I read a quote the other day by Immanuel Kant. Basically he said this: if you reward a child for good behavior and punish the child for bad behavior, the child will choose to be good for the reward.

As a blanket statement and on the surface, it seems reasonable. But, boy, it got me to thinking. And I rarely need more of that.

So here’s the thing. You would need to define what “good behavior” is and what “bad behavior” is. And there are so many different ways and times and situations to behave within. I don’t think you could cover all the bases up front. But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. But that supposes that the child is old enough to understand and remember. Maybe a written list would help. See what I mean about thinking. My mind just takes off.

I don’t know about today, but when I was young, no one sat me down and told me exactly what was bad or good. It was just something you had to figure out for yourself. Of course, getting smacked in the face for saying “no” to your mom is a pretty good indicator that’s a bad behavior. Get smacked enough and pretty soon “no” seems like a very bad word. Ramifications?

But the thing that really got me about Kant’s statement was this:  What if failure is considered bad behavior and you punish the child for it? And as a corollary, what if success is good behavior but you never reward it, because, of course, you were happy with it. The things that make us unhappy are usually the things that get the most attention. Sadly.

And what if the child’s problem is that she failed to obey some unspoken rule? Or failed to meet some unspoken expectation?

So. What? Might a parent say something like: “You failed to do what I wanted you to do and even though I didn’t tell you what I wanted you to do, I am punishing you for your failure. That’s why you are now restricted to your room for the rest of the week.”

How is that supposed to work?

I’ve gone a bit off topic here. That happens when I get on what is an emotional subject for me.

The thing is, there are always going to be all sorts of people out there trying to advise you about how to raise your kids, live your life, eat for better health, etc. None of them can realistically anticipate all the different situations the people they are trying to advise might find themselves in.

I’m not talking about the basic stuff like “don’t touch a flame, because you will get burned.” That’s always going to be good advice. I’m talking about the more complicated things, like what Kant advised. And believe me, as simple as that might seem on the surface, it is so far from simple it might as well be on Mars.

So to my way of thinking, the trouble with advice is that in reality there simply cannot be any good advice. Yet people keep giving it anyway. If they didn’t, all those Internet influencers would be out of a job.

Hey! Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

And that’s my rant for the day.

Images courtesy of Forbes and Everyday Power, respectively.