Foolish freedom: Why some kids refuse to eat, even to the point of harming themselves

Dec 17, 2009 by Anna Migeon

“Leave them alone, and they will come home.” — Little Bo Peep

Sometimes a kid can be like a wild mouse, according to some lab studies of mice. Though I oppose the conditioning of young humans with incentives as if they were rats in a lab, test animals’ reactions can sometimes illustrate something about why kids—or grownups—do what they do.

A group of wild mice was brought into a lab and taught to turn on their own cage lights. Given the choice between bright light, dim light or no light at all, the mice would always choose dim light. But whenever the dim light was switched on for them, they would run and change it to either bright light or no light.

In another test, the mice, who for their own good needed and wanted to run about eight hours a day, were given a wheel to run on and also…