Raising Objectivist Children

Psychology and Self Improvement
1

I was just curious if there are any families in this country that have made it public that they are raising their children according to strict Objectivist values. I would like to know what kind of effect that would have. I, for one, was raised in a Catholic family that valued reason and productivity just as equally as it valued respecting self-sacrifice and God. I (grudgingly) went to church with my parents almost every sunday until I was in high school and was even forced to become a confirmed catholic by my father, who is a businessman who enjoyed explaining concepts like the holy spirit and the holy trinity in seemingly rational ways. Out of this hodgepodge of reason and faith that characterized my home life, I emerged an Objectivist.

Obviously, one can be raised in a religious household and still find Rand’s ideas to be the right ones. But I wonder what kids who have grown up with parents that read them Anthem at night and teach them to reject religion and irrationality turn out to be like years later. I would personally like to raise my kids under Objectivist values and plan on reading them books like Anthem and The Girl Who Owned a City, etc.

2

Do you mean maybe, Objectivist principles? And “strict”? That seems like kind of a weird word to describe a philosophy that advocates individualism! :lol:

I’ve met a couple of people that were brought up by Objectivists (most notably my best friend in high school and her mother); if they are representative, which I’m not saying they are, I’d say children raised as Objectivists stay Objectivists, they are much more thorougly integrated at a very young age.

3

I was just curious if there are any families in this country that have made it public that they are raising their children according to strict Objectivist values.

Not sure what you mean by “made public” and “strict”, but sure there are kids who have been brought up as Objectivists. I can’t imagine that an Objectivist who has kids would try to “bring them up anything other than Objectivist”. Ofcourse, there is an age when a child is ready for explicit philosophy. Something a parent has to judge.

My 7 year old is too young :wink: , but when the time is right, we’ll introduce him to explicit philosophy. Even at his age, the reasons he gets from us for why to do or not to do certain things, are undoubtedly very different from what our neighbours tell their kids.

4

But I wonder what kids who have grown up with parents that read them Anthem at night and teach them to reject religion and irrationality turn out to be like years later.

My son is four, and I do not teach him to reject religion. I try to teach him to think.

As far as that goes, he is turing out to be pretty bright. For instance, we took a trip to the Great Wall last week, and one of the engineers on the trip had my sons toy T-rex. The guy said to my son that the T-rex was going to bite him if he wasn’t careful.

My son simply said, “No it won’t. It is not alive.”

It is just a matter of time until he, all by himself, rejects God and religion.

I expect that he will “turn out” to be rational in later years because the other options don’t make sense.

5

My son is four, and I do not teach him to reject religion. I try to teach him to think… As far as that goes, he is tuning out to be pretty bright. For instance, … I expect that he will “turn out” to be rational in later years because the other options don’t make sense.

Hi Slave, Loved the example. I can just visualize my 7 year old saying: “That doesn’t make any sense!”. He starting to say that now and then.

6

I expect that he will “turn out” to be rational in later years because the other options don’t make sense.

Children can be extremely rational if adults didn’t undercut them. They’re also enthusiastic to learn. Just now, as my son was dressing for school, he said: “Do you know what I really want to do at school today?”

“What?”, I ask.

He replies: “Lesson B of ‘Interjections’”.

(He thinks it’s great fun to say things like “Hey!” ,“Alas!”, “Egad!” )

PS: We should have a thread in the “Misc” sub-forum, titled … “See, my kid is so cool” (I’m serious.)

7

Mrs. A. T. Dinwiddie asked her Sunday school class what “you must do before you obtain forgiveness of sin.” There was a pause. Finally one 6-year-old timidly held up his hand and said: “Sin.” (From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 25, 1967 )

This is along the same lines. You can see the chidlrens using their brains more effectively than adults - many adults.

8

My son simply said, “No it won’t. It is not alive.”

LOL! That’s awesome. (A new Fox T.V. show called: “When Children Fight Back,”)

So many times I here adults telling children absurd things, such as your example, almost as if the child’s mind was a tool for their entertainment–it’s so pathetic and, if I may say so, childish.

Edited for quote fixing.

9

Lesson B of ‘Interjections’.

I have been laughing at this for the last two days. My mind keeps going back to a little guy saying that.

10

I was raised by a pair of very devout mormons. They taught me all of the tenets of their religion as well as teaching me to think and be intelligent. They taught me to make decisions based on consequences rather than telling me that something is just wrong. Later in life they wondered why I left the church. I don’t think its necessary to teach your children specific philosophy. Just teach them to think about consequences and to be responsible. Later in life you can offer them Rand’s books and they’ll find their own way to it. Anything they learn through their own way will be infinitely more valuable than something they are indoctrinated with.

11

So many times I hear adults telling children absurd things, such as your example, almost as if the child’s mind was a tool for their entertainment–it’s so pathetic and, if I may say so, childish.

I think it depends on the context. I’ve seen the cases you’re speaking of, where the adult is taking a perverse pleasure in a child’s bewilderment. It hassles me. When its my child, it angers me. It usually clarifies things to my son and shuts the adult up if I interject with something like: “Well, do you think something so silly can be true?” Depending on what has been said, there are a few other adjectives that may be substituted for “silly”.

On the other hand, there are some contexts for which I do not have a word, but “controlled nonsense” or “funny nonsense” might be close. Think of it like a puzzle. Take a simple puzzle that my son does in school: 4 words and they find the odd man out. At a slightly more complex level, there was a certain age (and it still continues at about 7 years) where my son enjoyed a little game of “why is this so absurd”. The way it was presented to him was always in a context where he knew he was being presented with something that was wrong, and the game was to figure out why? Like a conceptual, logical version of “What’s wrong with this picture?”

For an older child, Lewis Caroll’s “Though a Looking Glass” might be a more complex version of this “genre”. I say “might be” because I read it only as an adult. It struck me as a light-hearted puzzler, using epistemology as its subject. Its possible that a kid of some age might read it not as a simple fantasy but as a “spot the epistemological error” puzzler (though, obviously, not in so many words).

Aside: As for people telling my kid stuff I do not like, another thing that gets to me is when some adult would ask him (even as early as 5): “Do you have a girlfriend at school?”

12

I was raised under Christian Science, as taught by Mary Baker Eddy. But after a few years, my parents discovered Objectivism, as one of my dad’s longtime friends found out about some lectures in New York and so they both attended.

My folks were constantly searching for truth. Dad explored the religions of the world, from Buddhism to Christianity and even Subjectivity, but when he raised specific questions to the clerics of the religions, he got back subterfuge instead of answers. This led him to realize that the truth probably wasn’t in religion.

Objectivism was discovered and it simply made sense to all of us. I got an early tast of it and had read every novel and essay by Ayn Rand by the age of 16.

During that period, my mind was sharp, I could argue topics and no one spouting a mystical viewpoint could get anywhere with me.

Over the years, I got involved in other things, but always had a strong sense of individual rights and was always livid when I witnessed examples where such rights were abrogated.

Personal and interpersonal relationship problems caused me to become somewhat morose for a couple of decades, and I drifted toward mystical ideas (with the help of my father, who, after the death of my mother, also suddenly became mystical).

Then five years ago, I met my soulmate in the Philippines. We married. She is Catholic. Before I married her, I had a long conversation with my dad’s best friend, who is a wealthy, successful international businessman. He was the one who introduced Objectivism to my folks half a century ago. He admitted that he too had married a Catholic. We discussed it, and I reconciled it mentally and decided that I would talk to my fiancé about my disdain for religion.

I wanted to test her, and we had some long talks. I didn’t outright deny the existence of God. I simply haven’t done enough research in that area to understand it, so I express no opinion about that, but I did express how I thought the Catholic church was the biggest con game on earth and how the philosophy led to wars and murdering of mass numbers of persons. She agreed, which somewhat stunned me.

My wife doesn’t attend church at all. Although she does idly ask “when are we gonna babtize Amanda?” (our daughter, who turns one year old next Monday). She says she believes in God. But she doesn’t seek to go to church. She admits it’s a waste of time. She is materialistic. I suspect, like many Filipinos, she had it forced upon her by the Spanish tradition that remains in odd forms in that nation, but doesn’t really have her heart into it. She acknowledges that religion is the primary cause of wars. She is aware that the terrorists in her country are devoutly religious and use that conviction as their driving force to do evil in the name of Allah. So there is home for my wife.

As for raising our daughter, I want her to have access to Objectivism. I have found no other philosophy that makes so much logical sense as a set of rules for living on this earth.

We’re struggling, economically, so the private school idea is not looking like it’s going to happen (we haven’t even been able to afford a trip home to Manila to see the family there). I am very concerned about sending her to public brainwashing–uh, I mean schools. I want her to have the art of thinking under her belt at an early age.

She is almost one year old now. Although we’ve been spoiling her and treating her like she can do no wrong, I have observed from about the 8th month onward, an increasing attitude from her. She wants to do certain things and when she can’t get her way, the wailing begins. She throws things. Feeding always ends in us resorting to the bottle, because she refuses to eat by the spoon and pushes it away forcefully as if angry at us for feeding her table food.

I’m reaching the point where I wonder if I am raising her correctly, and whether Objective principled of early child rearing are applicable.

I adore my little girl, and I think she’s the cutest thing on earth, but there are those times when she is such a pain in the a** and impossible to deal with.

As a parent, we keep comparing with other babies. Pondering questions like “should she be learning to say a couple of words by now?” " Should she be able to eat what the adults eat at dinner?" “Should we be teaching her dicipline and putting limits on her demands?” These are questions that any concerned parent would ask.

I have had the benefit of Objectivism as a young boy growing up (at least toward the end of my adolescent years), and I want my daughter to have the same head start. But it is also a dangerous one, because we tend to be resistant to Totalitarian thinking, which can have grave consequences as adults.

I realize there are a lot of young folks here, as it seems a lot of students in universitites frequent this forum, but perhaps there are parents here too, who are raising their kids under Objectivism. It would be interesting to start a discussion thread on raising our children and dealing with issues that arise. I know I had scores of them, growing up and facing a public education.

13

As for raising our daughter, …

She is almost one year old now. Although we’ve been spoiling her and treating her like she can do no wrong, I have observed from about the 8th month onward, an increasing attitude from her. She wants to do certain things and when she can’t get her way, the wailing begins. She throws things. Feeding always ends in us resorting to the bottle, because she refuses to eat by the spoon and pushes it away forcefully as if angry at us for feeding her table food.

I’m reaching the point where I wonder if I am raising her correctly, and whether Objective principled of early child rearing are applicable.

Gotta love kids and their desire for independence! At times it can be infuriating. The way you apply Objectivism to getting a child from the bottle to the mushy spoon-fed stuff is to understand that this is a young child, still at a stage where in many ways they’re closer to a “smart” animal than a reasonable human being.

Personally, I have blanked out most of those memories :slight_smile: … I do remember food all over the floor! So, it is with ease that I say: “lower your expectations, and be patient”. At every stage, there are certain things that are “battles”. It’s the adult who has to stay calm.

Specifically, try all sorts of mush and hopefully you’ll hit on one or two “favorites”. With our son, it was “sweet potato”. (A little later, it was the salt-free rice cakes from Quaker!) Even if you do not want to spend on the Gerbers as a matter of routine, you can use a sampling of Gerber items as “test samples” to see what she likes.

[Caveat: My wife would laugh if she heard I was giving advice about this.]

The best places to look for helpful hints for such a young child would be: your pediatrician, other families with kids the same age (regardless of their philosophical affiliation), and books. The library probably has a few books just about kids and how to get them to eat stuff.

14

She is almost one year old now. Although we’ve been spoiling her and treating her like she can do no wrong, I have observed from about the 8th month onward, an increasing attitude from her. She wants to do certain things and when she can’t get her way, the wailing begins.

Maybe you should try not spoiling the child. When she cries for no reason or seeks other ways to get attention that are not legitimate, don’t give it to her. I think this is called negative reinforcement. You take away something (attention) in order to reinforce certain behavior (knowing that crying wont get you what you want). Also, never treat your child like he or she is never in the wrong. If your child makes a mistake, punish them accordingly (without ever spanking or using other forms of violence, of course). Most importantly, it is with attention that a child that young responds to. Sometimes taking it away is the worst punishment. However, this should only be used when asolutely necessary. Conversely, a parent should lavish attention on a child when he or she does something good.

15

I am very concerned about sending her to public brainwashing–uh, I mean schools.

I’m reaching the point where I wonder if I am raising her correctly, and whether Objective principled of early child rearing are applicable.

Pondering questions like “should she be learning to say a couple of words by now?” " Should she be able to eat what the adults eat at dinner?" “Should we be teaching her dicipline and putting limits on her demands?” These are questions that any concerned parent would ask.

Hey mweiss! Happy b-day to your daughter.

Our son is 2 & a half. We went through some of that stuff. It is important to “pick your battles”. I pretty much let him do whatever he wants UNLESS it is dangerous to himself or potentially injuring to others (other kids he’s playing with/around, hitting/kicking mommy or daddy, etc.).

Have you considered homeschooling? This is an option my wife & I are considering very seriously. Also, about her skills & abilities, remember, she is an individual :slight_smile: She will do the stuff she needs to when she is ready.

And as softwareNerd says…

Gotta love kids and their desire for independence!

Exactly. They don’t have the skills but they do have the desire & that is a GOOD thing even though it can be frustrating at times.

As soon as our son learned the word “No!” what it means & how to use it (for ex: when ANYONE tells him what to do, even if he wants to do it or is already doing it!) it was all we heard for a month. Finally he began to calm down about it & pull it out on an as needed basis.

Maybe you should try not spoiling the child.

Now THAT is easier said than done! :thumbsup:

When she cries for no reason or seeks other ways to get attention that are not legitimate, don’t give it to her.

I am not convinced that kids EVER cry for no reason. It may not be a valid reason but everytime I’ve seen my kid cry (or my little sisters when they were growning up) there was some specific cause(s). When they are little it is sometimes the only way they have of communicating/expressing what they are thinking/feeling.

I think this is called negative reinforcement. You take away something (attention) in order to reinforce certain behavior (knowing that crying wont get you what you want). Also, never treat your child like he or she is never in the wrong. If your child makes a mistake, punish them accordingly (without ever spanking or using other forms of violence, of course). Most importantly, it is with attention that a child that young responds to. Sometimes taking it away is the worst punishment. However, this should only be used when asolutely necessary. Conversely, a parent should lavish attention on a child when he or she does something good.

While I think you are on target with most of what you say, I want to point out something about this issue.

I have seen this business of “negative reinforcement” & other quasi-Behaviorist concepts taken past the point of reason in too many parenting magazines & TV shows. I’ve read/heard some articles/people essentially disregarding that kids possess volitional consciousness. I understand these concepts can have a legitimate application but if you don’t factor in the child’s volition essentially you wind up with a theory/approach that becomes a game of “who can manipulate who the best”. The results of THAT can be seen in action everyday in our mainstream culture that worships conformity, mediocrity, & arguing/defining by non-essentials, etc.

Removing attention can work depending on the child & the context. Another approach I have used is to show my kid I too have volition & make a point of “disobeying” him (whenever possible, explicitly going against HIS desires). After all, many times he is simply trying to extert some form of control over reality (which he just recently discovered he has). I try to show him the difference between objects in reality which he can manipulate & other people (mommy & me!) which have volition of their own.

Sometimes this leads to a meltdown (OK, usually!). But he almost always gets the point. It surprising how often & quickly he learns the lesson.

16

Our son is 2 & a half. … It is important to “pick your battles”. 

The “terrible twos”!

At all stages, I heed the advice I read in a book about kids: “Remember, it is just a phase.”

Re: Home Schooling… Do you and your spouse both currently work? Do either of you have any background in teaching? I’m curious, because we decided *not* to try home-schooling, and we’re really happy with our decision. More on this later…

17

Good advice from everyone, thanks!

From what I gather, there is nothing out of the ordinary that I should be specially concerned about.

I have pretty much adjusted my expectations to reflect reality. Gone is the hope of speech at six months, or piano playing at 12 months. :slight_smile:

I think it is natural for most parents to believe that their child is “bright” or “above average”, or at least hope that such is the case. My wife and I tend to think that Amanda is “right up there”, but of course I sometimes wonder if we are doing all that is possible to nurture her development. For the most part, I let her be and do as she pleases, as long as it doens’t involve putting dangerous things in her mouth.

My wife has nearly all of the “Baby Einstein” video series, and we started Amanda on that in her first month. So she’s had an earful of Mozart from an early age. And that first DVD repeated hundreds of times until we added more of the 12 volumes to our collection. From six months onward, Amanda would react to some of the content on the DVDs. If nothing else, she is learning shapes and colors and experiencing a lot of good music.

Feeding was and still is a challenge. The wife buys a few jars a week of ‘baby food’ and Amanda tends to eat the fruit purees. She won’t eat the chicken and vegetable baby foods however. So thus far, it’s cereal with fruit puree mixed in, banana puree in the Beechnut jars, and the occasional McD’s fries. Bottle formula remains her staple food for now.

We have a couple of decent books on baby care and they have been a good read while Mary Ann was expecting. The books go month by month and describe what baby should be able to do, might be doing and what to expect. There is some advice on handling some of the issues I’ve mentioned, but of course, all the reading in the world isn’t that much solace when your one year old isn’t eating what you give her. :slight_smile:

At such an early age (one friend of mine and recent parent the second time around) has told me that it’s impossible to spoil them when they’re under one year of age. But I suspect that only held true for Amanda up to age 8 months. From then on, I sensed a distinct “defiant” attitude emerging in some of her moods.

I think when she cries, it does have a reason, very often a good one. Mostly in the earlier months, it was because a diaper needed changing or she needed feeding. But recently, it’s because she’s lonely and in need of physical contact with a parent. I’ve started spending more time with her, often sitting on the floor in her room, playing with her and ‘animating’ her toys to get her attention.

She responds better after a day out at a picnic with lots of people (my wife’s in a Fil-Am club, so we have these events regularly). And she is just starting to become socially selective. For instance, the day before her birthday, I was shopping with her in my arms and when we got to the end of an isle, there was a woman and two young children, maybe 2 and 4 years old. Amanda did something she never did before–she waved her hand toward the two kids as she stared and smiled at them.

The next social milestone my wife noticed while at dance practice. She handed Amanda off to another adult friend, but Amanda put up a fuss. Finally, they handed her to a 16 year old daughter of one of the members and the two got along swell. She’s starting to pick and choose the people she wants to be held by and interact with.

I’m a pretty laid back guy (mainly because when I was growing up, my father was a strict, almost tyrant type, who picked on every little thing I did that was not up to his standards–leaving the lid off a jar of jelly was a serious offense!) and as such, I try to watch and enjoy my daughter’s early years, rather than try to dictate what her behavior should be. I think she’s too young to really discipline in any meaningful way. Most of the time, I’m stopping her from putting dirty things in her mouth and that’s about it. She will do annoying things like trying to eat my cell phone, or the DVD player remote (she already ate a button off my wife’s pocket calculator), but for the most part, I think she’s pretty well-behaved. She does demand a lot of attention now, such that leaving her to play on the livingroom rug while we eat dinner just doesn’t meet her satisfaction and she lets us know about it in no uncertain terms.

Homeschooling? I certainly have. Although neither of us are Masters degreed, so we are not qualified. I was homeschooled, despite also attending public schools. Up to grade three, I was judged to have a learning disability because I could not read or write by then. That’s when Mom stepped in with text books and “Listen & Learn with Phonics” records. I played the records and flipped through the books, just entertaining myself, and not really trying, but a stunning metamophosis happened to my reading skills the following year–I became the best reader in the class in fourth grade. Mom compelled me to go through mathematics textbooks and do the lessons within. I learned shortcuts to adding and subtracting large numbers that I use to this day (and my wife is mystified how I arrive at correct answers so fast without a calculator).

Frankly, I learned nothing in school, except that kids can be cruel and destructive. Public school destroyed my self esteem and that set me back forty years. Now as I approach retirement age, I am finally starting to get over those personal issues, but I’ve lost of lifetime of prime years. I hope Amanda doesn’t have to go through such a childhood.

My wife works a regular job. I was working pretty frequently as a broadcast engineer, often traveling all over the tri-state area, but when Mary Ann was pregnant with Amanda, I got busy renovating our collapsing house. I had actually started working on it one room at a time the year before. But last year, I spent thousands of hours renovating and little time working for pay. At that rate, I have 5-10 years of rebuilding to do. Due to industry factors, I didn’t see much work last year, so I was at home doing major structural renovation. In one summer, I demolished one corner of the house and rebuilt it. (The roof had collapsed from rot.) I rebuilt the bathroom the year before. And I’m trying to start some businesses out of the home, mainly television graphics and video production. So for the past year, I have been mainly at-home, although fully employed in the race against time to save the house from the cancer that has spread throughout most of the upstairs floors. (Advice, never build a house with a flat roof.)

It’s been so long since I’ve been in school myself that I don’t think that I am qualified to educate my daughter on all subjects. I can teach her electrical engineering and a little music, and even Objectivism, but other subjects would be very difficult if not impossible. Perhaps with textbooks, I can teach and simply guide her, while the textbooks provide the flow and direction of the educational process.

I had hoped to have another child next year, as growing up an only child myself, I had a pretty desolate childhood where I yearned for friends and social interaction. I want Amanda to have a sibling that she can identify with. But the wife says we can’t even support the one we have and is pretty much against the idea, so that will have to be worked out soon.

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Homeschooling? I certainly have. Although neither of us are Masters degreed, so we are not qualified. ..

Frankly, I learned nothing in school, except that kids can be cruel and destructive. Public school destroyed my self esteem and that set me back forty years. Now as I approach retirement age, I am finally starting to get over those personal issues, but I’ve lost of lifetime of prime years. I hope Amanda doesn’t have to go through such a childhood.

Hi…I just sort of stumbled onto this discussion, and wanted to contribute my experiences with homeschool. I personally was not homeschooled…I attended public school all the way up until I graduated high school. I learned approximately the same things you did. I never really thought there was an alternative though, until I wound up with a job homeschooling an elementary school aged-girl who had never even been to public school. To make a long story short, I wasn’t sure I was qualified (I haven’t even finished college yet, let alone my Masters, haha) but I found a really good online program that provides instruction for the student and the parent/tutor, so I wasn’t on my own to make up an entire curriculum from scratch. And of course, being homeschool, there’s the flexibility to introduce her to topics that aren’t in the standard curriculum. But the best thing is, there’s no violent classmates, no drugs, no apathetic teachers…Maybe things have changed from when I was a kid, but in today’s world I don’t think I could ever send a kid of my own to a public school. Anyway, just my experiences here to be considered. It’s kind of a long way off anyway, if your girl is only 1! :lol:

19

… I wound up with a job homeschooling an elementary school aged-girl who had never even been to public school.

Eroica, When you were home-schooling this girl, was it a 8-hours-a-day, 5-day, almost-year-round, arrangement? I’m curious about the financial aspect. In approximate terms, how would the cost of such an arrangement compare with the cost of a private school?

20

Usually, you can distance-ed your child (at least starting at middle school, but probably for all grades) and it is offered as an alternative to the government’s public schooling. All the materials are generally payed with the tax dollars. Then, become their teacher, and take a professional aproach to it. Read everything you can on education, especially published by Montessori teachers and the education resources at the Ayn Rand Bookstore. I’d say one wouldn’t need that masters degree to educate their children well (and better than at public school) if they adopted a long, thought out plan to educate them.

One last thing: I’m in grade twelve now, and if I had no classes and the work was given to me without instruction, I could likely cram all of the days work into two to three hours and still have it done very well. Alot of time is just wasted at school. So don’t worry about necessarily committing 8 hours straight of time for instruction. As a younger one, I remember having play and colour time for much of the day, and spending only a little bit of time on reading.

[Edit]

MWeiss, now is a good time to teach your daughter sign language. It allows a child to communicate with you before they can mouth words fully, which is less stressful on the parent and kid alike. I’ve also seen reports that it accelerate’s the childs ability to develop his speaking and other language skills. You might want to think about it if you haven’t already started, because it can save frustrations.