Temat: Wina

Parenting and Guilt

Everywhere you look and listen, you will see the signs of guilt used as weapon of parental warfare. You can see the tears and the tantrums of the toddler, the confusion and distraught emotional flailing of the tweens, and the dismissive anger and rolling eyes of the teenager.

A large percentage of these actions by kids can be directly traced to a parenting approach which uses guilt as a behavior manipulator. To understand why guilt can work to temporarily alter behavior but cause undo harm and other negative consequences, we first need to understand a little mix of evolutionary biology and psychology.

Memes

Most of us know what guilt is. Someone makes you feel bad about yourself purposely to try to manipulate you to act differently. Even as stated, I find it amazing that its use is so wide spread. Seriously, does anyone really believe this will work and is healthy? But I digress.

A useful term I have come to understand is meme. A meme is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. A meme is a word we can use to explain that children are endowed by evolution with the ability to quickly and effectively pick up on cultural and family norms. This is our evolved way to secure the future of our species.

Put another way, consider a lion cub. They quickly learn to hunt, learn the pecking order of the pride, and learn to spot danger quickly. Some of this is instinct, but these are also learned by watching and playing with adults.

Human children are similar in that they do not inherit their language or religion or approach to life, BUT they do inherit the tools to quickly grasp and integrate themselves into the world in which they grow up. After all, the faster a human can function like an adult, the faster they can safely function in the world and, stated simply, stay alive.
http://respect4kids.com/BlogEngine.Web/post/2009/09/08...