Banana memories
I was eating a banana and a flashback from when I was a toddler hit me. My mother was “boasting” to my siblings about how I ate a banana all the way to the bottom (there’s this part of the banana at the very bottom that, in normal eating, gets left untouched unless you specifically eat it), and how fantastic that was. I know it made me really proud.
Now I see my mother using similar tactics on my niece (who is three and a half). She “boasts” to me and others about how well she performs something (e.g., drinking milk), in order to encourage her to perpetuate that behaviour. This, of course, is positive social reinforcement.
It was just now that I actually realized and connected the tactics my mother used on me to the ones she’s now using on her granddaughter. Funny how I never really, fully connected that before. I don’t eat bananas all the way down to the very bottom anymore.