Proximal vs. Distal, and other notes
CutsieMarie89 said:
Aside from not being disciplined and just told to not do it anymore, I don't see how any disciplinary method doesn't use fear of something unpleasant to alter behavior.
It depends in large part on where the fear is located and how any given mind contextualizes it. For instance, imagine you hear a six year-old singing, "Shut your fucking face, uncle-fucker!" What do you do?
(A) Spank the child for cussing
(B) Ground/restrict/time-out the child for cussing
(C) Laugh, sing along, and then explain that a lot of people don't like words like that, and that the child might incur the wrath of school officials, grandma and grandpa, or other people who don't appreciate either the song or the words it uses?
(D) Other
A and B locate the object of fear in the immediate parent, which is the most problematic. C contains an element of fear, but it is the same sort of fear that a child learns the same time he or she leaps from slightly too high a precipice and learns, "Okay, that
hurts." There is always an element of fear insofar as even at the Freudian level, where law and punishment aren't necessarily the primary reason for any given person's civility. To the one, if murder suddenly became "legal", would you start knifing or shooting people randomly? What might happen to you if you do so?
Ah-ha! Or something like that. Civility is a form of self-preservation according to the conditions of nature—e.g., civilization—we experience.
The mind regards proximal and distal threats differently. The proximal is immediate and ever-looming. The distal is more abstract and subject to rational analysis. Experientially, I can say that answer C opens doors to further cognitive development. The inevitable, obvious question is, "Why are some words naughty?" And the functional answer is that, "Some people need to be offended by something. If it isn't
fuck or
shit that does it, it would be something else. People are always inventing fighting words." Now, this doesn't necessarily make sense to a six year-old, but consider it in terms of educating an infant becoming a toddler. Toddlers, it is said—and this is the colloquial expression—must be told everything fifty times before they finally start to grasp it. Don't play with the electrical outlets. Don't wrap that string around your neck. Don't hit. And so on. In truth, it takes more than fifty times, even if the lesson is reinforced with violence as operant conditioning.
Variable-interval, variable-response is the most effective positive reinforcement conditioning, and seems to hold the title for negative reinforcement as well. But in either case, what the child isn't doing is thinking deeply. The logical consideration is basic and proximal:
Do wrong, get hurt. Regular interval and response in negative reinforcement creates very specific outcomes in which fear compels conformity. Variable interval and response creates a very broad result in which fear can govern the entire outlook. Either way, such negative reinforcement shortens the logical consideration, while positive reinforcement opens the doors to further calculation. Grandma J says that curse words are tools of Satan, and I'm sure my daughter has heard that before. Just like she heard that grease is from Satan°. My six year-old is not only learning how to cuss, but she also eats cheeseburgers and bacon. I'm winning the theological battle, but slowly—my daughter is no longer afraid of Satan.
One result is that a couple weeks ago my daughter surprised me—pleasantly, that is, but it was still a surprise. Her mother doesn't like my version of "discipline", which consists of talking to our daughter as if she's smart enough to understand the basic concepts involved. To the other, she was asking me about when she would be old enough to wear makeup, get a tattoo, have a boyfriend, wear high heels, and so on. In this case, it was high heels, because she has this one pair of shoes with an inch block on the heel, and she does okay in them but can't seem to go up and down stairs without trouble. The last time I saw those shoes, she thought I didn't like them because they were high heels. So I explained to her that no, I don't really like high heels, but my actual worry was that she kept tripping in those shoes. I reminded her of the time she twisted her ankle stepping onto Mommy's porch. So she asked more questions about high heels that led to a twenty minute discussion of high heels, health, psychology, and history. And what was really striking about this was that she
followed the discussion all the way through. When she interrupted me with questions, they were
relevant questions instead of, "Daddy, do you like to move it, move it?" (e.g,
Madagascar; she has an old Happy Meal toy that sings that damn song.)
I'm thrilled. It doesn't vindicate my approach by any means, but I don't really care. I'm just happy my daughter is now exhibiting a new level of thought. It is my hope that over the long run, more and more similar results will occur, reinforcing the idea that if I give her a chance to think things through, she will. I would much prefer that she not wear high heels because they're uncomfortable and she's tired of tripping and twisting up her ankle than because "Daddy doesn't like them." And she knows that. Because I told her.
Just like repeating the basic message to a toddler is a form of conditioning, repeatedly challenging her cognitive skills as regards right and wrong is a form of conditioning. Fear is a natural part of life, but that is no justification for magnifying it, or bringing it so close that it is how the child identifies the parent. There will come a day when my daughter doesn't trust me implicitly, but I was seven or eight when my father and I started that drift apart, and I still remember the incident. My daughter turns seven in two months; I don't expect that she will stop trusting me in the next year or two simply because of psychological development. To the other, I hope that when the day comes, it is because her development demands it, and not because I've done something specific to trigger the process. That day will come, but it should come later.
Like why people don't speed when they see a police officer sitting around. The officer won't spank them, but they are still afraid that they might get a ticket.
I think that's a poor example for a couple of reasons. Everyone does something that violates a rule, and part of how we justify it includes the scale we assign it. For instance, lots of people speed, but far fewer will commit a rape or murder just because they think they have the opportunity. I smoke pot, for instance. (A) I don't think it's wrong. (B) I have seen no evidence that my consumption has hurt
anyone. (C) I don't fear the punishment; certainly it would be inconvenient, but I've actually smoked pot in front of police officers before (in plain view; at least twice specifically that I can recall). Oh, and (D) fuck the law.
Also, Interstate 205 between Tualatin, Oregon and the Oregon-Washington border was long patrolled by aerial observation. Signs to this effect were posted all over the place. Most people knew someone who had received a random traffic ticket in the mail. And for a few years, newspaper articles repeated the same old story that the tickets could not be contested without specific, irrefutable evidence—e.g., you are presumed guilty. And yet people
still speed, especially on the section between Tualatin and Oregon City.
It's not something I hear much about these days because of the prevalence of mobile networks, but I've known people who literally did not believe it was "stealing" to fraudulently obtain long-distance telephone service. And when I was in college, I got into an argument once with my girlfriend about food stamps. I didn't care if "everyone else" was doing it. That a college student we know might qualify for public assistance had nothing to do with the fact that we both had family support on top of our jobs, and in the end her logic amounted to the idea that it was inconvenient to sacrifice intoxicants and cosmetics in order to buy food. Really, if I had my druthers I would
still be stoned all the time, but I just can't afford it; there are other things that are, simply, more important. I
like being a stoner. I
don't care what the law says. But there are plenty of rational reasons why I'm not getting high today.
So they behave. How is it any different with children?
Well—
(A) Juvenile brains make decisions according to different processes in the brain—using different pathways and criteria—than adults. This is well-enough established that it was part of a 2005 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (Roper v. Simmons) to stop executing juvenile offenders.
(B) The observation that people speed is actually fairly consistent with Freud and MacLean.
(C) Norman O. Brown, in reflecting on Freud, asserted—accurately, I think—that historians have yet (even fifty years after Life and Death, in my opinion) to properly engage the dialectic of neurosis. The decisions people make are not so simply constructed as you suggest.
It is sad, and embarrassing, that my daughter had to learn the dangers of playing with matches by burning herself and setting the coffee table on fire, but that's
entirely my fault. However, I didn't need any authority figure to threaten me in order to figure out that the best solution is to simply not keep matchbooks in the house. So as to that, my bad, my lesson, and now learned.
As to fire, though, so cussing. I can't change school policies. I wouldn't change the prohibitions against cussing if I could. But my daughter sees the action and reaction, the choice and consequence, of cussing at school much more naturalistically—much like fire. If you do certain things, there will be certain results. Everybody has to learn this, else they cannot function in society. But the question of
where one invests that fear is of critical importance to cognitive development, and violence as a corrective tool invests that fear in the spanking parent.
I can do much more for my daughter if she trusts me and learns to think rationally than if she's simply frightened. The reality is that spanking is a shortcut for the
parent, and brings certain side effects. If spanking is more of a regular interval and response, the child learns something much akin to what you suggest about speeding:
Break the rules if you want; just don't get caught. If it is more of a variable interval and response, the child simply learns to live in fear. A very
proximal fear.
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° grease is from Satan — An amusing episode. Grandma and Grandpa J (both names start with J) are conservative-libertarian Christians of what seems a particularly paranoid strain. Grandpa is well-educated and worked in a sector that often tested his faith; he has seen and knows a good deal of what people are capable of. Grandma, to the other, is severely undereducated and wrapped in superstition. One day I was picking up my daughter from their care; she was finishing her lunch as Grandpa was coming in from yard work to eat his. So we sat around talking for a little bit. At one point, my daughter hops down from her chair, runs over to me, and says, "Daddy did you know grease is from Satan?" In that moment, you could see Grandpa J cringe, and drop his head closer to his food. He wasn't about to turn on his wife in front of Emma Grace, but it was easy to tell he wanted out of that one: Don't look at me. I got nothin' to do with that.
