Whats “Optimal” About Frustration?
Dear Dr. Hanson, When the baby cries we pick her up, but our parents say she’s manipulating us and she’ll never learn to live without us if we keep getting her. We’re worried she will be traumatized — and our parents worry she’ll become a spoiled brat. How much frustration is OK for a kid? How do children get “spoiled?” The theory of “optimal frustration” Your parents are expressing versions of a widespread theory of childrearing. For example, their parents may have read it in such places as the U.S. Children’s Bureau pamphlet, Infant Care (1924), which told mothers not to pick up their baby between feeding because he might learn that ‘crying will get him what he wants, sufficient to make a spoiled, fussy baby, and a household tyrant whose continual demands make a slave of the mother.’ The most sophisticated version of this theory has been developed in psychoanalysis and is called “optimal frustration.” In my opinion, much psychoanalytic thought is very useful, but this theory is both
