PEA RIDGE — Is common sense innate or learned?
That has been debated by many, especially now when some question why it appears that common sense is on the decline.
When I was in college (my children would say that was in the Dark Ages), I clearly remember studying the debate of genetics versus environment in psychology. My dad kept saying: “It’s all in the genes. It’s all in the genes.”
And, as I’ve aged, I do see so many things in people that can be explained in no other way than by genetics.
My father-in-law traveled back to Tennessee many, many years ago and met a relative who he didn’t know existed before his son began researching genealogy. This man, actually a close cousin, very closely resembled his family and had similar traits. Without any prior connection, it had to be genetics.
One of my brothers walks, talks, writes and lives much like our birth father, with whom he lived less than two years. Again, a claim for genetics.
Researchers have followed identical twins separated at birth and found many similarities, supporting claims for genetic predisposition.
But, that doesn’t let environment off the hook.
As parents, we must trainand teach our children.
Training is different than teaching.
Training is teaching a particular skill or behavior through practice and instruction over time, including rewards for positive and sometimes chastisement for negative behavior.
Teaching is a mental skill and involves showing or explaining how to do something and giving information about a subject.
A 6-week-old puppy can be house trained. A kitten can be litter box trained.
Human children can be - and are - trained. Even when parents don’t realize they’re training, they usually are if only by repetition. When you pick up a crying child, you’re training that child that he or she can trust you to comfort them and meet their needs.That is one of the first and most essential lessons for a child.
In the 1960s, a book was written entitled “The Psychology of Self-Esteem.” Somewhere along the way, the concepts there crossed into parenting and teaching and prevented parents and teachers from correcting wrong.
Teachers and parentsdidn’t want to correct a wrong because they didn’t want to make a child feel bad about himself or herself. They didn’t correct grammar or spelling or punctuation because they didn’t want to stifle creativity.
Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) was the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist Church and authors of many hymns. The youngest of 25 children, she gave birth to 19 children, 10 of whom survived infancy.
Her rules for child training were:
No eating between meals.
All children in bed by 8 p.m.
Take your medicinewithout complaining.
Subdue self will in each child.
Work with God to save the soul of each child.
Teach each child to pray as soon as he can speak.
Require all to be still during family worship.
Give children nothing they cry for.
Give them only what they ask for politely.
To prevent lying, punish no fault which is first confessed.
Do not allow a sinful act to go unpunished.
Command and reward good behavior.
Preserve property rights, even in the smallestmatters.
Strictly observe all promises.
Require no daughter to work before she can read well.
Teach children to fear the rod.
Today, we parents confuse chastisement with discipline and both with child abuse. We rob our children and handicap them when we continually interfer with them suffering the consequences of their actions. We are responsible for protecting and training them, but parents in the 21st Century have so cushioned children’s lives, that they don’t understand the consequences of bad choices.
We stand between them and their teachers or employers or even law enforcement and claim they didn’t understand or that their failings are someone else’s fault.
(To be continued...)◊◊◊
Editor’s note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County. A native of Louisiana, she moved to this area in 1980. She has nine children, four sons-inlaw and three grandsons, a granddaughter and another grandson due this year. She can be reached at abeard@ nwaonline.com. The opinions of the writer are his own, and are not necessarily those of The Times.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 05/09/2012