Teach, don’t train
Just a little rant today.
I’m sick and tired of hearing or reading about people training their kids. Are your children dogs?
Really, stop and think about it for a minute. Is obedience what you are striving for? If the grandest and best thing you can wish for is to have an obedient child, then maybe training is the way to go about it. But I don’t think that is an appropriate goal for a human being. When you train people to obey, you train them listen to their superiors rather than to their instincts. They lose (or never gain) the ability to use common sense or rational thinking to make decisions and instead they rely entirely on instructions or advice from others to decide what to do. You train them to be people pleasers, to be reliant on others for their own sense of self-worth.
History has taught us that unquestioning obedience is a dangerous thing. So don’t train your children. Teach them instead.
Teach them through your own example. Take phrases like “do as I say, not as I do” and throw them out the window. Instead, model the type of behaviour you would like to see from your children and explain your beliefs and reasons for doing things a certain way. If you are a good leader, they will follow in your footsteps because they look up to you and respect you, not because they fear you.
Teach them by problem solving with them. Don’t tell your child what to do to solve a problem. Instead, ask questions and help your child to come to a solution on his own.
Teach them by involving them. Let them help you with the cooking and the housework. Get them to pay attention to the route you take to the supermarket and ask them to give you directions next time (yes, this means not having a DVD player in the back of the car or if you do, only using it for some parts of very long trips). Ask them their opinion when making family decisions (maybe you choose what car to buy, but let your child choose the colour).
Our society needs leaders. We need idea people. We need researchers and inventors. We need people willing to go the extra mile. We don’t get those types of people by training our children. We get those types of people by teaching them and empowering them to become independent thinkers.
If you want something to train, please get a dog. Don’t have a child.
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9 comments
Great post. The VERY least we owe our children is to teach them and show them through our behavior the type of person we hope they will be.
I completely agree. I don’t understand people who continue to live their own lives entirely separate from their children. My MIL can’t understand why we insist on eating early with our LO at the table, for example – to set a good example of what dinner time is all about, duh! This is also why I hate child-specific places and activities, like “adult table and kids table” at a meal, or parks where you dump your kids in one area and the adults go to another area. I’m not an attachment parent by any means, but if your child never gets to see how you act, interact, and react, how are they supposed to magically learn their own social norms? Oh right. By training them. Agreed – my child is not a puppy.
dvd’s in the back of the car are one of my serious pet peeves
theres a book out there about potty learning and that is what my family is calling it…i see it more as a process that happens over time…not one day we put away diapers and are trained
Learning is messy, noisy, and often not pretty but they end result is knowing that you are capable!
[...] September 18, 2008 by phdinparenting As you may have gathered from my other posts, my goal for my children is not obedience. My goal is for them to be smart, to learn, and to make logical decisions on their own. I want to teach them, not train them or tell them what to do. [...]
I believe in teaching and training. If my child happens upon a snake in the yard and I say “Stop, don’t move!”, I want them to be obedient. Their first instinct is going to be “why” and keep moving. Then, their own instinct may get them hurt. The teaching part will come after I have killed the snake. You can teach both and not ruin your children for life.
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