"Well, He Won't Do That Again"

"Well, he won't do that again."We've all said, or at least thought it. And more often than not (but not always) we're right. Like when a child goofs around on the edge of a fountain on a cold day and falls in. We expect that unpleasant experience to "teach" them a lesson. At least, we hope, it's less likely that they're going to need us to caution them about it the next time. Either they're going to avoid it or they're going to use the information they gathered the last time to exercise a bit more cautionThis doesn't mean that we don't care about their tears. Of course, we comfort the child. Dry them off. Get them new clothes. But we don't need to add to the unpleasantness by attempting in our heavy-handed adultness to "drive the point home" with a lot of "So what did we learn today?" style scolding. That just shifts the focus from the actual lessons learned to whether or not the adult is pleased with them, which is a different thing. In his book Why We Remember, neuroscientist Charan…