Don’t tell me what to do…. or why parenting is like puppy training

And this goes for all of us. There’s absolutely no point telling anyone what to do. The title of this piece is, of course, an oxymoron. I know that by telling you not to tell me what to do you’ll ignore me anyway, or worse, keep doing it because I give you a reaction- and that’s the way of the world.

It may come as a surprise to many, but each and everyone of us is blessed with a substantive amount of grey matter from which we form judgements, make decisions and go about our business without walking into walls. And these choices, (such as they are) are based on the results of whatever has led up to the moment of so-called decision (which probably isn’t a decision anyway, just the logical conclusion of nature, nurture, instinct and experience with a healthy portion of circumstance thrown in for good matter, churned up and spewed out by our brains under the guise of choice.)

All things being equal, getting upset when someone won’t do something your way is a complete waste of time and only generates stress for the person doing the telling and the person being told. We have to trust each other that’s someone else’s vision aligns with what we want for ourselves and leave the other person alone to get on with it.

The difficulty arises, as in so much of life, when all things aren’t equal. When someone in a position of power needs to coerce someone else into doing what they want. Traditionally, the carrot and stick method, ie. incentive, and punishment, has been seen as most effective way of getting something done. But this is because this is the way most of us have been brought up:  do this and get THIS (positive thing) or THIS (negative consequence) will happen  – and so we are blinkered that there may be a better way of doing things.

Increasingly, now that sticks, slippers, naughty steps, rubbing puppies faces in it and even jail are falling out of fashion, positive reinforcement is seen as the best way to get things done.

Disincentives don’t work because all behaviour is the result of circumstance and genetics. Bad thing don’t just happen. The concepts of good and evil are thankfully, finally,  being seen for what they are: fairytales. Things happen, and they are never the result of just one person. And ultimately all attention, sweets, smacks, pay rises and punishments, is still attention. There’s no such thing as bad attention.

This is most clear when training dogs, but it works well with children.  Johnny Milton, our new puppy is being puppy trained, and the vet was clear in how to do it well. “Reward them when they get it right,” she said. ” Ignore them when they get it wrong.” And it works.

Obviously, as a  dog owner you are in a position of power over your dog. You hold the rewards. But if you have a flap and a meltdown – or even smack your dog every time it does a shit on the carpet, you’re doomed to  a life of shitty carpets. The attention generated by your flap is as likely to create the same response as if you gave your dog a treat every time he shat on the carpet. By giving the dog attention, you reward it. Ultimately, whether we’re puppy, human, extrovert or introvert, attention, one way or another, is what we all crave more than anything else.

With children this approach is more subtle, hard wired, as babies are to gain their parent’s attention from birth, and parents, by and large are hard wired to give it. But though we’re conditioned to think of people as individuals reward mentality is universal.

Babies are born to be arch manipulators; it’s only by the second or third child that most parents realise they don’t have to breast-feed, comfort or otherwise reward their child with attention every time they cry out or do something they don’t like. Chucking dinner on the floor will become an entrenched behaviour if it precipitates a scene every time it happens in toddlerhood. According to my late beloved grandma, the Queen Mother was still throwing her dinner on the floor well into her 80s, and you can almost see how this might have happened.

Parental over attention is why many first children become neurotic – first child syndrome is an actual thing, so christ help the world if China and David Attenborough get their way and force us all into only one child for fear of over population (my own view being that parenting is so unrewarding in a modern society that eventually only a few will be daring enough to breed. Those that do should be handsomely rewarded for their effort in raising large, well adjusted families – but what universe would ever be as shortsighted as to reward people for raising large, well adjusted families – surely much better than scorn fragmented families for propagating their nasty little, thoughtless genes, by making them as poor and powerless as possible so their offspring grow up to be as maladjusted and prone to anti social behaviour as their parents – what world indeed? Well if anyone does it it’ll probably be the farsighted Nordics, and thank god for that.

Anyway, this is why poor old Gina Ford has such a tough time of it. Most second or third time parents recognise her system of  regular routine and leaving babies to self-comfort is actually sensible and works to create happy, predictable babies. But the hectoring, prescriptive tone she uses in her seminal and controversial work, “The Contented Little Baby Book” gets most people’s backs up – particularly as a non-parent (and frankly a bit of a fatty, so CLEARLY not to be trusted by the middle classes). When her actually quite sensible formula fails to align to the new parents’ experiences, and their baby, perhaps teething or colicky, persists in crying through the night, the inexperienced parent becomes frustrated and angry for having not used their own judgement to soothe their infant as they felt they ought, rather than relying on the  ‘step one, two, three,’ simplicity of the easy sounding GF routine. The trouble is, however, that most first time parents’ judgements are’t all that sound, because they simply don’t have the experience to know whether what they are doing is best or not.

Then point being, whether someone is right or wrong (and that’s always a spurious and moot point depending on who’s viewing the situation) trying to tell anyone else what to do is pointless, because if it doesn’t align with their experience, all things being equal, which most often they’re not, it’s likely to be ignored until the other person works it out for themselves.

And if that person is at the mercy of someone more powerful then themselves, then coercion by force will only generate stress, anxiety and ultimately, subversive behaviour that counteracts the project or position of the person wielding power in the long run, so forcing someone to do what you want is largely pointless too, unless you’re willing to go to extreme means to get what you want – and that IS just evil.

This is why leaving children to their own devices  is actually, contrary to the concept of “good parenting” quite sensible. No amount of enforced homework, violin lessons or football coaching is going to make your child better at these things if they don’t want to do them for themselves. Much better to model the behaviour you seek: if you want your child to be the next Vanessa Mae, god help you, pick up the fiddle yourself and show them how it’s done – and you still might discover they’ve got different ideas.

Modelling good behaviour rather than insisting upon it is even more important when when children are small – forcing them to say please and thankful is about as successful as smacking them round the face every time you give them a treat. Much better to say it effusively on their behalf and watch them eventually follow suit.

Micromanaging even toddlers is counterproductive: even little ones aren’t suicidal, and left to themselves a bit, they will work out what’s what for themselves. Like dog owners, parents are in a position of power – unless they hand over all the power to the child by working as their slaves and acquiescing to all their demands – which will only lead to frustration for parent and child when the child inevitably fails to do as it’s told.

Better to get what you want by giving kids what they want – your attention- when they do what you want, rather than just telling them, expecting results and punishing them with the reward of negative attention when it doesn’t all go your way.  The ONLY way to get what you want to to reward the positive and ignore the negative. It works. And if I sound prescriptive about this, don’t get upset with me. Don’t worry about it. I know you’ll ignore me anyway and do it your way.

But even knowing all this, I can’t, on occasion, contain my natural inclination to make a scene when I don’t get my own way – whether from poor parenting myself,  although I was a second child, I was very close on to my sister only 12 months my senior, so my parents were more than likely wrung out by the time I came along; or my own genetic tendency to a quick temper, which is noted throughout the generations and doesn’t just affect me – or Jonah, for that matter. We’re all of us at the mercy if our genes and our upbringing, which is why parenting should be taken more seriously, but less prescriptively, by everyone.