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The Hand Licking Incident

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#311

Post by philwelch »

beaconstudios wrote: post #96
philwelch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true even for dogs, to some extent. And, to some extent, some people are just born very slightly sadistic or mean and there's no noble underlying reason in the first place.

why would their reason have to be noble? Human motivations can be complex.

They can also be very primally simple, but confused by layers and layers of rationalization and self-justification. And that's more obvious in children, who haven't learned how to rationalize their behavior very convincingly yet. If a child throws a rock at someone's head, they're not going to come up with the same elaborate justifications for that kind of behavior that, say, a political rioter would, even though the underlying motivations are probably the same.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#312

Post by Udik »

gowld wrote: post #286
Udik wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second that, the story is interesting and has the value of a general lesson, but on second thought it sounds like other obviously made-up anecdotes, such as "the car that wouldn't start after buying strawberry icecream" or the "emails that didn't go farther than 500km". There is a little kid obsessively licking his hands in winter? They must have become very red and inflamed after only two or three days. Therefore,…

Why do you think "emails that didn't go farther than 500miles" is obviously made up? https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html How would putting some cream on prevent the licking? Cream doesn't last forever.

Thank you for replying, at least I have an idea of why those downvotes. As for the 500 miles email, thank you, I didn't know that FAQ page. However, it highlights a number of issues that actually make the story seriously implausible, even if the author swears by it.

Q: If you're not 100% certain of all the details, why did you write the original post so vividly? A: I took license. It made a better story that way. [...] Q: the technical details at the end just don't add up. A: I know.

But especially:

Q:Well, to start with, it can't be three milliseconds, because that would only be for the outgoing packet to arrive at its destination. You have to get a response, too, before the timeout will be aborted. Shouldn't it be six milliseconds? A:Of course. This is one of the details I skipped in the story. It seemed irrelevant, and boring, so I left it out.

Hmmm, that is quite some detail to leave out, as it just makes the story impossible. No further explanation given.

As for this story, the cream wouldn't prevent the licking, but it would solve the root cause, the dryness of the hands. Put the cream on for a few days, until the redness is gone, and that basically solves the dryness issue as well. Then the licking might restart a few days or weeks later, but that should have already shifted the focus to the state of the hand's skin rather than the licking itself.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#313

Post by scotty79 »

glitchc wrote: post #206

I dunno about this story. When I saw my son lick his hands the very first time, this was the convo: - Are your hands tasty? No - Are your hands dirty? No - Are your hands dry? Yes! Problem solved. Plus a quick visual inspection will usually confirm dry hands. It’s not like an insidious disease with no visible symptoms.

For me it wasn't easy. When I was about 30 I noticed my hand itch like hell.

Visual inspection revealed a lot of small wounds that were cause of the itching.

I tried washing them thoroughly and drying (no effect beyond temporary pleasure of hot water similar to scratching).

I put on them some cream with steroids that supposedly helps with wound healing. This helped for few days. Then the problem reoccured. I applied the cream again. This happened few times.

In about a year the problem came back. I didn't want to abuse steroids so I thought if I just wash hands and seal the wounds with any hand cream they will heal quicker. Worked just as good as steroids stuff. Only then I realized that my skin is probably just cracking because it's dry from vold weather and dry air.

At no point before my skin looked or felt dry. I never had this problem before in my 30 years of life. It was a new problem for me and lacking knowledge it was very hard for me to debug. The fact that I hate to have anything oily on my hands didn't help. Even now I put cream only on the side of hands that crack and only after they crack first time this season.

I would very much like to have a troubleshooting guide for the human body, right from the start.

I got something like that but limited in scope to pains caused by damaged muscles. The book is organized so that you can go from knowing where it hurts to knowing which muscle is damaged and what movement you need to do to gently excercise and stretch this muscle. Both things were surprisingly counterintuitive when my pain was caused by small muscles around the spine.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#314

Post by DanBC »

benj111 wrote: post #249
csixty4 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize the author learned from the situation and I hope they're a better person now, but I would certainly consider their behavior abusive. It's fortunate the kid was just dealing with dry skin. Imagine if it was something like OCD where they were dealing with an irresistible compulsion and had no way to express what they were experiencing. Is spanking an acceptable response? How about one or both parents telling…

Isn't the line for abuse subjective? Doesn't it partially rely on the motivations of the 'abuser'? If you circumcise your male child for religious reasons, is that abuse? What about forcing them to eat their vegetables? Maybe we're just arguing semantics here? For me abuse is a strong word and something that social services should be getting involved with.

Physical violence towards a child is always unambiguously abusive.

The only exception is if that child is eg running at you with a knife seeking to harm you.

In this country I would have made a referral about the school's poor response, and I know that would have been investigated. And I would have made a referral about the response of both parents and I know that would have been investigated.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#315

Post by Baeocystin »

vidarh wrote: post #294
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…

> 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. Sorry, but with all due respect: You do not. You know that with the accumulated past experience you had,…

The basis of your claim appears to be "people are incredibly complicated, everything ties in to everything, therefore we can make no claims about what works and what doesn't."

To which I respond: if things were truly that un-understandable, we would have been unable as a species to have additive culture that improves over time, because what we think about how people and the world work vs. the actuality of things would be too divorced from one another.

And yet we can positively point to growth of knowledge across all human endeavors, in societies around the globe. I therefore fundamentally disagree with your proposition.

Which is ok. It's fine to agree to disagree. We could both be wrong, after all. :)

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#316

Post by Baeocystin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #255
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…

> Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of poking around outlets again. No, it did not make me resentful, and more dedicated to wirepokery than before; my parents were consistently trustworthy, so I took their fear reaction as something I should genuinely respect. Wait, so was the thing that underlined the message the physical punishment or your parent’s fear reaction ? You seem to be equating them, but it's…

I should clarify. I did not know my mother (the one who caught me performing my well-designed science experiment with the wall outlet) was scared at the time; I only learned that when we spoke about the experience when I was older.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#317

Post by benj111 »

DanBC wrote: post #314
benj111 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the line for abuse subjective? Doesn't it partially rely on the motivations of the 'abuser'? If you circumcise your male child for religious reasons, is that abuse? What about forcing them to eat their vegetables? Maybe we're just arguing semantics here? For me abuse is a strong word and something that social services should be getting involved with.

Physical violence towards a child is always unambiguously abusive. The only exception is if that child is eg running at you with a knife seeking to harm you. In this country I would have made a referral about the school's poor response, and I know that would have been investigated. And I would have made a referral about the response of both parents and I know that would have been investigated.

Which part would you say is physical violence? One of my examples or the original post?

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#318

Post by waterhouse »

waterhouse wrote: post #182
arnarbi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on. You had a temporary dental appliance that was interfering with your speaking, but were diagnosed with speech impediment and sent to therapy? That just sounds like some sort of oversight.

It's not visually obvious like braces; it's on the roof of the mouth and behind the teeth. You'd have to be looking upwards into my open mouth to see it, and if you're an adult—taller than a child—you wouldn't usually be in a position to do so. Here's a reasonable approximation to what I remember it being: http://www.gregjorgensen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08... I'll ask my mom what they were all thinking. Inc…

According to my mom, I had been mispronouncing R and L as far back as age 2, and there wasn't any period before the expander was removed when I did pronounce it correctly. So my experience exactly matches that of the above internet citation regarding pronunciation, speech therapy, and expander removal.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#319

Post by sangnoir »

Loughla wrote: post #289
MRD85 wrote: post #254

I don't get why people find it so hard to empathise with a child. I've solved a bunch of my youngish children's problems by taking the time to try to figure out their reasoning and talk to them about it. I've had a huge chip on my shoulder about parenting for years. I'm a single parent of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and it's been this way since the youngest was a baby. I've had so many bad experiences, especially w…

>people have treated me poorly because I was a dad with his kids. That's interesting. Honestly, I've found that I get passes for many mistakes, because the bar to being a good dad is set so low in most peoples' minds. If I'm not hitting them and basically know their initials, I seem to be a success. What has your experience been? If you don't mind me asking.

> Honestly, I've found that I get passes for many mistakes

I'm not gp, but I'm assuming both your experiences are rooted in the same incorrect idea: that dads are lesser/"assistant" parents, real parenting is done by (and expected of) moms.

No doubt gp probably experienced the automatic suspicion heaped on any man with small children without a plausible mother-figure around.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#320

Post by tempestn »

gambiting wrote: post #236
tempestn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are six and four, and explaining to them that something could seriously injure or kill them is definitely enough to prevent them from ever doing it. I can't imagine spanking them to try to make a point, but if anything I expect that would influence them to trust my warnings of potential injury less.

As a complete anecdote - I remember when my parents told me when I was very little that eating rotten/mouldy food could get you seriously ill, I think I even asked if you could die from it - to which they said that yes, you could. And after that, I had a complete phobia of everything that seemed even slightly off. I became incredibly picky, because that one spot on the slice of cheese could be mould or because the ha…

Yeah, that's true, you definitely do have to be careful with that kind of thing. Kids really can take things to heart and believe them so strongly that it's difficult, even when they know you're the one who originally gave them the information, to moderate it. I usually try not to speak in terms of absolutes, but let them know what _can_ be dangerous, especially for kids who don't yet have enough experience to know which situations are dangerous and which aren't—so if they want to use/touch/whatever it, please ask an adult first. So it's not the thing itself that's inherently dangerous, but rather using it before you have enough experience. (Still do have to emphasize the potential danger though, lest they one day decide they do in fact have enough experience now.) This seems to work well for my kids, but of course ymmv.
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