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Putting Time Out In Time Out: The Science of Discipline
An anonymous reader points out this story at The Atlantic about new research and approaches in the science of discipline. "At the end of a gravel road in the Chippewa National Forest of northern Minnesota, a group of camp counselors have gathered to hear psychotherapist Tina Bryson speak about neuroscience, mentorship, and camping. She is in Minnesota by invitation of the camp. Chippewa is at the front of a movement to bring brain science to bear on the camping industry; she keynoted this past year's American Camping Association annual conference. As Bryson speaks to the counselors gathered for training, she emphasizes one core message: At the heart of effective discipline is curiosity—curiosity on the part of the counselors to genuinely understand and respect what the campers are experiencing while away from home....She is part of a progressive new group of scientists, doctors, and psychologists whose goal is ambitious, if not outright audacious: They want to redefine "discipline" in order to change our culture. They want to rewrite—or perhaps more precisely said, rewire—how we interact with kids, and they want us to understand that our decisions about parenting affect not only our children's minds, but ours as well. So, we're going to need to toss out our old discipline mainstays. Say goodbye to timeouts. So long spanking and other ritualized whacks. And cry-it-out sleep routines? Mercifully, they too can be a thing of the past. And yet, we can still help our children mature and grow. In fact, people like Bryson think we'll do it better. If we are going to take seriously what science tells us about how we form relationships and how our mind develops, we will need to construct new strategies for parenting, and when we do, says this new group of researchers, we just may change the world."
TFA was TL;DR, and TFS doesn't explain anything. Apparently I'm not disciplined enough to even understand what the hell this is about.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The march towards turning people into robots continues apace I see.
What is the point of putting kids in the middle of the forest if you can't beat them without anybody hearing? It was good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for these spoiled little kids.
Camp is there to weed out and identify the weak minded.
If you want to be coddled and understood, go to frickin' band camp. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Everyone's a winner. You can do no wrong! The world loves us, and when it doesn't, it's all our fault.
And thus the decline of western civilization...
Life is not for the lazy.
seriously peeps what is it were you going to say?
Many people want/prefer a less assertive/aggressive child. They do what they are told, instead of trying to invent/create new things to do on their own.
That makes for a less assertive/aggressive adult. They do what they are told, instead of inventing/creating.
Another clear example is the 'polite rage'. Studies have shown that the more polite a society, the more seething rage develops inside it. Where a traditional brash American northerner gets angry, but never fights for honor, a traditionally polite American southerner stays polite until you go to far and then goes for blood.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
People with out kids. Telling others, how to raise kids.
Oh dont beat them! They might get sad! We can't feel sad! Never! Oh don't yell at them. They have feelings!
Bunch of crap..
What a bunch of crap.
Oh look, here come the same "social engineers" that brought us soaring male suicide rates and burgeoning single motherhood with it's associated social outcomes, except this time they want to get their clammy hands on the children. They even use the same postmodernistic deconstructivist language as every likeminded gang of merry marxists.
Stop trying to redefine things through ideological lenses you muppets, science doesn't work that way even if you do manage to convince the gullible that it does for a while.
I have five young kids. There's no way to survive this as a parent if you don't let your kids cry themselves to sleep at times. There simply aren't enough parents and time to go around otherwise.
Every child is different, but my five only cried for a long period for about 2 weeks or less. Then it generally reduced to about 30-90 seconds. Over the course of their first year of life, they learn to sleep, in stages. There are regressions associated with certain development stages, but so be it.
My family size was average until the last 2-3 generations. Is is abundantly apparent that the reduction in family size provides the luxury of a lot more choices in parenting. That's a positive thing. But because there is so much variety to the human condition, it is illogical to suggest that 'crying it out' is new or terribly sub-optimal.
Why do I suspect that this person is neither married nr has any children? Only those with no direct experience in chiuld rearing are likely to propose nutty ideas like these.
They want to redefine "discipline" in order to change our culture.
That's nice, Tina, dear. You play your little make-believe games with all the other ivory-tower bleeding hearts, while the adults get real work done.
I read it, and I've seen this before, many times. I had a couple of kids of my own and used to be a school teacher. I've read many studies on discipline and outcomes.
What do you want for your child? Be successful ? be a good person?
Want to child to be a success? I mean a big success, such as a CEO, judge, or congressman?
Here's what studies show, and what I personally observed.
Raise a spoiled, can do nothing wrong, brat. Prevent them from learning sympathy for others.
Having a single child is best so you can devote your time to hovering and removing obstacles.
Make sure that they are also academically successful - private school is almost a must.
Give them practice bossing other people around with club activities.
Team sports only helps if they're going to be a star player so others can admire them.
All this came from journals I read many years ago, so don't bother asking for links. If I did recall the original titles, they would be paywalled.
This makes the sci-fi part of my brain tingle, imagining a scenario where our understanding of the brain becomes so good that behavioral manipulation reaches extraordinary heights. High-precision brainwashing on a grand scale. Who would remain immune to play the role of puppeteer?
When something has worked for thousands of years, you should
A. Deny its efficacy.
B. Fix it till it's broke.
C. Trash talk it till you get funding.
D. Buy the king some new clothes.
These people will inevitably hurt the people they interact with. You can spot destructive people by what they say. The claim they'll "redefine discipline" and "change our culture".
Non-destructive people would say "we're studying different approaches", "we'll try things and see what works", "we may not redefine discipline or drastically change the culture, but maybe we'll come up with something that works". Humility is the key. Without it, you end up hurting people recklessly or accidentally.
I had to reread the title a few times, since I kept reading "Pulling out in time, the science of discipline"
First line:
"At the end of a gravel road in the Chippewa National Forest of northern Minnesota"
Why do I give a fuck if they were at the end of a gravel road? I don't, and neither does anyone of even the most negligible consequence. They're clearly pandering to a very specific audience with this article. Not that the rest of the summary is any better, of course.
Good enough for me, good enough for my children.
No more need be read.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
How about we go back to the original definition of Discipline? "To make a disciple, to teach."
I know, I know... Parents ought not be required to teach their children, that's why we have government schools.
Say goodbye to timeouts. So long spanking and other ritualized whacks. And cry-it-out sleep routines? Mercifully, they too can be a thing of the past.
I applaud any attempt to bring neuroscience and other scientific insights to bear on childrearing, but I question the idea that somebody who is an expert in one of these sub-issues would also be an expert in the others. Sounds like we are committing the logical fallacy of assuming that because one person is an expert in one field they are an expert in all. Maybe these are all related, but it just seems to me that neuroscience is complex enough that an answer to one of these questions doesn't have a lot of bearing on the answer to others.
I'm a father of seven, and I do a lot of work with my kids that could be called timeout, although I don't know if it fits anyone else's idea of what timeouts are. I make my children follow the same rule I was given for myself from a clinical psychologist: when you are angry or upset, don't say or do anything until you relax, because everything you are thinking of saying or doing is a bad idea. Over time you build up the habit of relaxing in the face of frustration, and when you do your brain stops putting so much energy into angry outbursts and starts putting it into actually solving your problem. Also you are a lot less likely to whack somebody that you want to be friends with for the rest of your life. I have a hard time believing that neuroscience would yield any results that say this is a bad idea for child rearing, but maybe they mean something different by "timeout."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The article sounds pretty ridiculous, but in reality studies have shown that imagining practice is almost as good as practice.
Those "mirror neurons" sound like neurons being used to simulate actions of others. Saying that they automatically reflect actions taken by another is a stretch in humans. In monkeys, maybe it's triggering a pavlovian-style neural pathway.
I would rather not try to base a whole philosophy of something or another on animal studies. Try it on some college students first and see.
"Watching porn triggered the same neural pathways as actual sex."
"When people see violent things it's like they're doing those violent things in their mind."
I think a more accurate statement which is consistent with humanity is:
"Kids model their behavior on what they see adults doing." That isn't the same as "mirror neurons" by far.
...at the breathtaking, towering arrogance of people who presume to have a say on how to raise SOMEBODY ELSE'S kids.
I don't smack or condone it (speaking as somebody who came from a deprived background and got smacked a lot -- results were lackluster at best). But some cultures make use of a lot of it, e.g. people from Africa, who in my observation, are very strict/religious, and run very tight ships at home. So the cultural Marxists are effectively criminalizing entire cultures, as well as the lower (white) economic strata, who must fall back to corporal punishment, because they don't have the social/cultural capital to do fancy stuff like timeouts or whatever.
Just because these clueless, sandal-wearing, muesli-munching wankers have the education and intelligence to put little Hugo and Tarquin into timeout, doesn't mean that everyone else is able to.
So now we have stuff like smacking bans -- in half of Europe, child rearing methods are literally enshrined in law. It's fucking insane.
That's a long-winded and self-justifying way to say "I didn't RTFA".
Tina Bryson has two fairly recent books in print which she undoubtedly hopes to sell by the boatload, Should I trust her or the millions of years of evolution that have led to my parentage? Hmmmm?!
Looks like SPAM to me.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Dear Slashdot,
I apologize for my critical comments about Slashdot Editors. It appears that the ability to look up the correct spelling of a phrase is not required in modern publishing, e.g "right vs rite of passage", "corporal vs corporeal punishment". I am not a grammarian, nor an expert in child rearing, however this article makes me feel that I am a veritable genius.
TL:DR version:
Don't beat your kids, it can act as an interruptive stimulus but has little lasting effect. (No kidding?)
Don't use time out. It's almost as bad as beating, and can cause emotional dissociation from the parents without time-ins (UmKay...)
Time-ins are the secret magical ingredient that parents didn't know about before the specific identification of the mirror neuron. Therefore, all of those parents that used coaching to illustrate logic empathy and consequences, you knew not what you hath wrought. ( Yeah, whatever.)
Cynics Summary: Hey, being a good parent means treating your child like a human being, and trying to establish a rapport such that your requests make sense to the child. Coaching your child about consequences for actions (good and bad) are still the primary method of behavioral training. Punishments should be used sparingly to be of good affect.
I know my grammar probably sucks. I don't get paid, nor do I want people to click on my article to generate ad revenue. This is a public service announcement. ;P
The point of the article is made near the end, which is to use less time-outs (which should still be used, as a time of reflection), and more "time-ins", which is apparently teaching your child about emotional events as they occur through the day. Based on the examples given, I would guess "time-in" is something we already do with our kids; it's just talking over events like "Wasn't it funny when Sarah sneezed milk out her nose?" Then listening to our kids tell their version. The new thing is to somehow "teach" them what that emotion means. I'm OK with a psych doing research that confirms common parental practices work, but there was a lot of vague hand-waviness about "teaching" emotions, and they skimmed over the fact that once a child is in school or daycare, the majority of their daily events aren't shared with their parents. Discussing such events therefore requires discovering them, which is difficult when the response to "How was your day at school?" is a terse "Okay".
PS: I actually read through TFA, which was rather long and filled with the author's opinions more than the psych's study results and opinions.. I don't recommend reading the article by the way, it was a lot of filler text with very little discussion of the main topic. It could use an editor's review - for example, it alternates between "time-out" and "timeout". Plus the title is misleading - it explicitly says time-ins aren't a counter-point to time-outs, it simply encourages that time-ins be added to the daily routine.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
It doesn't necessarily need to be physical punishment in the sense of pain or injury, but there must be real and consistent negative consequences. Reward-only might work OK for training dumb animals to perform tricks, but even animals often still need some negative consequence in order to eliminate specific undesired behaviors. You sound like another of those "I took psych 101 so I'm an expert"s. It's not all that simple, and no neuroscientists are NOT necessarily the end all be all authorities on cognitive and behavioral psychology nor any of the other numerous interrelated disciplines in the first place.
From the linked article:
I’m reminded of a case study that describes an individual who had come to associate sexual arousal with being covered in insects. As a child, that individual had been locked into closets for unimaginable amounts of time, and during those times, bugs would frequently fill the space and crawl on him. The child, trying to seek some sort of escape from the reality of his experience, found comfort only in sexual release—even though he was too young to even know what sex was or meant. His body knew only that it felt good, and it provided the only possible escape available to him.
This is everything you need to know to raise a really interesting child.
Seriously, almost all of these modded-up responses strike me as a bit crazy. Is it so mad to believe that we, as a species, might be doing things that we could be doing better? I've been around these forums for long enough to know (and feel myself) that the "think of the children!" arguments get overused, but is it so unthinkable that we need to identify anything that goes against our own parenting styles as "horseshit" or "screwy"?
We're all a bit damaged in our own ways. Whatever we've dealt with (or probably more importantly, haven't dealt with) growing up shows up in our own parenting. I know we all think that we're all perfectly functioning adults with the sure-fire recipe for creating the next generation of perfectly functioning adults, but are we? We're a violent species who thinks that the solution to problems is a display of authority, usually by physical means. Little Johnny getting out of line? A small whack will put him right back into his place! That'll teach him, right?
Come on.
The technocrat response on these forums is old, and shows a lot as to why we fail as a society at identifying and correcting problems before they explode into tragedies. A little empathy goes a long way, and our knee-jerk reaction of "but this is how we've always done it!" isn't productive. The fact that we treat children like tiny adults is pretty screwed up.
I wish you would have read the next sentence:
This could help explain why changing methods of discipline is so difficult and why science faces an uphill battle in facilitating change.
They managed to get an anti-science dig in with their prone-to-violence dig. This is the typical crap that you read in The Atlantic.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Seriously? Unicorns and rainbows. Ponies. Fuck. Is this from the 1970s? Spanking? WTF?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
My mom broke a wooden spoon in my bare behind. Fortunately (for her, not me) she had a spare.
Don't think about what you want to happen when it all goes right. Think about what you want to happen when it all goes wrong.
When there's a teenager in front of you, telling you to fuck off, about to hit you, throwing shit around the room. Quite what do you think "talking" is going to do? Now, there's a limit and being just as angry isn't going to help, but all your lovey-dovey techniques will go out of the window even if you try them all).
(I used to run karate clubs for children up to 18... I have had 18 year old stand in front of me, push me, and threaten - in a room full of parents of kids. It did not require physical intervention to stop the situation, nor did it mean ignoring it and allowing it to continue).
You can (hopefully) stop things getting to that stage but there are points in a child's life when they aren't going to listen or conform to your fancy-schmancy child psychology class.
At certain ages, children are animals. We all are, all were, all will be for several million years yet. And the analogy holds when they are in a rage, or upset. They can't speak to you, they can't listen to reason, it doesn't work. Try to stop an animal from peeing on the sofa by just telling it no every time.
The ONLY way it works is if you've already got them to associate your denial with some kind of consequence. That consequence needn't be beating the shit out of them - nobody condones that on animals or children. But the consequence has to be there.
That consequence also has to be ENFORCED no matter how gentle it is. Take away the videogame. Deny them sweeties. Make them sit in the corner. Don't let them out with their schoolmates. Whatever it is, you need to enforce it. What's missing from modern parenting is consistency and enforcement.
Society does not function because everyone does what you tell them. It functions because the outliers that don't are handled in a different manner to those that do. And we have a set of consistent rules - the law - and we enforce them. (Crappy enforcement of the law in the US news aside, but even that proves my point - if the rules aren't consistently enforced, they will not work!).
We enforce them by the only way that provides the negative connotation to it - association with a negative action including "tasters" of that action for those who can't imagine the consequences for themselves. We call them "jail", "community service", "fines", etc.
Positive-only parenting works about as well as giving all law-abiders £100 a year. Bankrupts the country, scams the government to oblivion, and still doesn't get rid of crime - and any amount of crimes go unpunished and "rewarded" just because we don't know about them still. The positive-only approach is NOT ENOUGH to calm an angry teenager, in the same way that it won't appease an angry criminal to offer him £10 extra when he's mugging you. He's still going to mug you.
Set rules. Enforce the rules, at every infraction. And there has to be a negative consequence for failing to abide by the rules because otherwise - what's the fucking point of setting them? No animal on Earth will abide by a rule "just because". They will do it because of positive or negative actions associated with it. And positive associations ONLY work when everyone is calmly playing the game. See how far a doggy treat will get you in terms of compliance when your dog's just been barking at another that's bitten him (hint: he won't give a shit).
The other crime of modern parenting is conditioning children to EXPECT consequences for everything. Yelling at them for the most minor things is pointless. You're wasting a "power" a parent has on a bit of food on the floor or a stain on their jumper. Stop it. Then when you DO need it, it's there and has the desired effect - because they aren't conditioned to expect a bollocking over the most minor of things, and it shocks them when it does happen.
Also, stop the absolute bullshit of "I'm not going to tell you
...after you have had a few kids of you own. Most find that these ideas while they sound nice fail to actually perform any sort of useful discipline, utterly failing the child, the parents, and ultimately society.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
...is Dave Brubeck in all of this?
Dear Google, I asked for "Time Out", not whatever this crap is about.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
It's /. half of us were waiting for the followup on that as "You were eaten by a grue".
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
This is a refreshing article and confirms a lot of what I've seen with kids. After working with children for many years, mostly at the elementary level, and then observing their progress as teens, I've found an alarming number of them take on unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drug use, bullying, vandalism, cutting, promiscuity, a lack of desire to learn, and a kind of continuous anger. These kids show up at the elementary level unable to focus because they've already started to tune outæ on a permanent basis! This is a coping mechanism kids do to survive not only abusive situations at home, but situations in which the parent is not providing an attachment based relationship. A type of relationship (and discipline) rooted in alienation. In another words, they're may be food on the table, a place to sleep and love for the kid, but there is something missing: understanding the context in how to relate to the child. Adults often focus on behavior, not what causes the behavior. Understanding WHY a child crys at bedtime, or commits acts of vandalism is the key, not the behavior itself. If you've told a teen a hundred times to not do drugs and he doesn't comply, who has the learning problem? You can spank a toddler, but is that going to work when he's 15? What about when they become an adult? Will prison or addition really "teach" him a lesson? Part of the developmental process of children is to push back, and challenge, but there is a difference in healthy and unhealthy rebellion.
In order for a child to mature and make good decisions, he must be able to fall back on an adult without the fear of retribution or judgement and definitely without violence. When a child is raised in such a way that your love for him is conditional (not taking him under your wing and hanging out when grounded for example) and alienating (crying to sleep), not only will he rebel (as a teen in self destructive ways), but your relationship and what you say will have no weight.
I would highly suggest checking out author Dr. Gabor Mate, he has some great books on ADHD, addiction, stress, and parenting and all of these ailments are rooted in childhood, which is heavily related to research like this article. After observing children and their progress over the years I've concluded that this author has it nailed. Not to mention a number of mental health professionals I know also concur. Just scroll down to the parent section and read a few of his essays or if you have kids, actually read one of his books! http://drgabormate.com/
People through out the ages have tried fix society and produce well behaved people. They all have failed. Some have had some good ideas, but I believe they fail to get to the root of the problem. Each and every one of us is selfish. We want things done our way to benefit us. We are able to dream of utopia, where everyone is well behaved and loved, and everyone works for the common good, but we are not able to achieve that. We are broken. No amount of proper child-rearing, programming, or law making will solve that problem. Deep down inside we are still selfish, wanting to be in control with everything benefiting us. And yet we can dream of a better society. We know that something is wrong and something is broken. Unfortunately we are unable to fix it ourselves.
I believe there is a solution. We can not fix ourselves but God can. God loves each and every one of us. He desires that we would all be fixed without turning us into little robots. Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can have new lives and live in love. Though we yet perfect, you can see many Christians around the world working to make things right. We, Christians, are in the process of being fixed ourselves. We are not there yet. I know that I am a better and more loving person today than who I was 20 years ago. I am still broken but God is at work in me making me better. That is the solution that works. That is what I have experienced.
Pain is possibly the oldest, most effective stimulus to changing behavior in the history of, well, life.
To suggest that human behavior isn't modified by pain is to imply that humans are somehow intrinsically different than every other kind of life on this planet.
I doubt that is true.
Now we can talk all day about the long term effects of pain on spent beings, and the concomitant damage that can be done emotionally, socially, or in terms of relationships. But if I'm going to take you seriously as a real scientist (and not just a flake with an agenda) you need to concede that pain CAN change behavior, and that in some cases the behavior change may conceivably be worth the effects.
-Styopa
I would say I'm pretty much a technocrat, in that I would take hard data over what feels correct or what has always been done any day. If the data show beyond any doubt that working with children in the manner that the article suggests produces better results than thousands of years of corporal punishment evidence, then I would follow the study regardless of what anyone else did.
The problem is that when you're working with people, especially _all_ the people, studies only get you so far. Average IQ is 100 -- so lots of parents are below that. Some parents are poor, or work 3 jobs, or don't give a crap about their children. Whenever I see bad behavior, I have to remember to reserve judgement because of these facts. Some parents lack the ability to reason with their children -- and no parent can reason with a preschooler sometimes! I have 2 little kids and really don't want to screw them up too badly. I'd like to think that treating them like human beings who need training works better than "My dad beat me up all the time, and look how well I turned out!" It must be a pretty lousy job being a social worker for a state child welfare agency and seeing children from the entire cross section of the public as opposed to what you are exposed to regularly.
It seems to me that the study boils down to a consequence of the old adage "Children learn what they live." If your household is a nice tranquil place with two academic parents who take the time to raise their kids, the kids will turn out better than those from a household ripped from an episode of Cops. Now, there's some scientific data behind this, showing that children can model the behavior they're exposed to.
but there are a few gems in it.
I kinda get what they are saying.
From own experience as parent with three kids:
child #1: no disciplinary method ever worked effectively, period (spanks, timeouts, taking objects or privileges away, etc). Currently this child has severe entitlement issues and feels nothing is her fault. She passes the psychopath test with flying colors. at 16, she's in psychiatric care after professing suicidal ideation and superficial attempts.
child #2. A thoughtful, empathetic and generous girl of 9 who sometimes floods emotionally and has big tantrums. She clearly has suffered from abuse from child #1. When she has tantrums, its like her neural pathways become scrambled and the only way to bring her back to rational behavior is with a quick spank, which seems to "reset" her system. After which she is rational, remorseful and loving again. Timeouts and take aways generally work.
child #3. a big hearted loving boy at 7 years old who is very physical and intense but also cerebral. Spanking does not work, simply sending him into an animal like rage as depicted in the article with hissing, biting, etc. The only way to snap him out of his tantrums is to get him to think about the puzzling nature of things at which point his higher level reasoning takes over from his reptilian brain.
All three children completely different. all of them super inteligent. all of them with ideas about how to fix things, inventing, or helping society.
Anecdotally alone, I would say spanking generally does not work as a discipline method, but can be helpful as a pysiological tool. Its all about teachable moments and above all repetition! Reinforce the neural pathways with the positive influence you want, over and over until it sticks.
For instance, the bedtime. You dont coddle them all night long but you dont just ignore the crying either... you just keep putting them back to bed. they know they arent abandoned, but at the same time they know (eventually) they arent going to "win". Its a lot more work. With a baby you make contact but then put him down. With an older child, you can rationalize a bit.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
I do hope you mean "on my bare behind."
Usually when they do something that is past our limits of acceptability, it is a tool used for getting our attention.
There is no right or wrong, no discipline, only your reflection.
How you act in that moment is all that matters, not how or even why you think you need to discipline them.
I'm basically a fairly liberal person, but when I read about "progressive" scientists wanting to "construct new strategies for parenting", my inner reactionary boils over.
I have three kids ranging in age from 12 to 20. I agree that spanking is a bad strategy; I never used it. I also agree that timeouts are useless, especially for very young kids. For very young kids, a stern reprimand delivered immediately after the undesired behaviour usually works. For older kids, removing a privilege is quite effective provided you don't make empty threats. Don't threaten anything you're not prepared to carry through; kids can smell a bluff a mile away.
But letting a kid cry it out until they sleep through the night? That's a godsend. My first daughter was not sleeping through the night even at 11 months. Finally one night I said "That's it, I don't care how hard she screams, we are NOT going in there."
It was a couple of hours of hell. And then 19 years of bliss.
All you really need to be a decent parent is to love your children and to have common sense. Unfortunately, the latter is sometimes in short supply, especially among people "on a mission to change parenting." That itself is a cringeworthy label.
This is all fine and good, but the fact remains that sometimes what the little bastards need is a damned good thrashing.
How we go from camping to parenting just got way more complicated than either needs to be.
At first I thought the title read 'Pulling Out in TIme: The Science of Discipline" which might have been more interesting.
Worse: "recent data on brain imaging" my bullshit alarms went CRAZY on this one. Recently a lot of this cycled through the mommy-sphere with lots of garbage claiming time-outs looked the same to an MRI.
"So you're telling me, you put toddlers into an MRI machine?"
"Yeah"
"and you were trying to see something about time-outs?"
"yeah...."
Cue the "are you kidding me" face. Not only is this an impossible study, it's an immoral one from a psychological ethics standpoint. It didn't happen. There are so many confounding factors that we can dismiss any such talk OUT OF HAND. This is the worst kind of junk science, nuero-bunk, and it's being used to make people feel guilty about time-outs, likening it to physical abuse.
I'm totally stunned by the anti-scientific "bash kids" meme being promoted in the comments on this admitedly badly written summary.
The evidence is clear, spanking is shit. I'd expect slashdot people to understand that.
Oh but my parents spanked me and I'm Ok. Sure about that? My ancestors dragged women by the hair into caves and raped them. Is that OK too?
Or is it that slashdot is so dominated by USA cititizens who live in a totally fucked violent anti-democratic society that any evidence challenging their view is tossed aside without a proper hearing?
Grow up guys.
work in progress
Come on now: The appropriate followup for that is "Open mailbox." It is far too bright to be eaten by a grue.
No violence, no meanness, no cruelty. Teach kids that the world doesn't revolve around them. If they're polite, considerate of others, say "please" and "thank you", then the world may give them some of what they want. If, on the other hand, they're demanding, insulting, and inconsiderate of others, they end up kissing an unyielding brick wall. Sort of like the golden rule turned on its side: you get what you give, no exceptions. And you know what the hardest part of this principle is? Mom and Dad have to practice it themselves every day. Kids imitate the parents, so if you spank and yell at them, well, guess what? You're teaching them that violence is perfectly okay. You can do whatever you want to others as long as you're bigger or are in a position of authority. ... meet Effect.
Cause
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Are these people really invested in child discipline as an aspect of parenting, or just something to get short-term results for the duration that the children are in their custody?
(I don't know which, I just thought it was worth asking.)
'Cause every ivory-tower scheme invented last year is obviously superior to what we've been doing for tens of thousands of years.It's not like the old ways have a track record of building civilizations, or the new ones a record of turning out to be every bit the fiscal disasters the Republicans warned us all about. It's GOOD to have faith...
"The Atlantic"
No more need be read
Is the title of the book I used in childrearing. It is about effective training of animals, children, and other humans in your life. Punishment may be hardwired in primates, but it is not the best training tool. Rewards are. Reward steps towards the behavior you want. Become more precise over time. Use occasional "jackpots'" to sustain the behavior.
YOU SUCK! That wasn't even CLOSE to a +5 Troll! I'd tell you to get your sorry ass back under your bridge, but you've done such a shit job that you probably lost it gambling or some such troll nonsense.
And how would your parents have punished you for being such a douche? And if this was your child posting on your account, how would you punish them for being an internet douche?
Also, no matter how big you tell someone your dick is, doesn't make it actually that big. Similarly, telling and even insisting psychology is a science does not make it so.
That isn't Slashdot that you're reading- that's you seeing your reflection in the mirror. "What the fuck does that shit mean?" you say. Let's examine it starting at the end since that's where you put your conclusion.
Please define this. You want us to act more adult-like which by inference, you are claiming to be. Well, you start the whole post off with a racial slur (redneck) and manage to slide in some xenophobia as well (you evidently resent Americans, of which you are not). You then, instead of arguing something rationally, immediately jump in to hyperbole to try to "prove" your point. You go from spanking to rape in 2 phrases flat. Impressive! Though you would have probably earned more effect if you just Godwinned the whole thing from the start. So after analyzing the post and your conclusions, you wish that every slashdotter would respond to problems by name calling, belittling, exaggerating, and shaming. That's a fine definition of growing up you got there. Sounds to me like guilt.
"Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent"
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Babi...
"New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined.
A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.
In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture--and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies.
Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breast-feeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her?
These are but a few of the important questions Small addresses, and the answers not only are surprising but may even change the way we raise our children."
John Holt and Pat Farenga are worth reading too, about "unschooling" as essentially "give your kids all the freedom you can stand, especially in following their own educational interests".
http://www.johnholtgws.com/pat...
Although, I personally feel the more extreme form of "radical unschooling" as some (not all) practice it is like the libertarianism of parenting, emphasizing freedom over all other virtues... Kids are indeed "learning all the time" but the quality of what they are learning can matter too. Also, "supernormal stimuli" of certain media and certain foods may need to be avoided or limited for health reasons because to help kids avoid or recover from "the pleasure trap".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
Also related on Myers-Briggs for both parent and child to look at various matchups:
http://www.motherstyles.com/
And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
That page talks a lot about Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive and Neglectful styles. But the page goes into more types than that (including "attachment" parenting which may be close to the human historical norm within hunter/gatherer tribes where it sounds like a crying baby was rare).
By the way, kids can be much more a discipline problem when fed junk, not fed enough fruits and vegetables, lacking in sunlight, lacking in good gut bacteria, lacking in exercise, overstressed by an early focus on academics instead of play, saturated by violent and sexualized media, and so on. See also:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/chil...
https://www.vitamindcouncil.or...
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/0...
http://www.chrismercogliano.co...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Apparently the fuckwits who are championing this program were so harmed by the way their parents raised them that this program is the best they could invent as adults.
any comments