Parenting

Notes

Autonomy

There's a psychological experiment that I found very useful in thinking about this.

They had two kittens in a sort of carousel harness. One kitten was on the ground, and controlled where it could go, while the other kitten saw all the same things but had no control.

So they both had the same set of "stimuli", but one was in control and the other was just a passive observer.

And they found that as they matured, the passive kitten's cognitive development got significantly behind the active kitten's.

My takeaway: you have to let kids make choices or they won't learn how to. Kids have to have some autonomy growing up, or they won't ever have it. (edited)