Followup to: Strategic ignorance and plausible deniability
My in-law always says: "For children it is easier be forgiven then to get permission."
EDIT: This post is superseeded by my Book Review: Kazdin's The Everyday Parenting Toolkit I recommend reading only that. The remaining insight of this post is: Children expend more brain power on their parents than the parents on them.
Parents may also pretend that they don't notice their kids engaging in some minor misbehavior, if they don't want to lose their authority but don't feel like interfering either.
I can say from experience: That is risky.
Children (esp. small ones) expend significantly more brain power on their parents than the parents on their children (your mileage may vary). I can assure you that they will notice these cases - at least some - and take that into account one way or the other.
If the children notice this they may assume that you either condone, accept, bear or ignore it. None of these has positive effects.
Possible alternative strategies:
- Invest the energy on the necessary consequences (these will be well invested because you save on lots of further occassions)
- Signal the child that you did notice, tolerate but do not accept it. This indicates to the child that the border to really unacceptable behavior is near. If the child still continues you do not get around to act. I do this with a smile and treat it as a gamed played by the child. This breaks a possible tension but may have disadvantages for discipline.
- Establish clear limits to acceptable behavior that avoid repeated testing of where the border actually is.
- Less restrictions that may be broken to begin with.
I am influenced by The Adlerian School. Of relevance here is Striving for significance.
The testing of limits and the resulting interaction with the parent give the child a feeling of significance if the parent acknoledges the act of the child even if he doesn't agree with it. On the other hand ignoring the act of the child is negative feedback about significance.
EDIT: The asymmetry between parents and children with respect to the effectiveness of deniability can be generalized to any situation where one actor has significantly less overall information about the situation than another actor and thus might not be able to reliably estimate whether deniability is possible.
ADDED: that ignoring is scientifically known to be effective and the advice or rather personal expierence I have related in this post may be contraproductive (at least if applied in isolation).
(how do I make those bars on the right indicating what I am replying to?)
"But it made me feel uneasy because it didn't (seem to) address the real issue. It looked like an easy way out. It did work but it also cost quite some time each time."
You can always address the real issue at some other time. The key is merely short-term timing, you don't want to react immediately in a way that reinforces the unwanted behavior with attention. Later, when the kid is not engaging in unwanted behavior your can address the real issue for hours on end if you want. Often the best way to address the real issue is to immediately react to the behavior that is the opposite of the unwanted behavior by having a long conversation about why the opposite is so good and commendable. Or, better yet sometimes, immediately ask the kid why he/she engaged in the good behavior and get them to tell you why they think it is good and all that. Kids love to have their parents listen to them, its a great social reward for wanted behavior.
"But the point still stands: If the children notice that you intentionally condoned than you relativize your consequence. You can only do this if a) you accept this lenience or b) are sure that the (small) child will not notice. And if the act is indeed harmless."
You are pretending to ignore. You are not condoning anything. The consequence is no attention. You are engaging in behavior shaping, notions like 'condoning" and "lenience" are not really categories in the behavior shaping process. Skillful behavior shaping is just the fastest way to accomplish lasting change according to the evidence. I my book, the fastest way to accomplish effective change is the direct opposite of condoning and lenience. I know this is not the way most parents think, but, in my opinion, it is the way to think. It does not matter if they notice it, the research shows it works whether they notice it or not.
Non-harmless unwanted behavior is a different matter, aggressive or significantly destructive behavior, it cannot be addressed by pretending to ignore. Redirection sometimes works. As a final resort use time-out, but most parents have no idea how to use time out. Time out is not a punishment, its just time-out from reinforcement. You can teach your kid to set in time out and reward them for executing a good time out. You can get the kid to practice time outs in advance of using it. Research show that time out works even if you award, praise, commend the kid for executing a good time out.
Parents tend to start the time out process with explanations. Explanations and face-time are time-in which is the opposite of time-out. Time-in, of course, tends to have the opposite effect of making the unwanted behavior more likely.
Parents tend to threaten time-out. Threatening time-out is time-in. Avoid threatening time-out.
When a time out is warranted, immediately initiate it with little or no talking and avoid looking at the kid. If you need to explain, say something short like "no biting". One minute per year of age is a good guideline for the length of time-out.
Also there are some gamification methods. Say a kid is doing head-banging tantrums or otherwise self-destructive or property-destructive tantrums. You can play a pretend game where the kid engages in "good" tantrums and you give him positive attention for "good" tantrums. Via this process instill the habit of good tantrums that can be ignored. Pretend games are a good way to trigger a wanted behavior that is not otherwise occurring so that you can start reinforcing this behavior.
Anyway this is advanced stuff, I refer you to the books of Alan Kazdin.
PS: You will probably find that it is easy to talk about why bad behavior is bad, but harder to come up with a long monologue or even a bunch of short comments about why specific good behaviors are good. It's worth working on this.
Thank you for your feedback. Seems you know what you write.
I looked up your comments and voted them. Note that you commented on old topics which will get votes seldomly. I voted them.
I also looked up Kazdin and just ordered a book from Amazon.
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