Learning self-restraint essential
Common sense — innate or learned?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, common sense is sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.
Britannica states it is the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good judgments.
What impetus encourages making good judgments?
Usually, when one has a positive outcome to a behavior, it is repeated. When one has a negative outcome to a behavior, it is avoided. That is simple training and is a process used with animals that don’t have to have sound judgment.
Training and teaching are different. Training is eliciting a desired behavior with repetition and rewards and attempting to cease unwanted behavior. Hence, we “house train” pets, teaching them the desired behavior for inside a home.
We can, and should, train young children. A very young child can be trained to come when called, to sit still in a car seat or a high chair. So, too, potty training involves teaching children when and were to relieve themselves. That entire subject has changed as to how it is addressed in our modern culture, but suffice it to say that if primitive natives, people in third-world countries who do not have access to indoor plumbing and disposable diapers, can train their infants to restrain their bodily impulses until an appropriate place and time, why can’t educated people in modern cultures?
We fear telling our children no. (We actually don’t tell ourselves no.)
We baby proof our homes and cars and use leashes to restrain our children who try to wriggle free from a hand-hold. I’ve heard young parents say “She just won’t wear a bib” or “He doesn’t like to sit in a car seat.”
Why do rational adults allow young children to make decisions based on what they want to their own detriment?
In a culture obsessed with good health where people observe a myriad of diets restricting foods, we fail to tell a child no to having a cookie just before a meal because we don’t want them to cry or scream or feel deprived. But, if that calorie-laden sugary treat prevents them from eating the nutritious food prepared, who has the ultimate responsibility for that child’s health?
When did we become so protected, so bubblewrapped, that we can’t function without fear of pain or failure?
When I was young, my brothers and I played outside until dark. We rode our bicycles around the neighborhood in a city. We walked to school (I was carrying a cello). If it rained, we carried an umbrella and wore a raincoat. We climbed trees, caught crawfish in the bayou, made mud pies. We drank water from the water hose in the yard when we got thirsty.
We jumped on an old, rectangular trampoline that did not have a net enclosure. We practiced silly circus-like tricks while riding our bicycles standing on the seat or riding without using our hands.
We did get hurt occasionally. We fell, scraped our knees and elbows and got up and tried again.
I was taught to cook from a very young age at a gas stove top that didn’t have any child-proof features.
Today’s babies and preschoolers are surrounded with child-proof protection at every level. Young parents put locks on cabinet doors and household doors, plastic bumper guards on hearths and table edges, gates on stairways.
Parents work hard at distracting children from behaviors they do not want to encourage. But, few teach their children the word “no” and fewer still allow them to suffer any negative consequences.
It’s not that those protections are unnecessary, but when children do not learn self-restraint, when they don’t recognize that a poor choice may lead to pain or failure, then what is there to carry them into their teen and adults years and wise decision making?
We adults might reconsider training ourselves as well as the young in our care. •••