Terrible twos

I had the chance to leaf through a copy of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice, at the same time practicing speed reading. Since the book has summaries at the end of its chapters, and a verbose table of contents, it was really easy to quickly grasp the core of the book. Also, doing this I found spots that I wanted to read immediately, so I did.

One chapter is about the “scarcity principle” – roughly: if access to something is diminishing, your desire to have that something is likely to increase (for example, offers that are while supplies last or this weekend only). Anyway, it had a section about “terrible twos” (and teenagers) that particularly interested me.

In June, I blogged about an article by Malcolm Gladwell, titled Baby Steps, that examined the claims made by the “zero-to-three movement”. He also wrote about terrible twos, and how they can be said to act like scientists, testing their theories on their lab rats (the parents).

Cialdini writes that the “terrible twos” have just begun to realize that they are individuals, and are exploring their freedom: “This developing concept of autonomy brings naturally with it the concept of freedom. An independent being is one with choices; a child with the newfound realization that he or she is such a being will want to explore the length and breadth of the options.” He continues:

Perhaps we should be neither surprised nor distressed, then, when our 2-year-olds strain incessantly against our will. They have come to a recent and exhilarating perspective of themselves: they are free-standing human entities. Vital questions of choice, rights, and control now need to be asked and answered within their small minds. The tendency to fight for every liberty and against every restriction might be best understood, then, as a quest for information. By testing severely the limits of their freedoms (and, coincidentally, the patience of their parents), the children are discovering where in their worlds they can expect to be controlled and where to be in control.

The question is to what extent you should give them freedom, or to what extent you should limit it. The book doesn’t seem to deal with this anymore than the few pages I’ve read. Hopefully, the book The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind by Alison Gopnik et al, talks more about this. I’ll have to read that one within a year.