Social Awareness for children

John Rosemond is a family psychologist who writes a column in the Washington Times. I am not sure if it's a regular column as I am not a regular reader, and I'm too lazy to go research it. ;-) Anyway, a family member sent me a recent article of his about how children should not be allowed to express their feelings freely.

He has some valid points in this article, contending that children need to learn how to control their feelings early to be sensitized to social norms as early as possible. His example:

Take love, for example. If it is inappropriate for an adult to blurt out "I love you!" whenever the feeling strikes, then I submit it is inappropriate for a child of a certain age and in certain situations to do so as well. In both cases, the spontaneous expression of feeling may cause the individual who is the object of said emotion to feel very uncomfortable.

I agree with this in principle; a child does need to learn how to control their feelings. Mr. Rosemond labels that control as becoming "civilized" and that's fine... he can label it what he wants. I personally don't like that term for it as I think the word "civilized" describes the control over our basic instincts as mammals e.g. not killing each other for food. On the other hand, I think what Mr. Rosemond is describing is the next step up in behavior modification from controlling our basic instincts. Since this is my blog, I'll label emotional control as "social awareness".

Then Mr. Rosemond continues with this anectdote and subsequent comment:

As I write this, in an airport waiting area, a mother is following her toddler as he runs up and down the rows of occupied seats, yelling incoherently, causing a general disturbance. Mom is smiling, as if she thinks this is cute. No doubt she would agree with my critic. Her child wants to run and yell in a public area; therefore, he should be allowed to run and yell (and she should run grinning after him, doubling the disturbance).

I'm certain the Stone Age mother would have removed her child from the area, insisted that he calm down and taught him to sit quietly with her. And everyone, including her child, would have benefited from her repressive, draconian attitude.

Again, in principle, I agree with him. A parent should not let their child be a nuisance to the world because the child can't control itself. However, I think Mr. Rosemond's argument = Fail on a couple of points.

1. A toddler is not mature enough to effectively control their emotions.

Heck, adults can't get it right, so why should children, especially a toddler? That said, a toddler is mature enough to *start* learning how to control their emotions. So expecting a toddler to calm down and be quiet upon an initial command is reasonable. Expecting a toddler to continue to follow the "calm down and be quiet" command over a sustained period of time, such as waiting in an airport waiting room for more than, say, 20 minutes, and I think even that's long for a toddler, is setting up the child for failure. Unless the toddler is the son of God, the only outcome to that situation is an even larger public disturbance because the toddler will melt down from the sheer inability to meet the expectation set upon it. This is no fault of the child, but of the parent who set the child up for failure.

Yes, children need to learn how to deal with failure, too. However, I contend that there are other vehicles for teaching this such as sports. The situation in the airport is an inappropriate medium for teaching a child about failure.

2. A toddler needs to learn to identify what (s)he is feeling before they can learn to control it.

At no point in his article does Mr. Rosemond address this at all, and I think this is what frustrates me the most about his article. My thoughts:

To tell the child to calm down and be quiet only teaches the child cause and effect: if I do this, then Mommy/Daddy tell me to sit down and be quiet. This "draconian attitude" fails to address what the child is feeling so that the child 1. learns what the feeling is and 2. learn how to deal with the feeling! This is an opportunity to teach the child self awareness with respect to their feelings, a key component in raising a well adjusted child (in my not-so-humble-opinion).

This "draconian attitude" also fails to start teaching the child how to reason. As I mentioned earlier, the scenario Mr. Rosemond describes as acceptable only teaches cause and effect. I recognize that a toddler can't truly reason, but it's never to early to try to start teaching reasoning. Again, the "draconian attitude" fails to take advantage of another teaching opportunity.

3. Allowing a toddler to run up and down the rows of seats yelling incoherently gives the toddler an opportunity to expend energy.

On the surface, this has virtually nothing to do directly with social awareness, yet it does. Those people who own/train dogs have a mantra: a tired dog is a good dog, meaning the dog will stay out of mischief because likely it'll be sleeping! The principle applies to children, too: a tired child (note - not an over-tired child!) is far more likely to be able to follow your instructions to be calm and quiet than a child with an overabundant amount of energy.

In this case, a toddler with an overabundant amount of energy on an airplane will be frustrated with its "captivity" no matter what the parent does to distract it. That frustration will be expressed, no matter how draconian the parent tries be to make the toddler control its emotions, and that expression of frustation will disturb the other passengers on the plane. It's an inevitable outcome unless the toddler is the son of God.

It is my contention to let the toddler run around in the airport to get out some energy if the end results will be that the toddler will be quiet(er) on the airplane! Only the parent knows how their child will likely react to situations based on their energy level so if letting their child run around is better, then so be it!

I am, by no means, the perfect parent, and never will be, though I will continue to strive daily to reach that unattainble goal. But I think I've had enough psychotherapy in my relatively short lifetime to see that the "draconian attitude" that Mr. Rosemond describes should be utilized in today's parenting is not going to result in a socially adjusted child, but a socially and emotionally repressed child. For someone who is a Family Psychologist, I would expect Mr. Rosemond to be more aware of this! Maybe he is, and he purposely left them out of his article to create controvery which would create discussion and therefore readership i.e. a mild publicity stunt.

If that's the case, then congratulations, it worked.