January 25, 2018, Fear, Pain and Pleasure Are Powerful Teachers
Though unpleasant, fear and pain are powerful teachers. They get a bad rap because they’re unpleasant, and when they deceive, they can be very destructive. But generally, they teach us things that are good and true. There are other, more enjoyable teachers, such as pleasure, but they are a mixed bag also. Pleasure can teach bad habits and addictions. It can deceive us into believing and doing things that aren’t true and good.
Children learn fear from pain. As they start to walk, they hurt themselves when they fall down so they develop a fear of falling. This is true and good because falling can cause injury so we learn to avoid falling. We learn to avoid things that make us lose our balance because that creates fear. We don’t actually need to fall down and experience pain to learn not to walk on a tight rope. The sensation of losing our balance triggers a fear response that naturally teaches us that walking on a tight rope is dangerous and should be avoided. It takes considerable discipline to resist this learning mechanism.
Learning to avoid pain and fear are natural mechanisms built into our brains for good reason. Parents often exploit the pain and fear response to teach children more complex lessons. We train them not to touch dangerous or fragile things by slapping their hands when they reach for them. They learn to fear the word “no” if we say “no” when we slap their hands. Very quickly children learn to respond to the word no without the hand slap. It arouses fear in them. So, we can stop a child from running into the street in front of oncoming traffic by yelling no.
This cycle becomes more complex as we teach our children more complex lessons, such as spanking them when they disobey or show disrespect. If applied inconsistently such punishments can be ineffective and even destructive. Causing a child pain because you’re angry instead of for their own benefit is abuse. Parents should refuse to discipline their children when they are angry to avoid being abusive, but protecting them from all pain robs them of essential learning opportunities.
Raising children is a difficult, complex process. As children grow, they face more complex learning that can’t be taught with simple application of pain, fear, and pleasure. They also start to push back if parents rely too much on pain or fear to teach. On rare occasions when our children were disobedient or defiant, punishment needed to hurt so they would fear behaving that way again, but I never wanted to cause pain or fear in my children. It was always an unpleasant task that I avoided, striving to only go that route when necessary and beneficial.
I struggled with how to motivate learning when our boys were easily distracted and took a long time to do school work because they weren’t focused. Punishment didn’t seem appropriate because the distraction wasn’t deliberate. We tried rewards, but that wasn’t very effective.
I mentioned that our natural learning responses don’t always work right. Pleasure can lead to bad habits or addictions. Parents and other teachers can become abusive. Fear can spiral out of control into anxiety. All of us should evaluate our life experiences to ensure that our learning is true and good. We need to make sure pain, fear, and pleasure are all working in balance to lead us to truth and goodness.