Very interesting response from Carolyn Hax: “In my experience, dog-rearing style is a deadly accurate predictor of child-rearing style.” That is kind of worrying to me, because I’m quite harsh and strict with my dog. I have actually made every decision with him and with his training based on the concept that he is not like a child in any useful way. He is quite well trained. Children don’t get trained at all; they get educated (or brainwashed). Children have language. They have reason. They have a purpose and desires in life separate and greater than achieving closeness with their parents. My dog has no hope for getting an actual education; he can’t really process any knowledge about the world around him except what he can’t do, what he’s not allowed to do, what he may do, what he must do and what he ought to do only in certain situations. He understands the commands I’ve taught him to understand, but that doesn’t really rise to the level of language. There’s no chance I’ll ever be able to explain to him why, for example, he should walk in the “heel” position – he only knows that he should because I reward him when he does it and punish him when he doesn’t.
I don’t use violence with my dog, though I do wrestle with him periodically to establish physical dominance, and I do physically force him not to do things I consider dangerous, like eating trash or running in the street. Children can understand violence, and consequently it is not necessarily always wrong to spank a child, as long as it’s done in the right way and not to excess (I was spanked twice in my life, and my mom used to slap me very lightly if I cursed or was disrespectful). My dog requires pretty constant feedback. Children don’t. They need to experience things for themselves, since they can learn from consequences that take longer than five seconds to unfold.
One of the things that I really appreciate about the way I was raised is that my parents never left anything to chance. Everything they did was the result of discussions and ideas, and they didn’t hide from me that they were not always sure about what to do as parents, but that they also had a fairly coherent parenting philosophy. Maybe it’s true that dog-rearing style can be indicative of child-rearing style in the presence of a style itself. People who don’t have any idea how to raise a dog and don’t care about how it’s raised are likely not to have any idea how to raise a child and won’t care how he’s raised. But I hope that someone like me, who puts a tremendous amount of effort into making his dog awesome, and into giving him a life that’s pleasant and long, would also be good at raising children.
Update: here’s a New York Times article agreeing with Carolyn Hax about using dog-training methods to raise children. Creepy!
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