What do I do when they simply refuse to do what I am asking them to do? (2015)
visiblechild.comWhat I don't like about article like these, is they never say when is enough, enough. If my 15 year old is still dumping milk on the floor and laughing surely the "Model Graciousness" phase has ended.
Also not covered is what makes "a spoiled brat". In my experience, both as a child and adult, it seems the "spoiled brats" are the children that have little to no boundaries and are allowed to do whatever they want even if there parents are present, and display helpful properties.
I considered my self a pretty forgiving parent, but in my opinion a parent who is not in control of their children at least to a degree where they can be pleasant to strangers in public(what if they dump milk on a stranger in public and laugh?), is not a good parent and their children struggle from a lack of structure.
Children really do thrive on boundaries, and sometimes the only way to establish those is with force (take their hand and make them clean it up) or other punishments.
"We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were broken down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased."
-- G.K. Chesterton
And then your child is not going to do something only because if not, punishment come. And they will still do it, if they can get away with it. Punishment never work on the long run.
> And then your child is not going to do something only because if not, punishment come. And they will still do it, if they can get away with it. Punishment never work on the long run.
Punishment definitely works in the long run. That's what society is based on.
That’s really where punishment (fear) falls down. In the short term, consequences may be or seem inevitable; in the long term, the mischievous or criminal or anxious will model behavior to avoid consequences.
Punishment should come after reinforcement - but with equal consistency.
If you punish your child for dumping milk on a stranger and then laughing, I think the behavior will stick for the long term.
Never underestimate the force of a raised eyebrow.
To summarize: Change your approach from instilling your will into your child’s behavior and becoming frustrated with their non-compliance to patiently modeling the desired behavior for your child and asking for their cooperation. Accept that you will not get their cooperation every time, and have faith that they will eventually learn from your graciousness.
I think this would be helpful if the parent hadn’t yet tried it, but it hardly sounds foolproof. Are there any parallels in other environments or studies around this?
It's not clear to me that any of this is a good idea.
For example:
> Just to be clear: this is not about just following your child around, cleaning up after them. That would be a failure to teach them responsibility, and yes, that teaches entitlement. This is about seeing yourself as a willing helper, the extra support that our children need to practice or to be willing to do it themselves.
It's not clear to me that just changing the way we see ourselves will actually achieve anything. Even if we see ourselves as "willing helpers", the child might take that to reinforce their view that everyone should be helping them willingly.
I love thoughtful mini-essays, and this is one of those. I just think that in this case the author reaches the wrong conclusions.
I vaguely remember a speech of an MIT president (?) to new students that the faculty goal is to make them dissimilar to their parents.
Although I agree strongly with author of linked post, it seems to me that the implicit assumption in the whole conversation is that a parent is only responsible for deciding on ones own behavior after a child misbehaves.
In my experience, the key to success in shaping a child's behavior, as in most things, is advance preparation and programming ones own behavior before problems occur.
Before problems start, involve children playfully in every aspect of family life, from chores to recreation, as soon as they can participate and to the extent they are able. Use praise and positive reinforcement for any contribution the children make to family business. Make them feel like active members of Team Family.
In my experience, small children want more than anything to feel like part of Team Family. If a child does something counterproductive or destructive, that is the time to take the author's advice and replace positive reinforcement with graciousness.
My experience is that children who have been treated to a constant flow of positive reinforcement will be more upset by even a temporary cessation of that flow that by any punishment, and will do anything to get back to membership in good standing of Team Family.
I find it astounding that scientists have found that positive reinforcement is the only reliable way to shape long-term behavior constructively, in both humans and animals, in experiments going back to the 1930's, but people refuse to believe the results, so scientists keep finding new ways to run the experiments, and get the same results.
I committed to using only positive reinforcement techniques with my own child, and I was delighted but not surprised by their effectiveness. My biggest surprise was when my child started using positive reinforcement on me. Which in my mind validates the linked post author's assertion that the biggest influence on children's behavior is the parent's own.
I think parents need to recognize when their own ego and emotions are overriding sensible requests. It’s like corporal punishment: it’s more about the parents anger and emotions that it is about disciplining the child, but the collateral damage is you’re causing pain to a child who probably doesn’t understand the full picture of why mommy is slapping them. In my experience, parents are generally unable to remove their own ego from a situation, to where it becomes a task to force a child to bend to their will and show who’s boss.
If you are able to take control in a proper manner, you open your children to new experiences that their out-of-controll peers will never have.
My five year old could hike next a cliff because he understood that when dad said "keep two feet away" that I was serious, had his best interest at heart, and his compliance would lead to better things.
I think this might work when trying to teach your child a new/correct behavior vs getting them to stop/cease a bad behavior (biting, purposely getting milk from the fridge to explicitly dump on the floor). In my experience for kids under 4, the latter often does require repeatedly forcing them through the motions of cleaning it up. Pick your battles of course and consider underlying factors like if they're hungry or tired.