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Self-regulation can only be effective when you know the “correct” behaviors for situations. How do you learn those “correct” behaviors, if no one teaches you?

My sister and I grew up half wild in a poor community — parents were busy eking out a living. They were good people, but immigrants who had no relatives here and didn't know many American customs. So we learned the basic morals, but not basic social behaviors — the lack of which result in other people laughing or talking about you behind your back, or disliking you, or exploiting your naïveté. There are many children born into poverty with those problems. And it’s teachers who end up having to deal with them — and they only have time for the very basics.

Neurologists and psychiatrists and many psychologists won’t tell you what behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable in society or at work. No matter how much self-regulation you have, it will not teach you the social behaviors to which your self-regulation is aimed at your adhering.

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