To Be Titled

But the data suggest that love withdrawal isn’t particularly effective at getting compliance, much less at promoting moral development. Even if we did succeed in making children obey us, though — say, by using positive reinforcement — is obedience worth the possible long-term psychological harm? Should parental love be used as a tool for controlling children?

I hope I’m not withholding my love when I try to teach Xander what is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do (morally or otherwise). Without conditioning positive and negative feedback on children’s behavior, parents effectively lose the ability to influence children’s choices. The Love and Logic approach would step in here, but then the question is whether every behavior/choice that parents want children to choose can be reasoned through via constrained choices. It’s good to know the psychological science behind parenting, but I’m guessing we’ll be muddling through.

A meta-level commentary I have on this is the broader societal implication. If conditional parenting does have such adverse consequences, is the world just full of generations of people psychologically damaged from bad parenting?

[HT: SNSK]

This is Xander’s favorite Sesame Street video du jour. For the non-parents, that means he will want to watch it at least 6-7 times in a row per session, several sessions a day. The video’s cute for now, but I will see how long it lasts. My favorite part is “I’ve got one daddy / I’ve got two….”

Dan Benjamin started this new website. It is a good concept and I like the style, but the content is disappointing. I’m not sure who the target audience is—it might be roughly the same as that of Cookie magazine.

Cases in point: Hand-crank locomotive for $4,100. Anonymous Nakashima-inspired chair for $550. I love my son and would like him to have fun and have a good place to sit, but I’m never paying those prices. The fact that Benjamin sought advice from the founder of Uncrate probably contributed to this.

dadadada:

Why would any sane parent teach his kids to talk back? Because, this father found, it actually increased family harmony. By Jay Heinrichs.

I can see this being a good set of skills for kids to build on top of the Love and Logic approach.

As most parents of small children will reluctantly admit, nothing can occupy a child quite like television. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence suggests that using the boob tube as a babysitter has its price: the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies’ likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others.