Guiding Children’s Behavior Part II – Seminar by Dr Louise Porter at Kennedy School

More notes and thoughts on the seminar (and book) from ages ago… 

What was that statistic again? 

380 children on average are molested before an abuser is caught. Dr Porter mentioned a statistic with that number during her talk but I couldn’t find the exact source offhand on Google to quote here – however if you search it, the number is around 300-400 with lotsa specifics. Skimmed crazy long research about child molestation statistics and misconceptions and what-not just to find a link, but at some point it occurred to me, do you care if it was 400 or 50, practically any number is too many before an offender is caught. 

Dr Porter’s point: That’s a lot of children who keep quiet. If children are not taught they can say no, it opens them up to abuse and mistreatment. Bullying happens when children are taught to obey stronger people/kids.  

The classic parenting wisdom of olde is to “discipline” a child into obedience, to not question grownups.

Now, I’m someone who famously got attracted to “smarts” over say, looks. A guy who’s been a top scorer in school is somehow more attractive to me. That’s pretty bad too. It’s real bull – we reward and pinnalize almost as shallowly as a society, when we covet pure braininess – it’s why so many smart/ high achieving people are still jerks. We contribute in however small a part to them being that way because when they’re smart/ high-achieving jerks they probably get a bit more allowance than when they’re regular jerks. And therefore my own No Zealot Like A Convert comment of not going simply for the smart kid as your child’s friend. Cos especially if they’re also crazy competitive then they might not be very nice – and being also smart, they can probably come up with a lot of ways of not being very nice to your kid.

Thing is, they’re also kids. In other words, they’re also learning, among other things, to be nice. But while they’re learning, and smart but still not nice……… I think it’s an understated little “risk” to have your child look up to or badly want to be friends with another child who’s smart or otherwise high-achieving…. and still learning to be nice… AND is very articulate, has a lot of creativity in not being nice.

(Sorry, does that sound awful? I’m just saying… True story – while sitting in a Mix blogging sometime ago, I saw a gorgeous little girl who really didn’t look like she was even 5 yet take a juice from the fridge, go up to the counter and say, “I’m really cute. Can I get this for free?” (Still don’t know how impressed I should be, along with being mildly horrified 😀 Her mum wasn’t even stopping by Mix, it turned out she was walking by quite far away)) 

Anyway, back to the good doctor’s comment: Bullying happens when children are taught to obey stronger people/kids. (I then took that to increasingly include smart ones. When I went to university, it was smart ones with the grades who were more popular than the hunky jocks who were failing courses… Then again there were a lotta China etc scholars in my jock hall that were obviously both athletic and pulling good grades..)

What kids really need to learn is to be aware of others when they behave.

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About 80% of children are actually eager to please; the other 20% will risk your displeasure to prove You Aren’t The Boss Of Me. 

More on that someday – because it appears we have one child who is in that aforementioned 80% (but with a rather delicate and fragile personality)……….. and another child who’s proving time and again to be of that other 20% (horrors!) Oh, and bribery doesn’t work.

All reward systems involve punishment…. Because (of) loss of a hoped-for reward feels like a punishment… If you gave pocket money as a reward for doing chores, you would find that in the long run, the children won’t do anything for you unless you reward them…

Therefore… when we tell children that they “have” to brush their teeth for e.g., this is a falsehood. They have to do no such thing: there simply will be outcomes if they do not, outcomes which may be worse than the inconvenience of brushing their teeth.

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Homework should be for kids to learn self discipline, but they need time to absorb what they learn at school. 

This one I agree with 200%. My own teen hood looked like this: 10 SPM (Malaysian equivalent of “O” levels and yes 10 is the maximum you are allowed) subjects, with the electives being in Additional Maths, Accounting, Chemistry, Biology, Physics (not say, Art. I loved art and literature btw.). Extra curriculars like debate team, taekwondo and music – gradings/exams as well as competitions. The activities took me out of class a lot, so I “needed” more tuition. Majority of the tuition I took however didn’t consolidate or revise what we did in school, the tutors taught their own stuff.

In SPM I scored….. 5As (For the Math subjects, Chemistry… the rest being all B3s except for Bahasa, a B4 – it would seem second or third languages are not a natural forte.) That didn’t even qualify me to apply for the coveted ASEAN scholarship, despite a Grade 8, black belt, and state level debating. I mean, I tried – I studied as hard as I could – but it always felt like I was stretched too thin. (Did develop some hacks for scraping through my music exam on much less practice though :D)

When I got to Catholic Junior College, beloved Sister Deirdre (whom btw I believe was Irish, bless her!) took one look at the crazy resume and pared everything down to 3A level subjects (plus 2 compulsory AOs) which I found so much easier to ace. I even had a life. My first boyfriend. (Long distance – we wrote snail mail to each other several times a week). And I could actually wander around Orchard Road! So CJC remains my happiest school time.

In the same vein, for as long as we can possibly hold off, Rockstar will get no tuition save for Chinese – instead, we try very hard to follow and revise what the school is doing. (So obviously we are dependent on knowing what to revise :)) 

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And finally, a point that I took great solace in (because honestly, I get a lot of crap from the kids :P)

Sometimes, children behave well for one parent and poorly for the other… Usually the one who is with the children the most, getting them to eat their veggies…. fertile ground for conflict.

…if they hold it together all day at school (say) and then lose it with you, this means that they know you are going to love them anyway. (Aww. Tear. :))

If your kids are just being children then let it go; but do NOT tolerate inconsiderate behavior.

No kidding!

But wait, I had another little story here….

Just over the Miss’ shoulder while she’s sitting on this horsie, is a local Cantonese-speaking girl accompanied by her helper who was quite belligerent to us because she didn’t want to wait her turn while we were playing at that machine before the Miss eventually decided on the horsie ride. We weren’t hogging the machine, we initially played one game, then let her play one game, and when her helper went to get more change for the machine, we resumed playing – a total of two games. Each game lasts maybe 2-3 minutes (for a toddler – if you’re an adult it will probably be 30 seconds or something to shoot all 5 ping pong balls).

The Miss stood her ground – this is one thing I constantly appreciate about her stubborn-ness/ gutsiness – the other girl was almost a head taller (and the Miss btw is not a small toddler – more on that later) and obviously several years older, but the Miss didn’t back down, even when the other girl reached over and tapped her arm and also took hold of the machine handles while the Miss was trying to finish her game.

I do expect better than that of the older girl, at her age. However, as I idly watched the girl and her helper over the Miss’ shoulder I then blinked in disbelief: After the first game, the helper proceeded to play the machine herself, instead of letting the girl under her charge play the next few games.

Considering how impatient and rather aggressive that little girl was with the Miss, even with me standing there, it was interesting that she said nothing as she watched the helper continue to play. Finally, the helper looked up and around her, and let the little girl play just the one last round of the last game before they left.   

And…. my conclusion is… parenting nowadays is hard enough as is, for actual parents. If you’ve got kids, you’ve just really, really, got to try to keep an eye on them, and delegate as little as possible.

ps: Guiding Children’s Behavior Part I is here.