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The Hand Licking Incident

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#141

Post by rukuu001 »

I love this story.

Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad.

Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in.

We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem.

Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy.

After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us there was a "BIG FROG" (said with wide eyes, mouth turned down) in his room.

Turns out that over the traffic noise he could hear a frog croaking outside his window. It was a noise we'd all just dismissed.

Opened and closed the window to show him it was outside.

Asked him how big he thought the frog was. Held his arms out as far as they would go. I showed him a video of a tiny croaking frog on my phone. Not the same as the outside frog, but close.

He was ok after we showed him the window was locked, and the frog wouldn't be able to get in.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#142

Post by fzeroracer »

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

This is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor-happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down, gleefully assuming that it's useless.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#143

Post by fzeroracer »

Baeocystin wrote: post #110
vidarh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but you don't know how you'd acted if they'd just talked to you instead. I have an entire childhood of other experiences I could relate to you that tells me that I do, in fact, know how I would have reacted in I had just been talked to. And I am genuinely grateful for the (very few) times I was swatted, because there are things in this world that fear is the appropriate response to. You appear to have spent your ch…

Similarly, there's an innate survivorship bias in your case as well. There are people that were spanked as a kid that grew up violent, despising their parents or simply engaging in more dangerous behavior due to the breakdown of trust. I can guarantee you there are kids that decided to poke wires in an outlet solely because their parents decided to spank them.

We also know that hitting your pets does not work either, yet for some reason we seem to believe that hitting children is effective.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#144

Post by markdown »

icu wrote: post #53
markdown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour I think it's safe to assume that most humans currently alive were spanked as children and most parents alive today spank their children. If that assumption is true, than it's not amazing... it's just the norm.

In the UK it is actually illegal to smack your kid... so it's not like corporal punishment is still the norm now. There is also a large portion of parents who have rejected corporal punishment and opted for 'peaceful parenting' techniques from a moralistic perspective based on the non-aggression principle. Even if you don't agree on moral grounds there have been loads of research papers written on this topic. The pap…

> In the UK it is actually illegal to smack your kid... so it's not like corporal punishment is still the norm now in the UK.

FTFY. That's 66 million people. Add Europe and USA and you have about a billion people who consider spanking a no-no. Since spanking is culturally accepted in most of the developing world, I'd say spanking is the norm rather than the exception on planet earth.

> There is also a large portion of parents who have rejected corporal punishment and opted for 'peaceful parenting' techniques from a moralistic perspective based on the non-aggression principle.

Myself included.

> Even if you don't agree on moral grounds

You may be responding to the wrong comment, since I didn't state a position in that comment.

> So, if you consider your role as a parent to include giving your child the best chance at life you need to seriously evaluate the body of evidence against using corporal punishment.

Again, you've probably responded to the wrong person. I've not supported corporal punishment anywhere in this discussion.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#145

Post by georgebarnett »

scarejunba wrote: post #76
georgebarnett wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Ok, you’re right.

(I’m reminded how difficult it is to make full arguments over text.

Rather than flog a dead horse, I’ll just accept that I’m not able to make my point clearly enough.)

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#146

Post by markdown »

projectileboy wrote: post #55
markdown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour I think it's safe to assume that most humans currently alive were spanked as children and most parents alive today spank their children. If that assumption is true, than it's not amazing... it's just the norm.

For what it's worth, I think that assumption very well might not be true. But I also suspect it would be very hard to find out real numbers for that.

Spanking is culturally accepted in most of the developing world. Statistically speaking, the western nations where spanking has gone out of fashion don't add up to much.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#147

Post by markdown »

scarejunba wrote: post #87
markdown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour I think it's safe to assume that most humans currently alive were spanked as children and most parents alive today spank their children. If that assumption is true, than it's not amazing... it's just the norm.

Modern usage of "never ceases to amaze" permits reference to things that are common. For instance, one could say "it never ceases to amaze me that people believe in God". A few billion people believe in God, so one could say it's not particularly amazing but that's not the point. The point is that, in the opinion of the speaker, it is so outlandish as to be unbelievable that anyone could feel that way. It's a rhetori…

Fair enough.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#148

Post by benj111 »

rukuu001 wrote: post #141

I love this story. Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad. Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in. We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem. Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy. After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us…

>Little kid logic

My favourite is when you ask a crying child where they hurt them selves, and they point to the table they just walked into.

Edit: Or have a paddy because they can't join the banana they've just cut in half, back together again.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#149

Post by dri_ft »

fzeroracer wrote: post #142
exolymph wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor-happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down, gleefully assuming that it's useless.

The trouble comes when the others working on your code are crazy enough that that strange code often is useless, so you have to spend the time trying to work out whether it's tear-out-worthy.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#150

Post by tragic »

rukuu001 wrote: post #141

I love this story. Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad. Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in. We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem. Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy. After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us…

I remember, during a thunderstorm, being utterly convinced that a war was being fought outside. I was terrified ...
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