Do you tend more toward tough love or coddling?

[Chazmatazz269]

Is your teaching and mentoring of others more strict and rigid, or flexible and accommodating? Does the age of the target affect your approach? How about their sex or their general constitution?
When you are receiving instruction, do you prefer tough love or coddling? Do your needs impact your mentoring style?
Ultimately, did your philosophy on the matter develop with experience or is it entirely academic?

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

In the rare exceptions when I'm with a kid, I don't teach, I assist instead. I may deliver informations in subjects I know of. Ideally, using intelligence, emotional and cognitive, in order to adapt what I'm saying, to make it received instead of being blocked or not understood. This philosophy comes from being a kid cared for, from observing how information is presented affects me and how it affects others around me. From being a father, from being a friend and a lover, multiple times. From meeting so many people.

Tough love is an outdated philosophy to me. I would hardly call it love in fact, I would call it tough and, above all, dumb. Dumb because it's not a philosophy to me, it's just some repetition of behaviors from dead people, passed on to other generations, without standing back, without thinking about what we do. Just repeating what seemed to work. Except I don't think it has ever worked, it just created clones.

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

Obedient clones, cognitive machines absorbing and regurgitating information as if all there was in life was information.

[WhiteSteve]

Depends what it is, probably. Probably a balance of both is best, like many things. I think people’s psyches aren’t usually identical either, so what’s beneficial for one might be detrimental to another.

As I broad and brief answer, I’d maybe argue that we need to be more understanding and compassionate towards people, but people also need to be more emotionally resilient these days.

[OneViewpoint]

Tough love. Firm. Not inflexible. Most people resist change. They need to be motivated to do it. Coddling just allows them to evade the inevitable.

[Shiprex]

I would err on the side of tough love as this helps build resilience, a trait in low supply these days.

[msc545]

Good question! Sort of a mixture depending on what I think is needed.

[slatyb]

Neither is productive. I tend more to understanding, and helping others understand themselves so they can reach their goals.

[DJB72]

Coddling sets kids and society up to fail

[WonderingManII]

coddling I guess.

[Staximus]

Tough love

[Batsy01010101]

Depends on the situation