Intellectual_Savnot wrote: ↑March 12th, 2019, 12:46 pm
@Karpel Tunnel Misrepresentation for the purpose of not providing information is a much larger crime than misrepresentation for the purpose of protection. Not wanting to explain things to a child is seriously wrong, and could result in heavy lack of growth. If your child asks a question you must answer in full honesty and description so that they might learn, or otherwise their own knowledge and intellect be damned. You don't tell an adult why you are mad with your boyfriend because they don't need to know anything. A child, however, must know anything that they can know and think at any given opportunity.
Sorry I'm not telling my son that my wife doesn't take enough caution with her teeth when going down on me and that's why daddy was a bit upset over dinner. It's not his business. Though on the other hand I am quite open about sex in a general way with my children. But again fitting the level of the childs maturity and ability to understand. If I ask my dad who is a neurophysiologist how he's doing, I don't want a lecture about neurotransmitters that i can't understand.
And none of this stops the child from learnign the whole time.
Think of the poor kid of a philosopher who after asking when will the bus come gets a six hour lecture including relativity theory and its critics and then a wander through Zeno to the present about time. Sure, a philosopher should share their love of such things some times, but not others,a nd also fit to the childs mind. Or do you want her staying home from work and not letting the kid go to daycare so she can answer the quesiton completely?
When do we start? Preverbal?
There are billions of things that kids are learning and can learn. To actually respond to some things as fully as I possibly could, triangulating my way toward a full truth, but never reaching it, would take the rest of my life as I come to understand more about myself. And then I never tell the kind to step back off the curb cause that car is coming.
We make choices
between things to talk about and do
between answers that are way too hard, just right, too simple
I don't answer adults with full disclosure
I answer adults dependent on their needs, my time, our degree of closeness, my sense of their interest, my sense of their knowledge base....and so on.
But suddenly with kids I must answer like I am a wikipedia bot.
That is cruel to me and them.
And I am a very candid person with less taboos than most people. And this includes emotions not just being a walking encyclopedia for my children.
IMagine if teachers did this. Instead of meeting children where they always, always, responded as if the kids were at college level knowledge and if not, then the teachers worked on getting them there now. Some kids in the class can't multiply double digit numbers yet, but Timmy asked about something that would require calculus knowledge to answer, so the whole class spent a week while Timmy failed to grasp this.
And by the way...as a teacher I really believe in allowing interest to lead learning and am on the extreme end of progressive child centered eduction philosophy. But this doesn't mean I am controlled in all my future behavior by children's questions. They can pursue knowledge and will on their own with support.
Adults are not information spewing robots with a prime directive requiring complete answers.
Anyone who thinks this a good for children has never taught children and that includes has never parented them.
If they had they would know that you have to tailor suit your responses to everyone's needs and abilities in that moment. And it is complicated and not always easy to find the right balance. Of course this could be abused to keeep people from learning some things they need and deserve to know, now. But it is unavoidable that one makes choices, choices made out of respect for the child, yourself, other obligations, reality, time, other children, other adults and more.