Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told 412
Hugh Pickens writes "New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"
Re:And that's different how? (Score:2, Informative)
So as the OP said, if these eggheads would just have kids, they would know the outcome of their "research" through experience and intuition.
Not that having kids would get the grant money, of course.
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
Absolutely not! If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round, but if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough to discover that.
You're no scientist and have no idea what scientists actually do.
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
The correct answer here is that some engineers are scientists and some aren't. Among those engineers who are scientists, there are basic scientists, whose aim it is to understand the principles of engineering, and applied scientists, whose aim it is to understand how our knowlege of engineering interacts with real world problems.
That's the cartoon version, of course, but it should clear up some unnecessary confusion.
Re:Oh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh (Score:5, Informative)
There's a lot on corporal punishment in the Behavior Analysis literature. Full text of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis is free to the public (up until the most recent 2 issues).
http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/ [rochester.edu]
My boss at my last job was a hard-core Applied Behavior Analyst. He continually emphasized with our staff to be aware of our use of aversive stimuli with the residents we worked with and be aware of how they were conditioning us as well as vice versa. I'm almost directly quoting him in that last post.
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:3, Informative)
I've been studying nonviolent parenting in the last 6 months. All parents were once children and the parenting they will disperse is based on the parenting they received.
Children trigger countless issues in parents, resulting in all kinds of child abuse.
Expecting parents can reduce the harm they'll do their child by
1. Learn about child development and adjust their expectations. For example believing that a baby is manipulating their parents by crying at night or punishing a toddler for having a nervous breakdown ( often called "tantrums" by adults ) is inappropriate and dangerous.
2. Getting in touch with their own childhood and the abuse they received, and stop calling the abuse "parenting." This may take therapy and time. You were spanked as a child and turned OK? Wrong. You were spanked as a child and turned out to believe that spanking is OK.
3. Learn to feel, accept, process and understand their own emotions so that they don't act on autopilot when triggered. Losing it as a parent and shaking/smacking/spanking a child who can not protect themselves or run away is very, very harmful and never brings good. Never.
4. Learn to maintain emotional connection with another human being, especially when things are not perfect. You can be angry with someone, not just at someone.
5. I highly recommend looking into nonviolent parenting and nonviolent communication. The war between parent and child wastes time, energy and only teaches war/violence. Boundaries may be kept without violence. Alfie Kohn's books are founded on research and very accessible. ( www.alfiekohn.com )
Ultimately, parents parent the way they were parented. Abused children grow up to be adults whose gut feeling tells them that abuse is the norm.
Most parenting education focuses on behavioral psychology and successful control and domination over the child's will. In the long term, breaking a child's will is the worst thing for that human being and takes a lot of effort to repair.
And, nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting.
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Informative)
Hm-m-m. I don't see you offering your own experience with your own children. Allow me to suggest that until you've raised children, your studying is just so much academic bullshit.
"... the parenting they will disperse is based on the parenting they received. Children trigger countless issues in parents, resulting in all kinds of child abuse."
First, people vary wildly in their levels of self awareness about themselves and their history, and are influenced in varying degrees. Broad statements like this are simply meaningless bullshit. Second, it demeans real abusive situations to label, as you seem to do, any parenting practice that differs from your ideal as "abusive". Meet up with some kid who has bones broken, or who has lived with an end stage alcoholic who abuses her sexually, and then come back and tell me that it's abusive to swat a toddler on the rear. I'm not defending spanking, as I don't think it's effective, but your declaration simply paints a picture of you as ignorant and strident.
Calling a tantrum a 'nervous breakdown' is putting the child up on a bit of a pedestal. Kids have tantrums because they get frustrated that they aren't getting what they want. In many cases, it's a chosen and controllable behavior. If you had been around kids, you'd know this. In some situations, they learn that the behavior indeed gets them a positive result. A nervous breakdown, whatever that is, is a more persistant and unhealthy condition that indicates a problem with the person having the breakdown. Tantrums, on the other hand, are healthy, age appropriate behavior. You may not like them, but they are entirely normal. If whatever you are studying is comparing tantrums to adult nervous breakdowns, I think you should question your source. -Every- toddler has tantrums. Very few people have nervous breakdowns.
I'm reluctant to proclaim too much on what "must" be done as a parent. What worked for my wife and me was clear definition of boundaries, consistent enforcement of transgressions of boundaries, and age appropriate communication with the kids about why the boundaries existed. Age appropriate discussion with a screaming 2 year old is picking him up and carrying him out of the grocery store and strapping him in the car seat.
You sound pretty willing to proclaim what "most parenting education" is and does. I wonder if you have any experience that would make such a statement meaningful. After 17 years as a parent, your statement does not fit my observations. Further, your apparent belief that parenting should not involve dominating the child at least at times seems naive. Do you recommend not dominating your toddler when he tries to run into the street? Should we not control our child's willfulness and make them wear a bicycle helmet?
I think you should get a dog, and learn how to live with it, before you try to have children. You're reading some stuff that is going to give you trouble. Living with a dog will teach you the error of your ways, and when you end up with a neurotic and misbehaving dog, you won't do as much harm as when you do it with a kid.
Re:Oh (Score:3, Informative)