(no subject)

[randomness]

The older you get, the more serious the consequences of your actions tend to be. Best to learn about those consequences early, from someone who loves you and means you well, rather than later, from the cold, cruel world, which cares about you not at all.

With the caveat that I am not a parent, it strikes me that delivering those consequences is a crucial--though often difficult and sometimes heartrending--aspect of parenting.

Comments

On Good Responses

[dpolicar]

Well... the thing is, "respond better" is an ambiguous idea.

If you want to instill an aversion to hot stoves, you get fastest most powerful effect by letting the subject burn itself on a hot stove -- positive punishment. The problem is it's too powerful; you're likely to also get an aversion to cold stoves, pots, kitchens, any number of other things.

Rewarding not-touching the hot stove (positive reinforcement) is a weaker, slower and more tedious process, but avoids those side-effects. But even there you may end up creating an unwanted dependency on reinforcement, and associated side effects like lack of initiative. That is, positive reinforcement is often still too powerful. (This tends not to matter too much when training pets, since lack of initiative is often not considered a liability in a pet. It's more of a problem when raising a child.)

Setting the situation up so you get to play the "you've shown yourself to be trustworthy enough that I no longer feel I have to watch you all the time to make sure you don't burn yourself" card (negative reinforcement) is practically powerless by comparison to the other two, and therefore far more difficult to use, but by the same token has fewer side-effects.

We have this tendency to use the most powerful available tool to address a problem, because it's rewarding to see the short-term effect, and it's very much not-rewarding to work on something and see no obvious results for a long time. (This is frequently cited as a difference between "modern/Western medicine" and "alternative/Eastern medicine", though as you no doubt know better than I, this is mostly a bullshit dichotomy.)

But often it's not the most useful tool in the long run. Often a "good" (in the sense of strong, robust, noticable) response isn't actually a good response.

Re: On Good Responses

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I said "respond better" I really meant, I like it more more. :)

I sense that your experience with Sasha informs much of this discussion.