To Train A Child – Chapter One | Obedience Training

OBEDIENCE TRAINING

Training does not necessarily require that the trainee be capable of reason; even mice and rats can be trained to respond to stimuli. Careful training can make a dog perfectly obedient. If a seeing-eye dog can be trained to reliably lead a blind man through the obstacles of a city street, shouldn’t a parent expect more out of an intelligent child? A dog can be trained not to touch a tasty morsel laid in front of him. Can’t a child be trained not to touch? A dog can be trained to come, stay, sit, be quiet or fetch upon command. You may not have trained your dog that well, yet every day someone accomplishes it on the dumbest mutts. Even a clumsy teenager can be trained to be an effective trainer in a dog obedience school.

If you wait until your dog is displaying unacceptable behavior before you rebuke (or kick) him, you will have a foot-shy mutt who is always sulking around seeing what he can get away with before being screamed at. Where there is an absence of training, you can no more rebuke and whip a child into acceptable behavior than you can the family dog. No amount of discipline can make up for lack of training.

Proper training always works on every child. To neglect training is to create miserable circumstances for yourself and your child. Out of innocent ignorance many of you have bypassed the training and expected the discipline alone to effect proper behavior.

First, let me begin by explaining that I have a high regard and respect for my dog.  She is part of our family, our nana, and valuable.  We have had a total of three dogs in the duration of our marriage, and lost two a few years ago.  The grief was as tangible as if a human had been lost.

My husband and I have a high regard and respect for our daughter.  She is a part of our family, our baby, and valuable.  She often demands our attention to a greater degree than does our dog, and we often have to remind ourselves to pay as much attention to our loyal and forgiving 4-legged family remember, because she will often permit herself to fade into the background.  It saddens me that our beloved dog, who was our child before the human was born, is willing to take this position of second-ness.  I am thankful to her for her loyalty and patience, but often wish she’d jump up and down in front of me, saying, “Pick me, pick me!” as loudly as my daughter does.  I will have less time to share with my dog than my daughter, if nature’s typical course is run, and so I feel it ever that much more valuable that she (our dog) be elevated to an equal status of consideration in our family.

I suppose this sort of angle comes from a general respect I have for all living creatures.

So, it is especially disconcerting for me to read something that devalues a dog, and then states that if a stupid dog can be controlled in such a manner, should not we expect much more from our stupid children?  (Stupid is my term, not theirs, but when you read their material and listen/watch their videos and PODcasts, you get the sense that they view animals AND children as inferior to themselves, as adults and parents. This sense of superiority was something that was perpetually shoved onto me as a child, raised within a “religious” environment, to one degree or another, and as an adult, it sickens me when I see it being continued with children, or dogs.)

Let me prove, as if I really need to, just how low these people view children and dogs (please note, these sentences have been recopied out of context, which some might be concerned would distort their true meaning, but my position is that in or out of context, the content is so damaging and so clear, that it doesn’t matter).  The Pearl’s text is in red.

Even a clumsy teenager can be trained to be an effective trainer in a dog obedience school.

Do we, as a society, really need to draw attention to the uncomfortable awkwardness our teens endure? Additionally, one who effectively leads animals is, in my mind, ordered, organized, intelligent, and above all, patient.  These are qualities worth admiring. And if a teenager who is enduring the period of his/her life, when the body is constantly changing and perhaps not entirely symmetrical, is able to control that same body well enough to coordinate all that is required in such a task, he/she should be admired for that alone. To say nothing of the self confidence and courage they must possess.

You may not have trained your dog that well, yet every day someone accomplishes it on the dumbest mutts.

Really.  By patience, intelligence, and love?  By force and cruelty.  The survival instinct is strong, even in worms.  Worms, by the way, are rather intelligent creatures.  And valuable, useful, and acknowledged by intelligent humans.

A dog can be trained not to touch a tasty morsel laid in front of him. Can’t a child be trained not to touch?

What is the value in temptation?  Intentional temptation by one that, for whatever reason, holds the wand of control.  The position of advantage… using their position to manipulate and assert control over the one they are charged to care for and protect.

The Pearls advocate training your child to “not touch” by placing a favorable item in front of them when very young, telling them in a language that they may or may not fully understand to not touch.  Then, when the child falls prey to the trap, they advocate switching their little hand with something that will hurt them, until they learn to choose to ignore the temptation in favor of preventing the resulting pain.

First, children this small might have comprehension of the words, but they’re not able to comprehend the full meanings behind those words, nor the intent – they are concrete thinkers, not abstract.  They do not see the big picture.  They see what is directly in front of them… a mother or father who has betrayed their trust and confused them.

A better solution:  While the child is too young to comprehend the value of not touching something that should be left, remove them items from the possibility of them attaining them.  When the child is old enough to understand, explain WHY the item is to be left untouched.  There is always a reason.  Sometimes, you’ll find that your reasons are logical and reasonable.  Sometimes even the parent will discover the reason is a silly one, and when that is communicated to the child, the child is given an opportunity to learn self discipline even in the face of something that doesn’t logically warrant it.  Additionally, a child who knows that his opinion that something doesn’t make sense is shared by the parent, but that the result doesn’t change, gains a sense of self value, self intelligence, and equal value.  If the parent admits something doesn’t make sense, when the child indicates as much, they both are on the same page.  The outcome may still require compliance, but it’s done with a mutual knowing and respect for one another is grown.  Respect for abstract compliance is also grown.

If you wait until your dog is displaying unacceptable behavior before you rebuke (or kick) him, you will have a foot-shy mutt who is always sulking around seeing what he can get away with before being screamed at.

If you kick a dog, you will have a foot-shy mutt.  If you kick a child, you will have a foot-shy child.  If you kick an adult, you will have a foot-shy adult.  If you kick a cow… well, you may have an irritated cow, but chances are unless you’re a giant, it won’t make a huge impact. However, if you burn the cow with a rod, you will have a rod-shy cow.

“ALWAYS SULKING AROUND seeing what he can get away with before being screamed at…”  is, in reality, a fearful creature who is driven to survive and adapt, in spite of the cruel environment in which he is forced to exist.  Children are little different – most of them cannot exactly remove themselves and escape the cruelty.  Many, however, do escape the moment they are knowledgeable enough to do so.  I wonder just how many stray dogs have the same story.

Where there is an absence of training, you can no more rebuke and whip a child into acceptable behavior than you can the family dog. No amount of discipline can make up for lack of training.

First, discipline is training.  Punishment is what this group defines as discipline.  If education and training is used, with logical expectations, reasonable requirements, love and patience, logical, reasonable, loving and patient behavior patterns will typically follow.  Perfect compliance will not follow: Our children are not drones.  Hopefully.  But good choices on the part of the child typically are found when the environment they are growing in is a positive, intelligent, and safe one.

Second, in the absence of training, the sort that uses positive instead of negative attention, there is a void.  That void is translated by the child as neglect.  Where there is neglect, there is pain.  Where there is neglect, there is fear.  Where there is neglect, the child resorts to all sorts of responses in effort to right the wrong.  Where the neglect is pervasive enough that the child cannot overcome it, it is passed on to that child’s offspring and relationships.

Proper training always works on every child. To neglect training is to create miserable circumstances for yourself and your child. Out of innocent ignorance many of you have bypassed the training and expected the discipline alone to effect proper behavior.

Nothing always does anything for every child.  To neglect a child is to create a miserable circumstance for everything.  To neglect to guide and nurture a child is pathetic and any adult who chooses this route, in my opinion, should not be responsible for a child.

Out of innocent ignorance, parents who assume they can raise healthy and confident, capable and intelligent children by forcing them to endure ostracism, physical punishment that results in pain, fear, and humiliation, and a cruel expectation of complete compliance in the face of manipulative punishment, should have the tables turned upon them.  By the way, such grace and mercy (“innocent ignorance”) extended here to the parent/adult is never extended to the child by the Pearls.