What craziness is this? (an essay on child rearing)

I consider myself to be fairly well informed when it comes to raising children. My own experiences growing up are still fresh in my mind, I've helped my parents raise my little brother in some ways, and I've spent years studying all things related to the topic. The one conclusion I keep coming to is that all children are different and the best way to handle it is to get to know them. Children are not and could never be little robots running around doing just what we tell them and growing up according to strict stages. They each have a unique personality and ability to process all the information the world thrusts on them. Forcing a child into any one conceptual box is likely to be stressful for the child and for you. If the child does anything that doesn't fit within your neat little box, the automatic reaction may be to think that there is something wrong with the child. That is not a healthy situation. The child gets frustrated and scared that they may have problems and you are simply confused about what to do.

I was reading through the comments on this blog about children and video games, and I noticed a lot of very extreme educational practices ranging from a belief that the child is to be completely in control (how will they learn about things that don't naturally occur in their environment?) such as "unschooling" to strict control over the child's every encounter (in ways that have been shown to produce unhealthy dependence). It's appalling to me to see such uneducated drivel appearing on a respected psychological blog collection and forum. It's true that children need to have a sense of control over their own lives, but what harm is there in guiding their choices? Yes, kids are natural learners and should be enabled to learn whenever possible to encourage curiosity and cut down on the stress of forceful schooling. That doesn't mean that limits are bad. Limits are a very real part of life and will be imposed by anyone in a position of authority. Frustration and boundaries are one of a wide range of things that children must learn to deal with if they are to lead happy lives on their own.

Here's a question for "unschoolers": what do you do if your child becomes fascinated by little animals? I don't mean in the love and kindness way, of course. Maybe you provide little Johnny with a bunny rabbit and he wants to see how it works, so he pulls it's ears off and guts it with a kitchen knife. Do you encourage that sort of learning, or do you impose some limits and have a long talk about moral treatment of animals?

Right, now here's one for the people advocating a strictly controlled learning environment. During math class, Little Suzie answers a question before she is supposed to know the answer. Do you assume that she is cheating, or that she understands the material early for some reason? This may not sound like a very harmful dilemma but consider for once what would happen if you choose wrong.

Imagine that Suzie has seen the problem before in another class. You accuse her of cheating. You have just punished her for curiosity which led to an advanced understanding of the world around her. You have introduced a stigma to extra-curricular learning that if such treatment persists, Suzie will likely resent, dislike, or even outright hate having to learn anything. Her grades will drop because the better she does, the more she is punished.

Now the opposite scenario in which Suzie was actually looking at the lesson plans ahead of time and memorized the answer so she could shock everyone in class. (I'd like to point out that this is highly unlikely as just sorting through the lesson plans is bound to be confusing and unhelpful.) If you assume she understands the material, you have just reinforced a process of getting answers that is at best unreliable and severely punishable at worst. If this behavior continues, Suzie will likely be thrown out of school for cheating on exams and will have learned nothing but how to sneak into offices in the meantime.

The way to correct all of these scenarios is to do a little investigation before you make your choice. The proper reaction to a child's behavior will differ by child and situation. Perhaps Johnny is really interested in biology and simply didn't know any better. His seemingly violent activity may be driven mainly by curiosity and ignorance. As such, just explaining to Johnny that doing violence to bunnies is considered wrong may stop his behavior. Now, it is not enough to simply stop a behavior. Just as it has been mentioned before in the comments and blog posts all over this site, you would be treating the symptoms and not the cause. Once you have placed a barrier on the undesirable behavior (often with some form of punishment) you need to give the child an acceptable outlet for the impulses that led them to the behavior to begin with.

Imagine a typical undesirable behavior such as stealing from the cookie jar. Regardless of the reasons you may have for stopping the behavior, little Ralph does it for one reason: he wants a cookie. Suppose you catch him stealing the cookie, and give him a sharp slap on the wrist or put him in timeout or whatever your favored method of punishment is. Instead of connecting that punishment to the theft, Ralph may (or is likely to) connect the punishment to getting caught. So Ralph tries not to get caught next time he wants the cookie, because you have not told him the grand secret of getting cookies without getting in trouble, which is asking pretty please. Besides, you can't catch him every time anyway. Ralph may get good at stealing cookies from under your nose and begins to apply his skill to other things. He may take an occasional chocolate from your secret stash that you never share. He may sneak a drink from the local convenience store (before he knows what money is and does). But suppose instead of simply punishing him for stealing that first cookie, you tell him that he can have a cookie if he asks first. Now, a parent may have many reasons for telling Ralph "no" when he asks, but you must first build a trust that asking for a cookie will be the best way to get a cookie, so start by telling him yes every time. After a while, his first response to wanting a cookie will be to ask for one. Then you can start backing off on the frequency of giving a cookie. You can start to impose limits like "not so close to dinner time" or "I'd like to save some for someone else". Do it slowly or Ralph may decide that you were fooling him and go back to stealing cookies.

Remember Suzie and the math question? Instead of jumping to a conclusion about whether or not she cheated, the whole problem can be solved by simply asking Suzie how she knew the answer. She may decline to tell you at first, which may seem like cheating, but if you gently encourage her to tell you how she figured it out she will likely reveal more information about her thoughts. If she looked it up or figured it out or has been previously exposed to the type of problem, it should become fairly obvious fairly quickly. After you have a better idea about what Suzie was doing, you can deal with her appropriately. If she figured it out, she'll likely be able to explain it to the class. Remember, teachers, you were going to do that anyway and you still have the option to refine the explanation. If she's seen it before, she's also likely be able to explain it. If she really can't explain it, that still doesn't mean she cheated. The embarrassment of not being able to answer your questions will serve to encourage her to have an explanation ready next time she has an answer. In this way, it doesn't matter whether or not she cheated because the end result will be the same, Suzie learns how to perform the operations required for solving the problem. Even if Suzie continues to cheat from the lesson plans, she'll be reading much more carefully so that she understands what's going on well enough to report it next time.

As far as video games are concerned, many of these subtle processes are built in to encourage the learning required to complete the game. Within a game, children are free to explore the limits of their environment and find many ways to solve the problems it presents. The limits serve to educate about boundaries and the freedom serves to educate about choices. The nature of a good game keeps players coming back to it by rewarding them for every small success, and punishing failure severely. Cheating is often difficult, rewarding in the short term, and eventually boring. Children may resort to video games because it gives them a sense of control over their environment that may not be present outside of the digital world. They are comforting, educational, and teach real life skills within a manageable framework.

Regardless of your personal philosophy on teaching and child rearing, children should be taken on a case by case basis. You must carefully assess each situation and tailor your response to the child's needs. Choosing the wrong response can only do harm to the development of the child, and is likely to cause everyone involved undue stress.