Conditioning…..

We are creatures of habit and conditioning is a powerful moulding force which should not be ignored.

Skinners, the person who introduced ‘operant conditioning’, was not right in everything he suggested but his observation about the carrot and the stick is quite factual.

Young children are especially moldable because they absorb knowledge like a sponge. Whether parents are aware or not, deliberate or not, children mimic every of their parent’s mannerism, speech, actions, etc. Conditioning is therefore an effective tool which can also be abused or underused.

Parents who are shy or uncomfortable to use conditioning to discipline their children’s habit and routine while they are still young, eventually when the children grow into teens, end up being totally frustrated and helpless. They either give up influencing their children or they start screaming and controlling.

I have seen children who have been conditioned to respect and obey their parents eg. respond to Mom / Dad within the first call, going to bed when they should, no bargaining or whining etc.

It was not done by dictatorship or with the cane ie not demanded of them. It was inculcated into the young children as values through patient conditioning, explaining, affirming and exemplification.

I have seen a young boy of about 5 years old who had misbehaved and his father sat him on his lap and spoke so gently to him about the matter, that I could not hear a single word [I was barely 7 feet away]. This boy who is about 11 years old this year speaks with a gentle spirit too. By the way, it is not an Asian family which one might attribute gentleness.

I was told of a friend’s friend who always prayed before she breastfed her child. Even the infant knew whenever his Mom prayed, to be silent though just moments before he was wailing in hunger. I was amazed when I heard.

A child has a great [unrehearsed] sense of the spiritual. God is real to a newborn. When we acquaint the newborn to his / her Creator, through prayers, spiritual songs, and bible stories, by the time he or she is one year old, the child can know the reverence for God.

Yes, I am just an Aunty. I have been privileged to interact with many kids, especially when I was babysitting in the US.

Values that are hard wired into our being [with lots and lots of reinforcement] are hard to remove. Those that are ‘soft coded’ stay at surface level. When the environment changes or when difficult moments come, the ‘code’ changes too.

That reminds me of the man ‘who built his house on sand and when the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, it fell. And great was its fall.’ There is also a man ‘who built his house on the rock and when the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.’