Tips for Parenting

Obedience Training

Why worry about obedience? In some cases it is a matter of life and death. Do not run into traffic. Do not stick objects into power outlets. Do not touch burners or pull pots of boiling water onto your self. But there is also the matter of just day to day items like getting up, getting dressed, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, music practice, bathing and bed time. Having arguments about things that happen multiple times a day, every day, is a pointless, painful waste of everybody’s time.

When my son was young, perhaps around nine, we had some visitors. I told my son it was time to go to bed and he took himself off. One of the visitors was astounded and commented “you didn’t have a half hour argument!” I remember thinking – “That sounds awful! That would be a daily occurrence.”

The secret to avoiding this unnecessary pain is to inculcate the habit of obedience A.K.A. socialization. It is key to back up verbal commands with physical intervention. It starts when your baby is old enough to crawl. If the baby crawls off to pull the overhanging leaves of a pot plant, or to pull books of the bookshelves and rip the pages out, or to pull CDs off CD racks, or push the buttons or turn the knobs on a stereo at random, then it is necessary to get up and prevent him, saying “no.” This can be done calmly, with no smacking or hitting involved. Place your baby back where it was and maybe give him something else to do.

This must be done hundreds and hundreds of times. Eventually, the baby will not even try to do such things and the baby will also have learned to obey merely verbal commands. Patience, repetition, and consistency are key. If the parent gives in to whining after half an hour, the parent is teaching the child that an initial refusal can be overturned with enough persistence. The parent will now be subjected to hours and hours of challenges and complaints until the parent can stand it no longer and gives in, reinforcing this pathological dynamic.

Hundreds of repetitions sound painful. It is. But there is no alternative. That is exactly what most training involves.

By saying “no” to a child, the child learns to say no to itself. It could not be otherwise. If a child were an emperor whom no one dared contradict, then the child would simply follow every impulse as an uncompromising tyrant. If he wanted the cake from your plate, he would simply grab it. Or perhaps he feels like shoving a fork in your eye. He would never gain any practice in restraining himself.

Boot camps for criminals consist largely in getting the miscreants to learn to follow orders. To follow an order is to not follow one’s own spontaneous wishes. His impulse may be to remain seated. The order is to stand. To obey the order he must renounce his own immediate desire. This is necessary for self-discipline and for doing anything productive.

It may seem strange that mindlessly following orders can prepare someone for living outside the walls of a prison, and boot camps do look somewhat barbaric. But trying to produce in an adult what should have been instilled in the person as a baby requires some drastic-seeming efforts. Most murders are done in a fit of poor impulse control. Very few are planned for months in a particularly cold-blooded manner. Such behavior is more characteristic of a psychopath. It is more likely that the unsocialized will stick a knife in your gut in a fit of rage.

As a parent, you are establishing a hierarchy with the parent in charge. This is a good idea because you as an adult immeasurably smarter, more capable, more insightful, more considerate, more moral than any small child. This provides structure, stability and security. How anxiety-inducing it would be for a child to be expected to make all his own decisions and to live in a rule less, and thus unpredictable and chaotic, world. Fending for himself before a child is ready would be a nightmare.

Older children can be given more freedom as they approach the abilities of adults and they can also be given responsibilities with regard to their younger siblings.

A child learns to respect other people before he can respect himself. He learns to obey an external “no,” before he listens to an internal “no.”

Obedience training will make your child a relative pleasure to live with. Other parents and children are also far more likely to like your child too. This makes it more likely that your child will be included in playground activities and to be invited back to visit. Much of our self-conception is gleaned from how other people react to us. If a child is under-socialized and others react to her as a tyrannical and unlovable monster, a brat, then this will influence how the child views herself.

Obedience training means that it is unnecessary to “baby proof” your house. It also means that it is possible to take your baby to someone’s house, one that is also not baby-proofed, with little fear that he will get into trouble or injure himself. I call this “house-proofing” your baby. I know of couples who loved listening to the stereo, but never figured out how to stop their child from damaging the equipment, who simply put the stereo in storage. That child will also be a menace in anyone else’s home.

In fact, baby-proofing the house denies the parent a chance to train the child as to what it can and cannot do. Of course, locking away things like truly dangerous chemicals, or minimizing falling hazards, would be entirely reasonable. “Baby-proofing,” however, usually goes far beyond that.

Yelling at a child does not ensure obedience, especially if one remains firmly planted in one’s seat, teaching the child that verbal commands are meaningless noises. Hitting your child does not ensure obedience either. It is perfectly possible for a child to simply “take the hit.” I have seen a mother slap a ten year old in the face when he refused to obey her and he replied “I’m still not coming.” Then what? Hitting your child is probably not how you would wish to interact with your beloved child. It is also likely to inculcate fear, a simmering rage, and a desire for vengeance.

Corporal punishment also produces the possibility that a parent will take out his frustration and anger at the behavior on the child. That may be all very cathartic for the parent, but it is selfish and abusive and violates the necessity to consider the best interests of the child.

If the method of following up verbal commands with active prevention until the behavior stops and verbal commands alone are sufficient, the child is not afraid of the adult. The adult is not a source of physical pain and violence. It is simply a case of “resistance is futile.” If the habit of obedience is learned before the child can even think clearly and the parent does not make a habit of abusing his authority with copious and constant commands, then hopefully there will be a minimum amount of resentment and the child will still be reasonably compliant in his teenage years. Mostly, with obedience training, you as the parent are just setting limits to dangerous or anti-social behavior. You are providing some minimal rules and structure within which the child can happily play and be creative. As already stated, this includes not having to have stupid arguments about whether or not the child has to wear a seatbelt, or coming to dinner.

Teaching a child that he has to obey your instructions, which need to be fair, reasonable, and moderate, does not turn a child into a mindless robot because the instructions are minimal. The alternative to a child following your instructions and rules, is expecting very little children to provide their own rules and structure, which is completely unreasonable. If they become leader, and you the follower, their leadership will not be fair, reasonable, and moderate because they are too young for that, they have no idea what is in their best interests at that point, and they have not been socialized yet. They are more likely to become rude and tyrannical. Parents need to be the boss in the beginning, but can be relatively hands off pretty quickly if things go well.

It should also be remembered that although you have established yourself as an authority figure whose requests need to be obeyed, it does not mean the child will necessarily listen to the other parent if the other parent has not also backed up his words with physical intervention – if he or she has not enforced his/her instructions. It is not uncommon that a child will obey one parent, and not the other for this reason. When my son was beginning elementary school, two teachers said that he took a day or two to take them seriously as authority figures. They had to be firm that what they said was also to be followed. A socialized child does not necessarily follow instructions from just anyone. This issue regarding teachers resolved itself as he grew a bit older (7 or 8).

Do I Still Need to Do What You Ask?

I remember when my son was about eight. I said it was time to have a shower. A light bulb went off above his head and he said “no.” So, I playfully wrestled him into the bathroom which was right next door to the room where I had been reading to him his bedtime story. We were both giggling. He then said the equivalent of “all right then,” and took his shower. It never really happened again. It seemed like he had got to the age when the thought occurred to him “Why do I do what my dad says and what happens if I don’t?” Just going through the motions of physically backing up the command was enough. I don’t know what I would have done if I had got him into the bathroom and he had still refused.

As a member of a Mom’s club, I would sit with mothers who issued verbal commands but remained glued to their seats. The results were abysmal and painful to witness. The children understandably ignored the mothers’ commands and went on doing what they were not supposed to do.  The parents were training their children that the parent and any other authority could be ignored with impunity.

Child Tyrant

I know one young girl where one parent in particular refuses to be an authority figure. It is unbearable to be in the same room as the girl. She yells commands at the parent who adopts a slavish attitude, trying to grant her every wish. “Get my socks!” She yells. “Where are your socks?” the timorous and plaintive parent responds. “In my room, you idiot!” She screams. He returns with the socks. “No. Not those socks. The other ones!” Also delivered at maximum, derisive volume. There was no way that she appeared to be happy. She is a tyrannical monster, but one created by a reversal of the parent-child hierarchy. Judging by her voice and tone, the daughter was filled with disgusted contempt for this pitiful dad. She was also not remotely happy. Happy people do not scream and writhe with contempt and anger.  It might seem fun for a child to be the one in charge, getting to do whatever she wants, bossing the adults around, but it is a frightening and anxiety-inducing place for a child to find herself in. And, as already stated, young children are not in the position to know what is in their long-term best interests. Parents are supposed to be reasonably wise, protective figures, not incompetent nincompoops running scared of a tyrannical kid. Who can the child turn to when she needs help? A simpering idiot?

Sometimes, the child tyrant phenomenon can arise when parents decide not to use corporal punishment, but they are unaware of any alternative child-raising methods. This can happen when a country like New Zealand made corporal punishment illegal. Watching grown adults behave in a helpless fashion around a 2 year old, for instance, having no idea how to stop him throwing food, or otherwise misbehaving, is sad to watch. If one child-raising technique is prohibited it is crucial that parents are made aware of how else they can control unwanted behavior and get a modicum of obedience.

Dog Training

The perfectly trained dogs of Crufts Dog Show are not beaten. If it is possible to have a perfectly trained dog without beating it, the same is true of children. Dog trainers who are also parents confirm that raising dogs and very young children is remarkably similar. The well-trained dog does not cower in fear and anticipation of a kick or blow.

When I went to London, I stayed with a family whose dog was expertly trained and frighteningly smart. Taking the dog with us to Hampstead Heath, he was, much to my surprise, taken off the leash. Soon thereafter another dog came over to say hello. Since many of the dogs where I live are maltreated and untrained, I feared for the worst. The dogs greeted one another, played briefly, romping in a friendly manner, and returned to accompanying their masters. This happened repeatedly. All the dogs were unleashed. The ability that these Englishmen had to civilize their animals inspired real admiration in me. When a dog expresses the desire to rip out your throat, you are looking into the wild, undisciplined, uncivilized, careless, and emotionally incontinent heart of its owner; someone who thinks this behavior is acceptable and who is prepared to live with such an animal.[1]

Many dogs in Oswego, New York, are chained by the neck and left for hours on end in their front yard. This inspires a feeling of vulnerability in the dog, as it would a human, and they noisily react with fear and hostility to passersby. They are never walked and thus live a rather pitiful existence.

The dogs in this fairly fancy part of London are systematically exposed to strange people, to strange dogs, to traffic, etc., under the careful supervision of their owners making sure that the dog is not frightened or upset by each new phenomenon and thus can be counted on to behave in a calm manner at all times.

This is what a local dog owner, with well-trained dogs, said about socializing dogs to behave well around other dogs. “Well, one would have to consider the individual dog’s personality and traits as well as previous training and socialization. Something else to consider is whether the dog views its handler as a leader. If all that checks out as “normal,” I would make sure the dog understands the command “Leave It.” I would then expose him with distant encounters with other leashed dogs, for example, across the street. When your dog notices the other dog but before your dog starts displaying aggression you command with “Leave It” and reward him with a treat. Hopefully, over time he will look for a treat rather than acting aggressively. That said, it can be a difficult behavior to curb and may need an expert to help.”

Cèsar Milan’s, “The Dog Whisperer,” formula for dealing with pathologically unsocialized dogs is “structure first, love second.” A common scenario is a middle-aged woman whose dog is out of control and tries to bite her husband or boyfriend and makes everyone’s life unbearable in various ways. The women shown typically just want to smother their beloved dog with physical affection and nauseating baby-talk; their darling boobsy-woopsy boo.

Milan’s advice is to wait until the dog is behaving calmly and then to be affectionate. This reinforces that particular behavior. If the dog is smothered with affection when it has just tried to disembowel the boyfriend, then the dog is being taught that this behavior is good and acceptable.

Cèsar Milan knows that if there is an out-of-control dog it is because the owner is the problem. Likewise, if you see a monstrous child, look at the parent as the culprit, not the poor child.

I have asked a professional dog trainer what to do if a dog, despite all the training, still does something wrong against your orders. She said to firmly grasp the back of the dog’s neck and pull him over on to his back, exposing his neck and belly. This is dog language for submission to the dominant dog. It should not be done to inflict pain. It just means “I am the boss.” Dogs will do this voluntarily to show submission to a more dominant dog, and the dominant dog never goes ahead and rips out its throat.

Please and Thank You

These social graces should be taught before the child is capable of understanding why they are necessary. If the child wants a drink ask “What do you say?” The child will eventually grudgingly say “Please.” Before removing your hand completely wait for “Thank you.” Once this habit is established, the child will be much nicer to interact with and other parents will find him much more likable.

My one and half-year old son could not understand why he was being trained to do this, but it was an excellent idea!

Not Being the Child’s Friend

You are not your child’s friend. You are his parent. Your job is to do what you think is in the best interests of the child at all times, not to do what you think will curry favor with the child. That would be to be entirely selfish. If you relinquish your role of parent, then the child needs another parent.

Two times when my son hugged me with the most warmth and enthusiasm were days when I said that he did not have to do his music practice – the practice that I always supervised. In a cosmically just universe, it would be the reverse. And of course, if he never had music practice, his gratitude would wane within days anyway.

[1] Many dogs adopted from shelters are likely to have had abusive or neglectful owners, so they will present extra challenges for the new owner.

A Student Objects

“I have seen a two year old child stand there and scream a litany of obscene verbal abuse at his mother. I would hit him in the mouth,” said a student.

First of all, children are mimetic. The obedience training advocated here does not involve screaming. It seems unlikely that the child will scream abuse spontaneously. Secondly, where did the child learn the obscene words? If the parent does not swear and the social environment is minimally decent, the child should not know any swear words.

Thirdly, hitting little children in the mouth? Yikes! You as an adult are so much bigger and stronger than a little kid that it is crucially important that you restrain any violent impulses you might feel. The consequences are not the same as striking an adult, and even that can be catastrophic and lethal.

Children’s Food

There should be no such thing as children’s food; just smaller portions of healthy adult meals. This is normal practice in most countries around the world. What Americans called “children’s food” is actually unhealthy, nutrient-poor food too high in fat, salt and sugar.

If a child does not like some particular food, then it should be permissible to eat just a small amount of it, until hopefully the child gets used to the taste and learns to like it. One method is to offer the child a range of healthy food to eat and the child can pick and choose as it likes with the important proviso that an unhealthy alternative is not available. Turning meals into a torture of finishing everything on the child’s plate seems unnecessary. This may encourage overeating and be a source of needless antagonism. Letting the child serve itself as the child gets older means that the child figures out how much to put on its own plate. It also means learning to leave enough for everyone else at the table and thinking about that.

Music Practice

There are anecdotes of child prodigies who the first time their eyes fasten on a piano or violin demand lessons and practice hours a day with no prodding. I have never actually met such a child and the chances that your child will be like that are infinitesimally small.

The more normal experience is that there will be a honeymoon phase of about six weeks when the new instrument seems like fun. The novelty will then wear off and the child realizes that learning a musical instrument involves hard work and will probably want to stop.

If it is important to you that your child learn a musical instrument then you decide. If the parent decides to leave it up the child, the child will almost certainly stop practicing. In that case, it seems better never to start.

Do not buy a cheap instrument and wait to see if your child likes it. The cheap instrument is likely to be harder to play, depending on which type, and will sound awful. You are effectively taking a defeatist attitude before you have started. Let any deficiencies in sound be the result of the player, not the instrument.

A few boys, in particular, for some reason, decide to pick up the guitar on their own at the beginning of adolescence. This is something I did myself and even enrolled myself with a teacher. The teacher was thrilled because I had grade five music theory already, could read music fluently, and ended up being one of his better students, partly because I already had the habit of practicing. Plus, my left hand was “smart” already from years of violin playing. Your brain literally has more neurons devoted to that hand and those fingers from years of practice – which is true of any physical activity. If it is a wind instrument, it will be your lips. If your child spontaneously picks up an instrument, that’s great, but you cannot count on it.

Some students imagine that anyone forced to practice will end up hating playing instruments as an adult. This does not seem to be the case – although, there will presumably be exceptions. I supervised my son’s violin and piano practice (four hours a week) – plus he had orchestra from middle school up. I bought him an electric guitar and a bass as a teenager when he said he wanted one. He practiced these all by himself. He became good enough to be the opening act for bands visiting Oswego, NY, (he used a looper to build up looped tracks as a kind of one-man band) and performed around town. He went on to become a sound designer at a Brooklyn theater, then a Manhattan theater (“Caveat,” since closed). He mastered Ableton Live for writing music on a computer during his teenage years, again on his own initiative. And he still rents a rehearsal space in Manhattan to store his gear and practice. He loves music and it became part of his career. I was forced to practice violin as a kid and took up the guitar on my own at 12. I still play music almost daily. One of my sisters became a professional violist for many years with a degree in performance music. Another sister has played in bands and folk groups all her adult life. She recently joined an orchestra. The great thing about music is, once you are trained in it, you can play it alone or with others for the rest of your life.

We “force” children to brush their teeth, eat meals with the rest of the family, to get dressed, to go to school, to come on vacation with us, to take breaks from TV and computers, to brush their hair, to say please and thank you, to take their shoes off when they come inside if there is snow outside, so why it would suddenly be completely wrong to force them to take music lessons and practice seems hard to explain. Ideally, as with anything, becoming self-motivated is the absolute best. Children who become self-motivated at an activity, who get some instruction if needed, are likely to be the ones who excel the most. Again, the parent has to decide about their priorities for the child. If you do not want the hassle of music practice and lessons, and/or you have something else you care about instead, that is completely up to you.

One story I really like involved John Healey; someone I know. He had found doing his piano practice a chore until, when he was twelve, he attended a concert in his small town in Ohio. He loved it. He was so inspired that he decided that that was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. From that moment on, he had no problem at all with practice because he now had a goal and became completely self-motivated. Self-motivation is a tremendous gift because, chances are, you will get yourself to do more than it would be reasonable for someone else to try to force you to do. He ended up with a PhD in performance piano and now teaches and performs professionally. To end up as a professional, he needed those years of practice and lesson before he turned twelve.

Reading

It seems to be remarkably hard to get children to read these days without going to great lengths to remove every other possible source of amusement and distraction – and this in the most literate households, where the parents can be seen reading every day for pleasure, let alone in more commonplace homes.

Spontaneous reading for pleasure is likely to remain the behavior of those destined for an Ivy League education. It seems that girls are more likely to do this than boys these days and they are indeed outperforming boys academically.

If you read to your child from when he is about two months old until the age of twelve and read just above his (self) reading level, the chances are that your child will be formal operational by that age – capable of abstract thought, and metacognition, which means thinking about thinking. It is estimated that only 10 percent of Americans are formal operational and your child can reach this level by eleven or twelve. It does not make them a genius, but gives them the capacity to learn difficult things like calculus when they are older.

When my son was 12, his English teacher said, “Nicholas is an interesting boy.” I said, “How so?” “Well, he laughs at my jokes, when a lot other students don’t even understand them. And he can tell me how he arrived at a conclusion in step by step sequence. First I thought this, and that lead to this other thought, and then another, and this seemed to be the appropriate conclusion.” That is metacognition. It told me that my son was formal operational and that the teacher was too – otherwise he would not have recognized it in my son.

My son would lean against me as I read to him and it was a nice bonding experience. We could talk about and refer back to things we had read together. He even used a recording of my voice for one of his musical compositions because it had nice associations for him.

The difference between students who have read lots and lots of books and those who have not is generally obvious to professors. Their vocabulary is bigger, their writing better and more coherent, and their thinking more nuanced. They even understand movies better. Teaching English composition is one of the most frustrating things to teach. If a student has read a ton, then he or she will be able to write pretty well spontaneously, and might just need a few pointers. If a student has read little, he will be relatively nonliterate, and he will not be capable of writing very well no matter what the professor does. All English professors I know agree about this.

Reading trains someone’s mind to follow a narrative, to think sequentially and logically, to get used to extended trains of thought on various topics. Reading little snippets online is not the same thing. Little snippets online can be a very handy tool for someone who is already fully literate with a lifetime of reading. But, if you only read one paragraph chunks, your mind will not be as trained.

Love?

All this is predicated on a background assumption of love.  Parental love includes care and concern.  Taking care of children and socializing them takes a lot of dedication and patience. In short, love. The parent is teaching the child how to control his impulses. The parent is socializing the child so that he is a pleasure to be around for other children and parents. The parent/child relationship should be reasonably peaceful if the suggested approaches are followed. Many of the rules of the house will be implicit and not need to be explicitly enforced. By training your child not to pull pot plants, rip pages out of books, etc., when he is preverbal, there is a good chance that by the time the child can think, the desire to do any of those things will not even enter its head. Verbal instructions will only be necessary for unfamiliar situations.

Along with other things, this training will mean the child should be responsible and considerate and can be given a lot of freedom and independence of action from a reasonably early age. Personally, for me, it meant playing outdoors unsupervised with my friends from the age of 3 or  4. It didn’t mean I never made a mistake or never occasionally misbehaved, but usually just because I wasn’t old enough to know better.

If the parent is calm, fair, consistent, loving, affectionate and patient, then they will be a source of dependable stability and reassurance for the child and there is every possibility that the child will take comfort in the presence of the parent and will love the parent back.

Everything said applies to children not suffering from mental illnesses, disabilities, and the like.

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