I have the book Nurture Shock on my nightstand (along with several other parenting tomes), but I haven’t gotten to it yet. Not to worry, though, as there’s a blog for bite-sized chunks of counter-intuitive parenting results! A recent entry there, provocatively titled “In Defense of Children Behaving Badly” looked at the evidence behind the notion that well-behaved kindergartners turn into good students later in life. Turns out: Hmmm.. not so much! (I’m actually not surprised by that, but some people were, I guess.) Most interesting to me in the piece was the following:
there’s a lot of science (not just the study cited by Dokoupil) which describes the trade-off of reasoning with young kids. You can demand obedience, or you can appeal to reason. Of course, young kids don’t reason very well, so in the short term, children of parents who reason tend to act out more─they’re simply not as obedient. But long term, encouraging kids to reason scaffolds complex thought, language development, and independent thinking. In the long term, children of parents who appeal to reason turn out better─especially at school.
TLG is only 16 months and already we can sometimes see his little gears turning when we explain things or when he’s trying to puzzle through something. And I’m definitely not the type to “demand obedience.” Raising a conformist is not my goal. I’d much rather have a kid who questions authority for authority’s sake and understands the arbitrary nature of many rules and conventions. So three cheers for reason and logic. They may fidget in kindergarten a bit, but it’s a small price to pay. (So far, TLG doesn’t actually seem the fidgety type, but there’s still time..)
When I was in kindergarten, my teacher “demanded obedience” by giving us all necklaces to wear around our necks that had 5 tags on them. When we got in trouble, we had to forfeit a tag. At the end of the day we got to enter a drawing for little toys — pencils, finger puppets, stickers, etc. — we got to enter once for every tag we had left.
I thought about that for a while, then decided that it was more fun to get in trouble than to enter the drawing. So I’d start off every morning by doing 5 bad things — hitting other kids, knocking things over, breaking all the crayons, talking out of turn, splatting paint on the floor (that was my favorite), etc. It was way more immediate — and exciting — than waiting until the end of the day to enter the drawing. Once I figured that out, I don’t think my name made it into the drawing for the entire rest of the school year. My parents thought I was a terror, when really I had considered all my options and made a choice.
the notion that well-behaved kindergartners turn into good students later in life
I really don’t remember much about kindergarten at all (except for sitting in the corner, facing the wall, as punishment), but my mother loooves to tell my husband (and anyone else) stories about how I terrorized the school with my bad behavior. Apparently, she was called in so regularly that she was on a first-name basis with the principal by the end of fall semester.
Oh, I do remember that I got my first bike (a surprise gift) at the end of the school year – it was my reward for not getting kicked out.
I eventually became a good student, and I’ve got the advanced degrees to show for it.
well, there are *some* limits — Speck right now wants to test the rule that she must hold a parent’s hand when crossing intersections. (thankfully, she mostly throws a fit and sits down/goes boneless, rather than just racing into the street, but still.) not negotiable, although I am willing to explain over and over that she’s plenty good at walking, but that cars are unpredictable and don’t always look down . . .
Sure – that’s not an arbitrary convention, though.
Same for not messing with the car door handles! But more seriously, one of Moxie’s commenters wrote once that her family has the mantra: “Kind, respectful, and safe.” I kind of liked that.