It's a long article but I found it to be very enlightening. It not just teaches how to control anger and parenting but also the importance of story telling.
The fact that it's around the time of the year to file taxes, and anger is sometimes a part of that experience, pulls the "mental autocorrect" in that direction.
The article praises the Inuit for a "no scolding, no timeouts" form of child-rearing, talks about how "the culture views scolding — or even speaking to children in an angry voice — as inappropriate...even if the child hits you or bites you, there's no raising your voice" and quotes Inuit elders as saying that "they're upset about something, and you have to figure out what it is". It says that this is why adult Inuit have "an extraordinary ability to control their anger".
I Googled some studies about Inuit to see if I could find anything that didn't fit with this narrative, and came across this article on how Inuit leaders are protesting Canada's anti-child-abuse policy, because they say it is too harsh on traditional Inuit child-rearing practices like spanking. They complain that child protective services are unfairly removing children from Inuit homes, because they don't understand that Inuit tradition permits forms of physical discipline that might not be acceptable in broader Canadian society.
I also found this collection of interviews with Inuit elders where they describe how things were in the traditional old days. When asked about discipline, Elder Tipuula:
"If it was a boy, it was his father’s responsibility to discipline him. If he only wanted to spank him once, then he would only spank him once. He would behave for a while, and if he started to misbehave again, the father could spank him a second time.We women took care of our daughters. Some children reached adulthood without ever needing a spanking. Some of them needed to be spanked, and would thank us when they were older for correcting them. Parents would spank children to make them aware of things they had not been paying attention to. Some children were spanked when they did not deserve it and this was bad for a child’s development. When they realized they did not deserve a spanking, they became angry. Children who deserved to be spanked grew up being thankful for the discipline they received. Children who did not deserve to be spanked grew up to become angry people."
Elder Ilisapi adds:
"Some of us tended to take out our frustration on our children when it was our husband who we were angry at. Even if the child had done nothing wrong, if he made one small mistake, we took out our frustration on him. If children were treated like that,they could be damaged. It was their spouse they were angry at in the first place but they took their frustration out on their child. That is not the way to treat a child. It is not good."
Modern-day studies are downright appalling. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708004/ is studying Inuit suicides, but finds that 27.5% of the non-suicidal placebo group stated they were abused as children. goo.gl/gX4hFi says that 86% of Canadian Inuit women experience verbal abuse, and 48% experience physical abuse in the first postpartum year. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/ijch.v61i2.17443 finds that 48% of Inuit in Greenland report having been abused, about three times the Western population they compare this with.
(some of these are adult abuse statistics rather than child abuse statistics, but if adult Inuit never get angry or act impulsively, why are they doing all this abusing?)
To be fair, the Inuit are a very diverse population, and maybe some bands are unusually lenient parents and others are unusually strict (but the anthropologist in the article studied in northern ...
Sounds like there's a liberal sprinkling of 'noble savage' being applied in the article.
The "teaching through storytelling" thing rubs me up the wrong way, too. We yell at our kids if they deserve it, but we do our best never to lie to them.
And of course, any time someone expounds on "the" way to raise or discipline children, you know they're talking through their hat, because children vary wildly in terms of how they behave and what will work with them, even within the same family. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Additionally, there is a long period of time when the kid has suicidal tendencies and doesn't comprehend any language, and telling stories won't do anything to save his life.
Fear, induced by having made that mistake and paying the price, or induced by elevating your voice, does seem to work, albeit imperfectly.
I had a friend who was cohabiting with a single mom of a 4 year old. He was always quite harsh on the kid I thought, very strict, he didn't hurt him but the kid was sort of scared of him (Because my friend was like 6'6, and looked like a mountain wizard)
So one time I was at the house alone with the kid. I turned my back on him for a couple minutes, he came walking into the living room from the kitchen carrying a butcher knife almost as long as his leg. I yelled at him got that knife away from him. When the mom got home I told her the story and she laughed and said 'oh Damien!' (kid's name was Damien)
When I told my friend later he sort of buried his head in his hands and said something about how hard it was and he was always mean to the kid and having to yell at him because basically he was the only adult in his life that kept him in check. Probably my friend should have found a better way of handling Damien, but on the other hand some situations are more difficult than others.
So basically, boy acted like normal 4 years old and took an interesting thing into hand? And that is somehow proof that the kid is exceptionally difficult? Four years old holding knife right now is a reason to tell him to put it down or introduce consistent safety rules, but really really it is neither proof of unusual out of control behavior or something that requires instant yelling.
Four years old can be taught to cut soft vegetables under close supervision. However, if you constantly yell at four years old, four years old will learn to ignore everything except yelling.
Not that occasional yelling harms that kid or something. But, yelling often is more of adult emotional reaction, not a rational reaction to real acute danger.
That referred more to your friend. The "having to yell at him because basically he was the only adult in his life that kept him in check". It sounds honestly like an excuse making and rationalization.
Not that I never yelled at kids. I did. But this reaction on that situation sound like that.
Probably, but I wasn't in his shoes. I mean the guy was not the father, came in after the kid had grown some, was with a mother who did not say Damien don't take knives out of the drawer without asking but just laughed about it, and I expect was also from a somewhat disciplinarian background himself.
So, he was probably wrong in how he handled it, but it was quite heartfelt what he said, he was handling it as well as he could, and perhaps that was badly. It was hard for me to second guess him under the circumstance.
the mom was not there when the son came in with the knife. when told about it she laughed, that lovable little scamp. She was not there when my friend unburdened himself about what he considered his obligations to the kid, and what he thought was the difficulties. At any rate, it's a long time ago now. I was just sharing it in that people for various reasons may end up shouting while trying to do their best, then again people may also end up shouting because they are too stressed by situations which is also a problem, but they should be helped then.
> So basically, boy acted like normal 4 years old and took an interesting thing into hand?
A 4-year-old is old enough to know what they are and aren't allowed to grab, in terms of common household items.
> However, if you constantly yell at four years old, four years old will learn to ignore everything except yelling.
If you consistently show a four-year-old that only yelling will be followed by physical intervention, then they will learn to ignore everything except yelling. If you consistently show a four-year-old that a quiet "I'm going to count to three... one... TWO..." will be followed by physical intervention, then they will learn to pay attention to that.
The default attitude of most four-year-olds is "make me" and if you let them know what will result in you making them do the thing, they will pay attention.
Interesting. I'm debating whether I'll tell my child that Santa doesn't exist from the beginning. Kind of because I don't want to lie for the sake of tradition.
How'd your child deal with their friends believing in Santa and them knowing it's a hoax at that early age?
I told my kids that the santa is real, but I have never threaten them with how santa is spying on kids to see if they behave and not giving presents to bad children. The funny thing is, my oldest daughter, to old to believe in santa and know very well he isnt real, "wants" to belive in him. She is prefectly rasional about it. It is the stories and the good feelings of exitement, fairytails, mysteries that she cheriesh.
Followed by discussion of the evidence... if all goes well they learn to use their own judgement and cope with coming independently to their own conclusion in opposition to 99% of their peers...
We kind of skirt the edges of that one with "some people say that..." We don't just flat-out tell them that Santa was made up to sell more toys at Christmas, but we also don't present him as an actual real entity.
And let's face it, Santa works pretty well as a cryptid alongside the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny... :)
The problem with Santa is other parents. If you have that one child that doesn't believe in santa, and they gleefully inform all the other children at the daycare/school that santa is a lie, then you can imagine the blowback from parents of other children.
As far as how we handle Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc. - we decided to be up front that they aren't real, but treat it as a game that parents play with their children.
So we still do presents from Santa at Christmas, Easter Bunny baskets, and Tooth Fairy money, but they know it's us doing it. So far it still seems to have enough magic of anticipation that they enjoy it.
"Santa Claus is a great game we (our culture) plays. Every year we pretend (x) (y) and (z) about someone called Santa Claus, and pretend he's real! Do you want to play this game too, or would you rather not?"
and
"A lot of other kids really enjoy the Santa game. So don't spoil it for them. Like when you're playing being a pirate captain you don't like it if another kid says you're too young to be captain or your cardboard pegleg is fake..."
Kids more easily accept games and makebelieve, and happily hop into different games.
Even if some Intuits do opposite of what the article says, how does that refute what article is trying to convey - good parenting, controlling anger, and importance of story telling? I think you are focusing on "Inuit" part of story while the article is focusing on "parenting".
I don't follow. If "Inuit" is not a key detail of the piece, than why is it in the title?
The implication is strongly that a group of people, identified by name, has what is generally regarded as a successful way of teaching kids to control their anger. Again, based on the title.
The narrative of the piece builds this up with pieces of evidence all cherry picked to support how successful they are. This post, on the other hand, asks about contradicting evidence.
So, agreed that you can't just assume this parenting style is bad from the contradicting evidence. I question if you can truly assume it is good from the positive evidence. Random walks and all.
I thought the same thing, especially since alcoholism is a problem with many Inuit communities [1] and alcoholism and domestic violence often go hand in hand.
I think you're right to be sceptical, but I also think that contemporary inuit society is probably a poor example of inuit childcare traditions - since it's basically a community in its third generation of societal collapse. Child abuse is unsurprising in that context.
Canadian Inuit collectively suffer from PTSD inflicted upon them in the residential schools. They were abused as children so they abuse their children now. It's hard to see where is the aboriginal culture and where is the pain brought on them by white men.
And what you just cited should be taken in context, and that context is that native people in Canada have been subjected till very recently to a program of forced assimilation.[1]
Some people call it cultural genocide.
Basically we tried as hard as we could to "take the indian out of the indian."
They would come into villages, as late as the sixties and take all the children away from their parents and put them in "residential schools" where they were beaten for speaking their language.
Thousands died in these institutions.
So perhaps another way to read it, is from the positive side. That is to say that some native people of Canada can remember their traditions and are attempting to practise them despite a hundred and fifty years of persecution.
Every problem you cite is caused by forced westernization and urbanization.
Alcoholism is not an Inuit cultural problem because Inuit culture predates the introduction of alcohol by thousands of years.
Unemployment is not cultural because people living off the land are not unemployed.
And hitting kids is something picked up from forcible re-education in Indian Schools where every aspect of the original culture was forbidden by generous use of beatings.
There is a tendency to quickly believe anything that treats our culture as innocent by blaming the victim, to easily believe anything contrary to what "rubs us the wrong way". I believe this is a dangerous fallacy we should resist.
I think there are 2 main techniques in the article.
The first one are stories to prevent something. These stories are completely made up, but put fear in the kids to they behave as they should.
The second one is looking from a distance (or a 3rd person) at yourself.
I wonder if religion falls into the first bucket. "Behave or you will go to eternal hell". Lots of people already figured out that it's all made up. What is not clear is that, although made up, it could still have a lot of benefits.
The second technique is probably what meditation and NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) do. Take a step back and look at yourself, your emotions, your behaviors, as an observer.
NLP is pseudoscience, unfortunately. Research has failed to turn up evidence that it works, and it’s generally incompatible with our modern understanding of how the brain works.
Although it's not completely pseudoscience, in a sense that microexpressions do exist. You can't detect most of them with your bare eyes, and those you can detect (pupil dilatation) are not significative and can be caused by external factors. I heard in a skeptic podcast that the "ripple under the eyes" in case of a true smile is not fake though, its one of the few thing they got right (not the first time a pseudoscience got some part right, but this time it not just lucky).
I'm not an expert on NLP, and I don't know the exact claims that NLP makes, but I'm sure some of the exercises work.
One for example, is conflict resolution from a past event. You had a conflict with someone, you feel treated unfairly etc.
This exercise lets you go back to that situation in memory, as yourself. Next step is to go back as an observer of yourself, looking at what you felt, etc. Then you are an observer of the whole thing. And finally, you go back as the other person, trying to understand why they acted like that, trying to understand how they felt.
After such a thing, a certain "wrong" situation can suddenly become way better, by understanding the other person and their drives. Understanding what other people feel, stepping in their shoes, can be very beneficial. Stepping "outside" of yourself and observing your feelings can also give a lot of insight.
This is a nice extraction of the article's core points.
I agree with 1. Religion definitely seems to falls into the same bucket. If I were to use my culture's version of the "long john" story, it would feel totally religious to almost everyone else. I don't see this working out in urban society today. If we're in a public or friend's place with kids and we try this kind of stories there, the immediate reaction from everyone would be horror. "What kind of BS are you feeding your kids with! Don't bring any of that near my kids!"
I think it might be opposite, and combined. They have a set of stories, called legends in other First Nations cultures (in English); every knows them. If each parent made up their own story to put fear into their child, the child just has to compare the story they hard with a different story their friend heard and voila, the kids realize it’s all made up. This way, the older kids can reaffirm the story to the younger ones because they heard it too (although are at a point where they understand the point). These stories/legends are often told in a third person perspective too.
Religion... if you believe the tenets of your religion it most likely isn’t understood to be _just_ a made-up story (even if others think it is). As an example, all the Christians I personally know didn’t simply believe a story about some guy named Jesus and thus started living in fear of his judgement. They believe the bible as a historical record, and live in a way that Jesus taught, and in a way that brings glory to Jesus. No fear. In fact, they might get even say the bible helps with something like nlp since it is God who has “stepped back” and looked at human emotions, behaviours, etc. I guess that comparison falls short of how to deal with trauma-induced behaviour.
I wish I could personally meet a cultural Christian (someone who is Christian only because everyone else is), the kind that atheists or anthropologists or secularists point to as their own example of someone following a made-up story, and ask them why they believe it/align their lives to _just_ a story.
> I wish I could personally meet a cultural Christian (someone who is Christian only because everyone else is)
Aren't most religious people like this? If you are born in Pakistan, chances are pretty high that you believe in Islam. Cambodia? Probably a Buddhist.
All Christians that I know, are born out of a Christian family. I see culture as the main driver of religion. Or do you expect if you take a Cambodian baby and place them in Pakistan, that they will grow up to be Buddhist?
I'm an atheist, and almost all people around me are atheists. What a coincidence! My wife is from a foreign country. All people around here are dedicated Christians. And guess what, she is also a Christian! What a double coincidence!
> I wish I could personally meet a cultural Christian (someone who is Christian only because everyone else is), the kind that atheists or anthropologists or secularists point to as their own example of someone following a made-up story, and ask them why they believe it/align their lives to _just_ a story.
If he is following the story closely he wouldn't admit that he thinks it's fake as that's against the rules
One thing that I learned somehow down the road is apart from not getting angry at other people is to not get angry at yourself. That mirrors, of course we all know that everybody needs to be treated different, but when we just respond out of reflex, this is somehow the "default response".
I assume though that this is indeed only a thing that can be solved in interaction, possibly by talking more also. Maybe reading stories helps though. :) I heard in a Podcast that when you read/watch/hear stories till the end - and not stop when it gets emotionally uncomfortable - you won't miss out on the solution of the story.
In my circles it's common knowledge that what you observe in the behavior of children is an unfiltered reflection of their home environment. When kids are violent, loud, abusive, it's very likely that's what their home looks like.
It's surprising to me that this is being portrayed as some kind of discovery/revelation.
My father would get very frustrated and violently angry when things didn't go according to plan, particularly in the garage when repairing something under time pressure. It took me over a decade living away from that environment to completely shed some of the same behaviors I had picked up just being around it.
Nowadays there's an Isaac Asimov quote I tell myself whenever such situations emerge:
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - and I'll add "are you incompetent?"
I wonder how much the success of a parenting style has to do with the genetic predisposition within the children to receive the intended messages. What works for one culture that may be more genetically isolated seems potentially unpredictable when introduced into a group of differing genetic heritage.
This kind of article is inspiring, but also makes me depressed at what a shit parent I must be and all the various ways I'm screwing up with my kids head, despite trying my best, out of my own imperfections and ignorance.
I have a 3yo myself and I think it's all a trade-off, there's no such thing as perfect parenting. Old cultures tend to land in a local optimum.
That being said I'd consciously not move to an average US town as I think there's too much fear spread, it doesn't fit my own culture of giving children space/responsibility as early as possible. Depending on community reaction that can be impossible - not just in many parts of the US but also in Southern Europe for example. There tends to be much more support from the wider family there however.
Another local optimum I've seen in Japan where almost everyone is incredibly well behaved but almost no-one learns to think outside the box. Eh. I say choose what you think works and try to choose a community supporting it, within the options you have.
While there's some psychology (parental fear of abduction by strangers), there are also significant environmental problems at play in the US that don't exist elsewhere:
1. Kids are more spread out. A suburban neighborhood is huge and fewer people are having kids. The people that have kids will have fewer of them. For kids to coagulate together for playtime, you need higher density.
2. American roads are fucking deadly. Bigger cars at faster speeds with ever less attentive drivers. Cars are by far the number one killer of children and American voters do fuck all to fix it. If we banned all cars, I'd probably let my 2 year old mostly wander around by himself until dinner.
3. Dual working parents plus shitty workplace policies mean there are just fewer eyes out there. Even in the old days, "Free Range" didn't mean Lord of the Flies. It meant the kids roamed around but there was always an adult nearby, even if not in any official capacity.
A combination of 1, 2, and 3 makes for American parents structuring a kids' life around schleping them to various scheduled events and places. Even when a kid gets older, they've never developed the habits to do it for themselves.
Let me be clear - I'm not blaming American parents at all for this - as you point out it's a result of culture (although I'd say it worked 30y ago as well and you also had cars there). The thing is just if I can choose (and I can), I'd not move there with children.
That's exactly it. Other examples are parents depending on state get fined/threatened to loose their children when doing things like letting them walk across a park accompanied by a 10yo sibling.
Just to give an idea where I'm from:
* in my home country (one of the highest GDP/capita, so we're not talking poor&rural), children are walking alone or in unaccompanied groups to kindergarden at age 5-6. if parents try and drive them they're often scolded by school authorities, they're supposed to handle it by themselves.
* in Japan (just another example that I know well), children walk to school at age 5-6, accompanied by a 1-3 year older sempai that explicitely takes over the responsibility for younger colleagues. There's also people taking the responsibility for a given street corner at a defined time in the morning, watching out for the youngins a bit (but it's not necessarily their own). Again, people who drive their own are typically scolded by society.
* after school, children in both countries typically go do other activities on their own, like go to football club or in case of Japan do some school club activity. Curfew time is typically before dark or around 5-6pm.
* from time to time there tends to be an accident or case of violence/murder against children that might have been avoided without this culture of letting them run. people are outraged against the person who did it, but culture of self responsibility is not questioned and life goes on. risk is typically 1/1 million or lower (relatively safe drivers, low levels of violence).
It sounds like it’s more about urban vs suburban and rurual areas. I walked to school for 3 years because the school was close. I’m certain other kids in the suburbs don’t have a bus as an option if they live in a certain range. The school closest to my house is over 3 miles away and some parts do not have a sidewalk. When I lived near public transport I saw plenty of kids riding to private schools. Now that I’m in the suburbs it’s not possible.
No one is scared to let their children out because of violence or murder. That’s silly news media fear mongering unless you live in a bad area.
when I was a kid, around 30min for children's feet, besides a more or less residential road. where we live now, it's right beside our apartment building, no road crossings necessary. but even in more rural places in my country, children generally walk (or take the bycicle around age 9).
I think (s)/he's talking about the severe restrictions on movement that US kids are subjected to nowadays, stirred by unsupported fears of pedophiles, child-killers, and in general, the idea that there is a malevolent man with an axe hiding behind every tree in the forest.
Contrast my experience nearly 60 years ago in a small US town of ~35,000:
Once I had a bicycle I had almost complete freedom of movement. My buddy and I would cycle everywhere we could within about a 20-mile radius, out into the countryside, to the rivers and into the downtown urban area on our own. We also had large forests nearby and would wander afoot into those forests and stay out for half a day with no worry by us or our parents. To get to certain woods, we might have to cross private property and go through wooden fences that some owners had erected, but there was almost always a loose piece of fence "left unrepaired" to pass through (if not, then we climbed over the top). We were good Boy Scouts and always left things as good or better than we found them, and no one ever stopped us or threatened us.
Except other kids! In forests other groups of children sometimes might view us as hostile, perhaps to protect a "fort" (essentially a foxhole and a dirt pile) they had built out in the woods or who felt this was "their territory", and who might rain down clods of dirt upon us with little warning. We would parlay around it and if that didn't work, we were both pretty accurate with dirt clods ourselves and learned to keep moving so as to be difficult targets.
Today I get the impression most US-raised children are restricted to the house, the back yard (even the front yard is too dangerous) and adult-accompanied trips. So sad.
Japan went from WWII decimation to an economic powerhouse, led the video game industry, invented the best cars in some major categories, all in a small island country. I'd say they do a decent job of "thinking outside the box".
What's "locally" and not globally optimal about working together as a group vs everyone going their own way? The answer isn't obvious, and ultimately it's probably impossible to compare; we can't run A/B tests on planets.
1. almost everyone doesn't think outside the box -> if just a couple of people do it, there can be big breakthroughs once the group has been convinced, because then suddenly everyone pulls on the same string.
2. post WW2 Japan was a different beast from what it is now. I generally find there's quite a generational difference between people growing up after the war and 20-somethings now. not unlike the US, but for different reasons and more intense, they had to rebuild a whole country.
I go out of my way to tell my child when I don't know something or was wrong. Then I go out of my way to show them how I learn that fact or right the wrong, if I can. They learn very quickly and deeply by following your example.
This lead to a whole year of every car ride starting with, "Daddy, are you sure you know where you're going?". Kids also have a way of reminding you of every failure you ever made and never letting you live it down.
My youngest of 3 is now 32 years old. I've recently been thinking about the oft heard "I'm always amazed by the things my grown children remember and the things they don't". I've been trying to discover why they remember things I've forgotten, why that moment was so important to their young lives. We've started to talk about it, trying to find the base so they can use the lesson in their own child rearing.
If you have a sense of humor, that's fine. They aren't trying to hurt you; they are trying to understand the world and contribute to it and be important. These are all good things. And kids get obsessive about their fad hobbies, but it passes.
If they are spending too much of their energy on easy problems, give them harder problems. Like another commenter said, give them the map and ask them to tell you where to go.
I totally agree, it's hard to do in the moment but really allows you to connect with your child once you have time to reflect. For anyone looking for parenting inspiration and wisdom I really enjoyed watching this (long) interview with author and therapist Philippa Perry (starts about 8 minutes in) : https://youtu.be/UuQsIxS6UiI
Parenting is also dependent on the environment and your culture (you as both parents).
Western city culture tend to breed impatience, which helps a lot with being punctual, but screw up a lot with how we interact with people (including our kids).
I tend to think that as long as I can say to my kid that I am honestly proud of them, I know me and my partner haven't screwed up.
The bit about punctuality is really important. My eldest is 4.5yo, he only has a rough idea of time, and is only just understanding the idea of needing to be somewhere at a set time. So me getting frustrated with him because he's dawdling, isn't helping anyone and just brews up a conflict that he doesn't really understand. You literally end up arguing with someone who doens't understand why you are annoyed.
There are lots of good child psychology books out there. Pick one up. "Non-violent Communication" helped me a lot. It will simplify the issues. It's not about blaming the kid or blaming yourself, but learning ways to shift focus away from blame/judgement to needs.
Small changes in the way you use language help make such mental shifts possible. The positive outcomes make you want to do them more and more. I wish I had learnt this stuff at a younger age though.
My wife constantly reminds me that what I learnt from how to deal with my kid, has made me deal with adults way better. So there is that advantage too :)
How do you even have the energy and patience to do these things. After a day's work, if my kids hit each other I just couldn't act all calm and put on these kinds of little plays described in the article. Before learning to raise kids I'd have to learn to control myself much better first.
So I've come to realised a few of things that have made things easier for me.
First up, just accepting that I'm not not going to be perfect and there are going to be times when I take the easy way out (like this morning when I just stuck the TV on for them while I got things done). No one is perfect and most kids do fine. Expecting to be perfect is like people who crash out of a diet after one day where they fail to stick to it. Be kind to yourself. Do what you can when you can. Sometimes I will have the time and energy to go all deep and meaningful with my kids, and sometimes it's just a quick "stop hitting your sister or I'm selling your trainset".
Secondly, when I do make the most of the good times, it tends to pay off later. It's like taking the hit when we did sleep training with my youngest. It was hard work for a couple of days, but the end result was totally worth it. Same goes for stuff like this, sometimes you just get a breakthrough when the kid "gets it" and from then on they are just a little easier.
Finally, sometimes I'm going to be grumpy, stressed or tired (probably at the same time), and I'm going to snap, or lose my temper a bit from time to time, like most normal people. But I then make a point of saying "I'm sorry I didn't mean to snap at you, I'm just very tired/stressed". I've found my 4yo is pretty receptive to that, he gets it. It's good for kids to see you owning up to your own mistakes and understanding why. Recognising you've done something wrong, owning it, and apologising is a really important skill for kids. So much of the crap in the world is caused by people just not being prepared to accept when they are wrong and owning their mistakes and failures, but doubling down and digging in.
In short, don't take all these "perfect partent" stories too much to heart, most of them make them seem more straight-forward and perfect than they really are (and there is a smell of "look at the mystical native" about a lot of them that I think clouds the narative). But there are often good things to learn from them. Every kid is different so having a wider set of ideas to try is always great.
I agree completely. For me part of the issue is that getting angry (or pretending to) does work at certain ages! Right now my 6 and 3 year old sleep in a bunk bed. The 3 year old lately has been prodding the 6 year old when they are supposed to be falling asleep. I could come in and act out a play or be nice for an hour until he falls asleep out of exhaustion or I could come in with a stern voice and a touch of a yell and he gets upset for a few seconds but then goes to sleep.
Parenting is always a series of trade offs. On one hand maybe I am not teaching him how to self regulate and go to sleep. On the other he gets an extra hour of sleep. The reality is there is probably a better solution that I haven’t thought of but there is only so much time to research and explore each little issue that comes along!
Hah, yeah, we get the same sort of thing occasionally. Our 4.5 and (almost) 2yo are in a bunk bed. Sometimes my son (4) will just repeatedly come up with dumb reasons why he shouldn't be in bed. You can handle each on of these, but at some point a straight up and and firm "No. It's bed time." in my "I'm getting annoyed" voice is what works. Sometimes that means I have to stand outside their door for half an hour and keep putting them back to bed until they get the hint, but if you generally only have to do it a couple of times before they get the hint.
I only recently figured out how to phrase it, you can be "firm" without being "strict". You don't have to be a shouty monster to have limits, boundaries or firm ideas over what is acceptable behaviour. Kids seem to like consistency, they like knowing what's what, that doesn't mean you have to be horrible about it.
We're all making this stuff up as we go along, and every child and situation is different though, so you've got to go with what works for your kids.
>After a day's work, if my kids hit each other I just couldn't act all calm and put on these kinds of little plays described in the article.
My practice is to reflect on when things like this happen. We have one 3yo son but issues do arise where we get upset, and reflecting on them and preparing myself for the next time helps me address what he needs to not do whatever it is that upset me, and for me to not get upset which makes him upset.
I guess it's not so strange now but when I started parenting I figured my parents' approach would be best, like expecting kids to do their work because it's basically their job.
What I didn't expect is how powerful the word "please" is.
Seriously, I'd been trying to get him to do small tasks when he was about two and understanding us, but wouldn't ever, EVER do it. I'd talked with a teacher who mentioned her class listens to her because she asks them politely and other teachers who don't have unruly classes. And so I finally caved and said "...can you please put your dishes in the sink?"
The difference was night and day. Immediately, he picked up his dishes and put them in the sink. Since then, I think we've done an OK job of inviting him to be involved in chores and tasks because anytime he realizes we're working on something the first thing he says is "can I help you?"
Anyway, point is you can learn so much just by paying attention, mindful reflection, careful preparation, and some study mixed in there. And as someone else said, having the humility to acknowledge to your kids' face that you were wrong goes a long way.
The joy of parenting is that we get to learn from the mistakes our parents made with us, while dreaming up ingenious new ways to screw our own kids up.
The key is just to try and do the best you can. Try not to worry too much about what other people are doing.
Your parents were likely just as imperfect and ignorant as you are, albeit in their own ways. If they were able to get you to a point where you've got these kinds of concerns doing it yourself, you've probably turned out ok, and your kids will too.
If it actually bothers you, all the ways you're programming your child without knowing it, check out a book called "I Don't Want To Talk About It: Overcoming The Legacy of Male Depression" by Terry Real.
I think the police example is bad. We're based in the UK and we tell our children that the police are there to help. I don't want my children to grow up scared of the police.
I was actually very interested on the approach, until I realized that it consisted on fabricating awfully violent stories to scare little children as young as 3 years old into behaving properly through fear.
I am pretty sure this approach would be seen by our society as quite damaging to the children mental development.
To be fair, kids like to be scared - and the technique seems to have produced its desired result: adults who are incredibly level headed. I wouldn't try this on my kid, just because I feel that occasionally, anger is appropriate. On the other hand, I don't expect my kid to live in the arctic, where small mistakes or momentary irrationalities can cost lives.
Hansel & Gretel is about parents deliberately leaving their kids in the woods, and then a witch imprisons them, which is eventually resolved by throwing her into the fire.
Little Red Riding Hood is about a wolf that eats a little girl's grandmother.
Snow White only gets to meet the seven dwarfs because her mother-in-law has decided to have her killed.
There are many more examples, which is to say - "our" "own" culture's children stories are not necessarily less violent.
The difference is - the fairy tales are presented as fiction. The stories adults tell you to make you behave are presented as reality.
It's the difference between reading your kids Smurfs and Bible (if you're Christian). I remember understanding the difference pretty early (and wondering why Bible seems like Smurfs but is treated differently).
While I grew up on and love Grimm's fairytales, I am not sure if they are a good example of "our" culture. They have been edited ever since they were trusted to paper to reflect their editors' views on what "our" culture should be. The stern lutheran Grimm brothers themselves actually tuned up the violence in subsequent editions and stripped out the sex and incest (e.g. the devil in the Girl With No Hands was originally her father: try reading that version to your five year old daughter). And later Disney further defanged the stories by removing most of the violence as well.
It's not much different from the Bible, the stories are there to push your fear buttons in order to get you to comply. For children: if you don't behave your parents will abandon you in the woods to deal with the wild animals, for adults: if you don't behave you will burn forever in hell.
My take away is not that people should blindly copy the technique, but draw inspiration on why they work. Yelling is just an other fear method, either by threatening the child by violence (I am loud so I represent danger to you), or threatening by abandonment (I am angry at you and socially might not like you any more if you continue to misbehave). Both can be very damaging to the children mental development.
Which method that is best to get a child not to run over the road without looking is debatable.
I live in Poland (so, the culture is mostly western european with some eastern influences), I was a child in 80s/90s, and my grandma would tell us pretty awful stories to make us behave (looking at them back now they were awful for many reasons :)). Like "don't go near the street or the gypsies will kidnap you".
When you're 6 it might work, but when you're 10 you just learn to ignore whatever she says cause she's clearly telling you bullshit.
I especially remember grandma telling us not to play on a heap of wood planks (probably because you could fall into a hole and break a leg or sth). Her reason was - a "kuna" (weasel-like animal, pretty harmless for people) lives there and will bite us.
There was no internet yet, and we had no books on kuna, so we imagined it like a huge monster:) Later I learnt what's a kuna and laughed it off, but my younger sister refused to go to my grandma house (like 100m from our house) alone because of the wood planks heap and kuna nearby. For like 4 years :) Despite my parents telling her what's kuna and showing her photos and everything :) My parents were pretty angry with grandma because of that :)
I admit I was a dick about that and told my sister additional stories about kuna as well.
I thought the same when I got to this point but I wondered if and how much real damage this does. Fearing things on its own shouldn't be a bad thing. The repelling part is probably that you're lying about what children should fear. Regarding the ocean monster, would it really be less scary for a child to describe in detail the act of drowning, how you last moments have to feel (let's just assume for a moment we can get a 3yo to fully grasp it)?
I think everyone is told a bunch of (in the West, admittedly less dramatic) lies during their childhood to prevent you from doing stupid things. But does that really mess you up in a bad way, or is the average child able to handle this and gradually find out the truth while growing up?
I wonder how much of it is done in a playful tone and how that translates to a lesson rather than raw fear. Or at least fear may not be the primary element at play here.
When a parent says, "If a you walk too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family," the child may partially worry that it is true but suspects that the story is too far out to be believed, especially if the parent tells it in a playful tone. There's an element of fear preventing the child from going too near the ocean, but that element is couched in playfulness.
Fear is not an unhealthy emotion for children. There should be SOME fear that if he runs in the road, he'll get hurt. Or if he climbs somewhere high he may fall. The trick is to not overwhelm the child.
Our society sees little problem with religion being taught to children (I myself would prefer a stronger word—indoctrination).
For me this is not that different.
> "Don't go near the water! It's the sea monster," Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.
"If a child walks too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family," "Then we don't need to yell at a child," Jaw says, "because she is already getting the message."
Quite friendly for me. The message is clear - you will never see us again.
I had a similar story for my year and a half boy:
"Don't go on car pavement alone. It is dangerous!"
"Cars move fast, hit hard, they may not notice children. If that happened you'll never see us again."
He wants an explanation. It helps to make his own judgment... sometimes unexpected like "Why such dangerous things allowed here?"
I hope someday it would remain only in fairy tales.
Edit: please don't upvote this, it detracts from the discussion of the article itself.
Side note: I don't mind that my earlier submission[0] didn't get traction, just happy that the article gets the attention it deserves.
However, I'm curious, because the URLs are completely identical, and I thought HN then treats a submission soon after as an upvote to the earlier submission. Has this changed, or was this new post just out of the time range?
Also, when I submitted it, I was surprised that the title got automatically edited, chopping off the "How". (I submitted it as "How Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger", exactly as this posting, and also the title of the article.) Yet this posting has the original title. Can anyone explain that?
Your submission was 1 day ago, so that explains why it's not treated as a duplicate. Whether the title is shortened or not depends on how you submit it, I think. Did you use the bookmarklet?
No, I think you're right. I recall in the earlier days of HN it would bring up items from days ago when I submitted them. I recall seeing a discussion about this where a mod suggested it's due to the increased volume on the site and how many good posts no longer reach front page.
I did a search on "How Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger" and didn't find anything, hence, I submitted the link. Otherwise I wouldn't have.
I've been to Sri Lanka recently where 70 % of the people are Buddhists. It's a beautiful island, the people are very calm and nice to each other and to Tourists, it was a pleasure to travel around. It's a very safe place, crime and stealing is almost nonexistent. Disagreements are solved in a quite calm way.
And then I got aware that it has one of the highest suicide rates worldwide. How comes?
One issue might be that Sri Lankans do not talk about their feelings. The civil war ended 10 years ago, not talking about what happened very likely has bad effects on mental health.
Another issue could be that hiding aggression might not be healthy either. Studies show that hiding aggression is one possible cause for depressions, which might depend on the society you are living in. (I didn't read those studies but heard them from multiple reliable sources) Being aggressive doesn't mean starting to hit somebody, it can be raising your voice and get your opinion across very clearly.
I'm not sure whether a calm and self-controlled Inuit child would have an easy time in a western Kindergarten, school, or workplace.
Yeah, Sri Lanka for me personally is a sobering reminder that even culture/philosophy considered very peaceful can engage in worst atrocities when pushed enough. People are just people at their core, far from flawless we all crave to be.
You can't see it as a tourist there (at least I couldn't, but I didn't travel to north where most bad stuff happened). But generally this ancient mindset of 'not losing the face' can only lead to misery and desperation down the path, no matter the location. It seems its slowly dying which should be a net gain for societies still harboring it
"Yeah, Sri Lanka for me personally is a sobering reminder that even culture/philosophy considered very peaceful can engage in worst atrocities when pushed enough"
I might not be able to explain properly but I think there is difference in suppressing anger and not getting angry at all. I agree with what you say about suppression but what if that emotion of anger didn't germinate at all? Latter is what this article is referring to. However, you do bring up nice point and it has expanded my understanding too.
Highest suicide rate per "group" in my country is for "young females or a specific religious denomination". I wonder if the high suicide rate in Lanka can also be isolated to some sub group, that usually help in trying to figure out the cause.
In case of the afore mentioned group of girls: they have a lot of pressure on them from family (basically to be "perfect" for some often arranged'ish marriage).
I have several friends that work as psychologist, and the consensus seems to be that while it is unhealthy to not express anger in any way, it is neither a good thing to give in to anger. That is, if someones behaviour is provoking you, it would be good to air your troubles somehow. If you cant talk to the person in question, perhaps talk about it with your friends. But it would not be helpful to pick a fight or scream. Giving in to anger usually leads to more anger.
At least in the U.S. culturally I think we still have a long way to go when it comes to having what some have termed 'difficult conversations'[0]. In essence, confronting people with their behavior but in a way that's respectful and focused on the impact it has on the recipient (me) as opposed to the aggressor. Sure, it may not change their behavior, but processing the experience and the associated emotions - at least in my experience - is more effective than not dealing with them at all.
> ... consensus seems to be that while it is unhealthy to not express anger in any way, it is neither a good thing to give in to anger.
As far as I understand, the best way to deal with anger is never to act on it and distract yourself till it passes.
The thing people talk about as suppressing anger is not actually suppressing. It's more like polishing it, sharpening, watering like a plant, fanning like a flame so it's ready for the time you will act on it. And that's definitely not healthy.
Acting on anger to provide outlet is also bad because it increases probability of getting angry and acting angry in the future.
The best way is actually suppressing anger. Observing, I'm angry. Deciding I'm never gonna act on this anger. So there's no point of holding onto it. Let's do something else till it extinguishes.
Suppressing anger leads to mental health issues. What you're describing isn't suppression (lying to yourself that you're not angry, or ignoring your feelings) - it's a healthy way to deal with it. Suppression is bad for your mental health, but acting impulsively on anger is bad for your social and probably physical wellbeing. What you need to do is feel the anger, acknowledge it, maybe talk it through with the appropriate person. Distracting yourself from it is also known as "bottling up your feelings" and it's a well known cause of problems.
That's not bottling. You just don't pay attention to it and then you forget about what you were angry and forget you even were angry.
You need to acknowledge to yourself that you are angry but only for the purpose of making a decission not to act on it and possibly postpone actions that you being angry might influence adversely.
Talking it through will only increase likelyhood that the memory of being angry will stick with you.
Bottling up your feelings is the other thing I describe where you keep your anger instead of letting it dissolve.
I have found that understanding often diffuses anger.
For example, if you are dangerously cut off by someone on the highway and you speed ahead to yell at them, your blood is boiling with the expectation of a confrontation... until you stop at the next light and realize the person is having a seizure and actually needs help! In that moment your new understanding of the situation melts your anger away very very effectively.
In general, if you practice and train your mind to seek understanding of the circumstances surrounding the behavior that's making you angry, your anger will melt.
Psychologist here. Anger and optimal responses to it is a complicated issue. There is research (involving randomized controlled designs) suggesting that approaches to anger where you "act it out" can actually fuel the fire, like you're suggesting.
However, it's complicated because these studies generally focus on length of emotional response rather than complex, downstream effects. That is, they assume that the goal is to stop anger state; by that assumption, it's better to adopt a sort of distress tolerance approach than to act on it. But what about long-term effects on relationships and communication? Where does one draw the line? Stonewalling and cutting off communication is a strong predictor of relationship dissolution for example, even relative to intense expressive patterns. So if your response is to always approach your anger robotically and to shut it down, does it then lead to passive aggressive responses, which can be even worse?
There's also an important distinction between anger and aggression, which are different and have different associations empirically, even though people tend to conflate the two. This isn't unreasonable, because I'm not sure at what point you draw the line.
As a parent of a toddler, this article had me thinking a lot, and I'm not sure what I think. Lying to your child, for example, is manipulative. Is it better to express your anger or to lie to them and tell them a monster will bite off their fingers? Of course a child who's cognitively not developed enough to understand will become terrified, because they believe it. But is living in real fear of a disfiguring monster over a minor transgression really less aggressive than simply visibly expressing anger? Or is it just a manipulative aggressive response on the part of the parent?
I really don't know the answers to these types of questions. I wish I did.
When I am angry I am self aware enough to wait until the chemicals are gone in order to discuss things. I don't think this is unhealthy in any way. In fact, I usually don't like the feeling of anger and look forward with happiness to the calm that will follow. It is interesting that the original source of anger becomes resolved once the chemicals are gone. I found it interesting that the Inuits do the same thing.
Trauma from the civil war sounds much more plausible than Buddhism or emotional restraint. Twenty-five years of war is bound to leave a generous portion of the population with PTSD and grief of loss. People suffering from PTSD or grief tend to have higher suicide rates in other countries.
Not to sound insensitive but this sounds like a good trade off. If for say in the US there were no crime, everyone got along, no major arguments... but in turn the suicide rate went up 50% (10 to 15 per 100,000) I wouldn't see this as a net negative.
There is also a lot of poverty. And your experience as a tourist does not match mine - Sri Lanka is one of the few places to which I have vowed never to return, specifically because of the pointing, laughing, photo-taking, catcalling, touching etc. my blonde partner had to endure (and this whilst being respectfully dressed with her hair mostly covered), not to mention physical pushing and shoving from locals at tourist sites.
> Studies show that hiding aggression is one possible cause for depressions
Definetly the case for me. I was always proud of my kindness to others and almost complete inability to act in aggressive way — right until I finally went into therapy because of depression-like symptoms (I was never diagnosed with full-on clinical depression, so I abstain from using this term). Turns out, stopping your impulses because of your desire to be "nice" and please everyone around you is NOT the most emotionally healthy thing you could do! It's certainly good for others, but not for yourself.
So, now, in therapy, I re-learn exactly the things that these inuit children learn to avoid. At 30, I train to act out, to raise my voice, to listen to my emotions of anger and frustration and giving them a legitimate outlet, instead of pushing them down and letting them rot somewhere inside (often breaking out in awful passive-agressive ways that I don't even notice).
Your premise is mistaken. Sri Lanka's murder rate is lower than that in the US, but that doesn't make it low by international standards. I doubt that Buddhism has much to do with it. For example, both Israel and Jordan have much lower murder rates.
The premise is that Sri Lanka has unusually low crime and unusually high suicide, and the following argument is trying to explain that. But judged by murder rate (the most consistent crime stat), Sri Lanka doesn't have unusually low crime.
I think it's worth stating that learning to control your emotions is not synonymous with learning to suppress your emotions. The first involves acknowledging the emotion and expressing/discussing it or it's cause if it is warranted the second approach simply ignores both symptom and cause regardless of validity.
the people are very calm and nice to each other and to Tourists, it was a pleasure to travel around. It's a very safe place, crime and stealing is almost nonexistent. Disagreements are solved in a quite calm way.
You may have seen a tourist's version of the island, and have been fortunate enough to not encounter violence or theft. Both are very common. People are very quick to anger on the road. Theft and flouting rules are common. Don't get me wrong, we have many good qualities (for example, we're known for being helpful and hospitable), but calmness is not one of them!
I saw this TED talk by a Rwandan official. He was talking about the western counselors who came to help after the tragic events there. He said something along the lines of: These westerners came and made victims sit alone in cold rooms with them and talk about nothing but the bad things that happened to them -- instead of taking them into the sunlight, being among people, music and happiness. They were horrible, and he had to get rid of them.
I don't think anyone knows everything there is to know about being human. Who does? People often act as if they know everything or at least know better, even when they shouldn't.
Modern Western society, especially American society, seems to put all its attention on the subset of people who have difficulty coping with tragedy. It makes sense that that's where attention will shift as a society becomes prosperous and safe. You can finally begin to optimize on the 10% problems.
But most people have okay coping skills as tragedy was common place for hundreds of thousands of years. Using the same strategies can re-victimize them. Think of PTSD. The problem with PTSD is an inability of the mind to let go--a person is always reliving the moment in terms of stressfulness, if not literal imagery and thoughts. Forcing someone to sit in a room and discuss a tragic experience whose memory of the experience has already, naturally begun to fade into the background is its own tragedy.
About being calm: I agree about the anger on roads. Except for that my impression was a calm and peaceful one -- maybe what you encounter as violent is still OK from my culturally distinct perspective? Do you think there are many 'fights'/arguments where people are shouting in the public, or would such a thing happen at home?
And what is your opinion about the high suicide rate?
You've been quite fortunate. Perhaps you picked the best places and the best times to travel. During rush hour, most people in Colombo are on a hair trigger -- all it takes is a small incident to start a shouting match. In contrast, I recently traveled to Texas, and found Texans to be incredibly chilled out and friendly by comparison. Perhaps it is a cultural perspective.
There are many fights and tense situations, but more in places like inner city Colombo than in Kandy or Galle.
RE: suicide: hard to say. Our alcohol consumption and suicide stats are both extremely high. But even after living here all my life, it's hard to pin down a theory about why this is. My personal belief is that the average Sri Lankan's belief in Karma and astrological fate results in a defeatist attitude. We often hear the phrase "I/he/she probably did something in a past life to deserve this" in reference to tragedy, hardship or misfortune.
> It's a very safe place, crime and stealing is almost nonexistent.
It’s comparable to Russia in crime statistics. It’s not exactly great, but not bad either. I think almost the entire norther Europe are far superior to Sri Lanka. But I guess it is much better than most of India.
With regard to the story-telling approach to discipline...My mother told me that if I didn't brush my teeth that small birds and lizards would come in the night and eat the sugar off my teeth, but also accidentally eat some of the enamel and eventually I would be left with blackened triangular stumps.
That worked pretty well and retained surprising effectiveness even after I was absolutely clear that no such thing would happen.
An excellent read, but my only doubt is whether this is effective because all your peers have been raised this way.
Ie - If someone raises his/her child like this in our western society it might be conflicting for the child to learn how to behave like this at home, and then spend the majority of their time at school where other children behave completely differently.
I certainly recall being raised to never answer back to your adults. And then I saw other kids answering back to their parents (and getting away with it) and then all that upbringing went out the window.
I've been amazed at how well my kids' teachers establish social norms in their classrooms, early in the school year. A single adult can be very effective at establishing an environment that promotes positive social interaction and behavior.
I am not sure if this isolated anecdata or not, but I watched my daughter absolutely flourish when we put her in daycare. She barely could sit up on her own when we put her in. There were some "older kids" in the class that could stand and move around while holding on to the rail. By the next week or two, she was sitting up, and attempting to stand by pulling her self up. I am convinced it is because she watched the other little ones doing it constantly. If she stayed home all day with us, I am not sure where she would have learned this from.
My boy just started spending some time with the older group in the last two weeks so the actual group change in a week is not too brutal.
He went from being a bit lazy and not really trying to walk (he did stand up by holding on to things, and shuffled sideways) nor really say actual words, to trying to say a couple new words, standing up in place and trotting around the house all the time.
I did 2 years in elementary teaching back in uni, one thing that stuck to my mind is that imitation is one of the main learning strategies in childhood, up to high school age where discovering their own individuality takes over a bit.
I can assure you, should your baby daughter have stayed to grow at home, you'd have seen this same development. It comes from a natural drive to explore that all babies have. It's a constant adaptation to the environment, to parents, to new body, new everything.
As for the daycare factor, you could sure think of an equivalent 'beam' in your home. That could've been a chair, a something 'interesting' higher up, say, mommy's voice coming from above - anything!
Babies find the ways. Unless the home environment is devoid of attractions and baby is confined to safety of an infinite carpeted floor surrounded by soundproof glass. That's a sci-fi kind.
In my experience (anecdata abounds in this thread :P ), everyone here is right! Kids act like their friends in school, and then once in adulthood become more like their parents than they often would like to admit ... so the stuff you teach them as you raise them gets embedded deep, and resurfaces later on (arguably when it really matters ... school is so short in the grand timescale)
Also age is a big factor, grade 2 is a lot different than 4, when kids start to be focused on being cool. My kid complained about this specifically, because it was less fun.
>Kids take social cues from their peers, not their parents
How do you figure? Maybe it depends on the person but every interaction I have and have had with people has been framed by the lens of my relationships with family, not my peers.
I don't have all the cites handy, but I highly recommend the book NurtureShock. It's evidence-based parenting. Twin studies and adoption studies show that children's personalities are about 50% genetic and 50% from peers. Adopted children reflect very little of their parents' personalities.
I'm probably projecting my own experiences onto your wife, but I always get annoyed with people who hear something like "be dispassionate and try to be as logical as possible" and immediately discount it- primarily because I notice they've never tried it.
I used to make a lot of emotional decisions based on my gut feelings and intuition, and it took me a great deal of work to get over that and to start thinking about the "optimal course of action" whenever I had important decisions to make. My life has drastically improved, and all of my relationships are more stable and my goals have proved to be more attainable.
But when I try to preach this to people, a lot of them give the same reaction your wife did- and I get annoyed, because I observe them constantly having their feelings hurt, getting frustrated, missing their goals, and feeling stressed out, because they're operating off of anything but "optimal course of action reasoning".
I think the reason why this type of attitude gets mocked is that it seems robotic and condescending to emotion, as if emotion is not a real, legitimate source of information. It shouldn't be the only source of information (and maybe that's what you're getting at). But the idea that once emotion enters the picture, the discussion is no longer "rational" is stupid to me. Maybe that is a straw man.
Well, I think that emotion isn't really a legitimate source of information, primarily because it's so subjective. How many relationships dissolve because one party is connecting their experience of an emotion to the actions of the other party, but it's all a complete misunderstanding?
Emotion serves as an indicator, but not as justifiable evidence or information. I still get angry, fearful, heartbroken, elated, etc. but I now spend a great deal of energy trying to make sure that I don't attach my experience of an emotion to a belief that the emotion gives me real, trustworthy information about the true state of the world.
I thought a great deal about this while I was reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, which I highly recommend.
I don't see why we should go from "emotion shouldn't be considered an infallible source of info about the world outside our consciousness", to "emotion isn't a legitimate source of information." There are many situations in life that aren't accessible by pure reason, such as basically all aspects of social life.
Yeah. It's just another tool. Emotion works quickly over large and/or vague sources of information using heuristics. Sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn't.
Some emotion is a tool for sensing the world, but other emotion is the process of our actual being. It is truth in itself. If something makes me feel bad, that's a fact. Maybe it can change, maybe it can't. It's not a heuristic, it's not judging or discerning anything, it just is in itself the essence and existence of my being.
isn't emotion basically system1 in thinking fast and slow? optimized for making snap decisions yes but far from being an illegitimate source of information. there are a lot of examples where system1 gives you the wrong answer, but IIRC there are also plenty of examples where system1 is exactly right especially when there is time pressure. the book "Blink" is basically its antithesis offering examples where trusting system1 leads to better outcomes than overthinking it with system2.
Emotion is not a real legitimate source of information, it's an inspiration to tell the brain to pay more attention to something and then work it out logically (like when you have a bad feeling about something), but to make any non trivial decision entirely out of emotion is simply foolish.
Emotion is not a real legitimate source of information, it's an inspiration to tell the brain to pay more attention to something and then work it out logically
Technically that is information! Like, what if instead of feelings, there was this little light and slot on your chest, and at the appropriate time, the light would flash and a little slip of paper came out saying, "It's time to pay more attention to something and then work it out logically!" Wouldn't that be information?
About this I'm right. Technically right. The best kind of right! (Irony left to he reader. Please interpret in the cheeriest possible fashion.)
Very recognizable. Still, I think the annoyed reactions have more to do with people in general not liking being preached to. In my experience many people take offence with advice. They want to find out for themselves, even if that means getting hurt in the process.
Point in case, I have a floundering friend who won't take business advice from me or that of a mutual friend of ours, despite the fact that we both founded and operated successful businesses. Frustrating.
That's a good point. Considering I only really ever bring this topic up when there's something to get emotional about, it probably comes off as maddeningly condescending.
> by being dispassionate and using logic to reason the optimal course of action.
Even with all the logic in the world, it is very hard for most people to overcome their own biases (because they are not always obvious to oneself). So, not sure if it's a good rule to set.
Agreed. The most charitable view of the GP’s definition, is that few decisions are “intelligent”. In a less charitable view, it’s equating rationalizing with being rational.
I once told my daughter that intelligent decisions in life are made by being dispassionate and using logic to reason the optimal course of action.
My wife then snorted and said "says who?". Parenting fail :(
Not necessarily. I think that little story is very instructive. A smart child could well synthesize it thus: There is value in intelligent decisions made by dispassionate logic. Not everyone is going to recognize it, though.
Reality is difficult and messy. If we smart people are truly the smart people, then it behooves us to deal with it gracefully and win. If we end up just railing against the unfairness of the universe and all of the idiots around us, what does that really say?
One of my friends once made this observation about Ward Cunningham. He was convinced Ward was one of the smartest men alive, because he came to realize that Ward always managed to learn something, no matter how smart or how stupid the people were he was interacting with.
"I once told my daughter that intelligent decisions in life are made by being dispassionate and using logic to reason the optimal course of action"
This is the 'most HN' comment of the day.
Maybe someone should start collecting these gems.
On a serious note - I think this is inherently about managing emotions, responses, triggers etc. 'in the moment'. It's ultimately a social issue, not one which can be driven with data as we would like.
On a serious note - I think this is inherently about managing emotions, responses, triggers etc. 'in the moment'. It's ultimately a social issue, not one which can be driven with data as we would like.
It's driven by data which was processed by our ancestors, even before they were fully sentient. There's no sense in not considering that "data as we would like." It's as much a part of us as anything else.
I once told my daughter that "everything bad that has happened to you in your life is your fault". She ran away crying.
I meant this in the context of things not being inherently good or bad, its all your perspective, which is under your control.
I was trying to distill everything I have learned from meditation, Buddhism, stoicism... but I'm not great at communicating, and even if I was she isn't ready for some of the concepts.
I once told my daughter that "everything bad that has happened to you in your life is your fault". She ran away crying.
On one hand, that's a general truism. On the other hand, if she's young enough, it's not that much her fault yet, and the injustice of it might be a little much so soon. On the gripping hand, it's good she ran away crying. It indicates she really understands the magnitude of the situation.
I was trying to distill everything I have learned from meditation, Buddhism, stoicism... but I'm not great at communicating, and even if I was she isn't ready for some of the concepts.
This was one of those times when you should show, not tell.
In my experience, you acquire (i.a.) your behaviors, your values, and in particular your coping mechanism to most degree from your parents (or whoever raised you).
Your peers never have enough lever on you. The way kids look up to and depend on the love of their main care-giver(s) is irreplaceable.
I'm not talking about superficial things, like swearing, walking, etc.
It is sometimes frightening to realize how much of you is "just acquired". The way you treat people, the way you react to situations, the way you talk to your loved ones when you're angry. Once you realize there would be other ways: shocking.
I saw this article pop up elsewhere on the web and am a bit surprised all the reactions here seem to take the article at face value because of its holistic content.
And as some other people on the Internet have pointed out [0]: spanking and physical punishments seem to be a big part of Inuit child rearing [1]. In fact, modern studies about child and adult abuse show concerning figures [2]
This is the best and simplest description I have seen of parenting. Do no get emotional. Describe, explain, reason, rationalise. Beautiful. Such timeless advice.
Bingo. The best proven way to control anger is to train your mind to seek understanding of what's going on in those tense situations.
Like anything, you need to practice training yourself at handling anger.
When my kids get angry, I teach them to ask questions. "Why?!!" "Why didn't they let me play with them?" "Why does my sister always get to use my toys?!" "Why does it make me feel this way?!" "What can I do to prevent this in the future?!"
The most understanding you can gain during a confrontation, the better you train your mind to react in that way rather than in our following our instincts. We are, by default, animals, and anger is part of our fight-flight response - but it's something we can reprogram with practice. ...especially if you start with a young malleable mind.
> With little kids, you often think they're pushing your buttons, but that's not what's going on.
Maybe it's true for Inuit children, but my own kids are certainly not like that. They know all about my buttons and how to push them from early infancy.
It surprises me that so many here are praising or even envying inuit parents and their their child raising habits when suicide rates, depression and substance abuse amongs inuits and their children are so high?
I wish we'd stop fetishizing cultures and start giving people a more realistic and broad perspective of cultures, even if it doesn't align with our agenda. The grass isn't always greener on the side.
Also, we have been teaching kids to "control their anger" for decades now. I wonder if that has anything to do with the rising suicide rates in the US.
I was on board with the article until they mentioned checking for ear wax to see if a child is listening, and telling stories of special child eating monsters.
In a society that relies on the group for survival, one can imagine that a child learns pretty quickly that they have to get along or they will perish.
What the story does not tell us is what happens to children with behavioural or psychological issues.
The article goes into great detail about the social aspect and culture but I wonder if there is an environmental aspect too.
In such a hostile environment anger and violence would be a threat to the Inuit tribes
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 258 ms ] threadThe article praises the Inuit for a "no scolding, no timeouts" form of child-rearing, talks about how "the culture views scolding — or even speaking to children in an angry voice — as inappropriate...even if the child hits you or bites you, there's no raising your voice" and quotes Inuit elders as saying that "they're upset about something, and you have to figure out what it is". It says that this is why adult Inuit have "an extraordinary ability to control their anger".
I Googled some studies about Inuit to see if I could find anything that didn't fit with this narrative, and came across this article on how Inuit leaders are protesting Canada's anti-child-abuse policy, because they say it is too harsh on traditional Inuit child-rearing practices like spanking. They complain that child protective services are unfairly removing children from Inuit homes, because they don't understand that Inuit tradition permits forms of physical discipline that might not be acceptable in broader Canadian society.
I also found this collection of interviews with Inuit elders where they describe how things were in the traditional old days. When asked about discipline, Elder Tipuula:
"If it was a boy, it was his father’s responsibility to discipline him. If he only wanted to spank him once, then he would only spank him once. He would behave for a while, and if he started to misbehave again, the father could spank him a second time.We women took care of our daughters. Some children reached adulthood without ever needing a spanking. Some of them needed to be spanked, and would thank us when they were older for correcting them. Parents would spank children to make them aware of things they had not been paying attention to. Some children were spanked when they did not deserve it and this was bad for a child’s development. When they realized they did not deserve a spanking, they became angry. Children who deserved to be spanked grew up being thankful for the discipline they received. Children who did not deserve to be spanked grew up to become angry people."
Elder Ilisapi adds:
"Some of us tended to take out our frustration on our children when it was our husband who we were angry at. Even if the child had done nothing wrong, if he made one small mistake, we took out our frustration on him. If children were treated like that,they could be damaged. It was their spouse they were angry at in the first place but they took their frustration out on their child. That is not the way to treat a child. It is not good."
Modern-day studies are downright appalling. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708004/ is studying Inuit suicides, but finds that 27.5% of the non-suicidal placebo group stated they were abused as children. goo.gl/gX4hFi says that 86% of Canadian Inuit women experience verbal abuse, and 48% experience physical abuse in the first postpartum year. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/ijch.v61i2.17443 finds that 48% of Inuit in Greenland report having been abused, about three times the Western population they compare this with.
(some of these are adult abuse statistics rather than child abuse statistics, but if adult Inuit never get angry or act impulsively, why are they doing all this abusing?)
To be fair, the Inuit are a very diverse population, and maybe some bands are unusually lenient parents and others are unusually strict (but the anthropologist in the article studied in northern ...
The "teaching through storytelling" thing rubs me up the wrong way, too. We yell at our kids if they deserve it, but we do our best never to lie to them.
And of course, any time someone expounds on "the" way to raise or discipline children, you know they're talking through their hat, because children vary wildly in terms of how they behave and what will work with them, even within the same family. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Fear, induced by having made that mistake and paying the price, or induced by elevating your voice, does seem to work, albeit imperfectly.
So one time I was at the house alone with the kid. I turned my back on him for a couple minutes, he came walking into the living room from the kitchen carrying a butcher knife almost as long as his leg. I yelled at him got that knife away from him. When the mom got home I told her the story and she laughed and said 'oh Damien!' (kid's name was Damien)
When I told my friend later he sort of buried his head in his hands and said something about how hard it was and he was always mean to the kid and having to yell at him because basically he was the only adult in his life that kept him in check. Probably my friend should have found a better way of handling Damien, but on the other hand some situations are more difficult than others.
Four years old can be taught to cut soft vegetables under close supervision. However, if you constantly yell at four years old, four years old will learn to ignore everything except yelling.
Not that occasional yelling harms that kid or something. But, yelling often is more of adult emotional reaction, not a rational reaction to real acute danger.
Not that I never yelled at kids. I did. But this reaction on that situation sound like that.
So, he was probably wrong in how he handled it, but it was quite heartfelt what he said, he was handling it as well as he could, and perhaps that was badly. It was hard for me to second guess him under the circumstance.
A 4-year-old is old enough to know what they are and aren't allowed to grab, in terms of common household items.
> However, if you constantly yell at four years old, four years old will learn to ignore everything except yelling.
If you consistently show a four-year-old that only yelling will be followed by physical intervention, then they will learn to ignore everything except yelling. If you consistently show a four-year-old that a quiet "I'm going to count to three... one... TWO..." will be followed by physical intervention, then they will learn to pay attention to that.
The default attitude of most four-year-olds is "make me" and if you let them know what will result in you making them do the thing, they will pay attention.
"Santa sees all, so behave"
"If you misbehave you go to hell"
"Don't sit too close to the TV or you'll go cross-eyed"
"Masturbating makes you go blind"
"Respect your elders because they are more mature/knowledgeable"
Basically we constantly lie to our children.
How'd your child deal with their friends believing in Santa and them knowing it's a hoax at that early age?
- What do you think, dear?
Followed by discussion of the evidence... if all goes well they learn to use their own judgement and cope with coming independently to their own conclusion in opposition to 99% of their peers...
And let's face it, Santa works pretty well as a cryptid alongside the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny... :)
So we still do presents from Santa at Christmas, Easter Bunny baskets, and Tooth Fairy money, but they know it's us doing it. So far it still seems to have enough magic of anticipation that they enjoy it.
and
"A lot of other kids really enjoy the Santa game. So don't spoil it for them. Like when you're playing being a pirate captain you don't like it if another kid says you're too young to be captain or your cardboard pegleg is fake..."
Kids more easily accept games and makebelieve, and happily hop into different games.
(2 kids, 4 3/4 and 2)
The implication is strongly that a group of people, identified by name, has what is generally regarded as a successful way of teaching kids to control their anger. Again, based on the title.
The narrative of the piece builds this up with pieces of evidence all cherry picked to support how successful they are. This post, on the other hand, asks about contradicting evidence.
So, agreed that you can't just assume this parenting style is bad from the contradicting evidence. I question if you can truly assume it is good from the positive evidence. Random walks and all.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4696457/
Some people call it cultural genocide.
Basically we tried as hard as we could to "take the indian out of the indian."
They would come into villages, as late as the sixties and take all the children away from their parents and put them in "residential schools" where they were beaten for speaking their language.
Thousands died in these institutions.
So perhaps another way to read it, is from the positive side. That is to say that some native people of Canada can remember their traditions and are attempting to practise them despite a hundred and fifty years of persecution.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
Alcoholism is not an Inuit cultural problem because Inuit culture predates the introduction of alcohol by thousands of years.
Unemployment is not cultural because people living off the land are not unemployed.
And hitting kids is something picked up from forcible re-education in Indian Schools where every aspect of the original culture was forbidden by generous use of beatings.
There is a tendency to quickly believe anything that treats our culture as innocent by blaming the victim, to easily believe anything contrary to what "rubs us the wrong way". I believe this is a dangerous fallacy we should resist.
(One phrase that sometimes helps me avoid bad habits is telling myself: "You've been down this road. The consequences won't be good!")
The first one are stories to prevent something. These stories are completely made up, but put fear in the kids to they behave as they should.
The second one is looking from a distance (or a 3rd person) at yourself.
I wonder if religion falls into the first bucket. "Behave or you will go to eternal hell". Lots of people already figured out that it's all made up. What is not clear is that, although made up, it could still have a lot of benefits.
The second technique is probably what meditation and NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) do. Take a step back and look at yourself, your emotions, your behaviors, as an observer.
One for example, is conflict resolution from a past event. You had a conflict with someone, you feel treated unfairly etc.
This exercise lets you go back to that situation in memory, as yourself. Next step is to go back as an observer of yourself, looking at what you felt, etc. Then you are an observer of the whole thing. And finally, you go back as the other person, trying to understand why they acted like that, trying to understand how they felt.
After such a thing, a certain "wrong" situation can suddenly become way better, by understanding the other person and their drives. Understanding what other people feel, stepping in their shoes, can be very beneficial. Stepping "outside" of yourself and observing your feelings can also give a lot of insight.
So that was basically what I was referring to.
I agree with 1. Religion definitely seems to falls into the same bucket. If I were to use my culture's version of the "long john" story, it would feel totally religious to almost everyone else. I don't see this working out in urban society today. If we're in a public or friend's place with kids and we try this kind of stories there, the immediate reaction from everyone would be horror. "What kind of BS are you feeding your kids with! Don't bring any of that near my kids!"
Religion... if you believe the tenets of your religion it most likely isn’t understood to be _just_ a made-up story (even if others think it is). As an example, all the Christians I personally know didn’t simply believe a story about some guy named Jesus and thus started living in fear of his judgement. They believe the bible as a historical record, and live in a way that Jesus taught, and in a way that brings glory to Jesus. No fear. In fact, they might get even say the bible helps with something like nlp since it is God who has “stepped back” and looked at human emotions, behaviours, etc. I guess that comparison falls short of how to deal with trauma-induced behaviour.
I wish I could personally meet a cultural Christian (someone who is Christian only because everyone else is), the kind that atheists or anthropologists or secularists point to as their own example of someone following a made-up story, and ask them why they believe it/align their lives to _just_ a story.
Aren't most religious people like this? If you are born in Pakistan, chances are pretty high that you believe in Islam. Cambodia? Probably a Buddhist.
All Christians that I know, are born out of a Christian family. I see culture as the main driver of religion. Or do you expect if you take a Cambodian baby and place them in Pakistan, that they will grow up to be Buddhist?
I'm an atheist, and almost all people around me are atheists. What a coincidence! My wife is from a foreign country. All people around here are dedicated Christians. And guess what, she is also a Christian! What a double coincidence!
If he is following the story closely he wouldn't admit that he thinks it's fake as that's against the rules
I assume though that this is indeed only a thing that can be solved in interaction, possibly by talking more also. Maybe reading stories helps though. :) I heard in a Podcast that when you read/watch/hear stories till the end - and not stop when it gets emotionally uncomfortable - you won't miss out on the solution of the story.
It's surprising to me that this is being portrayed as some kind of discovery/revelation.
My father would get very frustrated and violently angry when things didn't go according to plan, particularly in the garage when repairing something under time pressure. It took me over a decade living away from that environment to completely shed some of the same behaviors I had picked up just being around it.
Nowadays there's an Isaac Asimov quote I tell myself whenever such situations emerge:
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - and I'll add "are you incompetent?"
The way I read it, discovery is not "behavior is reflection of environment" but how to create a good environment.
Scary.
That being said I'd consciously not move to an average US town as I think there's too much fear spread, it doesn't fit my own culture of giving children space/responsibility as early as possible. Depending on community reaction that can be impossible - not just in many parts of the US but also in Southern Europe for example. There tends to be much more support from the wider family there however.
Another local optimum I've seen in Japan where almost everyone is incredibly well behaved but almost no-one learns to think outside the box. Eh. I say choose what you think works and try to choose a community supporting it, within the options you have.
1. Kids are more spread out. A suburban neighborhood is huge and fewer people are having kids. The people that have kids will have fewer of them. For kids to coagulate together for playtime, you need higher density.
2. American roads are fucking deadly. Bigger cars at faster speeds with ever less attentive drivers. Cars are by far the number one killer of children and American voters do fuck all to fix it. If we banned all cars, I'd probably let my 2 year old mostly wander around by himself until dinner.
3. Dual working parents plus shitty workplace policies mean there are just fewer eyes out there. Even in the old days, "Free Range" didn't mean Lord of the Flies. It meant the kids roamed around but there was always an adult nearby, even if not in any official capacity.
A combination of 1, 2, and 3 makes for American parents structuring a kids' life around schleping them to various scheduled events and places. Even when a kid gets older, they've never developed the habits to do it for themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah-passes-f...
Just to give an idea where I'm from:
* in my home country (one of the highest GDP/capita, so we're not talking poor&rural), children are walking alone or in unaccompanied groups to kindergarden at age 5-6. if parents try and drive them they're often scolded by school authorities, they're supposed to handle it by themselves.
* in Japan (just another example that I know well), children walk to school at age 5-6, accompanied by a 1-3 year older sempai that explicitely takes over the responsibility for younger colleagues. There's also people taking the responsibility for a given street corner at a defined time in the morning, watching out for the youngins a bit (but it's not necessarily their own). Again, people who drive their own are typically scolded by society.
* after school, children in both countries typically go do other activities on their own, like go to football club or in case of Japan do some school club activity. Curfew time is typically before dark or around 5-6pm.
* from time to time there tends to be an accident or case of violence/murder against children that might have been avoided without this culture of letting them run. people are outraged against the person who did it, but culture of self responsibility is not questioned and life goes on. risk is typically 1/1 million or lower (relatively safe drivers, low levels of violence).
No one is scared to let their children out because of violence or murder. That’s silly news media fear mongering unless you live in a bad area.
How close is the kindergarten to your house?
Contrast my experience nearly 60 years ago in a small US town of ~35,000:
Once I had a bicycle I had almost complete freedom of movement. My buddy and I would cycle everywhere we could within about a 20-mile radius, out into the countryside, to the rivers and into the downtown urban area on our own. We also had large forests nearby and would wander afoot into those forests and stay out for half a day with no worry by us or our parents. To get to certain woods, we might have to cross private property and go through wooden fences that some owners had erected, but there was almost always a loose piece of fence "left unrepaired" to pass through (if not, then we climbed over the top). We were good Boy Scouts and always left things as good or better than we found them, and no one ever stopped us or threatened us.
Except other kids! In forests other groups of children sometimes might view us as hostile, perhaps to protect a "fort" (essentially a foxhole and a dirt pile) they had built out in the woods or who felt this was "their territory", and who might rain down clods of dirt upon us with little warning. We would parlay around it and if that didn't work, we were both pretty accurate with dirt clods ourselves and learned to keep moving so as to be difficult targets.
Today I get the impression most US-raised children are restricted to the house, the back yard (even the front yard is too dangerous) and adult-accompanied trips. So sad.
Kids nowadays wait for the school bus with their parents, usually in their parents cars.
What's "locally" and not globally optimal about working together as a group vs everyone going their own way? The answer isn't obvious, and ultimately it's probably impossible to compare; we can't run A/B tests on planets.
1. almost everyone doesn't think outside the box -> if just a couple of people do it, there can be big breakthroughs once the group has been convinced, because then suddenly everyone pulls on the same string.
2. post WW2 Japan was a different beast from what it is now. I generally find there's quite a generational difference between people growing up after the war and 20-somethings now. not unlike the US, but for different reasons and more intense, they had to rebuild a whole country.
Best delivered while the car is still at speed for maximum frustration. (Also best when the mood is already light.)
I tend to think that as long as I can say to my kid that I am honestly proud of them, I know me and my partner haven't screwed up.
Small changes in the way you use language help make such mental shifts possible. The positive outcomes make you want to do them more and more. I wish I had learnt this stuff at a younger age though.
My wife constantly reminds me that what I learnt from how to deal with my kid, has made me deal with adults way better. So there is that advantage too :)
First up, just accepting that I'm not not going to be perfect and there are going to be times when I take the easy way out (like this morning when I just stuck the TV on for them while I got things done). No one is perfect and most kids do fine. Expecting to be perfect is like people who crash out of a diet after one day where they fail to stick to it. Be kind to yourself. Do what you can when you can. Sometimes I will have the time and energy to go all deep and meaningful with my kids, and sometimes it's just a quick "stop hitting your sister or I'm selling your trainset".
Secondly, when I do make the most of the good times, it tends to pay off later. It's like taking the hit when we did sleep training with my youngest. It was hard work for a couple of days, but the end result was totally worth it. Same goes for stuff like this, sometimes you just get a breakthrough when the kid "gets it" and from then on they are just a little easier.
Finally, sometimes I'm going to be grumpy, stressed or tired (probably at the same time), and I'm going to snap, or lose my temper a bit from time to time, like most normal people. But I then make a point of saying "I'm sorry I didn't mean to snap at you, I'm just very tired/stressed". I've found my 4yo is pretty receptive to that, he gets it. It's good for kids to see you owning up to your own mistakes and understanding why. Recognising you've done something wrong, owning it, and apologising is a really important skill for kids. So much of the crap in the world is caused by people just not being prepared to accept when they are wrong and owning their mistakes and failures, but doubling down and digging in.
In short, don't take all these "perfect partent" stories too much to heart, most of them make them seem more straight-forward and perfect than they really are (and there is a smell of "look at the mystical native" about a lot of them that I think clouds the narative). But there are often good things to learn from them. Every kid is different so having a wider set of ideas to try is always great.
Parenting is always a series of trade offs. On one hand maybe I am not teaching him how to self regulate and go to sleep. On the other he gets an extra hour of sleep. The reality is there is probably a better solution that I haven’t thought of but there is only so much time to research and explore each little issue that comes along!
I only recently figured out how to phrase it, you can be "firm" without being "strict". You don't have to be a shouty monster to have limits, boundaries or firm ideas over what is acceptable behaviour. Kids seem to like consistency, they like knowing what's what, that doesn't mean you have to be horrible about it.
We're all making this stuff up as we go along, and every child and situation is different though, so you've got to go with what works for your kids.
My practice is to reflect on when things like this happen. We have one 3yo son but issues do arise where we get upset, and reflecting on them and preparing myself for the next time helps me address what he needs to not do whatever it is that upset me, and for me to not get upset which makes him upset.
I guess it's not so strange now but when I started parenting I figured my parents' approach would be best, like expecting kids to do their work because it's basically their job.
What I didn't expect is how powerful the word "please" is.
Seriously, I'd been trying to get him to do small tasks when he was about two and understanding us, but wouldn't ever, EVER do it. I'd talked with a teacher who mentioned her class listens to her because she asks them politely and other teachers who don't have unruly classes. And so I finally caved and said "...can you please put your dishes in the sink?"
The difference was night and day. Immediately, he picked up his dishes and put them in the sink. Since then, I think we've done an OK job of inviting him to be involved in chores and tasks because anytime he realizes we're working on something the first thing he says is "can I help you?"
Anyway, point is you can learn so much just by paying attention, mindful reflection, careful preparation, and some study mixed in there. And as someone else said, having the humility to acknowledge to your kids' face that you were wrong goes a long way.
The key is just to try and do the best you can. Try not to worry too much about what other people are doing.
Your parents were likely just as imperfect and ignorant as you are, albeit in their own ways. If they were able to get you to a point where you've got these kinds of concerns doing it yourself, you've probably turned out ok, and your kids will too.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
- "Don't do this or the police will arrest you".
- "eat you yogurt or that kid over there is going to eat it".
Isn't this fearmongering?
Interesting to note, this is the exact same conclusion Louis Rossman had come to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRwuu0u3UFA
I am pretty sure this approach would be seen by our society as quite damaging to the children mental development.
Hansel & Gretel is about parents deliberately leaving their kids in the woods, and then a witch imprisons them, which is eventually resolved by throwing her into the fire.
Little Red Riding Hood is about a wolf that eats a little girl's grandmother.
Snow White only gets to meet the seven dwarfs because her mother-in-law has decided to have her killed.
There are many more examples, which is to say - "our" "own" culture's children stories are not necessarily less violent.
It's the difference between reading your kids Smurfs and Bible (if you're Christian). I remember understanding the difference pretty early (and wondering why Bible seems like Smurfs but is treated differently).
Which method that is best to get a child not to run over the road without looking is debatable.
When you're 6 it might work, but when you're 10 you just learn to ignore whatever she says cause she's clearly telling you bullshit.
I especially remember grandma telling us not to play on a heap of wood planks (probably because you could fall into a hole and break a leg or sth). Her reason was - a "kuna" (weasel-like animal, pretty harmless for people) lives there and will bite us.
There was no internet yet, and we had no books on kuna, so we imagined it like a huge monster:) Later I learnt what's a kuna and laughed it off, but my younger sister refused to go to my grandma house (like 100m from our house) alone because of the wood planks heap and kuna nearby. For like 4 years :) Despite my parents telling her what's kuna and showing her photos and everything :) My parents were pretty angry with grandma because of that :)
I admit I was a dick about that and told my sister additional stories about kuna as well.
I think everyone is told a bunch of (in the West, admittedly less dramatic) lies during their childhood to prevent you from doing stupid things. But does that really mess you up in a bad way, or is the average child able to handle this and gradually find out the truth while growing up?
I wonder how much of it is done in a playful tone and how that translates to a lesson rather than raw fear. Or at least fear may not be the primary element at play here.
When a parent says, "If a you walk too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family," the child may partially worry that it is true but suspects that the story is too far out to be believed, especially if the parent tells it in a playful tone. There's an element of fear preventing the child from going too near the ocean, but that element is couched in playfulness.
Fear is not an unhealthy emotion for children. There should be SOME fear that if he runs in the road, he'll get hurt. Or if he climbs somewhere high he may fall. The trick is to not overwhelm the child.
Quite friendly for me. The message is clear - you will never see us again.
I had a similar story for my year and a half boy: "Don't go on car pavement alone. It is dangerous!" "Cars move fast, hit hard, they may not notice children. If that happened you'll never see us again."
He wants an explanation. It helps to make his own judgment... sometimes unexpected like "Why such dangerous things allowed here?"
I hope someday it would remain only in fairy tales.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/death-suicide-...
Side note: I don't mind that my earlier submission[0] didn't get traction, just happy that the article gets the attention it deserves.
However, I'm curious, because the URLs are completely identical, and I thought HN then treats a submission soon after as an upvote to the earlier submission. Has this changed, or was this new post just out of the time range?
Also, when I submitted it, I was surprised that the title got automatically edited, chopping off the "How". (I submitted it as "How Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger", exactly as this posting, and also the title of the article.) Yet this posting has the original title. Can anyone explain that?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19387122
And then I got aware that it has one of the highest suicide rates worldwide. How comes? One issue might be that Sri Lankans do not talk about their feelings. The civil war ended 10 years ago, not talking about what happened very likely has bad effects on mental health. Another issue could be that hiding aggression might not be healthy either. Studies show that hiding aggression is one possible cause for depressions, which might depend on the society you are living in. (I didn't read those studies but heard them from multiple reliable sources) Being aggressive doesn't mean starting to hit somebody, it can be raising your voice and get your opinion across very clearly. I'm not sure whether a calm and self-controlled Inuit child would have an easy time in a western Kindergarten, school, or workplace.
You can't see it as a tourist there (at least I couldn't, but I didn't travel to north where most bad stuff happened). But generally this ancient mindset of 'not losing the face' can only lead to misery and desperation down the path, no matter the location. It seems its slowly dying which should be a net gain for societies still harboring it
Same for Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge.
In case of the afore mentioned group of girls: they have a lot of pressure on them from family (basically to be "perfect" for some often arranged'ish marriage).
[0]There's a good book on this subject called "Difficult Conversations": https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...
As far as I understand, the best way to deal with anger is never to act on it and distract yourself till it passes.
The thing people talk about as suppressing anger is not actually suppressing. It's more like polishing it, sharpening, watering like a plant, fanning like a flame so it's ready for the time you will act on it. And that's definitely not healthy.
Acting on anger to provide outlet is also bad because it increases probability of getting angry and acting angry in the future.
The best way is actually suppressing anger. Observing, I'm angry. Deciding I'm never gonna act on this anger. So there's no point of holding onto it. Let's do something else till it extinguishes.
You need to acknowledge to yourself that you are angry but only for the purpose of making a decission not to act on it and possibly postpone actions that you being angry might influence adversely.
Talking it through will only increase likelyhood that the memory of being angry will stick with you.
Bottling up your feelings is the other thing I describe where you keep your anger instead of letting it dissolve.
For example, if you are dangerously cut off by someone on the highway and you speed ahead to yell at them, your blood is boiling with the expectation of a confrontation... until you stop at the next light and realize the person is having a seizure and actually needs help! In that moment your new understanding of the situation melts your anger away very very effectively.
In general, if you practice and train your mind to seek understanding of the circumstances surrounding the behavior that's making you angry, your anger will melt.
What I do is I try to keep myself from building larger narrative around it with malicious reckless idiot drivers as the villains.
Then each instance of anger lingers usually for roughly a day and then gets forgotten.
However, it's complicated because these studies generally focus on length of emotional response rather than complex, downstream effects. That is, they assume that the goal is to stop anger state; by that assumption, it's better to adopt a sort of distress tolerance approach than to act on it. But what about long-term effects on relationships and communication? Where does one draw the line? Stonewalling and cutting off communication is a strong predictor of relationship dissolution for example, even relative to intense expressive patterns. So if your response is to always approach your anger robotically and to shut it down, does it then lead to passive aggressive responses, which can be even worse?
There's also an important distinction between anger and aggression, which are different and have different associations empirically, even though people tend to conflate the two. This isn't unreasonable, because I'm not sure at what point you draw the line.
As a parent of a toddler, this article had me thinking a lot, and I'm not sure what I think. Lying to your child, for example, is manipulative. Is it better to express your anger or to lie to them and tell them a monster will bite off their fingers? Of course a child who's cognitively not developed enough to understand will become terrified, because they believe it. But is living in real fear of a disfiguring monster over a minor transgression really less aggressive than simply visibly expressing anger? Or is it just a manipulative aggressive response on the part of the parent?
I really don't know the answers to these types of questions. I wish I did.
When I am angry I am self aware enough to wait until the chemicals are gone in order to discuss things. I don't think this is unhealthy in any way. In fact, I usually don't like the feeling of anger and look forward with happiness to the calm that will follow. It is interesting that the original source of anger becomes resolved once the chemicals are gone. I found it interesting that the Inuits do the same thing.
Carl Sagan Dragon fallacy (1) reincarnation may be as real as not existing. Buddhism was mainly a way to solve India caste problem.
(1) Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World
Definetly the case for me. I was always proud of my kindness to others and almost complete inability to act in aggressive way — right until I finally went into therapy because of depression-like symptoms (I was never diagnosed with full-on clinical depression, so I abstain from using this term). Turns out, stopping your impulses because of your desire to be "nice" and please everyone around you is NOT the most emotionally healthy thing you could do! It's certainly good for others, but not for yourself.
So, now, in therapy, I re-learn exactly the things that these inuit children learn to avoid. At 30, I train to act out, to raise my voice, to listen to my emotions of anger and frustration and giving them a legitimate outlet, instead of pushing them down and letting them rot somewhere inside (often breaking out in awful passive-agressive ways that I don't even notice).
I don't think you're learning to express your anger the way a 2 year old impulsively would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
the people are very calm and nice to each other and to Tourists, it was a pleasure to travel around. It's a very safe place, crime and stealing is almost nonexistent. Disagreements are solved in a quite calm way.
You may have seen a tourist's version of the island, and have been fortunate enough to not encounter violence or theft. Both are very common. People are very quick to anger on the road. Theft and flouting rules are common. Don't get me wrong, we have many good qualities (for example, we're known for being helpful and hospitable), but calmness is not one of them!
I don't think anyone knows everything there is to know about being human. Who does? People often act as if they know everything or at least know better, even when they shouldn't.
But most people have okay coping skills as tragedy was common place for hundreds of thousands of years. Using the same strategies can re-victimize them. Think of PTSD. The problem with PTSD is an inability of the mind to let go--a person is always reliving the moment in terms of stressfulness, if not literal imagery and thoughts. Forcing someone to sit in a room and discuss a tragic experience whose memory of the experience has already, naturally begun to fade into the background is its own tragedy.
That's my $0.02. Maybe I'm just naive.
Welcome to the human condition!
In the list of intentional homicides Sri Lanka indeed ranks higher than I expected, rank 132 of 230: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
About being calm: I agree about the anger on roads. Except for that my impression was a calm and peaceful one -- maybe what you encounter as violent is still OK from my culturally distinct perspective? Do you think there are many 'fights'/arguments where people are shouting in the public, or would such a thing happen at home?
And what is your opinion about the high suicide rate?
There are many fights and tense situations, but more in places like inner city Colombo than in Kandy or Galle.
RE: suicide: hard to say. Our alcohol consumption and suicide stats are both extremely high. But even after living here all my life, it's hard to pin down a theory about why this is. My personal belief is that the average Sri Lankan's belief in Karma and astrological fate results in a defeatist attitude. We often hear the phrase "I/he/she probably did something in a past life to deserve this" in reference to tragedy, hardship or misfortune.
It’s comparable to Russia in crime statistics. It’s not exactly great, but not bad either. I think almost the entire norther Europe are far superior to Sri Lanka. But I guess it is much better than most of India.
That worked pretty well and retained surprising effectiveness even after I was absolutely clear that no such thing would happen.
Ie - If someone raises his/her child like this in our western society it might be conflicting for the child to learn how to behave like this at home, and then spend the majority of their time at school where other children behave completely differently.
I certainly recall being raised to never answer back to your adults. And then I saw other kids answering back to their parents (and getting away with it) and then all that upbringing went out the window.
Which makes our current system of isolating children by age group and then leaving them virtually un-attended look somewhat insane.
He went from being a bit lazy and not really trying to walk (he did stand up by holding on to things, and shuffled sideways) nor really say actual words, to trying to say a couple new words, standing up in place and trotting around the house all the time.
I did 2 years in elementary teaching back in uni, one thing that stuck to my mind is that imitation is one of the main learning strategies in childhood, up to high school age where discovering their own individuality takes over a bit.
As for the daycare factor, you could sure think of an equivalent 'beam' in your home. That could've been a chair, a something 'interesting' higher up, say, mommy's voice coming from above - anything!
Babies find the ways. Unless the home environment is devoid of attractions and baby is confined to safety of an infinite carpeted floor surrounded by soundproof glass. That's a sci-fi kind.
How do you figure? Maybe it depends on the person but every interaction I have and have had with people has been framed by the lens of my relationships with family, not my peers.
My wife then snorted and said "says who?". Parenting fail :(
I used to make a lot of emotional decisions based on my gut feelings and intuition, and it took me a great deal of work to get over that and to start thinking about the "optimal course of action" whenever I had important decisions to make. My life has drastically improved, and all of my relationships are more stable and my goals have proved to be more attainable.
But when I try to preach this to people, a lot of them give the same reaction your wife did- and I get annoyed, because I observe them constantly having their feelings hurt, getting frustrated, missing their goals, and feeling stressed out, because they're operating off of anything but "optimal course of action reasoning".
Emotion serves as an indicator, but not as justifiable evidence or information. I still get angry, fearful, heartbroken, elated, etc. but I now spend a great deal of energy trying to make sure that I don't attach my experience of an emotion to a belief that the emotion gives me real, trustworthy information about the true state of the world.
I thought a great deal about this while I was reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, which I highly recommend.
Technically that is information! Like, what if instead of feelings, there was this little light and slot on your chest, and at the appropriate time, the light would flash and a little slip of paper came out saying, "It's time to pay more attention to something and then work it out logically!" Wouldn't that be information?
About this I'm right. Technically right. The best kind of right! (Irony left to he reader. Please interpret in the cheeriest possible fashion.)
Point in case, I have a floundering friend who won't take business advice from me or that of a mutual friend of ours, despite the fact that we both founded and operated successful businesses. Frustrating.
Even with all the logic in the world, it is very hard for most people to overcome their own biases (because they are not always obvious to oneself). So, not sure if it's a good rule to set.
His wife had a duty as a parent to call BS.
My wife then snorted and said "says who?". Parenting fail :(
Not necessarily. I think that little story is very instructive. A smart child could well synthesize it thus: There is value in intelligent decisions made by dispassionate logic. Not everyone is going to recognize it, though.
Reality is difficult and messy. If we smart people are truly the smart people, then it behooves us to deal with it gracefully and win. If we end up just railing against the unfairness of the universe and all of the idiots around us, what does that really say?
One of my friends once made this observation about Ward Cunningham. He was convinced Ward was one of the smartest men alive, because he came to realize that Ward always managed to learn something, no matter how smart or how stupid the people were he was interacting with.
This is the 'most HN' comment of the day.
Maybe someone should start collecting these gems.
On a serious note - I think this is inherently about managing emotions, responses, triggers etc. 'in the moment'. It's ultimately a social issue, not one which can be driven with data as we would like.
It's driven by data which was processed by our ancestors, even before they were fully sentient. There's no sense in not considering that "data as we would like." It's as much a part of us as anything else.
I meant this in the context of things not being inherently good or bad, its all your perspective, which is under your control.
I was trying to distill everything I have learned from meditation, Buddhism, stoicism... but I'm not great at communicating, and even if I was she isn't ready for some of the concepts.
On one hand, that's a general truism. On the other hand, if she's young enough, it's not that much her fault yet, and the injustice of it might be a little much so soon. On the gripping hand, it's good she ran away crying. It indicates she really understands the magnitude of the situation.
I was trying to distill everything I have learned from meditation, Buddhism, stoicism... but I'm not great at communicating, and even if I was she isn't ready for some of the concepts.
This was one of those times when you should show, not tell.
Your peers never have enough lever on you. The way kids look up to and depend on the love of their main care-giver(s) is irreplaceable.
I'm not talking about superficial things, like swearing, walking, etc.
It is sometimes frightening to realize how much of you is "just acquired". The way you treat people, the way you react to situations, the way you talk to your loved ones when you're angry. Once you realize there would be other ways: shocking.
And as some other people on the Internet have pointed out [0]: spanking and physical punishments seem to be a big part of Inuit child rearing [1]. In fact, modern studies about child and adult abuse show concerning figures [2]
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/b0so4h/how_...
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-traditional-knowl...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708004/
Like anything, you need to practice training yourself at handling anger.
When my kids get angry, I teach them to ask questions. "Why?!!" "Why didn't they let me play with them?" "Why does my sister always get to use my toys?!" "Why does it make me feel this way?!" "What can I do to prevent this in the future?!"
The most understanding you can gain during a confrontation, the better you train your mind to react in that way rather than in our following our instincts. We are, by default, animals, and anger is part of our fight-flight response - but it's something we can reprogram with practice. ...especially if you start with a young malleable mind.
Maybe it's true for Inuit children, but my own kids are certainly not like that. They know all about my buttons and how to push them from early infancy.
The point the article makes is that your response is what teaches them
How do you respond when a kid pushes your button? It's only a button to push if there is a reaction
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-suicidal-thoughts...
Maybe NPRs staff should have look at their own article.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/4748479...
I wish we'd stop fetishizing cultures and start giving people a more realistic and broad perspective of cultures, even if it doesn't align with our agenda. The grass isn't always greener on the side.
Also, we have been teaching kids to "control their anger" for decades now. I wonder if that has anything to do with the rising suicide rates in the US.
In a society that relies on the group for survival, one can imagine that a child learns pretty quickly that they have to get along or they will perish.
What the story does not tell us is what happens to children with behavioural or psychological issues.