Say the magic word
Jan. 4th, 2011 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupWhen kids are learning to talk, they go through a stage where they lie. Badly. You could say that this is because they're vicious sociopaths, and they are, but I don't think that's what's going on. I think that kids learn language not as a descriptor but as a way of manipulating the world. And when you're that young, the world == your parents. Babies don't say "ju-" for the sheer joy of naming something, they say it because it gets them juice faster than indiscriminate crying. So when they learn that they get in trouble for breaking lamps, and are asked if they broke a lamp, of course they say no. They're not attempting to deceive any more than pushing a lever to get the food you want is an attempt to deceive. This is why kids often put swearing and lying in the same mental category- they're both words that come out of your mouth that you get yelled at for. At this stage, talking is basically a magic spell.
Unequal Childhood talks a lot about the difference in verbal instruction between middle class and poor/working class parents (once again, the working class parents act a lot more like poor parents than middle class parents): middle class parents treat their children as conversational partners from birth, give them a lot more explicit language and vocabulary instruction, and plain out talk to them more. But the differences don't stop there. Middle class parents are more responsive when their kids do talk. They're more likely to change a meal to suit their kids' tastes, more likely to buy a kid something they ask for, more likely to ask how the kid's day went, and hella more likely to view a kid's complaint about a teacher as a call to action on their part. This teaches middle class kids that their will affects the world. Middle class parents are also much more tolerant of kids negotiating/talking back/giving them new data/weaseling out of shit, which, again, teaches kids to manipulate the world through words. So poor kids are not only taught fewer spells, they grow up in a world where said spells are less effective. And since expectations influence the success of spells, they're in a downward spiral against the idea of trying.
You can't fix this out of context. One hour a week where someone asks about their day and lets them choose the ice cream flavor isn't going to undo the damage of constantly being silenced. I treated my tutoring student in typical middle class fashion- ask about her day, let her choose whether we took the stairs or the elevator, didn't come down too hard on her when she got distracted- and I think it may have cost me some respect. So there needs to be some sort of transition state so the kids get the sense that there are being listened to because they are important, not because the adult is an idiot. And you can't wave a magic wand and change parental behavior, because by definition poor parents are operating under more constraints than middle class parents.
It's not even clear we what the ideal mix of behavior would be. The P/WC kids in the study were generally far better behaved, politer to adults, and easier to manage than the MC kids, which surprised me. I think there's three issues here: 1. I dealt with poor kids when I was a kid myself, and the study doesn't say anything about behavior to other kids. Those of you dealing with a wide spectrum of kids as an adult are invited to weigh in here. 2. middle class kids learn to phrase disobedience much better, so it doesn't feel abrasive (to me, who was very much raised in the school of manipulating your parents with words*), but scores the same on a study sheet. 3. The study was done on 4th graders, but our impression of the behavior of kids of a given class is really based on the behavior of teenagers of a given class.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the initial pain of teaching children to manipulate the world is crucial to getting those polite middle class office workers we love so much. Running throughout the book is the theme that poor kids either follow rules or break them, middle class kids manipulate them or use them to their advantage. Maybe the problem isn't that poor parents "aren't strict enough", it's that their strictness means kids never learn how to manipulate the world in a socially acceptable way.
Next step: investigate this language-as-magic thing in Deaf and ASD culture, because I bet there's some interesting data there.
*My parents in fact said outright to seven or eight year old me that you don't get strong, capable women from cute, compliant girls, and they wanted to raise a strong capable woman. They knew the trade off they were making and they were happy about it, although I'm sure there were times the thought of having a stupid child with a healthy fear of adults sounded very pleasant.
Unequal Childhood talks a lot about the difference in verbal instruction between middle class and poor/working class parents (once again, the working class parents act a lot more like poor parents than middle class parents): middle class parents treat their children as conversational partners from birth, give them a lot more explicit language and vocabulary instruction, and plain out talk to them more. But the differences don't stop there. Middle class parents are more responsive when their kids do talk. They're more likely to change a meal to suit their kids' tastes, more likely to buy a kid something they ask for, more likely to ask how the kid's day went, and hella more likely to view a kid's complaint about a teacher as a call to action on their part. This teaches middle class kids that their will affects the world. Middle class parents are also much more tolerant of kids negotiating/talking back/giving them new data/weaseling out of shit, which, again, teaches kids to manipulate the world through words. So poor kids are not only taught fewer spells, they grow up in a world where said spells are less effective. And since expectations influence the success of spells, they're in a downward spiral against the idea of trying.
You can't fix this out of context. One hour a week where someone asks about their day and lets them choose the ice cream flavor isn't going to undo the damage of constantly being silenced. I treated my tutoring student in typical middle class fashion- ask about her day, let her choose whether we took the stairs or the elevator, didn't come down too hard on her when she got distracted- and I think it may have cost me some respect. So there needs to be some sort of transition state so the kids get the sense that there are being listened to because they are important, not because the adult is an idiot. And you can't wave a magic wand and change parental behavior, because by definition poor parents are operating under more constraints than middle class parents.
It's not even clear we what the ideal mix of behavior would be. The P/WC kids in the study were generally far better behaved, politer to adults, and easier to manage than the MC kids, which surprised me. I think there's three issues here: 1. I dealt with poor kids when I was a kid myself, and the study doesn't say anything about behavior to other kids. Those of you dealing with a wide spectrum of kids as an adult are invited to weigh in here. 2. middle class kids learn to phrase disobedience much better, so it doesn't feel abrasive (to me, who was very much raised in the school of manipulating your parents with words*), but scores the same on a study sheet. 3. The study was done on 4th graders, but our impression of the behavior of kids of a given class is really based on the behavior of teenagers of a given class.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the initial pain of teaching children to manipulate the world is crucial to getting those polite middle class office workers we love so much. Running throughout the book is the theme that poor kids either follow rules or break them, middle class kids manipulate them or use them to their advantage. Maybe the problem isn't that poor parents "aren't strict enough", it's that their strictness means kids never learn how to manipulate the world in a socially acceptable way.
Next step: investigate this language-as-magic thing in Deaf and ASD culture, because I bet there's some interesting data there.
*My parents in fact said outright to seven or eight year old me that you don't get strong, capable women from cute, compliant girls, and they wanted to raise a strong capable woman. They knew the trade off they were making and they were happy about it, although I'm sure there were times the thought of having a stupid child with a healthy fear of adults sounded very pleasant.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 11:51 am (UTC)http://www.npr.org/2011/01/10/132740565/closing-the-achievement-gap-with-baby-talk
I'd say this was probably the most important "middle class" thing my mom did, in addition to making me feel that I had agency...though maybe speaking to your child and helping them to feel empowered will almost always go hand in hand.