Sometimes Jupiter likes to read the classic Golden Book tale, The Poky Little Puppy before bed or nap time. This is another of many children’s stories where the intended moral of the story seems to have been surpassed by a message that, I think, conveys the nearly the opposite message.
The Poky Little Puppy is a story about five little puppies who dig a hole under the fence to go out for a walk in the wide, wide world. The fifth, poky, puppy is always behind the others. Eventually the poky little puppy smells the dessert that is prepared for the puppies each night. The four other puppies smell it too and hurry home while the poky puppy takes his time. The four puppies then eat their dinner and are scolded by their mother for digging a hole under the fence with the punishment being that they do not get dessert. Then along comes the poky puppy after everyone is asleep. He is met with no dinner but left over dessert, since the four puppies were not able to eat it.
This scenario takes place twice. The poky little puppy enjoys rice pudding and chocolate custard; a full helping, which was intended for five puppies, all to himself in these first two scenarios. The third time this happens, after the mother scolds the four puppies, they go fill in the hole and the mother then rewards them with the strawberry shortcake dessert while the poky little puppy is locked out of the fence. The poky little puppy squeezes through a hole in the fence and witnesses the other four finishing the dessert and feels sorry for himself for being so poky.
The intended lesson appears to be that being poky and naughty will yield unfavorable consequences. But looking at the story objectively, in this three day period, the poky little puppy has enjoyed eight times the dessert of each of the other puppies divided between two separate occasions. To me, it looks like the poky little puppy is being handsomely rewarded for being poky and naughty. What do you think?
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01/10/2012 at 11:56 am
bourgtai
Children, unless absolute geniuses, don’t see Poky’s eight desserts to the four other puppies’ one each. They see a pattern of rewards cease in the ‘naughty’ puppy and a pattern of punishment end in the ‘good’ puppies. While it’s definitely something that any reasonable teenager-or-older will see as a logical fallacy, children end up not comprehending the reward quantity dilemma.
tl;dr, don’t reread the story to Jupiter after a decade.
01/10/2012 at 1:21 pm
kirkaug
Yeah, you may be right. Although I tend to think most children are more intelligent than most people give them credit for.
01/10/2012 at 1:37 pm
phlored
This made me smile. That book really does teach that you can get away with it for a while and then only get a slap on the wrist. But what’s the options here? I write stories for my kids on my blog and at first I thought I’d make them all moral and teach them lessons. But they didn’t like that. So I wrote in a little more risque stuff like hotter emotions like anger and sadness and they loved it because they know it’s wrong. I even made the characters a little rude to Mommy or Daddy on occasion and my children really recognize when “their princess is being bad.” In my mind it’s good to imagine those things and play out the consequences in fiction first and maybe avoid it every happening in real life. Who knows. LOL
02/08/2012 at 9:59 am
Michael
Yup. Always bothered me. If you are not only naughty, but also lazy, you win 2/3′s of the time! Here’s another one that bothered me — The Elves and the Shoemakers. The moral? If you reward kindness with kindness, your free ride goes away.
03/22/2013 at 4:51 pm
'Seph Sayers
The five puppies were the ones – in spite of numerous warnings – that dug holes under the fence.
Let’s be clear here.
This was the crime.
This is what they were punished for. What we know is that the Poky Little Puppy did not repair the damage (the dug hole) on the third excursion; the other four did.
Is there a point about loyalty to the group? Is there a point about being separate and distinct from the group? Is there a lesson about charity, waiting for the slowest (weakest) member? The moral seems lost or confused.
I think part of the lesson is that of Karma.
“It’s a round world”.
You reap what you sow.
What goes around comes around.
Intentionally or not, the Poky Little Puppy allowed his four siblings to suffer the consequences of their punishment while he enjoyed what should have been their rewards. In the end however, the rolls were reversed. But I think there is more depth to this story.
I think the story’s moral lies with the mother’s actions and not the puppies at all. There is a lesson of incentives vs. deterrents.
Being rewarded for good behaviour vs. being punished for bad behaviour.
We see that deterrents – punishment for bad behaviour – not only doesn’t work, but also creates injustice in their small world. Their mother’s numerous warnings (the signs) and punishments do not stop the puppies from digging under the fence, and the injustice of the Poky Little Puppy being rewarded for his bad behaviour. It becomes out of balance.
By the end, the four puppies decide to fix the hold they dug, but this time are rewarded for their good behaviour. This succeeds. Justice is set aright and Balance is returned. The good behaving puppies reap their rewards while the badly behaving Poky Little Puppy suffers the consequences for his actions.
This strikes me as a lesson to parents on parenting (or for that matter, simply dealing with people in general).
This has very strong Taoist undertones. These lessons can be found in Lao Tzu’s Toa Te Ching, specifically verse 63, “The Secrets of Getting Things Done”.
Ralph Alan Dale, a Chinese-language translator of the Tao Te Ching comments the following on this verse:
…Lao Tzu’s most important advice in life is to avoid coercion. It is… precisely opposite to how most of our institutions are programmed… Most people don’t commit crimes, because, if they do, they will go to prison. Even most babies and young children are accommodated to the system of coercion by physical punishment when they do something that displeases their parents. Lao Tzu says all this is wrong. The use of force indoctrinates us into behaving contrary to our human natures…” “The Tao Te Ching: Translated, Commenting & Introduction” by Ralph Alan Dale, Watkins Publishing, 2006, pg. 178-179
This resonates so true with this story, The Poky Little Puppy.
I think the fact that this children’s story is teaching wisdom from an Eastern tradition – to our Western worldview – strikes us as confusing and difficult to understand. We try to make it fit into our own preconceived beliefs and values. We try to hammer a square peg into a round hole; it simply doesn’t work.
03/22/2013 at 6:35 pm
kirkaug
That makes some good sense. I may have to do another post with a revised perspective. Thanks for your insight.