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The Hand Licking Incident

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#131

Post by TeMPOraL »

Baeocystin wrote: post #112
nostrademons wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plug covers you can buy for Hell, my parents also told me when I was ~4 not to stick anything in the electrical outlets. No spankings were involved. I listened because why wouldn't I? (Well, at least until senior year in college, when I was like "What happens if I strip an Ethernet cord and stick it in an electrical outlet?" I'd missed the exploding-wires demonstration in my physics course, y'see. Did not g…

Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW. https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-fro... (These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.) >I listened because why wouldn't I? So did I, abou…

> I think you will be hard-pressed to find a child anywhere in the world that doesn't push boundaries.

Hell, isn't a lot of childhood precisely about learning the boundaries by pushing against them to check what the actual limits are?

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#132

Post by aperrien »

exolymph wrote: post #118
beaconstudios wrote: post #65

I tend to think that almost every time someone is doing something you don't understand or don't like, you're better off understanding the reason for the behaviour than trying to quash it. Even if you desperately want it to stop, they're clearly doing the thing as a means to address something so if you want to stop them using the current solution you should have a better solution to hand or the problem will once again…

Seems like a manifestation of Chesterton's Fence! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

AKA "Most regulations are written in blood."

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#133

Post by taneq »

ambicapter wrote: post #115
taneq wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but there's a difference between grilling someone about something, usually after a confrontation about it, and calmly discussing their motivations with them without a build-up of conflict beforehand.

As well, sometimes the difference is months of brain development.

Months, hell sometimes a couple of days makes a marked difference. Kids change so fast, for so long, I think we still don't really appreciate how complex, capable and versatile an average adult human is.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#136

Post by Baeocystin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #131
Baeocystin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW. https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-fro... (These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.) >I listened because why wouldn't I? So did I, abou…

> I think you will be hard-pressed to find a child anywhere in the world that doesn't push boundaries. Hell, isn't a lot of childhood precisely about learning the boundaries by pushing against them to check what the actual limits are?

Exactly so.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#137

Post by Kiro »

Sorry, but I'm not buying the "oh, it was just dry hands all along". Hand licking is a very common symptom for children with OCD and/or autism. She should have taken him to a doctor.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#138

Post by Baeocystin »

manmal wrote: post #128
Baeocystin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW. https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-fro... (These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.) >I listened because why wouldn't I? So did I, abou…

You are arguing that the spanking AFTER you tampered with a wire saved you. First, you could have died before the spanking. Punishment after the fact never rights a done wrong. Second, at the age of 4, if your parents had just sat down with you and told you that you can die from electric shock, don't you think that would have made a lasting impression either?

Which is riskier? Playing Russian Roulette once? Or a dozen times?

My mother gave me a spanking to impress upon me that playing with household electricity at my level of understanding was not a joke, period.

4 or 5 year olds, even precocious ones, do not have the cognitive machinery to be able to assess this kind of risk, and if they are unusually curious (which I was), well... Sorry, mom, about all the gray hairs I probably gave you over the years. (She seemed to have loved me well enough regardless. :D)

My parents sat me down and calmly explained everything they could. Which, as I mentioned before, worked great, until the appeal of something else overwhelmed verbal warnings, which was also not uncommon. Sometimes it was electricity, sometimes it was fire. I can think of another time maybe a year or so later when I discovered a box of strike-anywhere matches, and proceeded to light them one after another to wow at the sparkles, and watch the changes in the match as it burned. My mother took a different approach this time, and as 'punishment', gave me an entire box of matches, of which I was supposed to light them one at a time, let them burn down, then drop them in a bucket of water and repeat until the box was empty.

I suppose she was trying to allow me to explore my fascination with fire in a safe way so that I would get bored with it. Honestly, I can see some merit in that line of thought. ...but instead of getting bored, once I was done, I went and asked for another box. (it turns out fire is fascinating.)

I did get good at learning just how long I could hold a match before I risked burning myself, and how to strike them properly. So that was a plus. I also learned that the embers of the spent match can be kicked back up in to flame again for a surprisingly long time, too. So I'd say it was a good lesson, no spanking involved. But electricity is not nearly as forgiving, and I genuinely do think a swat in that kind of situation can be a useful thing.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#139

Post by Baeocystin »

Nullabillity wrote: post #130
Baeocystin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW. https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-fro... (These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.) >I listened because why wouldn't I? So did I, abou…

> Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Ultimately that comes down to the plug design. Schuko sockets (used in most of Europe) are typically indented into the outlet enclosure. This enables IKEA[1] (and others) to make covers that basically can't be removed without tools. [1]: https://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/20098963/

I do think sockets should be fundamentally redesigned from the ones we have here in the US. There are so many, better examples in use around the world. One small plus is that most of our outlets are only 110v, which is somewhat safer to deal with.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#140

Post by tigershark »

georgebarnett wrote: post #41
Baeocystin wrote: post #16

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.

So do you think that if from today all the crimes were depenalised there would be no whatsoever increase in thefts, assaults, murders and all the other crimes? I think that instead we would see a massive increase.
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