Pretending not to see when a rule you’ve set is being violated can be optimal policy in parenting sometimes (and I bet it generalizes).
Example: suppose you have a toddler and a “rule” that food only stays in the kitchen. The motivation is that each time food is brough into the living room there is a small chance of an accident resulting in a permanent stain. There’s cost to enforcing the rule as the toddler will put up a fight. Suppose that one night you feel really tired and the cost feels particularly high. If you enforce the rule, it will be much more painful than it’s worth in that moment (meaning, fully discounting future consequences). If you fail to enforce the rule, you undermine your authority which results in your toddler fighting future enforcement (of this and possibly all other rules!) much harder, as he realizes that the rule is in fact negotiable / flexible.
However, you have a third choice, which is to credibly pretend to not see that he’s doing it. It’s true that this will undermine your perceived competence, as an authority, somewhat. However, it does not undermine the perception that the rule is to be fully enforced if only you noticed the violation. You get to “skip” a particularly costly enforcement, without taking steps back that compromise future enforcement much.
I bet this happens sometimes in classrooms (re: disruptive students) and prisons (re: troublesome prisoners) and regulation (re: companies that operate in legally aggressive ways).
Of course, this stops working and becomes a farce once the pretense is clearly visible. Once your toddler knows that sometimes you pretend not to see things to avoid a fight, the benefit totally goes away. So it must be used judiciously and artfully.
Huh, that went somewhere other than where I was expecting. I thought you were going to say that ignoring letter-of-the-rule violations is fine when they’re not spirit-of-the-rule violations, as a way of communicating the actual boundaries.
Perhaps that can work depending on the circumstances. In the specific case of a toddler, at the risk of not giving him enough credit, I think that type of distinction is too nuanced. I suspect that in practice this will simply make him litigate every particular application of any given rule (since it gives him hope that it might work) which raises the cost of enforcement dramatically. Potentially it might also make him more stressed, as I think there’s something very mentally soothing / non-taxing about bright line rules.
I think with older kids though, it’s obviously a really important learning to understand that the letter of the law and the spirit of the law do not always coincide. There’s a bit of a blackpill that comes with that though, once you understand that people can get away with violating the spirit as long as they comply with the letter, or that complying with the spirit (which you can grok more easily) does not always guarantee compliance with the letter, which puts you at risk of getting in trouble.
Pretending not to see when a rule you’ve set is being violated can be optimal policy in parenting sometimes (and I bet it generalizes).
Example: suppose you have a toddler and a “rule” that food only stays in the kitchen. The motivation is that each time food is brough into the living room there is a small chance of an accident resulting in a permanent stain. There’s cost to enforcing the rule as the toddler will put up a fight. Suppose that one night you feel really tired and the cost feels particularly high. If you enforce the rule, it will be much more painful than it’s worth in that moment (meaning, fully discounting future consequences). If you fail to enforce the rule, you undermine your authority which results in your toddler fighting future enforcement (of this and possibly all other rules!) much harder, as he realizes that the rule is in fact negotiable / flexible.
However, you have a third choice, which is to credibly pretend to not see that he’s doing it. It’s true that this will undermine your perceived competence, as an authority, somewhat. However, it does not undermine the perception that the rule is to be fully enforced if only you noticed the violation. You get to “skip” a particularly costly enforcement, without taking steps back that compromise future enforcement much.
I bet this happens sometimes in classrooms (re: disruptive students) and prisons (re: troublesome prisoners) and regulation (re: companies that operate in legally aggressive ways).
Of course, this stops working and becomes a farce once the pretense is clearly visible. Once your toddler knows that sometimes you pretend not to see things to avoid a fight, the benefit totally goes away. So it must be used judiciously and artfully.
Huh, that went somewhere other than where I was expecting. I thought you were going to say that ignoring letter-of-the-rule violations is fine when they’re not spirit-of-the-rule violations, as a way of communicating the actual boundaries.
Perhaps that can work depending on the circumstances. In the specific case of a toddler, at the risk of not giving him enough credit, I think that type of distinction is too nuanced. I suspect that in practice this will simply make him litigate every particular application of any given rule (since it gives him hope that it might work) which raises the cost of enforcement dramatically. Potentially it might also make him more stressed, as I think there’s something very mentally soothing / non-taxing about bright line rules.
I think with older kids though, it’s obviously a really important learning to understand that the letter of the law and the spirit of the law do not always coincide. There’s a bit of a blackpill that comes with that though, once you understand that people can get away with violating the spirit as long as they comply with the letter, or that complying with the spirit (which you can grok more easily) does not always guarantee compliance with the letter, which puts you at risk of getting in trouble.
Teacher here, can confirm.