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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (20682)	8/6/2001 2:14:38 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

That sounds like a good idea in most cases, but what if the children do not want to be in the store or restaurant and they start misbehaving specifically to get you to leave. I guess is still has the benefit that atleast the children are not misbehaving in a store or restaurant but then you are rewarding the misbehavior. That's an excellent point -- it puts the children in charge and lets them control the adults through misbehavior. Children usually want something. In our case, we cured the whining problem by a fixed, unbreakeable rule -- if you whine for something, you don't get it. Even if you could have had it if you had asked nicely, if you whine, no. Cured whining in a hurry. My sister, OTOH, used to give the kids what they wanted if they whined enough. Or course, they learned to whine incessently, and she couldn't figure out why since they got virtually everything they wanted. VERY unpleasant kids to be around. if kids are misbehaving, it's for some reason. Maybe leaving the store or restaurant is the starting point, but then you need to figure out why they were misbehaving, what they wanted, and deal with that. If they just were overtired and needed naps, for example, that's the parent's fault, and the parents need to learn clues better. If they wanted to go somewhere fun, were, say, promised that after we're done at the store we'll go to McDonalds, well, of course then no McDonalds. Whatever it is that they are misbehaving for is what needs to be dealt with rather than just dealing with the misbehavior itself. One speaker at the 2001 brain exposition put forth the theory that teachers, at least, should welcome diagonistic misbehavior. He made a parallel between pain and misbehavior; when it's chronic it's debilitating and destructive, but when it's diagnostic (you step on a tack and the pain tells you "something's wrong, fix it NOW" it is an essential feedback mechanism. His view was that misbehavior in kids who are not chronic misbehavers should be used as a diagnostic tool, to identify what the problem is, and address it. I thought his argument had some merit, though it's going to be hard to teachers to say "yippie, Bobbie's misbehaving."