Toddlers are harsh judges of moral character

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/12/14/once-a-meanie-always-a-meanie-toddlers-are-harsh-judges-of-moral-character/

by rustoo • 5 years ago

242 139 5 years ago

digest.bps.org.uk

eric4smith• 5 years ago

And they are usually right.

As we grow up we are taught to lie, to not say the truth, and and worst to say “you look fine girl!”

stephen_g3• 5 years ago

I don't know, my experience of toddlers is that while they are good judges of character (as the article says), they are often hypocrites themselves! Lying seems to come pretty naturally, as well as selfishness.

Of course, their judgement of moral character is often distorted if it affects themselves. Deny them anything they want to do (like, no, we can't eat candy for dinner, or no, you can't touch the hot stove), and it can be basically as bad as the end of the world!

bryanrasmussen3• 5 years ago

Lying seems to come pretty naturally,

they tend not to be very good at it though (they may lie effortlessly but not believably), so not sure how natural something is if you suck at it.

tsimionescu3• 5 years ago

Children start lying almost as soon as they are born (they often learn to mimic cries of distress even when they only want attention). Toddlers are even worse, and will often indiscriminately lie to fit their ends. Telling the truth is a value we actually have to very consciously impart to children, especially when it's an unpleasant truth (such as admitting guilt).

Sure, toddler lies are laughably naive, but they learn how to tell more convincing lies all on their own (well, by judging others' reactions, but without explicit "here's how you can lie better" wisdom). And toddlers admitting guilt without prodding and overwhelming evidence is quite rare - rarer than even in adults, I would say.

causi• 5 years ago

One of my earliest memories is vehemently accusing my father of stealing because he borrowed the neighbor's ladder without asking. Of course he didn't ask because the neighbor wasn't home and they were good friends. We still laugh about that.

arethuza• 5 years ago

I remember our son when he was about 3 or 4 becoming irate in the baggage area of Geneva airport because some kids were sitting on the stationary luggage conveyor belts even though there were announcements telling you not to do that. He stormed off to protest to a deeply amused airport worker about this terrible situation.

zerop3• 5 years ago

Agree here. The initial personality and mindset development happens in childhood..

1. How parents treat/behave with kids, among themselves and others are observed and adopted or disliked by kids.

2. Bullying in schools are another one.

3. How elder kids treat the younger one.

4. Beyond that, every kid has his/her own nature and character by birth. All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.

Abishek_Muthian2• 5 years ago

All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.

But the attention varies, youngest gets the most attention in most families.

And in many parts of the world, Sex matters too. Usually male child getting more resources.

the-dude2• 5 years ago

But the attention varies, youngest gets the most attention in most families.

Isn't the attention equally distributed because everybody is at one time 'youngest' ?

candybar2• 5 years ago

The oldest child definitely gets the most parental attention and investment in most families - this is pretty much a universal finding across cultures as well.

martinlaz3• 5 years ago

All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.

I think none of these are the same because "everything flows". With each child the environment changes significantly. The first child doesn't have any siblings to grow around, then it exerts huge influence on the second child, the third child brings in yet another dynamic. Parents also change a lot with each new child. So, except for twins, nothing is really the same.

samhw2• 5 years ago

I don't think the claim relies on siblings' environments being the exact same. The point is just that the degree of intra-family similarity is almost always far greater than the degree of average inter-family similarity. To a reasonable approximation it's fair to call it 'the same' in the context of the comparison with non-siblings.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

So, except for twins, nothing is really the same.

It's still closer than comparing to a different family with different parents.

Broken_Hippo• 5 years ago

All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.

But we don't all have the same home environment. There are generally some years between births, and things happen in those years. Good things, bad things, and things. It'll be more pronounced if there is more time between children.

I mean, just myself: I have two siblings. One is 6 years younger, the other 11 years younger. Between me and the older of the two: My dad graduated college and got a decently stable job. My parents moved away from my mom's family, who helped take care of me while my mother worked, and moved to a small town. My mother started staying at home since the finances allowed it.

We moved yet again before my younger sibling was born: My father switched careers and made more money than before (which was rich compared to their finances while I was young and my father was in college).

All this meant that we got attention from different sorts of folks while young. Our parents had different finances: While I had poverty while young, my youngest sibling had nothing of the sort. My parents were more experienced by the time my brother was born, too. We all had different sorts of challenges which definitely affected the ways my parents communicated with us - their continuing maturity did this as well: I was born before either were 25, but my siblings after.

toshk2• 5 years ago

Of course.

But what OP refers to is that kids are born with their own personality which already emerges from a very young age in the first year.

I've seen it with my kids, and also other young kids in my close environment. For instance, some are just naturally extraverted, or wild, while others are careful by nature. Some of it changes when they get older, but a lot stays the same. So yeah environment matters, but most parents I talk to agree with me kids come with their own character.

zerop3• 5 years ago

OP here: Since the #4th point got maximum reaction, let me add more to it from a very different perspective. Far east text has concept of Samskaras (Impressions). These are earned by us as we do karma (work) and react to outcome of it. The impressions are "carried over" to next Birth. This forms the core nature and characteristics of the person. It's a theory to explain how do we have different nature/character. This is concise explanation of it https://www.sivanandaonline.org//?cmd=displaysection&section... (Grep for "Past Samskaras Constitute Prarabdha" to jump to exact that point)

andrepd• 5 years ago

Supernatural explanations and superstitions are not very useful to understand the world.

2muchcoffeeman• 5 years ago

Beyond that, every kid has his/her own nature and character by birth. All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.

Ignoring changing circumstances of a family, is the environment the same?

Suppose you like sports, and get your kid a ball, but your kid likes books more, are you going to persist with the ball or get a book to read together?

If your next kid likes the ball are you going to buy more books or try more sports?

Overly simplistic but a kid is probably affecting their environment.

stephen_g3• 5 years ago

Even days after birth you can see differences. One kid settles really easily, yet their sibling would cry and need much more holding. After a few weeks, you might have a child who smiles at everybody and doesn't mind being held by others, but their sibling at that age might have avoided people they didn't recognise. etc. etc.

While I'm sure plenty does come from nurture, it's actually incredible how different they can be even before books and toys come into the picture.

kqr• 5 years ago

Surprisingly, how parents treat/behave with their kids has no correlation on personality and mindset development! It's mostly in the peers, so parents affect only indirectly by shaping the culture and environment in which children grow up. (See Harris, 2009: The Nurture Assumption.)

cout• 5 years ago

I wonder if that applies to children who are growing up isolated from their peers during toddler years due to the pandemic, whose only social interactions are with their parents.

mstipetic• 5 years ago

It kind of makes sense from an evolution perspective - as a toddler you're extremely vulnerable and you must avoid and chance of harm. It's better to overreact in the short term but survive in the long term

varjag• 5 years ago

Or it could be that groups with inherent moral standards survive better than otherwise. We don't know.

dmurray• 5 years ago

Also you're much more likely to benefit from someone else sharing than to have something worth sharing with others. Easy to be a Marxist when you're broke!

boffinism• 5 years ago

Remember that we stuff toddlers full of stories from books and telly and games where, to simplify, we present antagonists whose sole motivation is that they are 'baddies'. Culturally we push ideas of absolute moral character quite hard, and only add nuance later.

zpeti• 5 years ago

1. This isn't just the adults deciding. Children are attracted to certain types of stories too.

2. It doesn't stop. And it's why CNN and Fox are successful. But it is how we as humans want to see the world. Suprisingly to some, neither democrats or republicans are actually evil, they just have different perspectives on the world, and probably have more in common than in disagreement.

tsimionescu3• 5 years ago

Mostly agree, though it's probably fairer to say that both republicans and democrats are corrupt, they just get payed by different interest groups. And this mostly applies to the vast majority of political parties in most democracies on Earth, unfortunately.

quietbritishjim• 5 years ago

Re: 2, I see your point, but I think you've taken just an extreme view as those that would categorise firmly into goodies and baddies. It's still possible to recognise that different people's intentions may be more or less selfish, without either going for "good"/"evil" dichotomy or lumping everything into an "only human" bucket.

yebyen• 5 years ago

It doesn't stop. And it's why CNN and Fox are successful

Oof. You are right about this, and it's certainly a blind spot for a lot of "adults"

tarsinge2• 5 years ago

Comprehension is different than approbation though. Maybe it becomes too philosophical but for me we can grow to appreciate the different perspective of others, what we have in common as human beings, and not judge them harshly because we are not sure we would do better in their shoes, but still actions can be evil.

ike77• 5 years ago

Maybe for a lot of people the media they consume actually shape their preferences?

But I would steer clear of generalizing, I think a lot of people have a strong preference for stories where the lines between what's moral and not are much more blurry and where you have reversal of preferences for various characters and where the main character is somehow sketchy. I think at the acclaimed Parasite for instance.

It's relatively easy to elicit a strong emotion, but that doesn't make a story, just a news.

sporkland• 5 years ago

Your #1 reminds me of this post: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressiv...

bscphil2• 5 years ago

neither democrats or republicans are actually evil

Surely this claim requires moral relativism, right? If women have a right to an abortion, then attempting to outlaw it outright in virtually every case is surely evil, and thus (most) Republicans are evil. If it's wrong to give people welfare or health care that they can't afford to pay for, then (most) Democrats are evil. If it's wrong to mandate vaccines, then (a handful of) Democrats are evil. If it's wrong to prohibit refugees or economic immigrants from crossing your border in search of a better life, then both Democrats and Republicans are evil to the extent that they do that. Same for drone strikes on purported terrorists.

Moral relativism is not as promising a position as most ordinary (non-religious) people believe. The majority of trained ethicists (in the field of Philosophy) are moral realists: they believe that certain things are actually right and wrong.

"Evil" sometimes connotes a special level of immorality than no one can ever reach - they'd have to be demon possessed, or act against the will of God (provided one exists), etc. But I think ordinary evil is quite banal. It's just a matter of large-scale injustices being perpetrated by ordinary people who think they're in the right, when they are not. I think it's almost certain that quite a few Republicans and Democrats are evil in this sense. I have opinions about which group is more systematically evil, but those aren't relevant to this comment.

bottled_poe• 5 years ago

Judgement is hard. It’s a hell of a lot easier to write and understand a narrative which has already done the hard work of discernment for you.

CoastalCoder• 5 years ago

Thanks, that insight that never occurred to me before.

jonny_eh• 5 years ago

Stories with nuance also take longer to tell and are inherently less engaging, even if ultimately more rewarding or enlightening.

_pmf_• 5 years ago

and only add nuance later

When would that be?

Benjamin_Dobell• 5 years ago

I tend to agree, since shotty kids TV/film far outnumber anything decent.

However, it's not all bad. I just watched The Grinch with my three year old. Despite some of the subtle adult oriented jokes aging poorly, the characters are surprisingly nuanced.

Initially my daughter was scared of the Grinch, then she decided he was naughty (like her, she added). Soon she was asking why children were mean to him when he was little etc. There was admittedly a bit of explaining (shaving cuts etc.), but by the end of it she seemed to have a pretty solid grasp that children being mean upset him, and so he did naughty things because he was upset.

trentnix• 5 years ago

Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. - CS Lewis

watwut5• 5 years ago

Frustratingly, we do the same in adult entertainment. The shows with nuanced characters are fairly rare - although quite popular.

leokennis• 5 years ago

This is a reason I love watching Peppa Pig and so do kids. They present characters with obvious flaws, but those characters are not judged for it and also make up for it with good traits. Just like real people.

Great example:

https://youtu.be/zNzC_cNZVjY?t=88

novia• 5 years ago

But there’s a catch — it turns out that seeing an individual mistreating someone else does not always cause children to expect them to behave immorally in the future. The researchers saw this when they repeated their experiment, except this time the toddlers first witnessed a dog puppet mistreating a rabbit (as opposed to a fellow dog) before watching the dog share out a pair of toys.
In this scenario, toddlers gazed longer when the dog went on to make an unequal sharing decision, suggesting that they still expected the puppet to be fair.

mrweasel• 5 years ago

What's your point, it's followed by:

Only when the researchers ensured that the dog engaged in three sequential acts of bullying towards the rabbit did the children’s gaze patterns suggest that they no longer expected it to act fairly in the next social interaction.

thrwyoilarticle• 5 years ago

This kind of study can't become very rigorous. Even the acting makes it impossible to be double blind. There's the possibility that the toddlers are staring because they just saw 'violence' - or because it's later in the day and this group is more tired.

Puts2• 5 years ago

I would argue that perceptions of fairness and morale is not the same. In fact they can even be the opposite. When we grow up we learn that the world is not fair, and that even tough we where being mistreated we can not mistreat others to make it "fair". Morale is the ability to go against your gut feeling and do what is intellectually right.

Children have a strong perception of fairness. If cookies are being handled out there better be a cookie coming your way too. If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

Ensorceled3• 5 years ago

If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

Really? If my boss came into the break room and handed out Christmas bonuses to everyone except me, I'm a psychopath if I get pissed off?

Also, psychopaths don't react to stuff like this ... that's part of being a psychopath.

JoeyJoJoJr• 5 years ago

I imagine something more along the lines of somebody scratching an expensive car because of jealousy, but justified through some sense of unfairness.

Puts2• 5 years ago

Well, he certainly doesn't have to. There's no worldly force automatically granting you a bonus as well. But on the other hand there's no worldly force keeping you at your job either.

But if you feel you can demand complete fairness, then everybody else on this planet can too so why don't you give a "bonus" to someone homeless who doesn't have anything – even tough you didn't get one from your boss? That is true morale because it requires strength to exclude yourself from the equation.

candybar2• 5 years ago

I don't agree with the GP either but your understanding of what it means to be a "psychopath" is even less correct. Psychopaths are highly impulsive and emotionally volatile. They would be far more likely to lash out in situations where they feel slighted than normal people would be.

There's this tendency (both among self-described high-functioning psychopaths and in the media) for people to think that psychopaths are highly rational and less emotional, but it's closer to the opposite - psychopaths are impulsively driven by the present emotions.

The main sense in which they are less emotional is that they react less emotionally than normal people to how other people feel and how they themselves would feel in the future. Because empathy generally acts as a check on your present impulses in most humans, this leads to more emotional, impulsive behavior, not less.

dsr_• 5 years ago

"Be fair to me!" vs "Be fair to everyone!" are different impulses. The first is rooted in self, the second in community.

jusssi• 5 years ago

Also, perceived and actual fairness can have quite a gap between them. People often feel like they're being treated unfairly when an outcome is not favorable to them, even when they're being treated by exactly same rules as anyone else.

pietrovismara• 5 years ago

If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

You make it sound like this is selfish. The toddlers aren't expecting a favorable treatment to themselves, they expect others to be fair towards everyone else.

I'd argue the real damage happens once toddlers lose their altruistic mentality and get into the selfish competitive mentality we enforce today. Keep in mind, this only happens as a form of natural selection, as those with these traits have a better chance at survival/success in this environment.

It's fundamental to remember that better fit doesn't mean better overall. As I've read once here on HN (one of those life changing sentences that I happen to read here every once in a while), if you have a stupid environment, you get a stupid fit.

BeFlatXIII• 5 years ago

If cookies are being handled out there better be a cookie coming your way too. If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

Citation needed.

CapitalistCartr3• 5 years ago

I have kids. Children are pure of emotion. That's not helpful, because they lack nuance. It's also why militaries prefer the youngest they are allowed to recruit. When a young child is angry, they are consumed by it. There is no restraint. When they learn rules, they are binary about them. When they learn to lie, cheat, steal, they go hog wild with it. Yes, your angel will do this, too. This part is hilarious if you're careful to keep it in check.

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

It's also why militaries prefer the youngest they are allowed to recruit.

Militaries recruit young adults primarily because they’re at peak physical shape but they haven’t settled into careers yet. It would be hard to build an effective military if we recruited a bunch of middle-aged men out of desk jobs and tried to get them back in young person shape.

When they learn rules, they are binary about them. When they learn to lie, cheat, steal, they go hog wild with it.

Your post is also quite binary, without nuance. I also have kids and haven’t seen this unilateral sociopathy at a certain age. On the contrary, kids are relatively complex emotionally and are capable of empathy from a young age. That doesn’t mean they never test the limits, but they don’t (generally) turn into lie-cheat-steal machines like you’re suggesting, nor are they completely incapable of controlling their emotional impulses. Give kids a little more credit. You haven’t completely figured them out as an adult (or maybe you forgot how frustrating it was when overconfident adults assumed the worst of you and thought they had it all figured out)

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

Exactly. There's a big difference between how much sleeping on rocks an 18yo can tolerate before their work performance degrades vs a 26yo who's sleeping on the same rocks.

The other problem with older people is that once you stop spending your workday taking orders from a capricious bureaucracy (school) it's hard to get people to voluntarily go back. Draw whatever trope-ey parallels you want with working for an employer but private industry is very different from school and military in its level of seemingly capricious micromanagement.

A bunch of 20 or 30-somethings who've been exposed to the realities of life and how dirty the world is are probably more likely to be able to deal with the more morally questionable aspects of military service but it's not worth the other tradeoffs of working with those demographics.

CapitalistCartr3• 5 years ago

Our (your) military recruits young adults, a term we've decided on, but many poorer militaries recruit as young as 10 years old. Having rules restricting military recruitment is a luxury of our wealth.

As for "lie-cheat-steal machines", I've personally observed it across thousands of children. It mainly happens at 11-13 years of age, middle school in the USA. When I worked for Southland Corporation (7-11), we tried everything to keep a store adjacent to a middle school operating. Finally sold it. Kids go through earlier phases of this when they first discover lying. Each kid differently, of course.

"On the contrary, kids are relatively complex emotionally and are capable of empathy from a young age."

That's not "On the contrary". Kids are, indeed. Emotionally complex and empathetic doesn't preclude naive innocence at all.

watwut5• 5 years ago

Military prefer young people, because they are amenable - it is much easier to change their values, habits and opinions. Socializing young people into new military values is easier and quicker then socializing old people who tend to be less flexible.

Physical strength, stamina and agility all also plays huge role.

Military does not want you angry, military wants you to obey and be easy to control. Anger makes people less controllable. They want to you to do what you are told, anger is not important.

asdffdsa• 5 years ago

The point is the military wants people who are easy to control: people who are controlled by their emotions are easy to be controlled and molded. Being amenable plays into it, but so does having emotions without life experience to judge and harness those emotions

analog31• 5 years ago

It's also because in an advanced economy, the older folks are busy with production, which funds the war. In less advanced economies, maybe not so much, but those economies also have an earlier transition to general purpose adulthood including employment and parenting.

Also, children are quicker to replace. It takes only 12 years to produce a 12 year old soldier, and war-torn countries tend to have a skewed age distribution.

kashyapc• 5 years ago

On this topic, definitely check out the fascinating work of Michel Tomasello[1]. He's the foremost developmental and comparative psychologist. As I expected, his work is copiously cited in the papers[2][3] in the article. Tomasello did studies for over 25 years with human children and other primates on understanding what separates humans from the great apes ("joint agency" and "shared intentionality") and many other topics on developmental psychology.

        • • •

In his recent book, "Becoming Human"[4], he summarizes his decades of research and proposes:

... a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that starkly differentiate humans from their closest primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities. But then, Tomasello argues, the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities—through the new forms of sociocultural interaction they enable—into uniquely human cognition and sociality.

The first step occurs around nine months, with the emergence of joint intentionality, exercised mostly with caregiving adults. The second step occurs around three years, with the emergence of collective intentionality involving both authoritative adults, who convey cultural knowledge, and coequal peers, who elicit collaboration and communication. Finally, by age six or seven, children become responsible for self-regulating their beliefs and actions so that they comport with cultural norms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tomasello

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6389704/

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5461303/

[4] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674248281

darepublic• 5 years ago

The study itself didn't seem very rigorous and judging by the threads here, for once I am among the minority who read the article

Moodles• 5 years ago

I often think, and find it amusing, that as adults we think we've grown out of many childish tendencies, but collectively we haven't. Our interactions are just a bit more complex, but fundamentally the same. In this case, it's very obvious: How often do you give your political party the benefit of the doubt, yet anything you hear or see from the one you disagree with, you immediately think of in the worse possible light? Or how often do you see one person at work do one or two stupid things and then ever since you just think they're an idiot and can't provide any value to you? We often decide we don't like some person, and it's very hard to change our views after that.

I think we're childlike in other ways too. There was a documentary I saw once which followed some 6 year olds around a school. They got into exactly the same kind of silly drama us grownups do: love triangles, fights, lying, groupthink, etc. Exactly as grownups do. It was hilarious, frightening and enlightening.

Sometimes we can break out of these immature tendencies of course, but it definitely requires maturity and mental energy, something I don't think anyone is capable of 100% of the time.

watwut5• 5 years ago

Why do you think love triangle or fight or lying is silly drama?

DrammBA• 5 years ago

Is it not?

_jal• 5 years ago

Whether it is 'silly', 'tragic', 'horrible' or something else usually depends on the stakes, not the activity.

It is certainly drama, and at least by volume, I'd say all of the above are usually silly.

Quarrelsome• 5 years ago

I would argue these tendencies are not all necessarily childish. From the OP the very act of judging someone based on your interaction is akin to the lesson: If someone fucks with you then don't take their shit. Which is good life advice for anyone.

runnerup2• 5 years ago

I would argue the same thing, but rephrased for "our species" as compared to other "social mammals" like cats/dogs/cows/pigs/squirrels/otters/etc. I think people greatly underestimate how much of our brains are still from the millions of years of mammalian evolution prior to tool-use.

I think we all have mainly the same feelings and motivations, although obviously each species, and each line of each species, have varying proportions and defaults. The primary difference, I think, is that we can use complex speech to communicate these feelings, and use complex tools to manifest what we are motivated towards.

I think this book about training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans...because while we do have other additional complexities layered on top of this, we also still have everything in this book. And the base layers (which we share with dogs) are potentially more "powerful" and fundamental to who we are than the final complex (and fragile) layers that we've evolved only very recently.

0: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin (view in the excellent SumatraPDF or your favorite .epub reader)

clairity• 5 years ago

"...training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans..."

yah, i couch this as 'dogs are first-order humans', feeling many of the same emotions (joy, pleasure, contentment, anger, fear, hurt, etc.) but more plainly and openly, without language (standing in for our more developed frontal lobes) as an indirection layer.

that (indirectly) leads to the notion that in the best of circumstances, you don't train (or own) a dog, you develop trust (and a relationship) with them, for which they're willing to cede their independence to your judgement, much like humans and leadership. the leader has to prove their worth to the group, not the other way around.

lanstin• 5 years ago

This is why the best thing I ever did for my software career was be a stay at home dad for three years. If you can make your gaggle of kids keep making forward motion towards some arbitrary goal, you can do the same with a gaggle of software engineers. Judging what people aren't saying but are feeling; assessing hunger and irritation that rule out rational conversation for the time being; framing things in a way designed to get "yes," etc. etc. The learnings are infinitely useful. Plus of course, even tho my gaggle has grown up to opinionated young adults, we still seem to enjoy a warm and fulfilling connection which I enjoy quite as much as a refactoring that shrinks the code base.

Also you learn the importance of self-mastery, of taking care to keep yourself in your rational side where you can provide the missing pieces, of support, creativity, steadfastness or flexibility, that the group needs for happy outcomes.

topkai22• 5 years ago

I totally relate to this. I didn’t take time off, but I am the stay at home parent/primary care giver. Having children also led me to volunteer teaching ski lessons to 4-5 year olds and occasionally help out in the classroom. The things I’ve learned on how to cajole, incentivize, and motivate my/others children transfers surprisingly well on how to deal with adults. After a brief dip in very early childhood (AKA the sleepless time) it felt like my career took off after children, as I gained a reputation for being a leader people wanted to work with/for. Now correlation is not causation, but I definitely think I gained experiences having and raising kids that made me more capable as a leader.

hinkley• 5 years ago

I think the last episode of The Rookie has a scene where a lady is trying to talk to one of the main characters while they're trying to wrangle a daylight drunk individual. The lady intervenes and gets the drunk to sit quietly on the curb.

Then announces, "I teach fourth graders," by way of explaining how that worked.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan• 5 years ago

My mother has an associate degree from a community college in early childhood psychology, and was a kindergarten teacher for a couple decades. Eventually it got physically tiring, so she left to take a grunt-level desk job at our local ISP.

She immediately rocketed up the corporate ladder. Even as a middle-aged woman with zero relevant experience and no bachelor's degree, she was put in charge of ~100 people within a few short years.

She said the same thing as you: many of her learnings about how to manage a classroom of young children also happened to apply to managing a team of full-grown adults. (She was also killer at speaking in front a group because she'd been doing it for decades in the front of a classroom.)

fumeux_fume• 5 years ago

I strongly agree. Reading books about parenting like "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills" has done wonders for dealing with adults in my personal life and at work.

tarsinge2• 5 years ago

Thinking we should grow out of morality because it's childish is a good excuse though.

soheil• 5 years ago

Not sure why you keep emphasizing the immaturity aspect. If you look at animals they pretty much do all the above too. It's a deep part of who we are and something much more fundamental than simply not being mature enough.

It's like saying humans need water at an early age, but as they grow older they can sometimes resist that temptation. Therefore thirst is a sign of immaturity.

There could be very valid game-theoretical reasons for why we evolved the way we did.

bell-cot• 5 years ago

At least in my social set, "toddlers and adults are about the same - except the adults mostly have filters [between their feelings and their words/actions] and the toddlers mostly don't" seems to be common wisdom.

globular-toast• 5 years ago

I find it funny that we teach children to share, while us adults design and participate in insanely complex systems to make sure we don't have to.

guerrilla2• 5 years ago

What was that documentary called?

mbrodersen2• 5 years ago

I would love to see that documentary. Can you remember the title or director or narrator?

wirthjason• 5 years ago

I have a 2.75 yr old daughter. I’m amazed at the mental growth at this age. Anyone have good recommendations for pop science books on toddler psychology? Another post mentioned the author Michel Tomasello.

I’m curious how punishment and corrective behavior is interpreted. Theres a lot of situations I don’t know how to handle. Recently my daughter has been spitting up juice, including on me, because she thinks it’s funny. When something like this happens I give her a light thump on the head with my finger and a stern “no, that’s bad”. But she doesn’t like it and starts crying. She then runs to her mom who then hugs her and says it will be OK. I feel like this is a lose-lose situation. She needs to learn this behavior isn’t acceptable but it makes me the bad guy and mommy the nice one.

jraby3• 5 years ago

Kids want attention, good or bad. So try walking away and giving her the cold shoulder the next few times she does that and see if it works. Don’t forget to also give her a lot of positive attention when she drinks juice and doesn’t do that to you.

runnerup2• 5 years ago

This book holds a surprising wealth of knowledge in how to encourage replacement behaviors[0]. Can view it in "SumatraPDF" (reads a very wide variety of formats, not just PDF). Even just the first few chapters are amazing. Generally seems to work to:

- accept that their current behavior is probably an effective way to get what they want

- identify what they want

- get them to do something else instead which is either more productive or at least more acceptable to you

- immediately reward them by giving them lots of what they want

Repeat the last two a lot and eventually the new behavior replaces the old one. The trick is that, once learned, the old behavior is never "unlearned"...it just slowly fades away and is used less and less. But even after a very long time if the new behavior stops working, eventually they'll try the old one again. Generally you'll have infinitely more success rewarding FOR behavior, rather than giving feedback AGAINST behavior.

0: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin

MisterTea• 5 years ago

When something like this happens I give her a light thump on the head with my finger and a stern “no, that’s bad”. But she doesn’t like it and starts crying. She then runs to her mom who then hugs her and says it will be OK.

Growing up there is always the good cop bad cop but there needs to be lines drawn. Talk to your partner about the situation and make sure she knows this needs to be corrected so when she cries to mommy, mommy backs you up and and supports you by telling your daughter "You shouldn't spit juice on daddy. Its not nice to spit juice on people." She can still comfort her, but she has to back you. If not then good luck.

randy909• 5 years ago

Stop the head thumping or any physical punitive action no matter how light. You might have to restrain her at some point but that's different. The only thing you're teaching with those actions is "violence solves problems" and you will see her hit other children and you a lot more as a result. Walk away, put her down, tell her you don't like it when she does that, take the juice away, etc. Don't thump.

I like to think "what would I do in this situation if this were an adult?" and respond accordingly. If you hit someone for spitting in your face you'd end up in jail. Is that the behavior you want to model? I don't understand why we think it's OK to treat kids that way. Violence is violence in my book.

Edit: You MUST learn to set boundaries without violence. A lot of bad parenting stems from our own upbringing where boundaries were set with violence so we don't know how to set them in other ways. Many of us just end up not setting any boundaries at all rather than use violence which can end very very badly with a boundary-pushing child. Learn to say "no" and stick to it at least some of the time (and flex when they negotiate well). I've gotten a ton of mileage out of taking away part of TV time if they act poorly or refuse to contribute to chores.

ijustboughtit• 5 years ago

My daughter is 3.5 years old. Great that you asked. Please don’t do that.

I can recommend this book series and in particular “Positive Discipline: The First Three Years”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804141185/

For anyone reading this, don’t get caught up by the “discipline” in the book title. The authors are against punishment.

vlovich1232• 5 years ago

Have you tried just making an distinctive sound (like a buzzer sound with your mouth) and taking away the juice? Nothing said, nobody hurt but a clear indication of a boundary violation with a non-painful consequence?

If you want to continue “thumping” her, it may be something you want to get her consent and make it more of a game. “If you spit up you get thwack from me flicking your forehead and if you swallow I pat your belly”. Kids love games and are insanely easy to trick. Boundaries should be opted into and the rules clear ahead of time. Learning the rules should not be penalized (eg if she spits up you remind her “we agreed I’d flick your forehead if you spit up - gimme your forehead”). Imagine what your reaction would be if someone randomly thumped your forehead for breaking some kind of social norm you didn’t understand.

ajessup• 5 years ago

This sounds a lot like my daughter (3yo). She likes to play up, but also craves approval from her parents and stern words can be devastating to her.

The best approach we've found is to progressively and predictably escalate our language and tone. Starting with a friendly "now, now" and ending with time out if she hasn't fixed her behavior. At some point along the way she usually recognizes The Voice and course corrects voluntarily without needing to be reprimanded.

As with all thing parenting, YMMV ;)

Dumblydorr• 5 years ago

She thinks she's funny, you don't, she is upset at your disapproval and reprimand. She goes to another adult for comfort and reassurance. The other adult provides it and says "It will be OK"

What will be OK? Spitting juice on people will never be OK. Her anger will subside yes, but I do think She needs a consistent message that doubly reinforces the immorality of her action.

I'd also state, if she goes to daycare, she may be picking up and reinforcing behaviors there, so to some extent home may need a different set of rules, lest she bring back any bad habit she finds and Mom tacitly approves it. Good cop bad cop, eh, I'd say there's no good cop who would approve of juice spitting.

petermcneeley• 5 years ago

You daughter isnt the problem. You have a relationship issue. The problem is your wife. But you already know that...

dqpb2• 5 years ago

I can’t imagine hitting my child on the head, even lightly. The messaging that sends is so wrong on so many levels. Besides which, they will likely end up hitting someone else on the head when they don’t like what they’re doing.

But, aside from that, if you’re looking for a mental model for teaching children, I think Reinforcement Learning is highly applicable. If you consider their observation space, action space, and reward signals, you start to see that you have quite a lot of levers for helping them learn and grow.

dqpb2• 5 years ago

I guess I should have split this into two comments. Now I can't tell if the downvotes are from pro-hitters or anti-RL'ers

metachris• 5 years ago

Highly recommend Daniel Siegel: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/191925.Daniel_J_Siegel

audiometry• 5 years ago

Don’t react. Sometimes if they don’t get a reaction they stop doing it, because it’s your reaction they seek.

redact207• 5 years ago

When she does it, take the juice away and say it's for drinking, not spitting. Explain why spitting is unacceptable to you.

If she goes crying to her mother, her mother should back you up.

She can have her juice back once she agrees to drink it and not spit it. If she does it again take it away for a longer time and repeat.

Physical violence is not needed, you don't treat adults that way, children are people too.

mbrodersen2• 5 years ago

Never use physical force unless the child is in danger. Instead simply take away a favourite toy and tell her she will get it back when her behaviour improves.

vilhelm_s• 5 years ago

“Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.” --G.K. Chesterton

kderbyma• 5 years ago

virtues need not be taught to be known..though it helps

_tom_• 5 years ago

It's not just children. Non human primates have notions of fairness, as demonstrated in this hilarious video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo

Fnoord• 5 years ago

That's a happy thought on the eve of Christmas, and IMO another one to include in Rutger Bregman's book De Meeste Mensen Deugen (Humankind: A Hopeful History [1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History

Toddlers are harsh judges of moral character

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