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The Hand Licking Incident

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#161

Post by brazzy »

dfgert wrote: post #57
cryptonector wrote: post #47

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.…

I don't understand when will medicine recognize the cause of all health complications instead of trying to individually path each and every problem. People can then start correct precautionary measures. All health issues that we see on rise today were virtually absent in pre-industrial era and are directly result of our newly adopted habits and environment. We are paying so much of cost to live in a "modern" world.

The world is not that simple.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#162

Post by benj111 »

DanBC wrote: post #155

I don't understand why this example of abusive and poor parenting has got so many upvotes.

Is it abusive and poor?

No ones perfect, and parenting is the ultimate 'make it up as you go'. Could they have done better? Probably. Did they learn from their mistakes? Yes.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#163

Post by benj111 »

Slightly off topic but would throwing an alcoholic drink on a fire make it worse?

90% of drinks aren't going to be strong enough anyway, but what about neat spirit (Obviously don't try on electrical fires.

Edit: Clarity

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#164

Post by ddalex »

sneak wrote: post #50
georgebarnett wrote: post #2

It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour, rather than simply causing the issue to be hidden and breaking down trust and then later having it resurface many times worse.

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” —Asimov

Words to live, and die, by.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#165

Post by ddalex »

legohead wrote: post #52
georgebarnett wrote: post #2

It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour, rather than simply causing the issue to be hidden and breaking down trust and then later having it resurface many times worse.

Were you given any courses on parenting in school?

Our modern increased individualism and focus on mono-nuclear families should require that. In tribal societies everybody knows how to do that since they have been doing it since they were old enough to care for their younger siblings or generally the younger kids of the village.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#166

Post by setgree »

Like many of you, I wish that more of my peculiar behavior as a kid had been tolerated. I think this is getting better over time. My grandfather got beaten for being left-handed, my dad failed 4th grade for poor penmanship, I got briefly put on ADHD medication for being unable to sit still -- but this trendline is encouraging.

Cnservatives (e.g. Kevin Williamson) sometimes say: "Don't just do something, stand there!" The lesson is that not all problems can be solved quickly or well or through active attention. In general this is an underrated response, IMO.

(Bumi in Avatar season 2 makes the same point: "I'm going to do...nothing!"Neutral jing FTW.)

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#167

Post by Baeocystin »

fzeroracer wrote: post #143
Baeocystin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

>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.

My point is that negative reinforcement has its place, not that it is desirable in and of itself. My parents very seldom used it, but it wasn't completely off the table, and I am confident that I benefited from that approach. That is a fundamentally different situation than one where spankings or other physical punishment are so common as to have children lose trust in their parents. I always trusted my parents.

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

Speaking of pets and pain: the hotwire that I used around the horse corral kept both my dogs and the horses safe, with only an absolute minimum of actual pain. No animal needed more than one or two incidences of contact to learn to not mess with the fence, and there was no more effective solution available. Note that this isn't hitting or striking an animal out of anger- it is a very specifically directed form of negative reinforcement to prevent otherwise dangerous behaviors from spreading. It works very well, and does not cause the affected animals any long-term trauma. The just learn to respect the wire barrier. Just like they know that it will hurt if they touch it, they also know that it won't chase or bother them if they leave it alone, and that's usually how it goes, no stress beyond the first few contacts.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#168

Post by jdietrich »

vidarh wrote: post #54
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…

> 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…

Young children have a very limited ability to understand cause and effect. It simply isn't possible to explain to a toddler that "if you run out in the road then you might get badly hurt", because their brains still have a limited grasp of "if... then" and "badly hurt". I am strongly opposed to corporal punishment in the general case, but I am willing to concede the possibility that it is a necessary option in cases of genuine life-or-death emergency.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#169

Post by ddalex »

exolymph wrote: post #122
hogger wrote: post #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…

You might enjoy this similar anecdote from an SSC post. > The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I’ve seen in the mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but people were at each other’s throats about the Hair Dryer Incident. > Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every m…

Somebody should dig out the SCP file about that damned hair dryer.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#170

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

geomark wrote: post #79
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.

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.

That logical fallacy list is required reading here, it's practically a holy text.
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