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More on kids vs adults
Jul. 5th, 2009 02:08 pmBased on some responses to a previous post, I have some further thoughts.
My reference to "how to behave" things, was more thinking of the way adults will get all over a kid for doing something that the kid was never told not to do and that you could not *reasonably* expect the kid to have gotten from "generalizing" other rules.
That, btw is a big problem in kid/adult relations. The adults don't seem to "get" that kids are *very* logical/literal.
So if you tell the kid "don't to X" you really shouldn't expect the kid to generalize that to "don't do X, Y or Z".
Likewise, if you define X to loosely, you shouldn't be surprised if the kid takes you literally.
The general response when someone (especially the kid) tries to point this out to adults is "you should have used your common sense".
BZZTT!!! Wrong. Expecting common sense from kids is not merely wrong, it's *insane*.
Common sense is nothing more than expectations based on *experience*. As such, expecting kids to have it is denying reality. And as such counts as insane.
Y see the same thing when some adults deal with adults from a different culture or a different area, btw. They expect them to follow unwritten rules that have never been explained to then.
Hmmm. It occurs to me that folks oughta be required to write down a lot of this unwritten stuff. Yeah, it'd be a pain. But it'd also both expose a lot of bigotry and stupid assumptions and make life easier for a lot of folks.
My reference to "how to behave" things, was more thinking of the way adults will get all over a kid for doing something that the kid was never told not to do and that you could not *reasonably* expect the kid to have gotten from "generalizing" other rules.
That, btw is a big problem in kid/adult relations. The adults don't seem to "get" that kids are *very* logical/literal.
So if you tell the kid "don't to X" you really shouldn't expect the kid to generalize that to "don't do X, Y or Z".
Likewise, if you define X to loosely, you shouldn't be surprised if the kid takes you literally.
The general response when someone (especially the kid) tries to point this out to adults is "you should have used your common sense".
BZZTT!!! Wrong. Expecting common sense from kids is not merely wrong, it's *insane*.
Common sense is nothing more than expectations based on *experience*. As such, expecting kids to have it is denying reality. And as such counts as insane.
Y see the same thing when some adults deal with adults from a different culture or a different area, btw. They expect them to follow unwritten rules that have never been explained to then.
Hmmm. It occurs to me that folks oughta be required to write down a lot of this unwritten stuff. Yeah, it'd be a pain. But it'd also both expose a lot of bigotry and stupid assumptions and make life easier for a lot of folks.
