"Stupid" kids who "don't listen"
Mar. 31st, 2013 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrHad to put myself back in the mindset of my younger (primary school) self to work out some reactions of a character that age.
That got me thinking about a few other things, both in other stuff I was reading and bits and pieces from various real world events, both very old and recent.
And it struck me that a lot of times, perhaps even most of the time when adults complain about kids being "stupid" or "not listening" (at least for pre-teens) what they *really* mean is that the kid acted (or failed to act) in accordance with the way the adult would have acted in the situation.
What's going on is that the adult sees the kid as actingt contrary to a "rule" or instructions. And they Either expect the kid to know that the rule is a variation on one the kid dooes know or a "reasonable" corrolary of such a rule.
Or in the case of instructions they feel that the instructions have been ignored.
Heck, they may even consider the kid's protests to be an attempt at rules lawyering.
But what I recall from when I was that age (and from observing some adult child interactions since) is that often the adult is assuming that the kid has the same base of knowledge AND EXPERIENCE that the adult does.
So what is clear and "obvious" to the adult is sometimes anything *but* to the kid.
A classic example surfaced a few decades back when some kids were being put thru the typical "don't talk to strangers" etc indoctrination at a school and someone (as I recall) decided to do so live practice to see how well the kids got it. To their surpridse (and horror) the kids would walk right up and start talking to the folks playing "stranger".
When they asked the kids why the response was "But they weren't strangers!". Further questioning elicited that the kids had never been explicitly *told* what a "stranger" was, so they'd come up with a "definition in their heads that ran along the lines of "weird and scary person". Which kinda makes sense given the context that they'd encountered the word in.
Thinking upon it now, I suspect they were also trying to work things out from the "obvious" relationship between "stranger" and "strange". With them knowing that strange meant "weird" but not the other connotations of "not known".
Anyway, that was quite a shock to a lot of folks, including many educators.
And it's the principle that I think applies far more broadly than most want to admit. Most words are *never* explicitly defined to kids. They have to pik up meanings from context and it's way easy to get things wrong that way.
So the "stupid" kid acts on his best knowledge and gets it wrong because the *adult* assumed that what he told the kid meant the same thing to the kid as to the adult.
Or the kid "didn't listen" because the kid didn't do what the adult expected.
Sad to say, this is actually a big problem in adult-to adult communications as well. Read any of the various fora where tech support types or even customer service types have to deal with adults who "know" things that aren't so (like "wireless" routers don't need to be plugged in)
The idea that other people do *not* necessarily think the way we do, nor have the sane "background" knowledge we do is often a shock to people. And in too many cases, it's utterly rejected as just not *possible*. Which results in the "they must be willfully misunderstanding out of sheer malice" reaction.
Take a look at some child-adult confrontations and you'll see that (not that kids *don't* play that sort of game, but there are times when they *aren't* but the adults refuse to believe that they aren't).
Likewise some thorny political & social problems run into the same morass.
Not easily solvable without a *major* overhaul of our culture and our educational system.
That got me thinking about a few other things, both in other stuff I was reading and bits and pieces from various real world events, both very old and recent.
And it struck me that a lot of times, perhaps even most of the time when adults complain about kids being "stupid" or "not listening" (at least for pre-teens) what they *really* mean is that the kid acted (or failed to act) in accordance with the way the adult would have acted in the situation.
What's going on is that the adult sees the kid as actingt contrary to a "rule" or instructions. And they Either expect the kid to know that the rule is a variation on one the kid dooes know or a "reasonable" corrolary of such a rule.
Or in the case of instructions they feel that the instructions have been ignored.
Heck, they may even consider the kid's protests to be an attempt at rules lawyering.
But what I recall from when I was that age (and from observing some adult child interactions since) is that often the adult is assuming that the kid has the same base of knowledge AND EXPERIENCE that the adult does.
So what is clear and "obvious" to the adult is sometimes anything *but* to the kid.
A classic example surfaced a few decades back when some kids were being put thru the typical "don't talk to strangers" etc indoctrination at a school and someone (as I recall) decided to do so live practice to see how well the kids got it. To their surpridse (and horror) the kids would walk right up and start talking to the folks playing "stranger".
When they asked the kids why the response was "But they weren't strangers!". Further questioning elicited that the kids had never been explicitly *told* what a "stranger" was, so they'd come up with a "definition in their heads that ran along the lines of "weird and scary person". Which kinda makes sense given the context that they'd encountered the word in.
Thinking upon it now, I suspect they were also trying to work things out from the "obvious" relationship between "stranger" and "strange". With them knowing that strange meant "weird" but not the other connotations of "not known".
Anyway, that was quite a shock to a lot of folks, including many educators.
And it's the principle that I think applies far more broadly than most want to admit. Most words are *never* explicitly defined to kids. They have to pik up meanings from context and it's way easy to get things wrong that way.
So the "stupid" kid acts on his best knowledge and gets it wrong because the *adult* assumed that what he told the kid meant the same thing to the kid as to the adult.
Or the kid "didn't listen" because the kid didn't do what the adult expected.
Sad to say, this is actually a big problem in adult-to adult communications as well. Read any of the various fora where tech support types or even customer service types have to deal with adults who "know" things that aren't so (like "wireless" routers don't need to be plugged in)
The idea that other people do *not* necessarily think the way we do, nor have the sane "background" knowledge we do is often a shock to people. And in too many cases, it's utterly rejected as just not *possible*. Which results in the "they must be willfully misunderstanding out of sheer malice" reaction.
Take a look at some child-adult confrontations and you'll see that (not that kids *don't* play that sort of game, but there are times when they *aren't* but the adults refuse to believe that they aren't).
Likewise some thorny political & social problems run into the same morass.
Not easily solvable without a *major* overhaul of our culture and our educational system.
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no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 02:08 pm (UTC)I'll do *exactly* what someone tells me to do, and get in trouble because what they meant was not what they said. (At least in my mind.)
Or, I'll remember previous troubles and ask for clarification, and the person gets angry because I'm "stalling" or "just causing trouble."
And, of course, as an engineer I get into trouble because I want people to use the correct word or term, and they think I'm being "picky." (I'm sure you know why engineers tend to be very careful with terminology, at least when speaking or writing in a professional capacity. Because when we're not things fall down. :-)
Keep in mind that some of what you are describing is neurological. The human brain goes through some pretty extensive changes in several stages between birth and full maturity. Of course, even toddlers can be taught things like basic rules of logic and persistence of object.
Moving on to the teen years, some studies have shown that when teens - at least late teens - evaluate a situation, they see roughly the same amount of risk as adults, but greatly overvalue the rewards.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 12:06 am (UTC)For a larger example, I was going home the other day. I was at the 60th MAX overpass and taking the elevator up because I hate going up stairs. I was *obviously* waiting for this guy with a bike, holding the elevator for him. Twice he told me to "go ahead." Since I was plainly holding the elevator for him, I assumed he meant that he didn't think there was enough room for both of us and his bike, and that I should go on up. In retrospect, I should have said, "There's plenty of room in here for you and your bike, too." But no, I took him at what I thought was his word and said, "Well okay, if you insist" and went up without him. I heard him saying some angry things as the door closed and got very confused, and then as I was sitting down at the bus stop I realized I'd read the situation wrongly. But I still don't get why he said "Go ahead" instead of "Go on in," if that's what he meant.
So I think another problem with human communication is too many people don't say what they really mean. They *think* they're saying what they mean, but they're not.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 01:55 pm (UTC)People do normally learn words and phrases by association rather than definition, as Brooke noted. When a response to a question or situation is required, they parrot back the response which best matches the input without thinking.
There have been several studies about this, including one of a boy who used phrases such as "the skinny fat man." He knew exactly what he meant, and by his internal understandings made perfect sense.