Thursday, February 24, 2011  Training vs. teaching  When you get
a pet, you can train that pet to do things you want him to do.
But the animal generally already knows how to do them -- the
training is to get them to do them when you want them to. For
instance, my cat knows how to go to the bathroom when and where
she wants. Her mother taught her that. She had to be trained to
use the litterbox.  Children may be "trained" to do a few
things. But for many things, they actually need to be taught.
They don't already know how.  I mean, you can't train a child to
read by leaving him alone with a book until he is able to tell
you what the it said. And you can't train an adult to speak
Spanish by smacking him every time he speaks English. Some
things need to be taught.  Here's an example: sleep. I tend to
hear people say, "It was time to teach my baby to sleep, so I
let her cry for an hour until she fell asleep." That's not
teaching -- that's training. Eventually, under enough stress,
the baby may learn how to do wha