Your Child: Today and Tomorrow: Some Problems for Parents Concerning Punishment, Reasoning, Lies, Ideals and Ambitions, Fear, Work and Play, Imagination, Social Activities, Obedience, Adolescence, Will, HeredityGruenberg, Sidonie Matsner
Science
Your Child: Today and Tomorrow: Some Problems for Parents Concerning Punishment, Reasoning, Lies, Ideals and Ambitions, Fear, Work and Play, Imagination, Social Activities, Obedience, Adolescence, Will, Heredity
Gruenberg, Sidonie Matsner
Children
What the new psychology does here is to unify what we have known. We
say not the performance of an act alone will establish a habit; not
the repetition alone will establish it; not the subsequent
satisfaction alone. All of these factors must take part, and they
must take part in association. The feeling must accompany the act.
It is not sufficient that Richard be assured that some time in the
vague future he will derive deep satisfaction from being master of
the scales; he must somehow be made to feel a present concern either
in what he is doing, or a real interest in the outcome. The time
that is to elapse between the beginning of his "practice" and the
satisfaction he is to receive must not be beyond the child's power
to appreciate.
In our actual dealing with children our experience leads us to make
use of these principles, often without realizing all that is
implied. For example, when the young child by your side shows signs
of weariness, and you still have some distance to go, you try to
stimulate his interest by telling him of the good things to come at
journey's end. If this does not serve your purpose, you draw his
attention to the bird on the tree only a hundred feet away, or you
challenge him to race with you to the next telegraph post. And if
you challenge him to such a race, you are sensible enough to let him
win it, for you know very well that nothing will discourage him so
much as defeat--that is, the unpleasant feeling of failure; and you
know that nothing will stimulate him quite as much as the
satisfaction of defeating you. In other words, you set before him
one goal after another, each but a small fraction of the main
journey, and each within the appreciation of the child, and each
offering a satisfactory conclusion that is readily and eagerly
seized as _worth striving for_, here and now.
Now it may be asked, what discipline is there in doing always what
brings satisfaction? How can the children ever learn to do the
disagreeable but necessary tasks that make up so large a part of
every-day living? Where will they ever learn that some things must
be done, not because we like to do them, but because it is our duty
to do them? And these are indeed serious questions. There are two
sets of answers. One of them consists of the results actually
achieved in dealing with children from the new point of view. The
other is a challenge to make clear just what we mean by discipline
and task and duty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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