(self/other/mirrorphase/object/subject…perhaps)

They did research into ‘parenting style’ and those kids whose parents would adopt a style that talked about what other people were thinking or feeling, had more friends, were more social and were bullied less often, plus were more likely to be able to understand the difference between their mind and others much faster.

Dunno… The seeming ban on emotions worries me…there is so much emotional censorship that people already do…particularly in regard to social research participants; the only “allowable” emotion is “happy” when telling their story a person might have to be sad (because it is a sad story) or someone might be angry (because it is a story about how unjust the world is)…

When I consulted for educational programs some years back, there was this ridiculous “self esteem” discourse that I always suspected of having derived from some fundamentally misunderstood psychological studies about the negative consequences that would result from disruptions to the development of a sense of self – a concept that has nothing to do with feel-good “self-esteem” messages, but rather with something more like the ability to differentiate self and other. I can’t help but wonder whether this is some further mutation of that phenomenon…

I find it disconcerting too – and not just the notion that we’re trying to program legions of little “accentuate the positive” kids, but the sense that this strategy seems precisely counter-productive, given that anger and negativity aren’t exactly dependent on the development of higher thought processes (Pinker has a lovely line somewhere about children being “nasty, brutish, and short” ;-P). The irony of this is that it will actually result in small kids receiving a large amount of specifically negative feedback for perfectly normal emotions and expressions.

I can predict the results: a generation from now, there’ll be this whole reactive discourse on how “you know, my generation, we were taught that it wasn’t okay to express your negativity – we had to hold all that in, to repress it”… There’ll be encounter groups; folks will gather together to “take back the no”… There’ll be books on The Part of ‘No’ We Didn’t Understand… ;-P

(Sorry for the silliness – it’s been an extremely long day…)

I’ve had similar experiences — though not to the extent where they were discussed as issues, as in your examples. On one occasion I was picking up or dropping off my then 12-month-old (approx.) boy at occasional care and I happened to ask if they’d heard him say “no” a lot. I asked because our boy was constantly saying “no” at home, to the point that he would say it on the many occasions where the correct response would have been “yes”: e.g. “do you want some strawberries [which a boy loves and always wants]?”; “No” [a boy reaches out for strawberries]. “No” was a kind of all-purpose word: a transcendental signifier, as it were.

So, I asked the staff at occasional care if they’d heard him say it — partly out of interest and partly out of a largely sublimated desire to show off how wonderfully clever out boy is. (He can use around 50 words and is learning more all the time, and he’s only just coming up to 18 months! Did I say “largely sublimated”…?). They said that they hadn’t heard him say “no”. Knowing that he would say it mostly in response to being told “no”, I asked if they ever said “no” to him. I was merely wondering about the extent to which his use of the word was utterly contextual or tied to a trigger of some sort, but the staff member adopted a very serious face and said something like, “only when we’ve tried all the alternatives”.

What the hell are the alternatives?! Why on earth would you want to try alternatives to “no”? I was completely bemused. I guess now, after the fact, I can think of a few alternatives and some good reasons why you might choose them over simply saying “no” (e.g. distraction being more effective than simple negation). But there’s no doubt in my mind that the staff member understood the question of whether to use the word “no” as an ethical issue, that “no” is inappropriate, bad, and she wanted to reassure me that the staff there were the utmost professionals and would only say “no” as a last resort.

I find all this utterly hilarious, but also a little disconcerting. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of “innocence” as one of “positivity” (not in the sense used in the post-structuralism thread, though!). I think the “problem” is that words like “angry” and “no” are too negative; they don’t build and maintain a “positive” outlook, etc.; they don’t teach our kids to [sings] “always look on the bright side of life [death]“.

I think you’re right about it being a kind of Whorfian activism, then. Using words like “angry” and “no” would mean that our children would turn out to be mean-spirited, “glass-half-empty” cynics, whereas we all want our kids to be shiny happy people. And it’s here, of course, that my amusement turns to concern, because if that strategy is in any way effective — and I wouldn’t see it as having no effects whatsoever — then I can’t help but be appalled at the prospect of the next generation acting on the basis of such a bereft form of subjectivity! (assuming that people’s actions harmonise with a given form of subjectivity, which is no small assumption).

Of course, I know that things are more complicated than that, but it does make me wonder about the way that a certain discourse (one that has its locus in psychology and social welfare) has become normalised and positioned itself within the study of and training in early childhood education (and thereby provided itself with an institutional basis for maintaining its normalised position of dominance). And I can’t help but wonder about the many varying implications of such an arrangement. More specifically, I can’t help but fear for the mind and disposition of my son!