Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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That's the problem with one-size-fits-all methods. Kids are just different and what worked for one child doesn't necessarily work for another child. Even if you do exactly the same thing.

My girlfriend used to train dogs for a living. She always said "it's the owner's fault, not the dog's". Now we have a Chihuahua who won't listen, doesn't respond to rewards, doesn't respond to punishment. She just does her own thing. My girlfriend is much more humble now. I wish a lot of these child psychologists would have to deal with a difficult child day in and day out, not just once a week. Maybe they would also lose some of the confidence in their advice.

Yeah, after having three kids with widely different temperaments, I can only offer two pieces of advice to other dads:

- You're going to have to change diapers anyway, so you might as well get good at it. I was a one-man Formula 1 pit crew of diaper changing. AMA.

- Invest in a vasectomy.

Wait. After three kids your advice only covers the first 2-3 years?!

Since I basically followed both of those pieces already, am I good?

> After three kids your advice only covers the first 2-3 years?!

Yep. Good luck.

AMA: what about the super runny pound of goop poo that leaks through both nappies.

They use sawdust to clean liquidy messes at the subway so...

Just deal with it. It's going to happen, just notice as quickly as possible and then go and clean the baby (washing, not wipes, just hold him in one arm, use the shower head and in a minute its all clean)

Buy a dog.

Cannot recommend this one enough, many household messes will be gone in no time with a dog that does his/her part

I think it's also that a dog will also respond differently to a third party (the trainer) than how they respond to the owner with whom they already have a relationship. The owner could use the exact same techniques as the trainer, but the dog will respond differently.

Same thing as why organizational change can be more effective when lead by an external change agent than an internal one.

Exactly the same thing is true of a child with their parents compared to other caregivers.

I think that's what a ot of trainers and coaches don't understand. When people (or dogs) meet somebody new they listen much more to that new person. So the coach thinks his method is perfect.

But after a while people will regress to their old habits.

I saw this behavior in speech therapy with my second. He would refuse to vocalize to his mom because he knew she would eventually cave and give him what he wanted, but when the speech therapist withheld a toy until he vocalized, he responded very quickly - likely because he was unsure whether she would cave as mommy does.

This helped us realize that, in this case, we really were the problem. We needed to, in some cases, be more firm. At first this resulted in a lot of tantrums, but once the child's expectations changed then he behaved with us similarly to with his speech therapist.

I'm not sure why that would humble her. If she trained dogs, then she already knew 99% of the dogs out there with behavioral issues are a direct result of the owner. There are VERY rare circumstances where it's just a genetic defect (for lack of better term) in the dog, and it just has insurmountable issues. After fostering/owning roughly 75 dogs in my life, I can say 9 times out of 10 that consistency and discipline are lacking in households that have a "problem dog".

Ironically enough, the exact same consistency and discipline are pretty vital for a child as well. They need a little structure in their lives to feel secure. (No, I'm not talking helicopter parenting or scheduling every second of your child's day).

9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100?

99 % dogs, 9/10 children.

9/10 dermatologists

It humbled her because in the past she would have blamed the dog's behavior on the owner and she would have known exactly how to fix it. Now she has a dog that doesn't respond to her methods.

The more likely explanation is that she is not properly applying her own methods, because it's harder to evaluate something that one is personally experiencing, as opposed to something happening to another person. The article even talks about this.

This is not unique to kids and pets. It is why even experienced athletes have coaches, for example.

You are exhibiting the Just World fallacy. It makes you uncomfortable to believe that sometimes the universe is random and chaotic, and that sometimes there are dogs and children whose bad behavior really isn't the fault of their handlers, so you shield yourself with a dogmatic (no pun intended) belief that it's always someone's fault, even when the empirical evidence (like a crummy Chihuahua owned by a professional dog trainer) suggests the opposite.

Which is not to say that it's never the fault of the parents/owners. It probably is, the majority of the time. But to suggest that as a universal law, as you have done, is silly.

So you didn't bother to read my post? Because I never once said it never happens/is universal law. I said it is the majority of the time... you know, exactly what you just said.

You were not very precise with your numbers. You say "99%", "9 out of 10" and "very rare". To a lot of people these mean "negligibly small". With dog training, child rearing and most everything else in life you increase your chances for success by a lot if you follow certain rules. But let's not look down at the people who fail. It may be their fault or it may not be their fault.

How are 99 % or 9/10 not precise numbers?

And "very rare" was a comment on "99 %", not a quantity on its own.

HN is the one place where I expect readers to interpret numbers literally.

Are 9/10 and 99% the same number to you?

Would you describe a random number generator outputting 5 when picking between 1 and 10 as "very rare"?

1/10 != 1/100 != "very rare"

They are for separate things.

> You are exhibiting the Just World fallacy. It makes you uncomfortable to believe... so you shield yourself...

This is bulverism. You haven't presented evidence that tw04 is wrong. You've just assumed they're wrong, and presented a condescending explanation for why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism

And as they said, you're not actually disagreeing with them.

"Here [at the Yale Parenting Center], we deal with two kinds of children. One is that they are very aggressive and have serious psychiatric problems. And the other one is that they come in for normal kinds of issues that parents just want some help on."

I don't think these people are just dispensing pop psych advice in magazines or once a week. It's a clinic.

I think it's a little of both. The thing with kids, and dogs, is that the training has to start from day 1. You let a little bit of laziness in, and they take advantage. It compounds (kind of like eating that extra slice of pizza over a few years).

I have had both kids and dogs, and trained both in pretty much the same way (don't tell their mom).

But again, that is my sample size of me.

I think some breeds are just kind of fundamentally flawed.

Were chihuahuas bred to be obedient or were they bred to be toys and possibly food?

No idea. They are very good lapdogs. Our dog is actually very nice and cute but she just doesn't learn anything. T

I have agree with you half don't, I train Australian Shepherds and I can say without a doubt that positive enforcement works better then positive punishment. I have worked with 2 Chihuahuas in my lifetime, but were little pieces of shit that don't respond to anything either way.

So I guess we should clicker train our black/brown haired fat kids and the blonde skinny ones are screwed.

Seriously though, your post makes me think about how dogs/child teaching is all in what you have and psychologist (maybe news) try to apply one method to all of them. It just doesn't work, some kids need one thing and others need something else. We live in such a crazy complex world.

Probably bred to be rodent dogs.

Chihuahua are an old breed and I don't think we know their true history. Old breeds tend to be healthier and more compatible with humans though, as we have worked all the bugs out.

I heard they were bred to be alarm dogs. Nothing was getting close to your camp if you had a chihuahua. That's why they never shut up, and they are so difficult to ignore. My friend from Mexico told me that - he's not a dog authority by any means, but it sounded legit to me.

I think you're right about adjusting the method according to the child but Kazdin is a director of the Yale Parenting Center, and they seem quite experienced in dealing with "problematic" children. But also, giving an exhaustive method to complex social issues, e.g. parenting, isn't really possible because of all the edge cases you may have, which is why we have "free form" methods like therapy, I guess?

I think the problem is with the entire field of psychology they don't take people's personality into account. And I think it takes lot and lots of practice to even start getting at that because you have one personality as a psychologist and your entire theory of mind is based on your own perceptions of what you would do were you in the other's person's shoes. It takes a lot of experience to get over that level of understand and start to take other people's temperament into account before even thinking about that. Not to mention even our models are not good because we don't really understand ourselves that well.

http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/fish.html :

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. "Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."

"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."

"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

---

Do you know that they don't because you know the training that psychologists get, or because _you_ don't and you haven't had that training?

Similarly, do you know that the models are bad because you've studied how they don't fit people, or do you think that those models don't fit you?

Psychologists do study personality. But despite that I still think as human beings our theories of mind are based on our own understanding of our mind. Those neurons that fire in our brain emulate the behavior in our brain. So the advice that any psychologist gives is based on that. But I am not a fish, so I don't know how it is like to be a fish, a psychologist in this case.

I have just received bad advice before from a psychologist and looking back on it was because they don't know me and could not have known me in the few hours I spent with them. In order to know me they would have to go through a lot of people, and very few people are like me in personality terms. So to know me they would have to go through many many people before they had enough experience with people with my sort of psychology or temperament... to give me any sort of advice that would work with my temperament and actually add value to my life.

> I have just received bad advice before from a psychologist

Exactly. It doesn't take much Zen magic to figure out when someone is useless to you. (OK, maybe sometimes it does, but nevertheless it doesn't.)

Plus it's doubly off-putting when they are being useless while feeling good about themselves because they think they are helping. I have a gut feeling that some psychologists are driven by their own insecurity about being useful.

One of the biggest causes of poor dog behaviour is failure by the breeder to properly socialize the puppy. Puppies should be handled frequently, starting from newborn and preferably by as many people as possible. This imprints the dog with the concept that human=boss,parent,good person.

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