I suppose it is an interesting story, but how much nonsense can one person take??? Look, I understand that we want to protect our kids, but is this protectionism going too far? We want to protect our children from the darker side of things, but really, aren't we being naive? We know about the darker side of life, right? We had to learn sometime. It seems that everyone knows about it. So really what the psychologists are doing is delaying when children learn about it. And is that necessarily a good thing? Up to a point, i agree that we should protect our children and let them be children. But at sometime we need to transfer from protection to preparation. We might be doing more harm than good by delaying this preparation.
We can see this protectionism in other places and other aspects of child development, also. In our day, we were rewarded when we did well in school, by gold stars. This was positive reinforcement. But now a days, there is a movement to do away with this positive reinforcement, because it acts as... I think its negetive reinforcement, right Del?... and makes the students who didn't get the stars more likely to feel poorly about themselves and have low self esteem and what ever else. So people want to spare them and blah blah blah... But this is just another example of protection vs preparation. In life, we can't all win. Someone wins, someone loses; that's just how it is. By sparing our kids now, are we setting them up for more harm later?
Wouldn't it be better to teach them in a controlled environment rather than later when the control is less or not there?
I dunno about the way we are becoming. We are all about protection and not about preparation.
Anyhow, that's my million dollars. Enjoy.
Your moment of Zen:
"Spare the rod and spoil the child."
7 comments:
i posted about ebonics, go see.
this is of course a reaction based party on the way you were brought up and at what point you began your preparation of dealing with the negatives and absurdities of life. i bet after our children's generation (or further on, depending on how long it takes to reach the cultural extreme) gets babied, the would likely have this same conversation but support a need for less protection and a more reasonable introduction to the ills of the world. Such would result in a cyclical attempt to properly introduce children to human nature, which in reality, is best done at an individual level based on the child's personality strengths and weaknesses. Something that is, of course, beyond the ability of any pair of parents or large institution (for various reasons).
DUH! :-P
This reminds me of my studies on Death and Dying and how we should handle it with children. It turns out that when we tell a child something like 'Daddy is sleeping forever' then the child has long term lasting effects not knowing if and when Daddy will wake up. It is found that its best to be honest with children and tell them gently that Daddy has died and he is not coming back.
I think watching Harry grow up, mature and accept life as it is has a positive effect on kids. I think it shows them how to cope with life in an imaginary setting so that when real life happens they have something to go off of. I know that right now Harry is being rather dark, but we all know that in the end revenge wont win out.
While the new book was very dark the power of love si also emphasised and if a somewhat younger child is reading the book then sit down and talk with them about it after and show them how important love was. I mean the greatest influence on Harry (Dumbledore) flat out told Harry that NOTHING was more important than love and I think that as the books keep going that theme will be repeated again and again.
We need to stop coddling chilren, while they are not little adults they are also not infants. You should not lie to them about reality. As I think of gorwing up and crying 'Its not fair' and my father telling me "Life is not fair' and well I think I am much the better for it. Life is not fair, bad people can win, good people don't always get what they deserve. Show kids reality and it makes growing up easier.
grrr...every time you bring up harry potter i stop reading....cuz i don't want to be dirtied by your ideas on the characters and storyline. STOP TALKING ABOUT THE HARRY POT. that is all.
answering your question on negative reinforcement... here is it's definition:
The removal of a stimulus immmediately after the ocurrence of a behavior that will increase the occurrence of that behavior in the future.
ex. the rain and the umbrella
it starts to rain (antecedent stimulus), you take out an umbrella (behavior), rain stops due to umbrella stopping the rain from getting you (consequence). therefore in the future you will be more likely to take out an umbrella when it rains so that it doesn't rain on you.
Reinforcement either positive or negative, will increase the chances of the behavior occurring.
I think you meant to use punishment in your post. Because punishment either positive punishement or negative punishment decreases the chances that a behavior will occur again. Hence why a child tantrums and then gets spanked they don't scream or yell again after the spanking for example.
The aspect of positive or negative relates to whether you are presenting (+) or removing (-) a stimulus.
That stimulus can be either reinforcing (appetitive/desired) or punishing (aversive/undesired).
So here is the list:
Positive reinforcement - presenting an appetitive stimulus immediately after the behavior in order to increase its occurrence in the future. (giving cookies after doing homework right)
Negative reinforcement - removing an aversive stimulus in order immediately after the occurrence of the behavior in order to increase its occurrence in the future. (the rain example)
Positive punishment - presenting an aversive stimulus immediately after the occurrence of a behavior in order to decrease its occurrence in the future. (the spanking after tantrum)
Negative punishement - removing an appetitive stimulus immediately after the occurrence of a behavior in order to decrease its occurrence in the future. (taking away toys when, or tv when fighting w/ sibling, or a time-out procedure because you are removing the child from a preferred environment, which leads me to the statement that parents who say they do not punish their children and put them on time outs are lying, because time out is a form of punishment, not necessarily physical, but still punishment... )
it eventually gets more complicated than this, but this is it in its simplest terms. :)
I want more post! Among other things;)
Geez beth, lets try to keep this a decent post now, you tell andy what kind of things you want, on your own time...
;)
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