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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
I felt the exact same way. "Oh, okay, so no spanking, no time outs. What should I do?" And finally at the end of the article they say something about teachable moments.
Ummmm...so what do I do when my 2 year old hits the cat? Most of the time he's loving and playful with the cat. But then sometimes for no reason he throws a toy truck at the poor cat. So I yell at him "NO!" and send him for a time out. Then I explain what he did was wrong, and make him apologize to the cat, and then explain that we only love and pet our kitty.
What the fuck is wrong with that? What else am I supposed to do? Let him go right on doing it and wait for some teachable moment about not hitting the cat? TFA says "what you're doing is wrong" with little explanation why and then fails to tell you what to do instead except some hippy crap about talking to your kids.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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
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
The same thing my generation did: ignore the self-styled "experts" who tell you you're doing it all wrong, and trust your own best judgment instead.
The world is chock full of wonderful theories about child-rearing and education that might provide better outcomes if we all had infinite time, infinite patience, and infinite resources to try them out. But we don't, so we do the best we can with what we have. That is particularly true when you are a parent of a young child.
This reminds me of the current fuss over "flipped classrooms". Yes, it seems like an interesting idea, and it might provide better outcomes, but it requires several outstanding teaching assistants who understand the concepts well enough to provide one-on-one instruction during class time.
In the real world most of my teaching assistants don't understand the material any better than my students. So unless my employer can figure out how to clone me, I'm going to stick with what works, rather than lose sleep over what is impractical to even attempt.
Have you ever had a 2 year old?!
Actually I agree with you, and thus far our 2 year old has responded reasonably to rational discussion (kept at his level). Like most things in parenting, persistence is key. A 2 year old doesn't "get it" the first time, but being consistent with disrupting and correcting the errant behavior has always borne fruit after the 20th or 30th time (or we have become numb to it perhaps?).
We have a really mellow kid, so we have not had the need for spanking or time-outs as such. Often we are simply dealing with a tired or hungry-cranky kid and need to deal with that issue rather than the specific outburst as a behavior issue.
The basic bit of wisdom I got before I had kids was that all kids are different. It is dangerous to project your own experience onto other parents, not matter how clearly it appears you or they are doing it wrong.
The authors don't care, because they won't be present when your toddler misbehaves.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Hell, TFS was TL;DR.
TFA in a nutshell:
"We're going to discover all these neat behavioral things via neurobiology, and change the world!"
It doesn't say they've actually discovered any of these things yet. Just that they plan to.
It reads very much like this.
I think what they really want are children who are so unruly that their parents can't control them, and they can't function in society. They make for perfect lemmings fully dependent on the government.
If you honestly think it's a government conspiracy then you are at least a little bit "broken, psychotic, or socially maladjusted".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.