Thread: If We Weren't Taught What Was Right or Wrong as Children..

I think parents are the only people who can develop a child's conscience. It involves more than rewards and punishments in general. It involves rewards and punishments as they relate to love between child and parent. That has a strong emotional effect. I don't think the law or peer pressure can develop a conscience because strong innate love is not part of the picture. It takes something that powerful.

There is good research on this, but I have not really studied it. I am basing a lot of what I am saying on correlations between bad behavior and lack of parental involvement. I have taught school, and almost 100% of the truly bad kids who were flat out hopelessly evil were kids whose parents never disciplined them and even took the kids's sides against the teachers if teachers tried to do something. Those people are warping their kids and making them problems for society. Also, I remember the major events involved in the development of my own conscience. They all involved the pain I felt when my father showed disappointment over his inability to trust me.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I think parents are the only people who can develop a child's conscience. It involves more than rewards and punishments in general. It involves rewards and punishments as they relate to love between child and parent. That has a strong emotional effect. I don't think the law or peer pressure can develop a conscience because strong innate love is not part of the picture. It takes something that powerful.

There is good research on this, but I have not really studied it. I am basing a lot of what I am saying on correlations between bad behavior and lack of parental involvement. I have taught school, and almost 100% of the truly bad kids who were flat out hopelessly evil were kids whose parents never disciplined them and even took the kids's sides against the teachers if teachers tried to do something. Those people are warping their kids and making them problems for society. Also, I remember the major events involved in the development of my own conscience. They all involved the pain I felt when my father showed disappointment over his inability to trust me.

Behavior, I believe, is something that can be learned and molded to fit a socially acceptable standard. Kids who don't have that molding can indeed become troublesome later on in their life. A Lack of a conscience though (or in this thread's context, a "mis-guided one"), is much harder to understand. We hear it all the time with people who grew up in loving households, who had boundaries and rules, who would be described as a great person, and they would later turn out to do terrible things. The influence of how they grew up, was overruled by something else in their life that allowed them to suppress that conscience that tells them they shouldn't be doing something.

There are many kids who grow up however, in the way you've described. Never disciplined, always had their side taken, and yet when they got older, they turned out fine. I know a couple of them myself... people who you would've thought seeing them grow up, that they'd be the biggest assholes you could imagine, who today are actually nice kids and have turned around their behavior.. and it certainly wasn't due to parental involvement (considering I know their parents, and have known them since they were born pretty much).

Somewhere along the line though, something changed. That's the key there, is figuring out what it is that triggers that change. There is evidence to suggest that discipline and boundaries helps, but there's also evidence that shows it doesn't help. I think there's some underlying factor that is the bigger influence.

I am using generalities, but I am just trying to illustrate strong correlations. I know that the exceptions you mentioned are examples of real things, so I agree that there are other factors involved.

We are talking about a part of the brain that has to be developed. It seems that it never reaches maximum development until adulthood. That could explain why some bad kids become good adults. Then again, maybe they have just learned how to put on the right show. I remember when I ran into a major asshole from junior high when I was in my 20's. I indirectly suggested that he seemed to be a good guy although he was a real prick as a kid. He said something like, "Well, you grow up and learn that you can't act like that." His statement was not an expression of conscience. It was an expression of making things work for himself.

If any bad kids turn out to be genuinely good, which involves having a conscience, maybe a father or mother involvement from earlier in life helped enough to make it where the final stages of biological growth would reach some kind of threshold. I am guessing on that, but there clearly are examples of bad kids becoming good adults, and some of that might not be just a show. I would say that usually there is good parenting behind it, but maybe another relative or mentor filled in for some kind of substitute parenting role somewhere along the way. I guess that can happen too.