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The Hand Licking Incident

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71–80 of 358 posts

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I think she made the right choice the times she did. To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of pokin…

If violence worked, the drug war would be over because people would not take drugs. .. and there would be no crime and police would have only one encounter with each person. Clearly this isn’t true, so it suggests there was an alternative to violence that could have been applied in your youth.

[deleted]

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You receive the special hacker news award for shittiest extrapolation - 2019.

If violence worked as a strategy, then it would work better the more of it was applied. Instead, what we see is that the more violence applied, the worse the outcome in the long run. This indicates it’s not a solution.

> If violence worked as a strategy, then it would work better the more of it was applied.

I am generally opposed to violence, but...that really doesn't make sense. It's not generally true that, if fixes something, 10* fixes it 10 times better.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#73
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I think she made the right choice the times she did. To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of pokin…

> But appropriately, rarely applied, I can say with certainty it worked for me. No, you can't. Maybe it did, but you don't know how you'd acted if they'd just talked to you instead. It's easy to think we can untangle how a given event shaped us, but we really are horribly bad at it. It ignores that people who never were spanked regularly can tell similar stories about just having been talked to (that's how I learned…

I am pretty sure he can say it did work with more certainty than you can say it didn't. It's a personal anecdote that he is intimately familiar with.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#74
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, he was gone six months out of the year the entire time we were in Kansas. It was the worst duty station in that regard in roughly two decades as a military family.

The tone of my original comment had a bit more "shouting at the TV" to it than it should've. Apologies for that. It's tough to comment on people's lives and kids even if you know them -- much more so if you don't.

On the internet, you shout at TV, TV shouts back. ;)

It's all good. My sons are adults and basically adore me. I hear probably daily "You're an awesome mom and I'm so glad you raised me!" even though the oldest is so Aspie, he will not and has never told me he loves me. Feelings: Not his cup of tea.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#75

It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else. Young children will not figure these things out by themselves.…

To me, the point of the essay was the opposite of what you just said, instead: listen to and trust your child.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You receive the special hacker news award for shittiest extrapolation - 2019.

If violence worked as a strategy, then it would work better the more of it was applied. Instead, what we see is that the more violence applied, the worse the outcome in the long run. This indicates it’s not a solution.

This is astonishingly illogical.

> If violence worked as a strategy, then it would work better the more of it was applied.

This does not follow at all. This whole argument is total bullshit. It may end up being the right answer for parenting (don't use violence against your kids) but the reasoning is astonishing. Every single one of the statements is false and only the conclusion is true. What a masterpiece!

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#77
post #51

It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else. Young children will not figure these things out by themselves.…

> "It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for." I couldn't disagree more. This seems like a step in the wrong direction. The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we already do into the bucket of "strange." Actually, even saying that parents need to "debug" these problems may be going too far. Huma…

We already apply this technique to medical issues. Currently if we Google around we will find the answer if the symptom is common enough. A "WebMD" for a range children's behavior seems to be what OP is getting yet. Not such a bad idea. However, I agree that labelling them and treating them as a "disease" is going overboard.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#78

Parenting is like that. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, operant conditioning is a thing. Humans are still mammals. Parenting gets simple when you can detach and not be caught up with your own ego. Barring abnormal psychology, kids are pretty fun to teach and watch grow. My one key lesson is, especially with younger kids, they aren’t doing whatever they are doing to cause me distress. Most of parenting…

Right, your job is to help the child grow and learn. Whether it looks - to other parents, teachers, etc. - like you are a good parent is very much beside the point, and usually a conflicting goal you need to detach yourself from. In fact, paying attention to that is narcissism. See Preacher's kid syndrome. Similarly, whether their behavior is impeccable today isn't the point, whether they're learning skills for tomor…

We are big on Montessori at my house. The philosophy there is basically what you said: kids are adults in the making and parents are just their guides. Ego leads people to think they own their kids and such, but we are just stewards of our kids for small but key part of their life. Many parents struggle with this idea that kids are their own agents and you are just there to help them grow. It seems obvious, but when you really embrace this philosophy it seems to have a huge impact for most people.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You receive the special hacker news award for shittiest extrapolation - 2019.

If violence worked as a strategy, then it would work better the more of it was applied. Instead, what we see is that the more violence applied, the worse the outcome in the long run. This indicates it’s not a solution.

Just yesterday I was reading a list of logical fallacies, and between this comment and your previous one I think you've hit at least 3 or 4 of them.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#80
This reminds me of something that happened with our child. She started pulling her hair out at night as she fell asleep. Large clumps were pulled out over a month or two and every night there would be small amounts of hair removed. There was a lot of pressure to go to a psychologist from her GP and medication was suggested too. We were talking about it a lot and her hair was getting thin. One night we gave her a new stuff toy, and suggested to her that if she needed to pull hair or was thinking about it, put the dolls hair. It was a toy penguin. Plucking penguin has many bald patches now and the hair pulling stopped that night.
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