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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.
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
Exactly. Far too many children are coddled and protected far too much growing up. Kids need to learn that not every day is happy sunshine fun land while they're kids. Yeah, it's no fun being punished/disciplined for screwing up, or failing at something, but when you're a kid the stakes are low. I see far too many young people where I work (college) that are on their own for the first time and have never worked at anything in their whole life, never had someone not holding their hand and wiping their nose. What happens? They fall flat on their face and then howl that it's not fair. Better to learn early how to struggle and persevere and succeed than to coast into failure later.
I don't think the reason large portions of the world don't "like us" is because "everyone's a winner". It probably has more to do with torturing people, blowing up innocent women and children via drones, 100+ years of interference in other governments (including supporting drug smugglers, funding violent overthrow of democratically elected leaders, funding oppressive regimes, funding death squads), domestic police murdering people, and generally being a dick that sees no wrong with itself.
Now, stop whining or I'll give you something to cry about!
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.
You guys fail to see the point here. Perhaps you're not parents. Perhaps your bad parents of the type described in the summary.
The point is that there are ways of engaging kids to address the core reasons for their acting out and/or to redirect their energy into something positive. Really has nothing to do with spoiling or coddling or calling everyone a winner. It's the same behavior that any good manager at work should exhibit, rather than just declaring that there will be punishments for all until moral improves.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
The whole point of punishment/discipline is not retribution for stepping out of line, but a means of teaching children where the line is and not to cross it. If there is a more effective way of teaching those things that doesn't involve punishment, why not try it?
Maybe my children just have a different personality, but I never hit them and have rarely yelled at them. We don't have a concept of "time out" at our house. Yet people frequently remark about how well-behaved my kids are, probably because I use other techniques like empathy ("how would you feel if somebody did that to you?") and consequences ("if you don't put your PJs away, you won't be able to wear them to bed tonight").
Of course camping is more about independence and responsibility than behavior, but I think the same methods could apply.
dom
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
Okay. A simple spanking is not "physical violence".
A spanking is a proxy for the pain certain dangerous activities could inflict.
We are NOT talking about beating a kid black and blue. We're talking a simple swat or two on the landing gear.
A friend of my parents subscribed to the whole "no spanking" line.
Her son kept coming into the kitchen while she was cooking and trying to get into the oven.
She used a gate. He'd get over it.
She'd physically move him elsewhere in the house, he'd come back.
She'd yell at him. He'd cry, then come right back.
Finally, he wound up searing his hands on an open oven door. Stuff that required painful reconstructive surgery later in life.
So I ask you. What would have been worse for him? A couple swats on the ass? Or what happened to him?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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
The appropriate thing to do, obviously, is to hit the child with the cat.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
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.