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Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

The thing that jumps out at me is that it took months and months to ask the simple question, "why are you doing that?"

Also, in this case the undesirable behaviour had a perfectly benign and easily fixable root cause, but that's not always (or even mostly?) true. In many cases my kids will be misbehaving because they're not getting what they want, eg. icecream for dinner or to not go to bed on time. In cases like these, it's the parents' job to say no. Of course it's very important to understand the child's real motivations but often it's going to come down them just wanting something they can't have.

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Small children often can’t articulate the reasons why they do something. If pressed they’ll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense (but isn’t true nonetheless). If you suggest a reason to them they’ll immediately say yes. If you offer a list of reasons they’ll immediately claim it’s the first or last choice offered.

I have no doubt that she asked him repeatedly why he was doing it but either he couldn’t answer or by that point the shame and pressure from himself teacher created a mental block that prevented him from answering.

Taking the pressure off is absolutely the right thing to do.

> Small children often can’t articulate the reasons why they do something. If pressed they’ll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense

This reminded me of a UI Design principle, that users themselves often don't understand why they dislike a user interface, so their complaints and requests need to be explored, rather than taken at face value. Otherwise, when the first request is implemented, it may then replaced by another, and again, until the root cause is uncovered and addressed.

A very fuzzily remembered example was something like puzzling requests for data-entry form tooling, and the root cause turned out to be a multiple-page form lacking a "I can see it all, and see that it's right" confidence property, which was resolved not with tooling, but by simply making the form a single page.

I've seen the same behavior with my kids. Sometimes the reason is clear and correct and sometimes it's clearly not.

One strategy I've found that can sometimes work is to engage with them in problem solving. Asking them what they think would help or if you have a guess, an action that corresponds with that guess. I've found its usually a more reliable source of information.

The internet is a boon for these things too. I know the author didn't have Google 23 years ago, but now there are a lot more resources to get on the right track with many strange kid behaviors, so it's like parenting in easy mode now.

The article mentions that she tried grilling her son about why he was doing this early on, without success.

True, but there's a difference between grilling someone about something, usually after a confrontation about it, and calmly discussing their motivations with them without a build-up of conflict beforehand.

As well, sometimes the difference is months of brain development.

Months, hell sometimes a couple of days makes a marked difference. Kids change so fast, for so long, I think we still don't really appreciate how complex, capable and versatile an average adult human is.

It didn't take months to ask that question, it took months before the kid could answer it. Children often have trouble explaining such things. Can't find the right words, or lack the self-awareness to understand why they do what they do.

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