#teachable

[oncce-againn]

Be teachable. You’re not always right.

[inolienkiki]

This is a story, with a lesson attached, about how not everything should have a lesson attached. You can skip the story if you want and go straight to the lesson; I'm mostly writing it to give a brief example and to get my thoughts in order.

Today I went to my local game store to buy paints, among other things. Their barcode scanner was out of order, so the cashier needed to enter all of my items manually, which took a while. This meant that the family behind me in line, three kids and their dad, was waiting for me for probably five minutes.

During those five minutes, the kids talked a lot. The two boys were up at the counter next to me discussing the price of dice sets and talking about some of the new Avatar MtG cards. The girl, who was probably about 8, seemed not to have been there for the MtG tournament and was mostly talking to her dad. She asked a few questions about what taxes were and what happened if you didn't pay them; he gave a one-sentence explanation but said "that's a complicated question, I'll answer in a minute", then went back downstairs to get his water bottle. When he came back, he seemed to have forgotten about that.

Later, the girl picked out a keychain from the counter and suggested it as a gift for a family friend. Her dad liked this idea, so she held on to the keychain while she continued to wait. At some point, she asked her dad: "This keychain doesn't have a barcode sticker on it. What would happen if I took it outside?"

I thought this was a pretty interesting question, since I'd imagine this is something the store has to worry about too. I looked around and pretty quickly noticed that there was a security camera on the wall behind the counter, presumably to keep track of things exactly like this.

For some reason, though, her dad assumed she was asking him if she was allowed to do this. "That would be stealing, and we're not going to do that." She didn't ask any more questions.

One of the kids, at some point, made an offhand comment about how they didn't like having to wait to check out. Their dad decided to take this opportunity to apologize to me about it. I was annoyed by this, as I'm always annoyed when parents apologize to me in public, and I point out that they have every reason to be impatient because I was the one buying way too much paint. Apparently trying to take the opportunity to teach his kids something, he said, "Yeah, but you *need* the paint," (to which I said, "I promise you I don't.")

I stopped engaging after that because I was getting annoyed with myself for talking over the kids' heads.

This isn't that important or revealing of a story, but it reminded me pretty well of something I've wanted to talk about for a while.

----

Parents, teachers, and childcare workers in general LOVE "teachable moments". Isn't it amazing when something a kid is doing allows you to naturally and un-preachily impart a behavioral lesson? If you're clever about it, you can turn anything into a teachable moment! At any time, you can let a child know that they're Behaving Well or Behaving Poorly, and what they should do to change that.

And, okay, this does actually sound great on paper. The idea is that teaching kids *in the moment*, rather than after the fact, results in a strong lesson! I haven't looked into any research surrounding this specifically, but it matches up with what I learned about classical conditioning when I took psychology, and childcare workers do love referencing psychology.

The dad in my story was obviously an interesting case, because he took a few opportunities to impart Behavioral Lessons, but missed an obvious opportunity to share a much more important Life Lesson. That said, I don't think he's too different from most people who use teachable moments.

See, kids ask a lot of questions. I remember asking loads of questions as a kid just like that girl did, trying to figure out how the world worked around me. This is how a lot of kids, in large part, learn these Life Facts! There is no moment more teachable than answering a direct question... so why are "teachable moments" necessary in the first place?

Well, it's pretty simple. "Teachable moments" are engineered ways to answer questions that a kid would not ask. Questions like, "is it okay if I walk over there?" "is it okay if I talk in public?" "is it okay if I play with my own toys right now?" Teachable moments, like basically all of Parenting, are designed purely to impart Behavioral Lessons. Lessons like, "don't steal from this store", or "don't complain about having to wait in line".

None of this is for the child.

I've been talking vaguely about "childcare workers" throughout this explanation, but now I'm going to switch to talking about parents specifically. Teachers and other role models do these things too, for sure, but at least they do it with the genuine belief that children desperately need to be taught to behave. Parents do it for... well, a totally different reason.

Case in point: the apology. Whenever parents decide to apologize to me in public-- something that happens basically whenever kids are near me in public-- the apology is not on behalf of the kids, it is about the kids. Not "I'm sure they'd be sorry if they knew they were bothering you," but "I'm sorry-- they must be bothering you."

This was one of the Mysteries of the Adult World for most of my childhood. One day, when I was a teenager, I had an argument with my mom in public, and she snapped "You're embarrassing me!" Then I figured it out.

Cultural norms dictate that a parent must have control over their children in public. The parent is expected to take responsibility for any aspect of the child's behavior, whether that behavior is bullying or mere rudeness. A kid who "misbehaves" is an embarrassment. Yeah, I get that this seems like a really tough situation to be in-- parents probably feel really nervous and self-conscious about their kids' actions in public. Certainly this kind of stress would make me apologize a lot.

From this perspective, a lot of things about Parenting, especially considering "teachable moments", start to make sense. Parents will take ANY possible opportunity to avoid future embarrassment, especially if they can prove to random strangers that they care about their kids behaving properly. They will pay close attention, making sure every action is societally acceptable and that the kid understands it in that context. Good job saying "thank you", that's Mature. Don't sound so stubborn in public, that was Immature. Your silence was Mature, your fidgeting was Immature, your obedience was Mature, your angry face was Immature. My parents made sure I got these feedback updates constantly.

I will also take this opportunity to point out that the word "immature" makes no sense. If "immature" means "childish", a child acting immature should be entirely expected. Parents tend to use this word as a moral stand-in for "embarrassing" Most parents don't bother explaining to a child that they aren't allowed to frown in public because it makes Dad insecure; instead, they frame it as Doing Something Wrong. Kids understand that doing something that's genuinely wrong, like stealing or hitting someone, will get them in trouble with more than just their parents-- but Misbehaving is tough to frame that way because, for the most part, nobody else cares.

Parents have even more trouble with this, of course. I'm sure the author of the recent Parenting guide Please Yell At My Kids would have had a very specific request for me, had she been in line behind me today. Of course, nobody has written a book called Please Defend My Kids, because no parent wants their "teachable moment" interrupted by someone who's going to take all the bite out of their scolding.

It must be really tough for parents to moderate kids' behavior this way. They're probably motivated by fear; nothing else makes any sense.

----

I like talking about parents' perspectives, because I think cultural norms need to be unpacked in order to be questioned, but it's crucial to recognize that kids' voices should be at the center of this discussion.

The use of "teachable moments" is a great example of systemic oppression. What the hell, Kiki? you may ask. It's just a lesson! And I would agree-- on its own, a "teachable moment" is fine! The problem starts to manifest in aggregate. Criticizing someone's behavior once probably won't have much of an impact on them, but monitoring someone's behavior constantly, in public and in private, over years and years of someone's life, continually letting them know whether or not their personality is to your satisfaction, sounds to me like the formula for the Anxiety Bomb. Raising children like this leaves them HANGING OFF OF YOU for approval, constantly looking to you for outside validation, asking whether they're Mature today... and I can say that because I was that kid! I had to peel my own sense of self-satisfaction apart from my mom's approval, a process that took years, and I had to do it while she was STILL evaluating me like this. A kid who learns too many Behavioral Lessons will miss learning to feel proud of themself.

One thing they will learn, though, is how to read their parent. A Teachable kid will learn to pick up on it when their parent is even slightly annoyed, and will avoid any behavior that triggers this. Talking to Dad about your day makes him annoyed, so better not bother. Asking Mom if you can have a friend over makes her annoyed, so if you do this you'd better prepare yourself for a bad day. This would be enough of a problem if a lot of very adaptive childhood behaviors weren't also normed as disturbances. Playing is annoying. Exploring is annoying. Asking too many questions is annoying, especially if they're good questions. So kids just WON'T, and they won't learn, and they won't enjoy themselves.

If you haven't been through this, take a minute and actually try to imagine what this is like. Imagine having a constant companion that gives commentary on your behavior. Every time you express yourself too loudly, they let you know how embarrassing you are. Every time you try to be genuinely kind to someone, they offer you little bits of dished-out praise like they're throwing a treat to a dog. You don't always know what will make them shame you, so your best bet is to stay quiet and stay out of everyone's way. Now imagine that this companion is someone that you rely on for food and shelter and transportation, someone whose permission you have to ask and whose approval you need to go into public or see your friends. Now imagine that everyone else can hear this person's comments about you and they all agree.

Adults love to ignore the severity of experiences like this, citing how kids don't fully understand the world yet, so they don't know any different. Don't mind that you could use this argument to justify "regular" physical abuse, too!

This is just... it's wrong. It's a horribly unethical way to treat someone. And it stops kids from being able to understand what life is actually like. My mom, like lots of parents, told me she had to be hard on me because the world was going to be way harder. It was definitely the other way around, and adjusting to that after I moved out was devastating.

This is not even considering the apologies. Nobody deserves to be apologized ABOUT like this; adults even use it to shame each other. (I'm sorry about my friend, they have a bad attitude, etc.) But this happens to kids constantly, and it happens literally over their heads. Thankfully my parents didn't do this very much, because I can't imagine what it would be like if the person who took me into public was constantly telling strangers they felt ashamed about doing so.

Whether you're a kid or an adult, you shouldn't tolerate this! I'm going to start calling out the embarrassment behind these sentiments. Hopefully some parents will realize that being ashamed of your own children, to their face, is way more contemptible than letting them do what they want.

This ties farther and deeper into other concepts I'd like to talk about sometime, particularly The Child As Project. Some childcare workers seem genuinely unable to separate "childhood" from "learning". They see kids as similar to unfinished sculptures, incomplete objects that must be carved and chiseled into adulthood through careful application of the right lessons. This inability to see how a child feels and thinks-- and therefore to recognize their humanity-- apart from how they respond to criticism is deeply uncomfortable, and it disturbs me a lot. This is why I always frame my posts as "Raising kids like this is wrong, AND DOESN'T WORK," because people like this only care about the second half of that sentence. Talking to these people can be really tough, because they ARE using the best possible teaching techniques that are backed up by psychology and they DO care a lot about making sure they fully understand the mind of the child... but they approach childcare like dog training, and any dog trainer will tell you their job would be a thousand times easier if they'd SPENT EIGHTEEN YEARS as a dog. Again, I plan to talk about this in greater detail sometime later, but I bring it up because this post is a great example of the consequences of this worldview.

----

Hhhhh. Writing these posts takes a lot out of me, but I always find it helpful to get my thoughts down like this. It helps me get a handle on how these systems work on a deeper level, and I can only hope it helps a few people too.

[pardalote]

Beetles, 2022.

Link to the online workshop to make these guys: https://pardalote.teachable.com/

[wordsofwisdomandsoul]

[wordsbyhisheart]

[oldfarmhouse]

𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞✨

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

𝐅𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞, 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 & 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫✧.*

[tears-that-heal]

“Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. “And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭18‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

[theinwardlight]

We strive to be a loving body of Friends where we all support each other – but we often fall short. How can we open Quaker spaces so that everyone feels welcome? We know that we each have work to do if we are to hear voices that are unlike our own. We seek to be Spirit-led, as our experience and understanding permit. May we be aware of our limitations. May we be open to learn in love. May we be teachable.

Epistle of Britain Yearly Meeting, 2024