Brain Rules for Baby (31 page)

Nanny’s solution? Next day, she brings in a physical chart with rules and expectations written right on it—including a reasonably formulated time for bed—then mounts it where the entire family can see. The chart produces an objective authority where the rule is a) realistic, b) clearly stated, and c) visible to all.

Mike, the boy who wants to hide because of dropped books, clearly has been yelled at before. Cringing with fear is an obvious sign that the kid does not feel safe at that moment and may not feel safe generally. (Getting yelled at for something as innocent as accidently dropping books is consistent with the latter.) This is a warning bell for Nanny. She tries to communicate safety to the little guy—note her immediate empathy—and she later upbraids Mike’s dad, telling him he needs to choose a calmer, more measured response if he wants Mike’s behavior to change. Remarkably, the dad listens.

You know by now that the brain’s chief interest is safety. When rules are not administered in safety, the brain jettisons any behavioral notion except one: escaping the threat. When rules are administered by warm, accepting parents, moral seeds are much more likely to take root.

So, you have crystal-clear rules, and you administer them in a certain manner. The next two steps involve what you do when the rules are followed.

Suppose you want your increasingly sedentary 3-year-old, who happily still craves your attention, to get some exercise outside and play on the swings more often. Problem is, he rarely even goes outside. What are you going to do?

Scientists (and good parents) discovered long ago that you can increase the frequency of a desired behavior if you reinforce the behavior. Children respond to punishment, certainly, but they also respond to praise—and in a way that risks less damage and usually produces better results. Behaviorists call this positive reinforcement. You can even use it to encourage behavior that hasn’t happened yet.

Instead of waiting for your 3-year-old to get on the swings, you can reinforce his behavior every time he gets near the door. After a while, he will spend more time at the door. Then you reinforce his
behavior only when he opens the door. Then only when he goes outside. Then when he spends time near the swing set. Eventually, he’ll get on the swings and you two can play together.

This process, called shaping, can take much patience, but it usually doesn’t take much time. Famed behaviorist B.F. Skinner got a chicken to turn the pages of a book as if it were reading in less than 20 minutes using a shaping protocol. Humans are much easier to shape than chickens.

Remember Amanda, the little girl who put herself to bed while her parents watched TV? The parents did not praise her obvious lack of fussy behavior, but the nanny did. Praising the
absence
of a bad behavior is just as important as praising the
presence
of a good one.

Researchers have measured the effects of these four parenting strategies on moral behavior. When warm, accepting parents set clear and reasonable standards for their kids, then offer them praise for behaving well, children present strong evidence of an internalized moral construct, usually by age 4 or 5. These are hallmark behaviors of Baumrind’s gold-medal authoritative parenting style. They’re not everything you need in your moral tool kit, but from a statistical point of view, you won’t get a good kid without them.

 

Do you do these things, or do you think you do? One of the obstacles to getting parents to change their behavior is making them understand how they are actually coming across to their kids. Nanny helps parents see what she sees by videotaping the families, looking for each person’s cues, and pointing them out. Researchers use the technique, too. Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg at Leiden University, for one, carried a video camera into the homes of 120 families with kids ages 1 to 3. Bakermans-Kranenburg was examining some of the hardest kids on earth to treat: pathologically resistant children who
displayed a toxic brew of aggression, uncooperativeness, whining, and screaming. She and her crew edited the video for teachable moments and created a lesson plan for the parents. The researchers taught the parents to spot cues they’d missed previously or had misinterpreted. They were shown behaviors that proved counterproductive, ones to which the children had responded poorly. Afterward, even in this tough group, the children’s hellion acts dropped by more than 16 percent! That’s huge for this field. Most moms in the group were able to resume reading to their children on a regular basis. In an interview, Bakermans-Kranenburg said the parents found a “peaceful time that they had dismissed as impossible.” That’s powerful stuff.

Though I don’t want to, I sometimes think of Ted Bundy. The serial killer did a great deal of his mayhem at the University of Washington around the same time I was attending as an undergraduate. A panicky parenting feeling sets in when I remember the time: How do I keep my kids from being exposed to the Ted Bundys of this world? How do I know my kids won’t grow up to
be
like Ted Bundy?

Ted Bundy’s favorite method of murder was a crowbar to the head, and he often raped his victims after they died. He may have killed as many as 100 women. Most of us cannot conceive of such horror and depravity. Bundy’s case was made all the worse because he seemed perfectly normal. Smart, handsome, and witty, Bundy was on the fast track in the legal profession, at one point even mentioned as a future politician. He navigated “proper” society with the ease of diplomat. There is a haunting photo of him with his girlfriend opening a bottle of wine, a smiling, caring young man, obviously in love. Yet by the time that picture was taken, he had already killed 24 women.

Researchers over the years have tried to make sense of the behavior of people like Bundy. They have no good answers. There are the usual suspects: broken home and violent, abusive parents, and Bundy
had all of these. But other people do, too, and most don’t become serial killers. Most so-called psychopaths—people with, among other traits, an inability to connect emotionally to their actions—aren’t even violent. Bundy was clearly emotionally competent. He could not only fake pro-social behaviors, but he had also an abundance of genuine emotions concerning himself. Narcissistic until the end, he had to be dragged to Florida’s electric chair on the morning of his execution, doubled over in terror, sobbing inconsolably with tears he probably spent years storing up for himself. To this day there are no good explanations for Bundy’s complete moral collapse.

Ted Bundy knew the rules, but he sure didn’t follow them. How do we make sure our kids do? How do we correct any behavior we don’t like—and get the child to internalize the change? Discipline.

Researchers distinguish between two discipline strategies: negative reinforcement and punishment. Both deal with aversive situations, but negative reinforcement tends to strengthen behaviors, whereas punishment tends to weaken them.

As a child you probably discovered that when you burn your finger, cold water provides immediate pain relief, removing the obnoxious experience. When a response pays off, it tends to get repeated. The next time you got a burn—an aversive stimulus—the probability multiplied of you running to the nearest sink. This is negative reinforcement, because your response was strengthened by the removal (or avoidance) of an aversive stimulus. It’s different from positive reinforcement, which is when an action leads to such a wonderful experience, you want to repeat the action. Negative reinforcement can be as powerful, but it is also trickier to apply.

I knew a preschool girl who craved her mom’s attention. She started off her terrible twos by throwing her toys down the stairs on a regular basis, disrupting the entire family. The little girl seemed to enjoy misbehaving and was soon throwing lots of things down the
stairs. Mom’s books were a favorite target, which, this being Seattle, proved to be the last straw. Mom tried talking to her, reasoning with her, and, when these failed, yelling at her. She eventually brought out the heavy artillery—spanking—but nothing changed.

Why were Mom’s strategies failing? Because her punishments were actually providing the little girl what she desired most: Mom’s undivided attention. As difficult as this might seem, Mom’s best shot at breaking this cycle was to ignore her daughter when she misbehaved (after first locking away some of the books), destroying this unholy alliance between the stairs and attention. Instead, Mom would reinforce her daughter’s desirable behaviors by paying rich, undivided attention only when she acted in accordance with the laws of the family. Mom tried it, consistently lavishing praise and attention when the daughter opened one of the remaining books rather than tossing it. The throwing stopped within a few days.

Sometimes the situation requires more direct interventions. For this there is the concept of punishment, which is closely related to negative reinforcement. The research world recognizes two types.

The first type is sometimes called punishment by application. It has a reflexive quality to it. You touch your hand to a stove, your hand gets burned immediately, you learn not to touch the stove. This automaticity is very powerful. Research shows that children internalize behaviors best when they are allowed to make their own mistakes and feel the consequences. Here’s one example:

This is the most effective punishment strategy known.

In the second type of punishment, the parent is subtracting something. Appropriately, this is called punishment by removal. For example, your son hits his younger sister, and you do not allow him to go to a birthday party. Or you give him a timeout. (Jail time for crimes is the adult form of this category.) Here’s how it worked for one mom:

Either type of punishment, under proper conditions, can produce powerful, enduring changes in behavior. But you have to follow certain guidelines to get them to work properly. These guidelines are necessary because punishment has several limitations:

How
not
to punish kids? Try the 1979 movie
Kramer vs. Kramer
. The film is about a divorcing couple and the impact of the experience on their young son. Dustin Hoffman plays the workaholic, unengaged dad whose parenting instincts have the subtlety of dog food.

The scene opens with the little boy refusing to eat dinner, instead demanding chocolate chip ice cream. “You’re not going to have any of it until you eat all your dinner, the dad warns. The son ignores him, gets a chair, and reaches up for the freezer. “Better not do that!” dad admonishes. The kid opens the freezer anyway. “You’d better stop right there, fella. I’m warning you.” The son brings the ice cream to the table, acting as if his dad were invisible. “Hey! Did you hear me? I’m warning you, you take one bite out of that, and you’re in big trouble!” The boy dips the spoon in the ice cream, staring intently at his father. “Don’t you dare! You put that ice cream in your mouth, and you are in very, very, very big trouble.” The kid opens his mouth wide. “Don’t you dare go anywhere beyond that.” When the boy does, his dad snatches him up out of his chair and throws him in his bedroom. “I hate you!” the kid yells. The dad shouts, “And I hate you back, you little shit!” He slams the door.

The coolest heads, obviously, were not prevailing. The following four guidelines show the way to punishment that’s actually effective.

The punishment should be firm. This does NOT mean child abuse. But it also doesn’t mean a watered-down version of the consequences. The aversive stimulus must in fact be aversive to be effective.

The punishment must be administered consistently—every time the rule is broken. That is one of the reasons why hot stoves alter behavior so quickly:
Every
time you put your hand on it, you get burned. The same is true with punishment. The more exceptions you
allow, the harder it will be to extinguish the behavior. This is the basis of a Brain Rule: Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Consistency must be there not only from one day to the next but from one caregiver to the next. Mom and Dad and Nanny and stepparents and grandparents and in-laws all need to be on the same page regarding both the household rules and the consequences for disobeying them.

Punishments are obnoxious by definition—everyone wants to escape them—and kids are unbelievably talented at discovering loopholes. You can’t give them the opportunity to play one caregiver against another if you want them to have a moral backbone. All they’ll form is cartilage.