> they need to be raised deliberately. if you spoil a dog, and dont train it, what kind of dog do you wind up with? what kind of people do you end up with when they are sucked into ipads while still in a stroller, and they are sent to schools that are little more than zoos being overseen by air-headed sorority girls?
That is succinct, true, and a shame. A shame, just like your hand-picking out a part of a sentence, in order to make the poster sound like an idiot is.
He omitted: in that, from his sentence. They are just like animals, in that....
And if you were to be truthful with yourself, you'd admit he's eerily correct in his observation.
Children are neurologically incapable of understanding a large proportion of the dangers they face. Toddlers simply can't understand the cause and effect of "run into street -> get run over". Younger children who lack a fully developed theory of mind can't understand the concept of lying. Younger teenagers often attempt suicide as a means of seeking attention, without fully understanding the finality of death. Older teenagers have a very limited ability to reason about more abstract risk behaviours like distracted driving or binge drinking.
Unless your child is extraordinarily precocious, some amount of "don't do that or there'll be trouble" will inevitably be necessary. Hell, adults often respond far better to simple conditioning than logical reasoning. Patiently explaining the risks of smoking was far less effective than simply stigmatising the behaviour. Everyone knows that they need to eat less and exercise more, but that knowledge has done practically nothing to stem the obesity epidemic. We can't expect children to understand that homework is a necessary investment in their future when most adults don't save enough for retirement.
Children need to be taught self-regulation, but it's unrealistic and unfair to burden them with the full responsibility of disciplining themselves. Rules and boundaries are a kindness, not a cruelty - they give children a safe space in which to learn and develop.
not everything in life is conscious. in many situations that are new or ambiguous, a child will make a decision based on his or her disposition, his or her feeling. a well adjusted child has feelings about things that will help them. of course, those feelings and instincts dont guide all decisions, im not saying that.
and here is where our opinions intersect: the reason to control and form a child in their early development is because it provides a good foundation for the next step, which is self motivated learning. no child can learn anything unless they learn it themselves or if it is taught to them in an extreme way. by extreme, i mean that you take your kid aside and look him in the eye and you put on a face more serious and deadly than you have ever before and you say to him in a low voice "crossing the street without looking is not acceptable." those lessons should be few. what you want is to spark a chain reaction of learning by first teaching the child how to learn and then allowing them to build their knowledge on their own.
learning to learn comes naturally to some and not to others. being forced to learn complicated things forces one to learn how to learn. usually people get this in their twenties when they set a hard goal, like passing a chemistry or physics class in college. i believe that this can be done deliberately by the parent at a much earlier age.
so, my overall point is that a child must be raised deliberately.
This is an incredibly old fashioned view of dog training. Both science and actual practice have proven that, indeed, a more empathetic approach that focus on the positive side of behavior modification produces better and more consistent results. Indeed, this also translates to raising a kid, and is why physical punishment in the best case results in passiveness ("good behavior") and in many other cases, life long resentment.
Yeah, raising kids is just like owning a gerbil. Exactly.