some unnecessary confusion.
Spoken as an only child and a parent. :)
Concerning behavioral research (my career has nothing particular to do with this, I'm a molecular biologist concerned with early brain development), there are repeatedly studies presented here on /. with crappy conclusions (and good commentaries from the /. crowd).
When you say "crappy conclusions," do you mean conclusions that are poorly supported by the evidence, or conclusions that are well supported by the evidence but not that interesting, or what?
I've rarely seen much in the way of good commentaries on science from the crowd here. Sometimes a few people who actually know the area in question will post some insightful comments. But the rest generally respond to the popular report that's been posted, which almost invariably misses the point of the research. I'd be curious to hear what most Slashdotters think the take-home message was meant to be from the study under discussion here.
As a behavioral researcher, I certainly sympathize with your contempt for the field. But at the same time, I think there are good reasons to ask scientific questions that involve behavior (even more so neurology). The fact that some people do it poorly doesn't change that, nor does the fact that some people prefer an extreme reductionist approach.
I write user manuals for network equipment, and IT guys are just like toddlers. They slap in a piece of equipment, do the usual things to it, and only if it doesn't work do they engage their memories about what they've been told about THIS box, as opposed to some internalized archetypal box. That's why it's so important to make interfaces work the way people expect them to, with your special secret sauce elsewhere. Car makers figured this out ages ago. All cars have a steering wheel instead of joystick or a rudder or whatever, because people are going to get in and go before they stop to figure out the controls.
From the article:
What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face.
The wonderful thing is that this knowledge is already being put into widespread practice today. After "fixing deficient children" and having them score equally to "normal" children on exams, Dr. Montessori was given an opportunity to open a school in a ghetto in Rome. The law at the time would not allow her to work with Elementary aged children because she was not a certified teacher, so she was initially forced to work with children between 3 - 7 yrs. It was there that she came to the same conclusion (and others) about developmental psychology.
The school evolved into an environment where the children of the younger plane (3-6) could use autodidactic materials in order to "trigger this reactive function" and "highlight the conflicts that they were going to face". Even the teachers in the school were instructed on how to become part of this environment, while guiding the children to new challenges. This is in stark contrast to the "teacher-centric" environments that we still have today, in which the teacher tries to control the activities through adult reasoning and psychology.
Towards the end of her life, after working with all ages, she considered that developmental psychology could be looked on as 4 distinct age groups, she called "plains of development": (0 - 6), (6 - 12), (12 - 18), (18 - 24). Each has a number of characteristics and tendencies that strengthen or become marginalized depending on their natural development. These tendencies are strongest in the middle (which is why Dr. Munakata's research worked so well), and blend in between.
Dr. Montessori gave up her career as a doctor to create materials, open schools, train teachers, and put her findings into useful practice. I'd recommend anyone with children to look into it further. As with Dr. Munakata's research, there's much that can be done in both home and school. There's a fairly good, quick overview from Milwaukee Public schools where many public schools were converted into Montessori schools. Most Montessori schools you'll find are private.
But be warned, the name "Montessori" is not copyrighted, and many use it to make money. I'd suggest starting with schools associated with AMI (Association Montessori Internationale [this is the association Dr. Montessori created herself]), NAMTA (North American Montessori Teacher's Association), or AMS (American Montessori Society), as they seem to be the more reputable organizations.
The Wikipedia article mainly focuses on (3-6) education, and other aspects are sparse. One book that attempts to explain the approach through modern psychological findings is: "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius"
But probably the best thing to do, after a bit of web research, would probably be to visit a school run by AMI or AMS trained teachers and see for yourself.
Yeah pffft I hate it when scientists do research only to find out what they expected. They should only do research that would yield unexpected results.
You just got troll'd!
This is common with adults too. Someone mentions something. You don't think it's important or relevant. Then later you think (and perhaps admit) that the one making the comment was right.
You see, people need to have some sort of imprint of something being relevant in a certain situation (because people don't think about everything, so they will skip your information at first unless it's in a philosophical type conversation where people are forced to, and/or want to understand/use information given). However, they usually will have made a mental not of what you said and then apply it later.
Because of this, sometimes giving advice can be frustrating: You give advice. Other person doesn't do it. Then a few months later he comes with an 'idea of his own' that is actually the idea you presented to him/her.
It's in more complex situations this delayed application of information happens in adult life, but it's pretty obvious it happens.
Of course I meant conclusions that are poorly supported by the evidence. Conclusions that are not that interesting for me are simply not interesting for me, I do not use strong language to disapprove of them. (In this /. topic, there have been some comments of that kind: "I knew this anyway, why spend money on this research?" "Why do they not tackle The Real Problems(TM) instead?" Why are some comments so blatantly ignorant?)
Of course most comments are not that insightful (most are funny or crap or righteously false), but it are the few really great comments that get my attention. When learning something new, I usually focus on this great new insight, not on the crap surrounding it. ;)
I never denied this, I'm sorry if my comment was worded in an ambiguous way that allowed the suggestion of disapproval of your research area. In fact, I find behavioral research fascinating--and personal friendship with several psychologists lets me regularly discuss some studies or problems of that field. But I'm simply not very much into behavior. I have more than enough molecular biology papers on my desk(top) to read. ;)
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
I take offense to that. Although a lot of engineering involves solving well-known problems, there's a good deal of "never-before-done, at the conceptual stage, we're not sure if it's even possible" problems. Yes, we still use well known physics in the design process, but calling us "not scientists" is a little bit like saying modern mathematicians are not mathematicians because all they're doing is applying well-known math to solve their new problems.
Good engineers apply the scientific method in their design process. When creating something nobody has done before, they examine previous work, they construct a "hypothesis" of how to best solve the problem, they perform tests and simulations to make sure their assumptions are correct, and then they analyze the data, draw a conclusion (create a plan), and build the thing.
if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough
I agree with you in principle. You can't take anything for granted, common sense is often wrong. And that applies in engineering a LOT.
If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round
However, you picked the worst example ever to make your point, because you just used a "common-sense, everyone thinks this is right, but technically it's not" example. It's not necessarily "wrong" to say the Sun goes around the Earth. It's inconvenient for calculations because the center of mass of the earth-sun system lies inside the Sun. It doesn't mean that you can't come up with an elaborate mathematical model with the Earth as the reference center of the solar system (and it has been done), it just means that you'll be doing too much damn work.
There's no absolute reference points in the universe. Picking the Sun as the center of the solar system is the equivalent of using the cylindrical coordinate system instead of the cartesian one for problems that make sense. Things get a whole lot easier, and the math is way simpler and more elegant.
Lol!
"What did I just say?"
"You said.. for to not for to drink the drink."
"Well, why did you do it???"
"I dun-no."
"Well, that's BRAIN DAMAGE!"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
And I think the current study is indeed insightful, because I always become desperate when confronted with small children that simply don't listen to my arguments. Maybe I can use a different approach when handling kids in the future.
Here's a hint: don't make arguments, ask questions that lead the child to your point of view.
Children are (rightly so) a very curious bunch. They love questions; they love asking them and they usually enjoy being asked. I've had kids stop dead right in the middle of temper tantrums when posed with a sufficiently interesting question. You can just about see the gears turning in their heads.
When I want a kid to do something, I ask him a series of simple questions that he can answer with a little thinking, with each question bringing him closer to the realization I want him to have. Near the end, the connection is made and the child usually acts on his own volition. Sometimes a little amiable suggestion is also required.
This method requires a lot of patience, and it's not always possible or prudent for parents tasked with the 24/7 job of raising kids and who often find themselves at wit's end - but for childless people who only have to interact with children occasionally, it works like a charm.
With older (school-age) children, try explaining to them how other people feel about their actions, about the things they could do to make other people more amicable to their interests (and therefore get what they want). Kids really don't think about others - that's something that comes with teenagers (for some, later; for others, never) - so explaining to them how their actions could be tempered in order to ensure more smooth relations with others will often work (unless the kid is a stupid spoiled brat).
I've used that method to instruct kids on why their parents are angry with them, and what they could do to ameliorate that, or how what they are about to do (or trying to do) may end up with their parents getting angry with them. No child wants his parents pissed at him - it's pretty much the #1 aversion. You'd be surprised at how often the child just doesn't realize/think about these things, and when given reasonable advice, chooses to act in a reasonable manner.
The most effective kind of education is that
a child should play amongst lovely things. (Plato)
Human beings are the most imitative of all animals. This is especially true of
the child before the change of teeth. Everything is imitated during this time,
and as whatever enters the child through its senses as light and sound works
formatively on the organs, it is of utmost importance that what surrounds the
child should act beneficially.
At this age nothing is achieved by admonition; commands and prohibitions have
no effect whatever. But of greatest significance is the EXMAPLE. What the
child sees, what happens around him, he feels must be imitated. For instance:
the parents of a well-behaved child were astonished to discover that he had
taken money from a cashbox; greatly distrubed, they thought the child had
inclinations to steal. Questioning brought to light that the child had simply
imitated what he had seen his parents do everyday.
It is important that the examples the child sees and imitates are of a kind
that awaken inner forces. Exhortations have no effect, but the way a person
behaves in the child's presence matters greatly. It is far more important to
refrain from doing what the child is not permitted to do than to fobid the
child to imitate it.
(Rudolf Steiner, Lecture VI, Cologne, December 1, 1906, "Education...", p.96)
I've been studying nonviolent parenting in the last 6 months. All parents were once children and the parenting they will disperse is based on the parenting they received.
Children trigger countless issues in parents, resulting in all kinds of child abuse.
Expecting parents can reduce the harm they'll do their child by
1. Learn about child development and adjust their expectations. For example believing that a baby is manipulating their parents by crying at night or punishing a toddler for having a nervous breakdown ( often called "tantrums" by adults ) is inappropriate and dangerous.
2. Getting in touch with their own childhood and the abuse they received, and stop calling the abuse "parenting." This may take therapy and time. You were spanked as a child and turned OK? Wrong. You were spanked as a child and turned out to believe that spanking is OK.
3. Learn to feel, accept, process and understand their own emotions so that they don't act on autopilot when triggered. Losing it as a parent and shaking/smacking/spanking a child who can not protect themselves or run away is very, very harmful and never brings good. Never.
4. Learn to maintain emotional connection with another human being, especially when things are not perfect. You can be angry with someone, not just at someone.
5. I highly recommend looking into nonviolent parenting and nonviolent communication. The war between parent and child wastes time, energy and only teaches war/violence. Boundaries may be kept without violence. Alfie Kohn's books are founded on research and very accessible. ( www.alfiekohn.com )
Ultimately, parents parent the way they were parented. Abused children grow up to be adults whose gut feeling tells them that abuse is the norm.
Most parenting education focuses on behavioral psychology and successful control and domination over the child's will. In the long term, breaking a child's will is the worst thing for that human being and takes a lot of effort to repair.
And, nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting.
It is quite obvious with toddlers. I don't understand being completely against praise and punishments. How will you deal with daily situations? You can't wait your toddler to learn every attitude with cause and effect. You will have to provide a quicker effect. You may try this quick effect be nice, soft and natural, it will be a concentrated effect and will indeed be a praise or even a punishment. Like, you can't go to park without brushing your teeth. You may say that, this is not a punishment, we normally brush our teeth before going out. But no, this is a rule for preventing tooth loss. Concentrated effect (punishment) is staying at home, as you can't wait until he/she looses a tooth.
Nothing but the actual experience of raising a child yourself will prepare you for it, regardless of how intelligence you might be.
Horseshit. The only people that say that are parents that hate getting good advice from people who don't have children. Yes, all the wisdom in the world doesn't apply to every child, they are all unique, but most everything does apply to most children. And it's easy to learn. And yes, I have a child.
Learn to love Alaska
Hm-m-m. I don't see you offering your own experience with your own children. Allow me to suggest that until you've raised children, your studying is just so much academic bullshit.
"... the parenting they will disperse is based on the parenting they received. Children trigger countless issues in parents, resulting in all kinds of child abuse."
First, people vary wildly in their levels of self awareness about themselves and their history, and are influenced in varying degrees. Broad statements like this are simply meaningless bullshit. Second, it demeans real abusive situations to label, as you seem to do, any parenting practice that differs from your ideal as "abusive". Meet up with some kid who has bones broken, or who has lived with an end stage alcoholic who abuses her sexually, and then come back and tell me that it's abusive to swat a toddler on the rear. I'm not defending spanking, as I don't think it's effective, but your declaration simply paints a picture of you as ignorant and strident.
Calling a tantrum a 'nervous breakdown' is putting the child up on a bit of a pedestal. Kids have tantrums because they get frustrated that they aren't getting what they want. In many cases, it's a chosen and controllable behavior. If you had been around kids, you'd know this. In some situations, they learn that the behavior indeed gets them a positive result. A nervous breakdown, whatever that is, is a more persistant and unhealthy condition that indicates a problem with the person having the breakdown. Tantrums, on the other hand, are healthy, age appropriate behavior. You may not like them, but they are entirely normal. If whatever you are studying is comparing tantrums to adult nervous breakdowns, I think you should question your source. -Every- toddler has tantrums. Very few people have nervous breakdowns.
I'm reluctant to proclaim too much on what "must" be done as a parent. What worked for my wife and me was clear definition of boundaries, consistent enforcement of transgressions of boundaries, and age appropriate communication with the kids about why the boundaries existed. Age appropriate discussion with a screaming 2 year old is picking him up and carrying him out of the grocery store and strapping him in the car seat.
You sound pretty willing to proclaim what "most parenting education" is and does. I wonder if you have any experience that would make such a statement meaningful. After 17 years as a parent, your statement does not fit my observations. Further, your apparent belief that parenting should not involve dominating the child at least at times seems naive. Do you recommend not dominating your toddler when he tries to run into the street? Should we not control our child's willfulness and make them wear a bicycle helmet?
I think you should get a dog, and learn how to live with it, before you try to have children. You're reading some stuff that is going to give you trouble. Living with a dog will teach you the error of your ways, and when you end up with a neurotic and misbehaving dog, you won't do as much harm as when you do it with a kid.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
"punishing a toddler for having a nervous breakdown ( often called "tantrums" by adults ) is inappropriate and dangerous."
I totally agree, children are actually high explosives and can detonate at the slightest jostling. Handle with caution, call the bomb squad if you hear ticking.
"You were spanked as a child and turned OK? Wrong. You were spanked as a child and turned out to believe that spanking is OK."
The world is a tough place, unless you hit your children enough they aren't going to be prepared for the real world.
Many adults could benefit from having their butt paddled, it might adjust their attitude. Bad bank executives, naughty, NO!
ps - I'm glad you have a little religion to follow. Just don't be surprised that people you perceive as otherwise rational don't take your little soapbox outbursts too seriously.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
As a native Hebrew speaker, let me correct the errors in your interpretation.
Please forgive the ad-hoc transliteration.
> Yowm means about four hundred years:
> Numbers 20:15 How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time (yowm);
> and the Egyptians vexed us, and our fathers
The original text says "yamim rabim", literally: many days.
> Yowm means forty years:
> 1 Kings 11:42 And the time (yowm) that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel [was] forty years.
The original text says "ve-ha-yamim [...] arbaim shana", literally: and the days [...] forty years.
> Yowm means twenty years:
> 1 Samuel 7:2 And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kirjathjearim,
> that the time (yowm) was long; for it was twenty years
The original text says "va-irbu ha-yamim, va-ihyu esrim shana", literally: the days multiplied until they became 20 years.
> Yowm means seven and a half years:
> 2 Samuel 2:11 And the time (yowm) that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.
The original text says "va-yhi mispar ha-yamim [...]", literally: the number of the days was.
In short: "yom" (singular) is "day", approximately the time from sunset to sunrise.
"yamim" (plural) is "days", often used in the sense of "time" (in the same sense that the word "shanim" -- "years" is used).
> The words boqer and ereb are both used in other contexts as well. They are also used to mean beginning and end.
I'd like to see a reference to that. If possible, one that does not botch the translation.
And incidentally, evening is "erev", the Hebrew "Bet" (for B) and "Vet" (for V) are actually the same letter and the pronunciation depends on whether there's a dot ("dagesh") inside the letter. It is often omitted in modern practice and inferred from the context (same thing with most vowels), however it is present in the "official" text.
> The only thing we know for sure from this writings, is that there were distinct eras with a beginning and end. The rest is worded ambiguously.
Only if you misread the text. Otherwise, it is quite clear.
> You could argue that this was for the purpose of both making sense to the people of the time,
> and also being technically accurate at the same time.
Or I could argue that you were misled by a less than accurate translation.