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Psychohistorian comments on Our House, My Rules - Less Wrong
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Comments (229)
This is slightly tangential, but I'd argue the main problem with excessive discipline is that it tends to get directed inappropriately. Parents tend to invoke the harshest disciplinary measures when their kids are being inconvenient as opposed to being bad. I think this guy really nails it.
Very good link.
Somewhat tangential: what's wrong with spanking? I was spanked as a kid (and from what I remember, it was because I deserved it, not because my parents were pissed - which seems to be the policy the link recommends), and don't see anything bad with that.
My wife and I also expect to have a minimum of disciplin with our children, including spanking if needed. We just don't want our kids to be whiny spoiled brats with no self-control.
I've encountered at least three separate reasons for why people might consider spanking wrong. There may be more, of course.
1) Many people (me included) have a strong, emotional aversion to the thought of using physical force against a child that has effectively no way to defend themselves. (Needless to say, such emotional reactions say nothing about whether it's actually right or wrong to hit a child .)
2) AFAIK, there are studies indicating that spanking is an ineffective method of discipline. In general, it seems that positive reinforcement has stronger effects than negative. That'd lead to spanking being both useless and needlessly hurtful to the child, and therefore obviously something to be avoided.
3) The notion that hitting a child to make them do what you say teaches them that it's okay to use force against others to get what you want.
Indeed, I don't have any such aversion, and tend to score pretty low on the "emphathize with other human beings" thing. Which probably explains some of my puzzlement :)
I definitively will research the subject more before I have kids :) Overall, I'm dubious about the idea that negative reinforcement (a.k.a. punishment) is fundamentally ineffective, since fines and jail sentences do seem to work as a deterrant.
Depends how it's used. As the guy in psychohistorian's link says, the problem is when the severety of the punishment depends not of what the kid did, but of how the parent feels. If the kid gets spanked when he knows he did something wrong (like lying), he shouldn't interpret it as meaning that "it's okay to use force against others to get what you want."
I think the general notion is that negative reinforcement teaches you to avoid being caught, while positive reinforcement is more likely to make "being good" part of your self-image. The difference between wanting to be good, and wanting to appear good when others happen to be watching.
Very good point, thanks.
There is indeed a whole range of ways to subtly manipulate kids into being good, and threat of spanking is a pretty coarse method.
Oh, minor note. Negative Reinforcement and Punishment are generally considered to be different sorts of conditioning, rather than terms for the same thing.
Negative reinforcement counts still as reinforcement, ie, rewarding good behavior. It simply happens to be via reducing an undesired thing rather than increasing a desired thing.
Good, I was just going to make that point. Reinforcement, as originally defined by Skinner, seeks to increase the chances of a desired behavior; punishment seeks to reduce the chance of an undesired one.
Of course, since the distinction between positive and negative reinforcement (or punishment) is fuzzy at best (e.g., taking away the requirement to perform a chore could be seen as giving additional leisure time), it's no wonder that "negative reinforcement" has turned into a euphemism for punishment.
Yeah, negative reinforcement and positive punishment do seem to sort of "blend" into each other...
(A friend of mine is starting up a dog training (well, and training the humans with regards to training the dogs) business and she finds herself a bit frustrated at how she seems completely unable to get communicate the idea (to one particular person) that the four things are different)
See also my recent review of Kazdins positive reinforcement method:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jzg/book_review_kazdins_the_everyday_parenting_toolkit/
There's also (related to 1 and 3)
4) How do the parents feel about the idea of the kid later on hitting them when they don't get what they want? If their answer to this and their answer to how they feel about spanking their kids differ, they probably ought to carefully examine their thinking.
I don't see much of a moral difference between a kid hitting his parents when they don't do what he wants and parents hitting their kid when he doesn't do what they want - but I do see a difference between those and spanking your kid when he did something wrong and he knows it (for example : hitting a younger child for fun, stealing candy from the store, burning his schoolbook then lying about it ...).
By the way, I did know a kid who would threaten to hit his mother. What a brat he was, he's probably why I'd rather have a bit too much disciplin than not enough.
"That's right kiddo. And I'll keep hitting you until you realise that threatening violence isn't the right way to get what you want!"
(assuming you meant to say "I don't see much of a moral difference between .... but I do see a difference between...")
Well, let's poke and prod at that idea a bit. What about spanking someone else's kid? If your answer is different there... why?
What about "for talking back"?
What of the case in which it's "for disobedience" or such?
What about an adult? (remember, we're not talking about taking them to court or whatever, just grabbing him or her and spanking, no appeal, no reasoning, etc etc...)
More generally, even if there is merit in the abstract, do we want to trust parents (as mere humans) unconditionally in this matter?
Did the mother (or father) tend to threaten or hit him?
Simple. I might think it would be a good idea if I were allowed to spank other people's kids. This does not mean I think it would be a good idea for any adult to spank any kid (or, especially, my kid). I can recognize that laws and customs are generally good things, even if I think they might be better if they didn't apply to me in particular.
I think I should be allowed to spank other adults too.
Supposing you had to decide on a rule that both you and others had to follow. Would you prefer "people can spank other people's kids"? And would that be different than your preference for the rule of whether or not "people can spank their own kids"? And if so, why?
I can't do that. I have to decide on a rule that both my and others follow and that can be effectively enforced. Things may well work better overall if no one spanked their kids, or they may not - just because bad parents overuse spanking does not mean preventing it will make them into better parents. But it would be really, really expensive to enforce a rule that prevents other people from spanking their own kids. It is not that difficult to prevent people from spanking other people's kids. "Difficulty of implementation" is an excellent reason to support one rule but not the other, in my view.
Good point, and great link.