Most of the time a parent and his child agree about who should control something. The parent pays for the baby's food and the baby doesn't object. This is not "control" in the relevant sense because the baby prefers it be this way. And other times the baby decides on the location of his rattle. He exercises some control over his life and his parent is fine with that.
The interesting case -- and the one where the notion of an adult controlling a child is most relevant and meaningful -- is when there is a disagreement. Then if the adult, say, unplugs the TV to prevent the child playing GTA, against the child's will, he is taking control of the situation and exercising control over the child's life.
A wide variety of excuses are given for adults controlling children as a react to disagreements. One particularly generic and offensive one is "kids don't think so good". This sometimes takes more specific forms, e.g. "kids don't think so good on the specific issue of differentiating between virtual reality and reality" (btw, ironically, most adults are extremely bad at that same issue in some different forms, e.g. they don't really understand that when they "see" a chair the visual image is a VR rendering inside their head).
Anyway, here is a fact that, ahem, adults often mess up and which many young children intuitively seem to grasp: if we accept that the ratio of stuff adults are right about to stuff children are right about is 1000:1, it does not follow that in a disagreement the adult is right (or probably right). This is because disagreements do not happen in a random sample of cases. Disagreements only happen when both parties judge that they have relevant information that the other hasn't properly taken into account.
In disagreements, it's nothing but sheer unadulterated arrogance (and irrationality) to assume one is right. And to attribute this assumption to demographic characteristics of the other person is dehumanizing.
I think a lot of what your saying is thoughtful and worth considering, but relevant mostly to kids at around age 10. Prior to 7, FMRI suggests that kids don't even have a real concept of empathy yet (which btw has profound impact on how you handle discipline, in directions I think you might find congenial).
But again we're talking about a 4 year old. It just shouldn't be controversial (or, worse, acrimonious) to suggest that the rules are different for preschoolers.
FMRI studies suggest that children prior to the age of 7 don't have a fully developed (or useful) concept of empathy.
Therefore, when your 4 year old eats your 5 year old's cookie, it isn't productive to demand that the 4 year be held to account for "how it would make YOU feel if HE ate YOUR cookie". It's confusing and irrelevant to the child.
Since parents for most of the last century have used exactly those words on little kids, I have illustrated a disagreement between me and a hypothetical parent, and resolved it with a very, very basic finding of developmental psychology.
That disagreement is not very relevant to whatever it is our disagreement is, but it does illustrate that the logic you're deploying isn't... um... controlling? here.
Incidentally, isn't it a little bit weird that I'm taking this side of a discussion against the author of the "Don't Fight" iPhone application? =)
The science states that they don't understand empathy until age 7. I would hazard an alternative explanation: it takes years of training to become empathetic.
I don't think morality is about empathy. I think the "how would you feel if..." arguments are bad. So I wouldn't consider this a significant problem, if true.
I don't know if you've read through my app, but I think you will find it's consistent with my views in general, and thoroughly fails to advocate empathy.
I would be more inclined to point out that if there is a disagreement about a cookie, it is in everyone's interests to use a truth seeking process to find out the right thing to do. Then everyone can win. With fighting, someone loses, and it will sometimes be you, and even if you win the other guy uses his creativity against you instead of cooperatively.
I think most of morality can be learned or deduced by applying empathy. Morality and empathy are closely related.
Like the Golden Rule, for example. Do I like being slapped? If no, don't slap. Do I like to be stolen from? If no, don't steal from others. And so on. Empathy towards others goes a long way towards being moral -- even if one has to "fake" it at times.
Truth is a good thing, agreed. But I'd say that philosophy is an ineffective way at arriving at truth, however. Science, logic and mathematics are much better at it.
Philosophy also suffers from some crippling flaws that Wittgenstein pointed out.
lol, witt was a terrible philosopher (if one can even call him a philosopher -- he did not have philosophical problems). if you try reading Popper instead you'll find philosophy is rather better.
epistemology is a very important and useful field. at least i think so, feel free to post or cite a criticism. i'll accept that most of the rest of philosophy is a bad signal to noise ratio.
Most of the time a parent and his child agree about who should control something. The parent pays for the baby's food and the baby doesn't object. This is not "control" in the relevant sense because the baby prefers it be this way. And other times the baby decides on the location of his rattle. He exercises some control over his life and his parent is fine with that.
The interesting case -- and the one where the notion of an adult controlling a child is most relevant and meaningful -- is when there is a disagreement. Then if the adult, say, unplugs the TV to prevent the child playing GTA, against the child's will, he is taking control of the situation and exercising control over the child's life.
A wide variety of excuses are given for adults controlling children as a react to disagreements. One particularly generic and offensive one is "kids don't think so good". This sometimes takes more specific forms, e.g. "kids don't think so good on the specific issue of differentiating between virtual reality and reality" (btw, ironically, most adults are extremely bad at that same issue in some different forms, e.g. they don't really understand that when they "see" a chair the visual image is a VR rendering inside their head).
Anyway, here is a fact that, ahem, adults often mess up and which many young children intuitively seem to grasp: if we accept that the ratio of stuff adults are right about to stuff children are right about is 1000:1, it does not follow that in a disagreement the adult is right (or probably right). This is because disagreements do not happen in a random sample of cases. Disagreements only happen when both parties judge that they have relevant information that the other hasn't properly taken into account.
In disagreements, it's nothing but sheer unadulterated arrogance (and irrationality) to assume one is right. And to attribute this assumption to demographic characteristics of the other person is dehumanizing.