I don’t like the term ‘testing of limits’. It seems to be imply that somehow children are hell-bent on testing the boundaries of the acceptable and doing the naughtiest things they can do without getting caught, just for the sake of being naughty. Put simply, it assumes behavior that is too ‘adult-like’ and psychopathic. It seems more realistic to me that children aren’t capable of analyzing to this extent; they are impulsive and often do things without even considering the consequences. Sometimes you have a situation where the child is angry at the parent, and deliberately does things to piss the parent off. That doesn’t necessarily comprise all situations though.
I agree that corrective measures should be applied at all times. If it’s a minor infraction, only a minor correction is necessary (“Don’t do that”, said neutrally and not angrily.) If it’s a big infraction, a bigger correction is necessary. Reacting with unreasonable anger towards a minor infraction hurts your authority.
I don’t like the term ‘testing of limits’. It seems to be imply that somehow children are hell-bent on testing the boundaries of the acceptable and doing the naughtiest things they can do without getting caught, just for the sake of being naughty.
In my experience children do things like that. I have two little brothers and they had phases where they did engage in a lot of testing of limits.
Testing the limits is neccessary to learn the real rules. Especially in the beginning they do not even know what a rule is and even less what consequences to rule violation are. These are higher order concepts which must be learned.
Same with defiance and anger: To make any use of emotions their effect must be calibrated. The brain surely is not hard-wired to associate speific social situation with specific emotions. Not when the social situations themselves are largely learned. I think that a lot of anger and fear etc. is triggered during these childish outbursts not intentionally but more or less randomly due to hormonally reduced inhibition. This will increase likelyhood of suitable situations to learn emotional response.
I don’t like the term ‘testing of limits’. It seems to be imply that somehow children are hell-bent on testing the boundaries of the acceptable and doing the naughtiest things they can do without getting caught, just for the sake of being naughty. Put simply, it assumes behavior that is too ‘adult-like’ and psychopathic. It seems more realistic to me that children aren’t capable of analyzing to this extent; they are impulsive and often do things without even considering the consequences. Sometimes you have a situation where the child is angry at the parent, and deliberately does things to piss the parent off. That doesn’t necessarily comprise all situations though.
I agree that corrective measures should be applied at all times. If it’s a minor infraction, only a minor correction is necessary (“Don’t do that”, said neutrally and not angrily.) If it’s a big infraction, a bigger correction is necessary. Reacting with unreasonable anger towards a minor infraction hurts your authority.
In my experience children do things like that. I have two little brothers and they had phases where they did engage in a lot of testing of limits.
Testing the limits is neccessary to learn the real rules. Especially in the beginning they do not even know what a rule is and even less what consequences to rule violation are. These are higher order concepts which must be learned.
Same with defiance and anger: To make any use of emotions their effect must be calibrated. The brain surely is not hard-wired to associate speific social situation with specific emotions. Not when the social situations themselves are largely learned. I think that a lot of anger and fear etc. is triggered during these childish outbursts not intentionally but more or less randomly due to hormonally reduced inhibition. This will increase likelyhood of suitable situations to learn emotional response.
Tag: parenting