Comment Re: I don't even... (Score 4, Interesting) 323
The thing most people seem to fail at understanding is that training children is a lot like training dogs. They are habitual creatures (even adults are to a large extent) and learn a lot of behavior through mimicking and repetition. You don't always need to explain with words. Taking a toddlers hand when they are calm and stroking the family cat nicely while explaining with a very positive tone is the same as teaching the child to not hit the cat. Hitting a child for negative behavior is teaching them to hit others for behavior they personally find disagreeable. Its not a perfect 1:1 corellation of behavior because we all have conflicting habits that balance each behavior like a neural net.