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No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

theatlantic.com

321–330 of 446 posts

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#321
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a TV programme in the UK called The 3 Day Nanny, about a super nanny who would come in and sort out problem children and parents in 3 days. It ran for a few seasons. Fast forward till she had her own child, and I saw an interview with her. She was completely shattered. Like a wreck. She had her own difficult child, and coupled with little available help from others, she couldn't cope. She looked and sounded…

I think it's also different for her because it's different when it's not your kid. Enforcing rules and boundaries is really easy on Monday when you're not going to be there on Thursday.

It's also easier to enforce rules on kids that you don't have a deep, visceral attachment to.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#322
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Here [at the Yale Parenting Center], we deal with two kinds of children. One is that they are very aggressive and have serious psychiatric problems. And the other one is that they come in for normal kinds of issues that parents just want some help on." I don't think these people are just dispensing pop psych advice in magazines or once a week. It's a clinic.

I personally know a child who was a literal hellspawn for 10+ years and would not respond to any kind of newfangled therapy Then his dad got too mad over him literally failing school and leather belt fixed him within a year Which was not a single stop solution either

His punishment could get him arrested here (Norway) as well. They have pretty strict limits on violence towards children: They put it as none, including but not limited to spanking.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#323
post #62

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 ye…

This is not a real choice but a simple manipulation aiming to provide the illusion of choice. The purpose of parenting is not to control the children but to support them in learning themselves and the world. Human beings are intelligent and wired for success. It doesn't take long before we start realizing the difference between choices that don't matter to us and ones that do. If you're looking for parenting practice…

Yes. Natural consequences and contrived consequences are two very different things.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#324
post #213
post #62

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 ye…

> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side. Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential. Incentives and punishments that work with…

Although to be fair, having older or younger siblings probably changes your boys a lot too.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#325
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's sometimes confusing I think that's a subtle but powerful thing. Even when you're moderating you're not set apart from us and it feels more like a discussion and less adversarial. Not sure if that's what you intended but I appreciate it.

That's well put and expresses the feeling nicely. Thanks! The long run plan is to set up the system (moderation, software, and community) so well that it regulates itself. In that case having 'mod' next to moderators' names would be a field of boliauns. http://zucchinigirl.tripod.com/faery/field.html

Vibrant communities need strong moderators and no technical system (code or otherwise) can replace them.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's also the fact that unless you are homeschooling and preventing your children from experiencing human and media contact, your nurture input is only part of a whole. I learned a lot of what I did and did not want to be like from my parents growing up, but I also learned a lot from my siblings[1] and my friends, and my school experiences. That is, you may provide the same ingredients, but ultimately the ki…

Except the differences start showing up long before school age.

And upfront, they were all treated differently. Not by fault, mind you, but just by happenstance. You probably didn't fawn so much over the second, and even less on the third. Not because they are less special, but more because you had a sense of what you are doing. You came into the second and third child with a battery of things to try because you tried some on your first child.

You are probably less strict with the youngest child and worry a bit more over the oldest.

Plus you and your spouse (or whoever) have aged and matured with time, so each child gets to know a slightly different version of you, your spouse, your parents and family. The more spaced out your children are, the more this will become so.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#327
post #5

> Let’s say you have an adolescent daughter and she says to you, “Mom, you are such a bitch. What have you ever done for me? You only think of yourself.” > The teen may be at the dinner table and just being quiet and not saying negative things. Well, when you're starting out, one of the positive-opposites can sometimes be reinforcing the non-occurrence of the behavior. And you just say, “Marion, it's nice having dinn…

> Let’s say you have an adolescent daughter and she says to you, “Mom, you are such a bitch. What have you ever done for me? You only think of yourself.” Maybe it's because I grew up as a kid in another culture (Eastern Europe) and some time ago (I'm 36 now) but do kids nowadays really call their parents "bitch"? My parents almost never laid their hands on me (the couple of times they actually did I had deserved it)…

I think if you're at the point where your teenage child would even remotely consider calling you a bitch to your face I think any parenting strategy would be a day late and a dollar short. At that point maybe it's about relationship boundaries and damage control. You don't get to the point where a normal and mentally/emotionally healthy teenager calls their mother a bitch without a parent creating an environment where that was eventually going to happen.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#328
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side. Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential. Incentives and punishments that work with…

I have 5 kids and I can also attest to this. Each one is different. In our case, the children are in two personality groups: the 1st and 3rd child have a similar personality type, and the 2nd and 4th have a similar personality type that vastly differs from the first type (the 5th is too young to really be expressive right now). Each child is unique in their own way, and they all respond to different risk-reward profi…

I have four daughters. Can confirm.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#329
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. This claim (from the article) is nonsense. I've changed the behavior of my kids countless times with punishment. I realize that the attitude I am supposed to take is that when someone with Ivy League credentials espouses a currently fashionable theory that my own observations contradict, I am supposed to believe the theory and not my own l…

If punishment changes behavior, why does anyone get more than one speeding ticket? Why does recidivism exist at all? Punishment primarily changes the visibility of behavior. Kids who get punished by their parents a lot learn to avoid their parents and hide their feelings and behaviors. To the parent it can look like the punishment worked.

If you were trown in jail, brutally raped and had 50% of your income confiscated for the rest of your life as a punishment, trust me, pretty much nobody would be speeding.

For most people, the (cost of punishment * chance of being caught) is less than reward of whatever they're doing.

Re: No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems

#330
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4 year old also has a functioning long-term memory. Our oldest (4 1/2 now) often recounts minuscule, random details of events 6-12 months ago that neither me nor my wife had mentioned since. It's true that most adults have few memories from childhood, but that's something else entirely.

My nearly 5 year old remembers events from last Christmas in great detail, so they have a better long term memory than many people credit them for

This is why I treat my kids as adults who just aren't quite ready for adulthood. You can't fool most kids. We're the dull ones, not them, they're just inexperienced.
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