Learned Behavior

My Mom used to buy the rectangular packages of ice cream, because it was easy to cut the ice cream up into eight equal pieces. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but I often wonder if there was something to the approach that caused me problems later in life. I simply cannot buy large amounts of good tasting things; if I have them in the house I will eat them until they are gone.

It seemed to be an issue growing up- you either ate the ice cream as soon as it came into the house, or you lost your chance to eat it at all. Obviously not the message intend by my parents. I guess they were undermined by certain parties who would pilfer any tasty thing that was in the fridge. I don't think Pavlov could have designed a better way to ingrain binging into the psyche.

Earlier today I read something that mentioned profanity was a symptom of lazy thinking. So, it would seem an approach to profanity would be to insist that the person doing it go back and explain what was going on in reality more precisely. It would probably still be negative, but the process demands more thought. I wonder if it would work any better than the infamous bar of soap.

So, if I ever do have children, I'd like to have some method to help them avoid some of the stuff I struggle with. If it tastes really good, I just can't buy it in bulk! I have to pass up sales sometimes because the only tactic that works is to limit what I bring home. I like how the above approach to profanity implies a path to improvement, whereas the bar of soap simply encourages you to avoid communicating certain things around parents. Perhaps there is a similar way to approach food, because as I can attest, fear does not encourage discipline, despite what some say.