Gilda

I don't think ngdawg is saying that science tells you everything about child rearing. Sometimes the book learnin' won't apply. But it's better to have the tool and not need it than to need the tool and not have it.

For example (a classice example from my child development class) mom is with her four year old at the grocery store, going throuhg the checkout line past the candy. Kid is trying to take candy, mom is putting it back. Kid starts to scream, throw a fit. What do you do? I've seen, time and time again, mom's giving the candy to the kid to shut her up. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. Mom has just told her kid, "If you want candy, throw a fit and you'll get it." She's actually training her child to misbehave by rewarding undesirable behavior. The best course of action is to ignore the fit, and give the child no reward. The child then learns that throwing a fit doesn't get the desired result, and will do something else. This same strategy can be applied in other situations to eliminate fit throwing behaviors.

This is a case of knowing A: basic behvioral psychology and B: developmental stages; a four year old can be trained to behave appropriately most of the time in public.

Knowing the basices of developmental psychology and phsiology allows parents to adapt that information to their own children, using what is useful for them and disregarding what doesn't work. You cannot, however, use information you don't have.

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