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agonyaunt2022-09-02 05:02 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-09-02 05:02 pm
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Dear Care & Feeding: My Toddler Solved the Trolley Problem
This was not the answer I was hoping for!
I have a 3-year-old child whom I’ll refer to as “J.” While I was at work, somehow “the Trolley Problem” came up. You know, the exercise in applied ethics that asks if you should turn the lever to redirect a trolley that’s about to hit five people to instead hit a singular person on the other track.
Well, J likes to play with a train set, and after dinner, I was playing with J, and I thought to try out the trolley problem. We got some Lego figures, put them on the tracks, and I told J that the train was going to hit these five people, but J could switch tracks if J is willing to have the other person crushed. J looked at me, then at the tracks, and then very seriously picked up the lone figure and put it on the track with the other five. Then J took the train, ran over all six of them, turned to me, and said, very seriously, “it was a bad accident.”
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I’m now worried I’m raising a budding psychopath. Actively seeking to increase harm and playing it off as nothing is almost definitionally malevolent, and I don’t know what to do about it. Can I save my child?
— Trouble with Toddlers
Dear Trouble with Toddlers,
I think you may be overreacting a bit here. I don’t know what kind of conversations you all have had about the permanence of death just yet, but it is entirely possible that a 3-year-old wouldn’t understand the seriousness of this scenario. Furthermore, I don’t know exactly what you were trying to accomplish by asking such a young child to ponder a difficult moral quandary that adults have been debating for years. What if they’d gone to bed and had nightmares about train crashes and people being run over? How might a 3-year-old grapple with the idea of deciding who lives and dies? I just don’t see any value in putting such a challenge before a toddler, and I’m not surprised that they gave you a less than pleasing answer. Running Lego people over, even gleefully, doesn’t mean that your child has some kind of indifference towards human suffering. It says to me “I’m 3, and what you’re asking of me is too much.”
That said, you can continue to monitor your child’s attitudes towards death and harm to ensure they’re developing a healthy understanding of suffering, viewing it as something bad that shouldn’t be wished upon people under most circumstances. This incident may remain in the back of your mind, and that’s okay, but I don’t think you should take it as a red flag. It’s age-appropriate behavior. I strongly suggest that in the future, your line of questioning be age-appropriate as well.
I have a 3-year-old child whom I’ll refer to as “J.” While I was at work, somehow “the Trolley Problem” came up. You know, the exercise in applied ethics that asks if you should turn the lever to redirect a trolley that’s about to hit five people to instead hit a singular person on the other track.
Well, J likes to play with a train set, and after dinner, I was playing with J, and I thought to try out the trolley problem. We got some Lego figures, put them on the tracks, and I told J that the train was going to hit these five people, but J could switch tracks if J is willing to have the other person crushed. J looked at me, then at the tracks, and then very seriously picked up the lone figure and put it on the track with the other five. Then J took the train, ran over all six of them, turned to me, and said, very seriously, “it was a bad accident.”
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I’m now worried I’m raising a budding psychopath. Actively seeking to increase harm and playing it off as nothing is almost definitionally malevolent, and I don’t know what to do about it. Can I save my child?
— Trouble with Toddlers
Dear Trouble with Toddlers,
I think you may be overreacting a bit here. I don’t know what kind of conversations you all have had about the permanence of death just yet, but it is entirely possible that a 3-year-old wouldn’t understand the seriousness of this scenario. Furthermore, I don’t know exactly what you were trying to accomplish by asking such a young child to ponder a difficult moral quandary that adults have been debating for years. What if they’d gone to bed and had nightmares about train crashes and people being run over? How might a 3-year-old grapple with the idea of deciding who lives and dies? I just don’t see any value in putting such a challenge before a toddler, and I’m not surprised that they gave you a less than pleasing answer. Running Lego people over, even gleefully, doesn’t mean that your child has some kind of indifference towards human suffering. It says to me “I’m 3, and what you’re asking of me is too much.”
That said, you can continue to monitor your child’s attitudes towards death and harm to ensure they’re developing a healthy understanding of suffering, viewing it as something bad that shouldn’t be wished upon people under most circumstances. This incident may remain in the back of your mind, and that’s okay, but I don’t think you should take it as a red flag. It’s age-appropriate behavior. I strongly suggest that in the future, your line of questioning be age-appropriate as well.
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aw man, I hope it's real. I love it so much.
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A three-year-old who's trying to kill the family pet -- that I'd worry about.
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Frankly, I laughed a lot when he ran all six over, because that's every toddler I've ever known: maximum destruction in the course of play. Consequences? Not for this.
Although I am a bit worried about you, LW. This is not the kind of problem that I would expect you to set before a three year old...
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(Also, in real life, I’m someone who does a lot of work to help others, moves worms off the sidewalk, raised my kid to be a well-adjusted adult, etc. — and I 100% put Sims in a swimming pool and took away the ladder a few times, because IMAGINATIVE PLAY ISN’T HURTING ANYONE.)
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Pretty sure age 3 was the time of infinite viewings of Thomas the Tank Engine, which frequently involves a train crash and the reassuring phrase "luckily, no-one was hurt".
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