Piaget was very interested in how you produce structures that enable you to regulate yourself because you're like a kind of a colony of strange sub animals that have to figure out how to get along so that you can sort of be one thing you kind of learn that I would say between the ages of 2 & 4 as you're being socialized you know how erratic two-year-olds are I mean they're a blast and it's part because they're erratic it's like they're unbelievably happy and then they're unbelievably hungry and then they're really hot and then they're really upset and crying you know and then they're really scared it's like and all of that's just untrammeled and so it's really fun to be around them especially when they're happy because they're so happy that it's just you know you don't ever get to be that happy and so it's nice to be around a two-year-old because you can kind of feel that again you know and a lot of what they're one of the horrible things about being a parent is that you spend a tremendous amount of your time making your child less happy and the reason for that is that positive emotion is very impulsive you know and you know because everybody says well you should be happy it's like well no when you're happy you're actually quite stupid and so because happiness makes you impulsive happiness makes happiness says hey things are really good right now get what you can while the getting's good and so as a like if you're hyper optimistic manic will say it's like every stock investment looks like a really good stock investment it's like you won't spend all your money because look if there's those wonderful things everywhere and you could do such great things with them and then you know you spend all your money and then you crash and you think oh god my life's over you know because I just I just spent all my money on all this useless stuff but and it's all under the grip of impulsive positive emotion you know and so when when you're telling your kids to be quiet and settle down it isn't because they're making a lot of noise being in pain it's because they're running around like wild baboons having a blast and disrupting things like mad you know and somehow you got kids you got to settle down you know like quit having so much fun and it's it's kind of awful it's that you do that but but you do that's because the emotions and the motivations have to be brought into like a relationship with one another within the person so that you know one thing I remember with my son who is quite he's quite disagreeable by temperament which is actually a good thing as far as I'm concerned although it brings its own challenges and so with my daughter when she was misbehaving she was pretty agreeable and you know if she was misbehaving I could basically just look at her and then she'd quit you know but my son was like that was just nothing you're looking at me it's like no that's just not gonna go anywhere then and so then I'd like tell him to stop and that really wasn't having much of an effect either he just sort of made me laugh or run away or whatever I mean he was a tough little rat and you know what I would do with him is he would be doing something and I'd interfere and he'd get upset and you know angry and so then I'd get him to sit on the steps and I had told him this is when he was about to I said look you're gonna sit on the steps that's timeout you're going to sit on the steps until you've got control of yourself and you can come back and be and play the family game again I basically said be a civilized human being and then you're welcome again and so he'd sit on the steps it was so interesting to watch because he was just enraged he'd sit there like have you ever seen a two-year-old have a temper tantrum it's really quite the bloody phenomena if you ever saw an adult do that you'd like you'd call 911 eleven eleven adults do that you know because people say with borderline personality disorder will have temper tantrums and it's like man you want to be about thirty feet away from that person that's for sure it's really but in kids it's like well first of all they're only this long so how much trouble can they really cause but it's like you know they're just completely gone they're like on the floor their face is red they're just furious like way more furious than you ever get if you're even vaguely socialized they're just outraged and they're kicking and hitting the ground and like it's like a little epileptic fit of anger you know they're completely controlled by their rage and we took care of one kid for a while who he was out actually a pushover that kid you get him to behave by you know kind of shaking your finger at him but his mother thought he was really tough because he had her he had her figured out and one of the things he would do is have a temperature temper tantrum and during the temper tantrum he would hold his bloody breath until he turned blue it's like try that like you know well that's your homework go home and go home and have a temper tantrum and while you're doing it hold your breath until you actually turn blue it's like you won't be able to do it you don't have the willpower of a two-year-old that's for sure that little varmint man he just have a fit then he'd hold his breath and then he turned blue it was like wow that's that's amazing and we would just like let him do it mm-hmm you know he'd turned blue and everybody would be gone and he'd come out of it you know and it didn't work so he just quit doing it I think he did it like twice and he figured out oh well that's a lot of work for a very little outcome and you know it's not like two-year-olds are stupid they're they're not stupid they're probably smarter than you but they're not civilized by any stretch of the imagination and so anyways back to my son I put him on the steps and he'd be like oh just like enraged and and trying to get himself together you know and I wait up you got a strict rule which was as soon as you're done you're welcome again so it's completely under your control you you get yourself calm down you come and talk to me again if you're calm enough so I like you then you're welcome back in the family no grudges nothing and so it's harder than you think like people think they like their kids it's like don't be thinking that they're hard to like their little monsters and they're very very pushy and provocative and so lots of parents do not like their children and they do terrible things to them their whole life so it's no joke and it's very common and you know that was Freud's observation fundamental observation that a lot of psychopathology is rooted in the family and you can be sure of that you know when when you hear about some mother who's done something terrible to her child which happens reasonably frequently you know perfectly well but she has a very terrible capacity to discipline the child's just provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and it just happens to be a day where her new boyfriend left and she's quite / and she got fired and it's like that's the wrong day to provoke her and then she does something that is not good and you read about it and you think well how could that happen how could anyone do that well that's how they do it and so and kids are very provocative just like little chimps chimps will the adolescents will like throw little pebbles and sticks out the sleeping larger males and bug them and that teasing which it is that teasing turns into full-fledged dominance challenge behavior once the adolescent males get big enough to do it and so when you're being provoked by a child which they provoked you all the time they're trying to figure out well just where are you exactly what happens if I do this what happens if I do this you know and how else are they going to figure it out anyways he'd sit on the steps and just it's just enraged and trying to control himself and I'd watch that and then you know I come back after about two minutes or whatever and he'd still be ER I'd say well are you know have you got yourself under control are you ready to get off the steps go no not yet and then you know he'd get himself under control and then he'd come back and you know he'd be contrite and then I would like him right away you know you got to watch that you know because you don't like being dominated by a two-year-old no one does and so if the child hasn't mastered himself and started to act in accordance with the prevailing social norms you won't like them while you think oh yeah I will because you know I'm a good person like no you won't and no you're not a good person so don't be thinking about that at all it's just not true so when he was contrite then he'd come and then you know we just go on like nothing had happened because that's what you want to do right as soon as you get compliance especially if the compliance is in the best interest of the child you want to reward it instantly right that's the right thing to do because so then and and you could just see him gaining control over himself and so really what was happening is his in his mind in his brain will say there was a war between the psyche the ego that was starting to become integrated you know and starting to become a continued was person an identity and it's fragile in two-year-olds and it can be disrupted all the time and it is that's why they're so hyper emotional it's fragile that little Eagle and it doesn't have a lot of power and so what you want to do is reward it when it wins you know it's when it when he gets control over the underlying motivations you want to say hey good work man good work kid you did it you know you got yourself under control way to be and the kids really happy about that because it's actually not that much fun to have a temper tantrum it's exhausting you know it takes you over
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