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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."
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.
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
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.
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.
TFA was TL;DR, and TFS doesn't explain anything.
Indeed. I have seem more concise and informative submissions written by Bennett Haselton.
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.
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
I'd be curious to read what exactly these people recommend in place of timeouts. I mean, I'm always up for learning new parenting techniques, but I just don't see how a "teachable moment" tactic will work in the real world. Certainly with younger children.
As you well know, when a parent corrects a young child's behavior, the typical response is to either engage in a debate or to throw a tantrum. In neither case is the child internalizing the lesson behind the "teachable moment". A timeout effectively avoids both of those responses because once the child is placed into a timeout, there is no one to argue with, and there is no one to watch the tantrum.
So that would be my question: how does this new technique compensate for the real-world problem of toddlers acting like toddlers?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
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
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!
I'm not a parent, but I have observed Japanese parents with young children and they tend to recognize that 2 year olds are not really responsible for many of their actions. Maybe he lost his grip on the toy, maybe he didn't understand that the car can't catch it or doesn't like having things thrown at it. They tend not to shout anyway, and I've noticed that Japanese children tend to be a lot quieter and calmer which may be related.
Instead they will calmly explain that the cat doesn't like that. Play stops, the child is faced with their parent and even if they don't understand exactly what is being said they understand the tone of voice and facial expressions. They might try to explain that only dogs like to catch things, making it a teachable moment.
So, kinda like what you do but without the need for shouting and time-out. I see the logic - punishing a 2 year old for not understanding seems somewhat unreasonable, since being a 2 year old you can't really expect them to have understood. For repeated behaviour it goes to loss of privileges, like taking the toy away.
It seems to work pretty well. Japanese kids seem quite mature, and some of the toys they get are kinda surprising for a westerner... Fairly sharp woodworking tools, for example. I dunno, I'm not an expert, but I think I'd like to at least understand what they are saying before making a judgement and unfortunately TFA doesn't really explain it, as you pointed out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
The appropriate thing to do, obviously, is to hit the child with the cat.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
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.
The thing most people seem to fail at understanding is that training children is a lot like training dogs. They are habitual creatures (even adults are to a large extent) and learn a lot of behavior through mimicking and repetition. You don't always need to explain with words. Taking a toddlers hand when they are calm and stroking the family cat nicely while explaining with a very positive tone is the same as teaching the child to not hit the cat. Hitting a child for negative behavior is teaching them to hit others for behavior they personally find disagreeable. Its not a perfect 1:1 corellation of behavior because we all have conflicting habits that balance each behavior like a neural net.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Nailed It. "If you'd just figure out how to do it right, you could do it right!"
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.