ThrustVectoring comments on How to Build a Community - Less Wrong

13 Post author: peter_hurford 15 May 2013 05:43AM

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Comment author: ThrustVectoring 16 May 2013 07:16:09PM * 4 points [-]

It's not that cut and dry. The child can institute a policy of attrition to get bargaining power. Sure, in any individual situation the parents have a lot more power - but as a general rule they aren't willing to follow a policy of spending significant amounts of time to get their child to do anything.

It's complicated by the parents generally caring about their child's welfare, too. Getting compliance at any cost is a losing strategy for raising a successful kid.

Let me elaborate. There are certain lines which parents aren't willing to cross - spending tens of hours a week, or over a certain amount of money in bribes, or punishment inflicted. The parents mostly care about rewards and punishments in terms of how it affects the child's behavior. So, a general strategy of "do not let my behavior change by any reward or punishment that the parents are willing to give me for compliance or noncompliance" is a good enough position to get any reasonable compromise that the child wants. The parents are stuck with either not getting what they want, crossing the line into child abuse, or negotiating with the kid.

Comment author: Estarlio comment score below threshold [+] (11 children)

Comment author: Multiheaded 16 May 2013 07:45:29PM 4 points [-]

Alternatively, examine your assumptions about your relationship with your child, and try to identify how you both ended up at such a place. Is playing such adversarial games really normal for a family that you'd like to be part of? That you would like to have grown up in?

Comment author: Estarlio 16 May 2013 08:39:25PM 0 points [-]

It's not clear to me that sending someone to their room with no TV/computer/food/whatever is a line that most parents are unwilling to cross. So, the utility of the strategy on the kid's part seems questionable. Is she really prepared to play for those sorts of stakes?

As to whether most parents should be willing to cross that line or not, I don't feel one way or the other about it. It's part of what I remember of the coercion that I got when I was growing up. But would I have been better off without it? -shrug- There are examples of parents who don't seem to do that sort of thing - but they seem to be more generally better people than my parents so... just removing the coercion in one regard in my parents wouldn't necessarily get you something good.

In a sense it's like saying: Imagine your perfect world. There's no X in it, therefore we should never X.

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 17 May 2013 04:33:24AM 0 points [-]

My parents tried that. They lasted a week or so under that schedule before they give up. They weren't willing to take away pleasure reading books. It simply did not change my behavior one iota, so they were essentially punishing me for no reason.

Parents generally care about the welfare of their children, so its costly but straightforward to win power struggles with them. You simply have to refuse to change your behavior conditional on their reward/punishment schedule unless reasonable demands are met. Anything that crosses the line into child abuse simply sucks for a while, then you show up to school with some bruises and a meeting with someone who can call CPS. Anything that doesn't cross the line gets abandoned as ineffectual in favor of actually negotiating with you.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 May 2013 06:17:32AM -1 points [-]

Anything that crosses the line into child abuse simply sucks for a while, then you show up to school with some bruises and a meeting with someone who can call CPS.

One could argue that the problem here is that society's threshold for what constitutes "child abuse" is too low.

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 18 May 2013 06:28:49PM -1 points [-]

I may be over-extrapolating from my childhood level of persistence and stubbornness. You might be able to make many children fold by staying on the non-abuse side of the line, but it doesn't take that ornery of a kid to force your hand. You have to be unreasonable in the first place to push them to that negotiating strategy, though.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 19 May 2013 06:59:06AM 0 points [-]

I may be over-extrapolating from my childhood level of persistence and stubbornness. You might be able to make many children fold by staying on the non-abuse side of the line, but it doesn't take that ornery of a kid to force your hand.

What do you consider to constitute "abuse"? A lot of people consider any spanking "child abuse", I strongly disagree with this, unfortunately depending on where you live this can result in calling of CPS.

You have to be unreasonable in the first place to push them to that negotiating strategy, though.

I'm not sure what you had in mind, but, to use the examples from up thread, expecting a child to do school work and/or brush his teeth are not unreasonable demands.

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 19 May 2013 12:33:45PM 0 points [-]

What do you consider to constitute "abuse"?

I was talking about anything that you can convince a social worker to call "abuse". That's a conservative line, though. How about any situation where the child is better off dealing with child protective services than their parents on an ongoing basis? That puts a solid floor on how unpleasant you can make your child's life in order to get what you want.

I'm not sure what you had in mind

My parents big thing was basically compliance fetishism. Individually the demands weren't too unreasonable, but they wanted to get what they wanted when they wanted at all times with no exceptions. Washing the dishes isn't an unreasonable demand, but being available to go do anything they want at any time is. Uninterrupted blocks of time are valuable, and I never had that growing up unless I stayed up later than my parents or got up before them (I tried both, this also got them upset with me).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 May 2013 03:40:02AM 0 points [-]

I was talking about anything that you can convince a social worker to call "abuse". That's a conservative line, though.

This probably has more to do with the social status of the parents then what they are doing to the children.

How about any situation where the child is better off dealing with child protective services than their parents on an ongoing basis?

Given some of the horror stories I've heard coming out of CPS, this is an extremely low bar.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 May 2013 06:37:42AM * 0 points [-]

This probably has more to do with the social status of the parents then what they are doing to the children.

True enough, you can get away with a lot more things if you have enough status. (Well, except occasionally when the status is based on fame of the kind that makes people think they have more right to moral expectations...)

Given some of the horror stories I've heard coming out of CPS, this is an extremely low bar.

If systematically escaping and seeking sanctuary at any opportunity is not effective then I could perhaps recommend the victims wishing to escape consider acquiring non-permanent but visible injuries to, for example, the arms, legs, neck and cheek and leverage that (and suitable testimony) to employ social pressure against their captors. This is best accompanied by being extremely likeable and accommodating with all other authority figures wherever possible.

Of course virtually no children are able to effectively create and execute long term plans to exploit the social power structure around them toward strategic ends. That's why most of them need parents.

The biggest threat in such a situation is the possibility that more free will will be taken from you via the forcible administration of drugs. Sufficiently high status parents could easily get the child diagnosed with one of various mental disorders and given a cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressants, reducing their ability to behave as proactive agent. And they could (and probably would) do so while remaining completely secure in their belief that they are doing the right thing.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 May 2013 05:29:55AM 1 point [-]

The biggest threat in such a situation is the possibility that more free will will be taken from you via the forcible administration of drugs. Sufficiently high status parents could easily get the child diagnosed with one of various mental disorders and given a cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressants, reducing their ability to behave as proactive agent.

In my experience it's much more common for teachers and/or social workers to try to get the child medicated over the parents' objections than the other way around.

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