Thinking Outside of the Box
I’m sure we’ve all heard familiar phrase “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” or “milk a cow”. We would hear this said perhaps during a discussion on how something should be done when one person/or set of people would insist on accomplishing a task the same way they were able to accomplish something similar in times past. They remained closed off to accepting a new and sometimes “better” way of completing a task, because they relied on their ‘mental set’, which is defined as a preconceived notion about how to approach a problem, which is determined by a person’s experiences or what has worked in the past. (Goldstein, 2014, p. 339)
This concept comes to mind as I think of myself as it relates to parenting. I have a four year old daughter and five month old son, who as you can probably guess couldn’t be more different. When my husband and I learned that our second child would be a boy, of course we knew that things would be slightly different as they got older, but we assumed the baby phase would be practically the same. We couldn’t be more wrong. Even the hospital staff didn’t give us the same “teaching/coaching” as they did with our first. Everyone who entered our room asked the question; “Is this your first child”? Once they learned that it was not, the conversation shifted, as if we were “pros” on all things baby. As it turns out, the simple things such as what baby wash, diapers, bottles and even pacifiers to use were different. Even what soothed our daughter, doesn’t even come close to what soothes our son.
For the baby shower to celebrate the soon coming of our son, we asked our family and friends to purchase a specific brand of diapers because it was the brand that worked well for our daughter. However, once our son was born, it took us much longer to realize that those diapers weren’t the best brand for him. After more than two to three dozen ruined outfits, and another dozen soiled bed sheets, it dawned on us to try another diaper. Had we not be so “stuck” on our previous experience, we may have thought to try another brand sooner. The same was the case with our choice of bottles. All in all, I would have to agree that because we developed mental sets on how to care for a newborn, it was more difficult to find an effective solution. In the five months of our sons’ life, we have learned that raising multiple children is not so “cookie cutter” and that we have to think outside of our own mental box.
References:
Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (4th Edition). In E. B. Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (4th Edition). (p. 339). Cengage Limited.
Angela,
This was a super interesting and fun read. I don’t have kids, so I honestly would have also thought that what generally worked in the beginning for the first child, would probably work for the next. The concept of mental set is a struggle to get around in a number of occasions, and it’s more common than a lot of people think and want to acknowledge. A popular scenario where mental set it a common problem are work-place environments. A good chunk of the places I have worked at, I’ve came across the situation where I might have been doing something a certain way and someone comes to “correct” me because I wasn’t doing it the way they have always done it. My way wasn’t necessarily the wrong way, but it wasn’t right enough for the next person. I think if more people acknowledge their mental set and were actually willing to see things a different way, there would be a lot less issues in the world.
That is definitely a very interesting concept to think about! I don’t have kids so I never would have guessed that things like diapers or bottles could be so different between different children. That’s interesting as well that when you said it was not your first child in the hospital they assumed you were pros and could handle it. You have two completely different people and while they are still babies, they will be developing their own personalities which will come through in as you mentioned, what soothes them for an example. I think it’s a good philosophy to maintain throughout life that people are all so different and should be treated based on who they are as a person and not lumped together with the masses.