I:1:T Why has temper tantrum advice, both currently and historically, been unable to help all parents totally eliminate the tantrums of their children? Traditional temper tantrum advice is based on three faulty concepts, the first one being that babies less than one year or six months old aren't able to experience real anger or throw temper tantrums. Most child development theorists believe newborn infants are not yet emotionally functional-or not capable of having real live emotions. The angry-sounding expressions of babies are not real anger, they tell us. But neither are they any other type of anger, simulated anger, or pre-anger. We're led to believe babies' anger sounds are nothing more than instinctual crying responses to their hunger or other discomfort.
What, I wonder, do these experts believe happens when a baby turns six months or one year old that enables them to actually be angry whenever they sound angry? I'm thinking that it's something akin to a baby gradually gaining language or fine-motor skills. Decades ago I realized that I disagreed with this concept and I asked myself how these professionals could come up with the perception that infants are pre-functional with their emotions. We can't, after all, see if a screaming infant is or isn't angry just like we can see if it can or can't pick up tiny objects. By its very definition, an emotion is an un-seeable mental state. All we can do is interpret our perception of the expression of it.
If spouses appeared to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they were. Conversely, if spouses appeared not to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they weren't. It's easy to imagine grown ups experiencing different emotions from the ones they portray themselves feeling. Really, only the person experiencing the emotion can know for sure what is happening for them emotionally. And that concept logically applies to children and infants, as well.
I wonder how current parenting experts came to this scientifically unproven theory of infant emotional pre-functioning. They must have had it taught to them in graduate university programs from the accumulated learning of their previous generation's child development experts. That generation probably previously gained this concept from their own behaviorism-based ancestral theorists who viewed as irrelevant-for adults and children alike-all subjective phenomena (like emotions).
It seems that somebody along the way simply created this concept out of thin air and then everybody else just went along with it. In spite of our historical social failure to comprehend infants and young children as completely functional emotional human beings, our current knowledge should help parents recognize the reality of their very young children's anger and temper tantrum behaviors.
What, I wonder, do these experts believe happens when a baby turns six months or one year old that enables them to actually be angry whenever they sound angry? I'm thinking that it's something akin to a baby gradually gaining language or fine-motor skills. Decades ago I realized that I disagreed with this concept and I asked myself how these professionals could come up with the perception that infants are pre-functional with their emotions. We can't, after all, see if a screaming infant is or isn't angry just like we can see if it can or can't pick up tiny objects. By its very definition, an emotion is an un-seeable mental state. All we can do is interpret our perception of the expression of it.
If spouses appeared to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they were. Conversely, if spouses appeared not to be angry with one another, it wouldn't be guaranteed that they weren't. It's easy to imagine grown ups experiencing different emotions from the ones they portray themselves feeling. Really, only the person experiencing the emotion can know for sure what is happening for them emotionally. And that concept logically applies to children and infants, as well.
I wonder how current parenting experts came to this scientifically unproven theory of infant emotional pre-functioning. They must have had it taught to them in graduate university programs from the accumulated learning of their previous generation's child development experts. That generation probably previously gained this concept from their own behaviorism-based ancestral theorists who viewed as irrelevant-for adults and children alike-all subjective phenomena (like emotions).
It seems that somebody along the way simply created this concept out of thin air and then everybody else just went along with it. In spite of our historical social failure to comprehend infants and young children as completely functional emotional human beings, our current knowledge should help parents recognize the reality of their very young children's anger and temper tantrum behaviors.
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