I strongly suspect that what's going on with "people who talk to children like they're adults" is that they talk to children like they're people.
The morality of convincing children of arbitrary stuff is questionable. Though less than usual, because children are designed to work that way (also changing their preferences in cartoons isn't the end of the world). Do you know if the liking is sincere - i.e., if they enjoy cooking, or only believe they do and are surprised to find they didn't after each time?
Regarding "convincing" children of things: this AI koan is relevant.
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.
“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.
“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.
“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Children are input/output machines. What you put in, is what you get out. This is especially true of the younger ages. For example, an older child, say a 10 year old, already has 10 years of input going in, so it is much harder to work against all that previous input, than with a 3 year old.
Children's beliefs are being formed by their environment all the time. Every waking second, every personal interaction, is forming them into their future selves. You can either acknowledge this, and use it to your advantage to help them be the best future self they can be, OR you can say that it is "manipulative" and instead leave their formation up to chance.
For example, if I convince a child they like helping me cook, it certainly isn't for my benefit. Cooking takes three times as long, and causes more mess and trouble if you have a child "helping" you. You convince them they like cooking so that they grow up having a skill that is needed for coping in the world.
Also, in real life, the cartoon I convinced my charge that she like was "Higglytown Heroes", which I like because it shows that everyone in town is important in their own way. It was just less embarassing ...
My big problem is that children do work differently from adults, but there doesn't appear to be a model for treating them like unusual people.
You might be interested in the Continuum Concept, then. The book describes the childcare practices of the Yequana and other indigenous cultures that treat children as if they're differently-abled people rather than an underclass.
On first reading the continuum stuff, it's easy to get caught up in the parts that have to do with physical contact, feeding, etc. of babies, as that's where a lot of the discussion is. But the actual idea of "continuum" (at least as I see it), is that basically these cultures treated children as if they were "real people" from birth... as if they're full members of the community, with the same needs for contact, participation, respect, trust, belonging, etc. as full-grown adults -- and vice versa. (That is, adults aren't deprived of play, empathy, touch, etc. either.)
Even as much as Eliezer speaks and writes about the subject, it's still a bit of culture shock to see how fundamentally wrong our own culture is about the treatment of children, in ways that never occurred to me, even as a chil...
what if you told the children of their own bias
This might be useful at a certain age. But for younger children, that just isn't reasonable. They don't have the development to understand that. For example, here is the basic script of the "False Belief" Test, that shows a lack of Theory of Mind.
Tester: [presents crayon box] What do you think is inside?
Child (2-3 year old): Crayons!
Tester: [opens box. shows that there are birthday candles inside box] Oh, look! What is actually inside the box?
Child: birthday candles!
Tester: [closes box] Before I opened the box, what did you think was inside the box?
Child: Birthday candles!
Tester: Your mom is outside the room. If she came in, and we showed her this [closed] box, what would your Mom think was inside the box?
Child: Birthday candles!
So good luck getting them to actually understand cognitive biases!
what if... you told them, "Don't believe what I say just because I tell you that you believe it."
Then you are doing the exact same thing I am advocating for. You are manipulating their mind (by telling them what you want them to believe) to result in a positive outcome.
I would say that it is definitely that they do not have the cognitive/developmental abilities. There are MANY experiments, showing various fallacies at various ages. Here are some other examples:
I strongly suspect that what's going on with "people who talk to children like they're adults" is that they talk to children like they're people.
Strongly seconded. I've long been certain that this is the reason I get along so easily with that kids older than about 4. I listen to what they're saying, ask for more information about things they're interested in, and enthuse about things I'm interested in. In general, I talk to them like I'd talk to friendly acquaintances.
From what I recall of childhood, people who aren't obviously disingenuous towards kids are rare, and precious to kids.
"Wow, that was a really difficult math problem you just solved. You must have studied really hard to understand it!"
I had a third-grade science teacher who said something very similar to me after getting a perfect score on the first test of the new school year. It did two things; it made me think she was an idiot, and it made me feel guilt. Because, see, I didn't actually put in any study. I'd just paid basic attention in class, and then spouted it all back out.
Before I even read your comment I was going to post almost exactly the same story.
I was about 7 years old and I was praised by the teacher to the other kids in the class as an example of the value of hard work. "Listen how well Apprentice just read this page for us. You know how he can do this so well? Because he carefully practices the assigned reading at home every time. You guys need to do that too."
This was wrong but I didn't correct the teacher and, like you, I felt guilty about the lie by omission. I hadn't actually read this text at home before the class - nor did I ever practice reading the assigned texts at home. I was a fluent reader before I started school and there was no point in me practicing at home.
Throughout compulsory education, the teachers made efforts like this to instill in students the idea of "you have good results in school if and only if you do hard work". This did not fit with my experience but it seemed to be accepted by some of the other kids. I think they looked at it like this: "I put much more effort into schoolwork than I should like but Apprentice still gets far better results than I do. He must be truly torturing himself w...
It's about the difference between honor and reputation.
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same.
Lois Bujold, "A Civil Campaign"
The advice to praise children for effort rather than for ability is based on research by Carol Dweck on growth mindset vs. fixed mindset. See this short article which she wrote, this longer article about her work, this video of one of her studies, or her book Mindset.
Thanks for that reminder. I'm still struggling to overcome the damage done to me by people telling me as a kid how smart I was. So please for the love of everything that is good in mankind, remember that you have a human's life in your hand and treat it accordingly.
I am also still working to overcome the consequences of my parents, other adults, and peers constantly telling me (up through high school) that I was so very smart. The effect is compounded when one grows up in a small American town in the south. It was not at all unusual for a high school peer to believe that because I skipped a grade in junior high school and was graduating high school a year early, that I was somehow on the path to curing cancer or destined for a Nobel Prize. The sanity waterline still has much room for improvement.
What ended up happening was that I was forced to transfer - and forgo a full scholarship - after a semester at a top-15 university (by US News and World Report). I realized there that I simply did not know how to study efficiently, or even at all. Essentially, early association of approval and accomplishments to innate talent led me to disregard the value of hard work and determination.
Another consequence is, of course, having an overblown sense of superiority. At many good, but not necessarily elite, universities, quite a few freshmen come in who were top of their class in high school and have to adjust to being in the middle of the pack.
It had a similar effect on me.
I didn't learn how to form any study habits in college, and it really hurt me in graduate school. It concerns my development as a kid because I was unfortunate enough to graduate at 16. I tricked my parents and myself by telling them I was "studying" all the time on the computer, even though I was mostly recreationally programming and internet browsing, which I viewed as superior to studying. Most undergraduate work is rote and unchallenging, so I would usually procrastinate to the last moment without much detriment to my grades. Being much younger than my classmates means I didn't have any peer guidance in the formation of study habits, either.
Such is the woe of "child prodigies." Some students that zip through school have high intelligence and rationality (and extremely careful parents), and these usually earn a spot in history books.
I was never a child prodigy, but I took myself to be the smartest student in my junior high school class of 25 or so. Maybe I was, but if so it wasn't by a huge margin. But I had some mildly precocious interests and was overpraised. I decided it was the natural order of life that I would always be able to coast by without effort and would always be the smartest guy in the room. In other words, I bound up my self esteem to my supposed intellectual superiority, and I had learned to be lazy. This is a very, very bad combination. My parents went to considerable trouble to send me to a high school with an excellent academic reputation. When I found out I wasn't really all that relatively smart any more, my ego took a hit. Merely average grades were terrifying, a sign of failure. At the same time, having to work hard to get good grades seemed like a sign of failure, too. I felt like Charlie in the second half of Flowers for Algernon. I became far, far too overcautious, too ready to quit at the first hint of trouble. In LessWrong terms, I surrounded myself with ugh fields.
I see now that I was never really that smart. I wish I'd known that earlier. In the words of Jay Leno, "A little low self-esteem is actually quite good. Maybe you're not the best, so you should work a little harder."
If I met you in person, I would probably be too embarrassed to say: don't make my mistakes.
For what it's worth, I suggest you first find something worth working hard on, and then work really, really hard on it. I'd further suggest that, even if you're not quite sure that you've found the one true task that is your calling, maybe you should still take a bit of time busting your ass on whatever task may be in front of you. After a while, you could reasonably then step back and reflect on whether you're using your talents wisely. Maybe you should then choose some other goal to bust your ass for. But don't completely waste your time like I did.
I've seen some of your posts. I think you're more talented than I ever was.* However, I also wouldn't mean any offense by suggesting that you might not be quite as talented as Isaac Newton. The reason I bring it up is because I think everyone can agree that Isaac Newton had a lot of basic native talent, but also, he worked himself like a dog for years.
If you wanted to encourage efficient work as least as much as hard work, what would you praise?
I'll own my downvote. This article seems more directing us to a particular hypothesis of how to manipulate/teach children than really telling us anything informative about it.
Further, I somewhat disagree. Especially about not telling young women they look good. First of all, anything they put effort and resources in to that I genuinely enjoy the results of, I am going to tell them about. I am a human male, they are human females, they put a tremendous amount of mindspace, talent, and effort in to looking good, I'll be gosh darned if I am not going to...
The OP is talking about very young children. Specifically, children so young that they don't have a meaningful choice about what clothes they wear.
I'll talk with my son about the possible existence of latent sexism in society and how he might react to it when he's old enough to understand. Since he's not yet two, I limit myself to not freaking out if he picks up and plays with a doll.
Why would I want my daughter to work hard at math and then miss a job offer to do math because a competing interviewer was epsilon better turned out?
This is a false contradiction. It is totally possible to dress well as a woman without being "girly" or "sexy." To the extent that woman are expect to put effort into dressing "feminine" when men are not expected to put in similar effort to appear "masculine" in order to achieve the same success, this is a bug and not a feature.
For a specific example, I made my first charge like my favorite of the little-kid shows by saying: "Ooo! Kim Possible is on! You love this show!" She soon internalized it, and it became one of her favorites. There is of course a limit to this. No amount of saying "That show is boring", and "You don't like that show" could convince her that Wonderpets was NOT super-awesome.
I was just about to say, my parents tried this quite often on my younger siblings and it didn't seem very effective. Maybe there's a hard age-limit - it stops working after 5 or so?
Just thought I would comment on this:
I know it's hard, but DON'T tell little girls that they look cute, and DON'T comment on their adorable little outfits, or their pony-tailed hair.
Actually, I don't think I would ever find this difficult. An adorable child is one who is using their toy dragon to level their toy castle. But I do agree that this is a behavior our society encourages, and that it is quite widespread. I feel a bit ambivalent about this kind of advice, though. I think there are benefits to discouraging this type of behavior in the adul...
This seems to me roughly opposite to your earlier comment. They could both be true, but more specific information should be used to justify them. Yes, there is some evidence that it's better to praise children's work then innate explanations for their results, but it's pretty weak evidence and it's not clearly relevant to the other examples. (In fact, your link seems to claim the opposite about appearance: girls figure out what actions they can take to increase the compliments.)
Your earlier comment said to act normally. This post says not to act normally. Maybe the girls will notice your failure to provide expected praise and be hurt. Actually, you give two logically independent suggestions here: 1. not to talk about girls' looks and 2. to talk about something else. It is only the first that is at odds with the previous comment.
Sure, in isolation the claim about praise of looks makes sense, but it is opposite to the claim about praise of intelligence. Why does praising children's intelligence cause them to give up, while praising girls' looks causes them to put effort into the looks?
Why does praising children's intelligence cause them to give up, while praising girls' looks causes them to put effort into the looks?
I interpreted most of what you wrote as reflexive contrarianism with relatively little insight until I got to this part at the very end. Once you restated the claim in a very generic form "Praising X will induce more X, but praising Y will induce less Y" it called attention to the internal features of X and Y as being necessary to predict what will actually happen.
Once I understood the dichotomy here, I realized that I had no coherent theory about which trait-like surface features could be dropped in for X or Y to be suppressed or promoted by praise. My guess is that there's something that's actually pretty complicated going on here with cached selves, behaviorist conditioning, the fundamental attribution error, folk theories of human performance, and probably other stuff as well. I imagine I could have a somewhat evidence based working hypothesis for an answer 18 months from now if I keep my eyes and mind open but it seems clear to me that I don't have an answer of that quality right now.
Thank you for pushing forward in the face of d...
I know it's hard, but DON'T tell little girls that they look cute, and DON'T comment on their adorable little outfits, or their pony-tailed hair.
Looks like the author is overcompensating.
Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything.
Well, it is the first thing you notice, so why pretend otherwise? You can certainly start by complimenting a girl's appearance (tends to improve the mood of a girl of any age), without making a big deal out of it, before getting into a more soul...
I don't think the author's OVERcompensating. There may come a time when little girls are insufficiently told that they look adorable, but I seriously doubt that today is that time, nor that we have happened to stumble through memetic evolution onto the exactly correct amount to be complimenting little girls on their looks.
My own take is that if this is a little girl you see a LOT of (like, say, your daughter) then you might occasionally congratulate them on looking nice (especially if you know that they DID put some effort into it), but as a random stranger operating on timeless decision theory, the author's advice is pretty sound.
(Edit: and no, you're not being dishonest by telling them the first thing you notice, any more than you'd be lying to refrain from telling a below average child that they are stupid or ugly when you first meet them)
I once heard that Casanova once said that his secret to seducing women was to compliment the beautiful on their intelligence and the intelligent on their beauty.
Note: This is based on anecdotal evidence, personal experience (I have worked with children for many years. It is my full-time job.) and "general knowledge" rather than scientific studies, though I welcome any relevant links on either side of the issue.
The holidays are upon us, and I would guess that even though most of us are atheists, that we will still be spending time with our extended families sometime in the next week. These extended families are likely to include nieces and nephews, or other children, that you will have to interact with (probably whether you like it or not...)
Many LW-ers might not spend a lot of time with children in their day-to-day lives, and therefore I would like to make a quick comment on how to interact with them in a way that is conducive to their development. After all, if we want to live in a rationalist world tomorrow, one of the best ways to get there is by raising children who can become rationalist adults.
PLEASE READ THIS LINK if there are any little girls you will be seeing this holiday season:
How To Talk to Little Girls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little-gir_b_882510.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
I know it's hard, but DON'T tell little girls that they look cute, and DON'T comment on their adorable little outfits, or their pony-tailed hair. The world is already screaming at them that the primary thing other people notice and care about for them is their looks. Ask them about their opinions, or their hobbies. Point them toward growing into a well-rounded adult with a mind of her own.
This does not just apply to little girls and their looks, but can be extrapolated to SO many other circumstances. For example, when children (of either gender) are succeeding in something, whether it is school-work, or a drawing, DON'T comment on how smart or skilled they are. Instead, say something like: "Wow, that was a really difficult math problem you just solved. You must have studied really hard to understand it!" Have your comments focus on complementing their hard work, and their determination.
By commenting on children's innate abilities, you are setting them up to believe that if they are good at something, it is solely based on talent. Conversely, by commenting on the amount of work or effort that went into their progress, you are setting them up to believe that they need to put effort into things, in order to succeed at them.
This may not seem like a big deal, but I have worked in childcare for many years, and have learned how elastic children's brains are. You can get them to believe almost anything, or have any opinion, JUST by telling them they have that opinion. Tell a kid they like helping you cook often enough, and they will quickly think that they like helping you cook.
For a specific example, I made my first charge like my favorite of the little-kid shows by saying: "Ooo! Kim Possible is on! You love this show!" She soon internalized it, and it became one of her favorites. There is of course a limit to this. No amount of saying "That show is boring", and "You don't like that show" could convince her that Wonderpets was NOT super-awesome.