All parents sometimes have the feeling that what we say to our children comes through one ear and out the other. "Put on the coat that was cold". Any. "But Carlitos, I told you to put on your coat". Any.
Many times we ask ourselves why children ignore us. A study on cognitive development in childhood published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tries to elucidate the scientific causes for which children do not obey us.
According to psychologist Yuko Munakata, children listen to what we tell them and store the information for later use. That is, when we ask them to warm up they listen to us, but they are not able to understand that they should put on their coat because if they do not they will be cold. When they go out and feel cold they will use the information we have given them and they will be warm so as not to be cold.
The researchers used a computer program to study the reactions of two groups of children, one of children of 3 and a half years old and another of children of 8 years. The diameter of the pupils was measured to analyze the effort they made before a series of images presented to them.
They were taught two children's characters: Blue, who likes watermelon and SpongeBob, who doesn't like watermelon. When Blue appeared followed by a watermelon they had to squeeze a happy face and if Bob appeared, a sad face.
The older children found the exercise very simple because they knew how to get ahead of the sequence even before the image of the watermelon appeared, while the younger ones failed in anticipation.
The results of the study suggest something very interesting so that parents can better understand the behavior of our children. It is not that they are fighting or challenging us. They indicate that preschool children are not small adults, but that their cognitive development is gradually maturing until they become people capable of anticipating the facts, around eight years of age.
Therefore, we should consider new ways of giving an order to a child (or by changing the expression I don't like too much) how to tell them things so that they obey us. It would be more effective to try with "If you feel cold, remember that you have your coat in the bedroom".
