Parenting is not a series of "techniques" or "manipulations" designed to gain control over another human being. When parents are in control of themselves and [the way they interact with their children], children will learn to control themselves. – Jamie Raser, Raising Children You Can Live With

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select–doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years. John Watson, Behaviorism (1930). Thanks to the Wisconsin Association for Behavior Analysis for the complete quote (see the final sentence – italics mine).

Resources on Parenting

• You can contact Jamie using his email address: jraser AT dpisd DOT org.
• Research showing that spanking children does not work:
• Gershoff, I. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539-579.
• Kazdin, A. E., & Benjet, C. (2003). Spanking children: Evidence and Issues. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 99-103.

Although physical punishment may produce immediate compliance – children typically stop the behavior spanking is meant to end – there are a number of serious long-term side effects. For example, spanking is associated with lower quality parent-child relationships, poorer mental health for both child and parent, higher levels of delinquency, and more antisocial behavior. In addition, children who experience higher levels of spanking are less able to develop their own inner sense of right and wrong…Spanking also teaches children that violence is an acceptable solution to prolems by serving as a model of violent, aggressive behavior. – Robert Feldman, Development Across the Life Span

Concept Map

MeadMap is now called CoMapping. Feel free to contact me if you’d like me to send you my maps for the episode on New Year’s Resolutions and Weight Loss the Schools of Psychology and for Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development.

Constructivism (Constructivist Education)

• Children naturally enjoy learning
• Let’s let children tell us where they want to go and let’s build on their natural curiosity
• The teacher’s role: use questioning techniques and act as a facilitator
• The teacher’s role: arrange the environment
• The teacher’s role: encourage interaction with objects and other students

Resources on Democratic Schools

• Democracy and Education
• The Pursuit of Happiness- THE LIVES OF SUDBURY VALLEY ALUMNI
• Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO)
• The Directory of Democratic Education
• Radical boarding school escapes closure threat
• International Democratic Education Network
• Here is an example of a democratic school – Sudbury Valley School

Can we make learning as fun as it was when you were a child? We can. Listen to Dr. Eugene Geist as he explains the cognitive development theories of Jean Piaget and you'll understand why we are all geared to learn. We actively seek out learning experiences. How can we keep that excitement alive? Find out in this episode and in the episodes to follow as we examine ideas such as constructivism, problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning and democratic schools. This episode will also be helpful if you need to learn the different stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss cognitive psychologist.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor

• Approximate ages: 0-2
• An understanding of object permanence is achieved at the conclusion of this stage
• When a child’s expectations of what is supposed to happen are not met, confusion disequalibrium results.
• Confusion disequalibrtum can be resolved through assimilation in which you try to fit the new information into with what you already know
• Confusion disequalibrium can also be resolved through accommodation in which you create a new “folder”", a new category in your brain’s understanding of the world.
• Learning is an active process. Our understanding of the world becomes more complex – a :building process: (thus the term constructivism).

Pre-operational

• Approximate ages: 2-6
• Pre-logical thinking – children think intuitively
• Children can use symbols
• Ego-centrism lessons at the end of this phase
• Still believe in Santa Claus
• conservation tasks are difficult to solve

Concrete Operations

• Approximate ages: 7-12
• Children like to have more logical explanations at this age
• Manipulatives are helpful in the learning process
• Can think logically and a little bit abstractly, but not well with hypothetical situations

Formal Operations

• Approximate ages: 7-12
• Characterized by a more free flowing logic
• Can deal with hypothetical situations

Key point of Piaget: children are not empty vessels as the behaviorists might say. Instead, they interact with their world because they want to learn.

And, because I couldn’t help it:

Image via Wikipedia

Resources for this Episode

Zero Tolerance Policies: in this interview, Dr. Green and I briefly discuss our doubts about the effectiveness of zero tolerance policies in schools. A recent publication in the journal American Psychologist confirms these doubts. From the abstract of “Are zero tolerance policies effective in the schools?: An evidentiary review and recommendations” by the American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force (December 2008, Volume 63):

…zero tolerance policies may negatively affect the relationship of education with juvenile justice and appear to conflict to some degree with current best knowledge concerning adolescent development. To address the needs of schools for discipline that can maintain school safety while maximizing student opportunity to learn, the report offers recommendations for both reforming zero tolerance where its implementation is necessary and for alternative practice to replace zero tolerance where a more appropriate approach is indicated.

Need more mnemonics for psychology? Here’s how you can memorize the parts of the brain:
Here are the mnemonics I used in the video:

1. Bun (Trust vs. Mistrust) a "rust" colored bun
2. Shoe (Autonomy vs. Shame) an "auto" shoved inside of a shoe. The auto is driven by "shane"
3. Tree (Initiative vs. Guilt) Shia Leboef, or an Inn are sitting in a tree, which is wrapped with a quilt
4. Dinosaur (Industry vs. Inferiority) picture a dinosaur with dust (in"dust"try) sprinkled all over it. The dinosaur feels inferior because of the dust all over it.
5. Sky dive (Identity vs. Role Confusion) a skydiver's chute doesn't open and he falls on top of a car denting it. He is also very confused after hitting the car.
6. Sticks (Intimacy vs. Isolation) picture two sticks in love and one stick all by himself.
7. Heaven (Generativity vs. Stagnation) picture a generator up in heaven that died because it ran out of gas and a male deer (stag) pulling the cord to try to get it started again.
8. Plate (Integrity vs. Despair) picture grits and a pear on a plate.

You can also download this list in PDF format by clicking here.

Episodes on Mnemonics and Erik Erikson

• Episode 32 on Mnemonics
• Episode 20 on Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development

Here again are the resources on this topic that I think you’ll find useful:

Collaborative Problem Solving Books and DVDs

• The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

• Treating Explosive Kids: The Collaborative Problem-Solving Approach

• Parenting the Explosive Child: featuring Drs. Ross Greene and Stuart Ablon

• Calming the Tempest : Helping the Explosive Child

• Check out the Thinkkids website where you can find more information on collaborative problem solving.

Related Episodes on The Psych Files

• Episode 28: Is Timeout Really Effective?

• Episode 33: Timeout Revisited – Dealing with Challenging Kids Part 1

• Episode 34: Timeout Revisited – Dealing with Challenging Kids Part 2

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