We Teach Kids Addictions

Joey Carlson
MSMU Class of 2025

(1/2023) Psychology is notoriously preoccupied with childhood. Whether it seems funny or fitting, our habits form when we are young, and unless rerouted along the way, remain the same until we are old. The idea we have of what a habit is indicates how seriously we take them. When you think of that word, what do you imagine? Perhaps you think of something you read in a self-help book about setting good habits, or perhaps you think of that sin you’ve been trying to overcome for a long time. Most of us who are not psychologists, whether we imagined a positive or negative habit, thought of some particular action. My first thought was of my addiction to biting my nails, something I have halfheartedly been trying to overcome for years. Maybe that word seems a bit strong, "addiction". Addictions are for drugs, or alcohol, or other unpleasant life-destroying things which some have the difficult experience of relying on for their happiness. Right? There’s truth to that schema, for sure. But what if I told you that a far more potent addiction, one which we all indulge, exists in the mind? In our very manner of thinking? It actually is just that, your manner of thinking: you’re addicted to it, and you have been for a long time.

Children are taught how to think from an early age. Many educators and parents concern themselves with teaching their kids what to think, an obviously important task. The child needs to be told that the stove is hot and that it will hurt them if they touch it. What they do with that kind of information, however, is what will dictate the course of their life. Do they touch the stove on purpose in order to spite you, or because they don’t believe you, or because they think that it is funny? Do they avoid the stove altogether? The stove is of course an analogy for moral boundaries, since all laws and rules of morality exist in order to preserve the human beings involved from suffering pain or disillusionment from their own dignity. The corruption of a child is very easy to accomplish: simply encourage bad behavior. We do this, far less often by rewarding our children for bad behavior, and more often by leading by example.

I would like to give an example: A child has a brilliant idea! Children are smarter than most adults anyway. Maybe the child finds out that money is printed, and suggests that we just print more money to fix our financial problems. Maybe he has an idea for a science project that is just not quite complete, or maybe it seems smart but wouldn’t hold up to standards we set for real science. These are examples from my own life, and I would like to narrate how they went wrong and how they went right.

The first idea about money was one that a friend of mine had when she was three or four years old. Her father did the right thing: he explained simply and kindly the idea of inflation, and in doing so, his daughter learned that money only represents real things, and is worthless on its own. I am sure that many children have this same idea when they learn money is printed, but most of them probably don’t have this kind of conversation with their parents, so many never learn the most important truth about finances and the economy. She managed to be quite the saver actually, and treats money pretty well – that, however, is a habit that is only really communicated by example.

The second example, where the child has an idea about something scientific that is true but not quite complete, was me. I had to do a science project in 5th grade, and after a lot of thinking, I decided that I would test different woods to see which ones burnt the longest. I had a vague idea that some woods burnt longer than others because my father had told be at some point that oak burns longer than willow and pine. A good idea, but beyond that I was lost. My father suggested that I try and see if there was a correlation between density and how long wood would last being burnt. I did the experiment with all the typical marks of a good experiment, and I proved my hypothesis right. I learned the actual process of scientific inquiry, and I’ve never forgot some of the standards set for me for proving something. I didn’t get any awards or anything, and of course I couldn’t say that it was all my idea; my dad essentially authored the entire thing. Still, I got to do it, and I learned. I did nothing very interesting or original, but no child should expect to ever discover anything original, or to have any kind of exclusive success.

To let any child indulge in the idea that they have done something new or that they have had success where others haven’t is terrible parenting. No child invents anything new, especially not nowadays. They should, however, still try, and we need to love and be proud of them no matter what. If you let them think that they are more successful than they are, reality will be too cold a shock when it comes, and they will either be disillusioned from the truth or from trying. Or, God forbid, they won’t get to fail, and they will love success far too much. If my wood idea had been false, the right thing for my dad to have done would have been to let me test my hypothesis for me to find out that I was wrong. I would have learned the process just as well as if I had been right.

As a parent, you should be most on the lookout for habits of thinking in your child. How do they view success? How do they deal with failure? Are they inquisitive or moral all the time, or only when it suits them? How you react will dictate most of their life.

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