Children versus dogs and “bounceback”
Many philosophies on managing children are related to teaching children by conditioning in a similar way that pets are trained. In many ways it seems like that would be logical. Psychologists found out many years ago that providing a reward or a consequence depending on whether the behavior was desirable or not changed the behavior in dogs. It seemed that children would be able to learn the same way. In fact, many did at first. Dogs and humans though, even young humans, have very different physiology. What works to train dogs does not necessarily work with humans. Dogs can be trained with the method of getting them to do something you want then giving them a treat or praise. When the dog does something you do want, you provide negative feedback immediately. After some number of passes with this, the dog’s brain is basically reprogrammed with a neural path that knows how to do the wanted behavior repeatedly. They can then be relied on to always do the behavior in response to the cue.
Dogs, though, are animals with a hierarchical social structure. They are comfortable with and desire the hierarchical structure to feel safe. They may experience some shame, but it is not generally long-term. Dogs do not have the shades of emotions that go along with someone more powerful than themselves coercing them to do something.
Humans, on the other hand, may attempt the hierarchical structure, but only the people at the top are generally happy and comfortable with it. Humans are almost always not comfortable being embarrassed or ashamed or feeling less powerful or under the control of someone else. This goes for young humans as well as older. Training children as we train dogs or other animals does not work, entirely because of these differences.
There are certainly some things that can be “trained” into children. The problem is, though, that children are so much more complicated. We end up with undesirable side effects. Often these side effects are worse behaviors or more secretive behaviors. For example, if a parent forces a child to do something and the child feels completely misunderstood, the child might respond with a sit-down strike, not doing anything that they are supposed to. That would require a great deal more energy on the parent’s part to then get the child to do the tasks that are normally expected of him or her. It is possible that if the child felt heard in the first incident he or she wouldn’t drag their feet afterwards. These “side-effects” I call “bounceback.” It is like winning the battle, but losing the war. The goal is to stay off the battlefield altogether.
I think of children more like students, than animals. Students in school can, and are taught dozens and dozens of things every year. All humans, at all ages are able to learn and change their behavior with education. Most of how we raise children should involve considering them as students as opposed to trainees or pets.
