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Comment by fishnchips | Hacker News Reader

Yes and no. From my limited exposure to kids (father of two - 3.5 and 1.5), while in vast majority of cases explaining makes a difference, there are areas where there's perfect understanding but that doesn't lead to desired behavior. Like the older taking everything away from his little brother. He knows perfectly well he can't do it. He was also shown how it feels (I took everything from him for several minutes). He still does it. There's a certain emotional (on one side) and moral (on the other side) aspect that goes beyond mere explaining and understanding.

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I've been reading the 1-2-3 Magic book (expecting my first soon), and the philosophies have extremely stark differences. The 123 approach outright attacks (what it calls) the fallacy of "little adults" - saying that explaining is just frustrating to children who don't have a chance at understanding. The 123 approach probably comes across as more traditional.

The best theory I have is to build rock-solid boundaries, but to do so at a meaningful distance. Humans and animals are good at working with a "duality" of personalities. Children should have plenty of space to explore, be creative, and develop relationships, but going beyond a certain well-established limit brings out the bad cop. A lot of 123 methods looks like, to me, ways to make the kid recognize and respect the bad cop... but still have confidence that bad cop won't show up if they will stay inside of defined bounds.

Constant behavior correction is terrible, and leads to psychological problems. Too much of what I see takes this problem and turns it around to "no correction". That's probably not AS bad for the child, but is inviting disaster on the part of the parents.

I have two teenagers. An important aspect of 123 is that you are in absolute total control of your emotions. Saying "that's 1" and "that's 2" is a way of calming yourself down so you can manage the situation rationally without having to physically intervene.

It's all about controlling your own behavior.

When my spouse and I were expecting, I actually took a class on 123 at the hospital. The instructor gave one piece of advice, which I still remember: Your home environment when you were growing up will determine whether 123 will work for you now. Nothing works for everybody.

I need to get this book. I can feel the veneer of my patience slipping. My daughter is 22 months, and she's definitely in the boundary-pushing stage, and trying to assert control over as much as she can.

One trick I developed: The 123 thing is great for stopping a behavior, but not necessarily for starting one, such as getting into the bathtub. For those things, I used a count-down: 10, 9, 8...

My kids never found out what happened if I got to zero.

I think the method was useful because it distracted them from whatever they actually wanted to do, just long enough to get their minds on what I wanted.

Me and my wife (a highly qualified childcare professional) used to have theories, too. Now that we have kids, we no longer have theories. We just play by ear.

BTW I never heard of 123 but it just sounds like a pretty natural, common sense approach.

I agree. What’s been interesting is getting to know other families with kids. It’s obviously not always the case, but the fathers often have these elaborate theories. They also look really good in public. I know their wives too. The reality is that they do almost no childcare at home, and their wives have to do almost everything.

It sucks, but the reality (to me) is that you deal with the situations as they appear. Hardest part is managing your own exhaustion after little sleep, look after kids for hours a day for years, and trying to hold down a job at the same time.

I suspect that we are strongly influenced by how we were raised ourselves, and possibly even by genetics. The deluge of parenting advice may give a false impression of how much control we actually have.

This is the closest thing to true, imo. I'm not trying to say we know nothing about parenting. Beating your children probably leads to worse outcomes than not, for example. However the rest is vulnerable to a host of selection bias issues, which rarely seem to be addressed. I'm not saying to ignore advice either, but take it with a grain of salt. If it doesn't work for you, maybe you are doing it wrong. Or maybe your kid is just not the type for which it will work.

There is beating and then there is Pavlovian discipline. While really not the best thing to do, sometimes it really is the last resort... (Say when the kid really is attempting something deadly.)

Have to be real careful when forming associations this way, like some other poster tried with his kid potty training and messed it up. The whole situation gets associated not just what you want. And it is real hard to reverse.

Children don't develop meaningful self control and decision making until age 3-5. He's still developing the capacity to make decisions about not doing something he wants to. I would argue that the moral/explaining/understanding part of the equation is never even invoked because the capability to invoke it hasn't physically developed yet.

It's never a binary thing, though. You can't just one day wake up and say 'son, now you're old enough to know better'. If you do so, a smart kid will simply ask 'so dad, what changed since yesterday?'.

Oh absolutely, you have to treat them the same regardless, I just meant the parent should expect results until they are like 5.

That doesn't seem much of an obstacle. Something did change, and you can certainly explain that.

The point is that nothing did change. Children don't go from animals to sentient beings overnight - they develop gradually.

So how do you deal with that? You take them seriously, and you accept that it isn't going to work at first, and then will work imperfectly, but will work fully when they're ready for it.

Yes, something did change, or else why are you changing the rules? Your understanding of them changes. Your opinion changes. Something had to change. And even if you don't know when it changed, you can still explain that it has.

I would recommend checking out the Stanford marshmallow experiment and the connection to the prefrontal cortex.

In the context of the article, it is rather unclear if punishment will work when a kid understand a rule but is unable to moderate their own behavior.

Stanford marshmallow experiment has been debunked. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/09/03kohn.h34.htm...

>> Stanford marshmallow experiment and the connection to the prefrontal cortex.

From that article:

> The outcome, as it's usually represented, is that the children who were able to wait for an extra treat scored better on measures of cognitive and social skills many years later and had higher SAT scores. Thus, if we teach kids to put off the payoff as long as possible, they'll be more successful.

But I did not use the usually representation. See the highlighted part I made? "The connection to the prefrontal cortex", ie the development of the brain to moderating social behavior in particular young children? The linked article is not debunking nor dispelling the link between prefrontal cortex development and the ability to moderate social behavior.

What the the article do debunk is the predictable nature of looking at early ability to moderate social behavior in young children.

> when the children were tracked down 10 years later, those who had been more likely to wait didn't have any more self-control or willpower than the others.

Which is possible true. It was just not the part I refereed to. Here is some sources if you like: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187892931...

"We suggest that input from these brain regions contribute to three functions involved in generating flexible behavior within social contexts: valuation, inhibition, and rule use"

See the connection between topic we are talking about and inhibition and rule use? Lets take an other study. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110831160220.h...

That one somewhat debunks the debunking article, but I have no horse in that race. The Stanford marshmallow experiment is simply a starting point on the subject, but its an old study with multiple claims, some that is likely to be false. One can always skip it and jump directly into the more heavy research papers from recent dates.

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