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Thinking the unthinkable

anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#411

Post by TimGebhardt »

alvaromuir wrote: post #205

I'm sorry. Im a parent. This lady needs to control her kid. Vote it down if you want, but when 'Michael' snaps and shoots up a school then everyone will say shouldve couldve woudldve. She is clearly ALLOWING this behavior. Funny, no mention of a father. From experience, mothers are way more tolerant of out of control kids. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.

We do know what happened to the father according to previous blog posts: http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/07/news-from-war... tl;dr; he left her for some woman he met online and married her six weeks after his divorce was complete. And now he doesn't pay the soccer mom child support and is engaging her in a grueling custody battle.

Funny, not much of a father to mention.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#413

Post by debacle »

bambax wrote: post #155
InclinedPlane wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you comment on something as serious as this you should have your facts straight. Automatic weapons are highly regulated in the US, and no automatic weapon has ever been used in a school shooting to my knowledge.

You're right: automatic weapons are regulated in the US (but I did not claim otherwise) and they have indeed never been used in a school shooting (I misspoke; I meant semi-automatic weapons, not machine-guns). But my point is that if you make weapons difficult to buy and difficult to own, then they are less likely to be used by crazy people to do harm. The situation about machine-guns verifies this. What's more - sch…

There is a real reason that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution. You can't handwave away the reason it was included in the constitution and then say "See, it's that simple."

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#414

Post by flyinRyan »

Jach wrote: post #127
bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I guess you don't count child soldiers in Africa.

I hope you're not trying to argue in favor of the US with something like this. It's not a very favorable comparison!

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#415

Post by GuiA »

Natsu wrote: post #376
GuiA wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think things have improved (although they can always go south at a moment's notice- for example last year, he dropped and broke his phone, which triggered an "episode" that lasted pretty much the whole day.) There are likely multiple factors at play- it's quite conceivable that puberty hormones make the matters worse, and that he's slowly exiting this phase, it's something less in the way. But I also thi…

From your perspective, when & how did it start? Was he always like that, or is there a specific event you remember as the start of this?

I've always remembered him being like that, and my parents corroborate this. Apparently when he was a newborn/toddler, he would throw huge tantrums, was very hot-tempered, impossible to manage when he was sick, etc.

This leads me to further believe that his case his mostly genetic/physiological in nature.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#416

Post by s_kilk »

ForrestN wrote: post #252
ampersandy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beating your children isn't to manipulate them into becoming little slaves, it's to punish them for going against society's expected behaviour (which one might argue is its own form of slavery). Can you back up your claim that beatings produce poor outcomes for children in "highly educated societies?" Or that 'less educated societies" are inferior because they don't have qualms about spanking their kids when they mis…

See the quote from AAP I posted elsewhere. Corporal punishment has been shown to be less effective than alternatives, and probably harmful to children. Corporal punishment is more common in less affluent/educated societies than it is in wealthy/well-educated ones. This is common knowledge. I never said anything about inferiority. It's not about judging anyone, it's about contradicting bad advice.

>> " Corporal punishment has been shown to be less effective than alternatives,"

I've always figured that Corporal punishment is like banging rocks together to make fire. sure it _can_ be done, our ancestors used it effectively and it can be useful as a last resort; but a lighter or matchsticks are significantly more effective.

In my experience, those who argue strongly in favor of beating children do so not because they know better but because that technique is all they know. essentially: "but if i don't beat him how will I get him to behave??"

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#417

Post by Millennium »

konstruktor wrote: post #165
unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

If a sudden moment of clarity would be a repeatable cure for mental illness, we would not need mental healthcare. Please read up on confirmation bias.

No one claims that a sudden moment of clarity is all that most mentally-ill people need. But there are a lot of people who need, more than anything else, to take a good hard look in the proverbial mirror. The effects of this have been noted throughout history, predating psychology as we know it but continuing even after the discovery of that science: it does not work for everyone, but it is too powerful a tool to ignore. That seems to have happened to the grandparent. What fixed him was not Linkin Park, but seeing the consequences of his malicious act. The music may very well have helped him get into the mindset that allowed to see himself in the mirror, but it was not the mirror itself.

But are a couple of problems with the mirror. One is that if you truly need to change, then really SEEING yourself is a traumatic experience, and like any trauma, it requires further care to make sure that it doesn't raise issues of its own. There's no way around this: the traumatic aspect of the mirror is what makes it a powerful tool for personal change. Another problem is the nigh-infinite variety in human psychology: different people need different mirrors, and while it might be possible to classify them broadly, what works for one person still might not work for another.

Put these together, and a major problem emerges with using the mirror therapeutically: namely, doing it in a humane manner. I truly don't think it's always possible to do this humanely; the grandparent's case had him seeing the consequences of his own act of cruelty, which implies that there was collateral damage. Another such case would be the reverse: someone who, like a puppy, can learn that biting hurts only by being bitten. That's someone who needs to experience a moment of cruelty from the opposite perspective, but that requires being cruel to the person. Clearly these are not cases where the mirror is humane.

But there are still open questions. Knowing the trauma that the mirror causes, can bringing it about deliberately ever be humane, even when the subject is not committing or experiencing cruelty? In cases where it can't -which might be all cases- might it be worth doing anyway?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#418

Post by rehack »

timtadh wrote: post #337
kamaal wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Urdu we have a proverb it translates to English as - "Treat your teachers beating, as a garland you could receive in the future". I agree corporal punishment is cruelty. But some minimal beating must be allowed to put things in order. My mom is a teacher, and back here in the past and to some extent now. Beating kids in school in India was the norm. She tells me many parents would come ask the teachers to not beat…

"Spare the stick and spoil the child" That proverb is misapplied. When you look at the original Hebrew in context the stick was a guiding stick not a beating stick. A guiding stick is one used for gentle nudges to keep someone on the right path. Basically the proverb is saying: An unguided child is a spoiled child. Today is is often interpreted: An unbeaten child is a spoiled child. However, this is not the original…

I beg to differ. I think this is an interpretation adapted to meet the requirements of modern times . Because the commonly held interpretation of the proverb, is very simply, what it means, that you got to discipline the child, by spanking[1].

IMHO, this(revised definition) is a catchup which the clergy (of various religions) play every now and then. Sometimes to meet the new discovery in science, or other times to meet the current human right guidelines.

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spare_the_rod_and_spoil_the_ch...

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#419

Post by HarryHirsch »

evan_ wrote: post #406
HarryHirsch wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel everything is about her, not him, and that's why he's so upset. Indeed. It seems that the son has an exemption from the uniform policy ("They told me I could wear these" he insisted), the mother has this desire to make the child conform, and is insufficiently introspective to examine her own motivations ("my 13-year old son ... missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants"). Hey, he missed the…

You think the kid who thought threatening his mom with a knife was acceptable wouldn't tell a petty lie?

It's possible. But look at this: "Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program"

Something changed with the new school, something that set her son off with regularity. The answer is the district's most restrictive behavioral program. The child may be an asshole and a violent psychopath, but the mother doesn't ask if there's perhaps anything wrong at the new school. There may well be, and the fact that she does not mention that possibility raises a red flag for me.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#420

Post by clarky07 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #372
clarky07 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is also true of a revolver, or a bolt, lever, or pump action gun. The point is that the above poster has no idea what he is talking about, and as such his opinion on the matter isn't as relevant as it would be if he actually educated himself on the subject.

No, it is not true of a revolver or a bolt, lever, or pump action rifle. I don't want to be mean about it but do you not know what you're talking about? You take a revolver and a box of ammo and I'll take an AR-15 and let's see who can fire more rounds. That's completely ridiculous.

Did you read the parent? >Within a minute, one can fire many, many rounds with only a few pounds of pressure.

I didn't say it was faster than an AR. I know exactly what I'm talking about. A revolver could have accomplished the same thing at that school. Yes, this idiot shot some of these kids 11+ times and the revolver wouldn't have done that, but guess what, you don't need to shoot someone 11 times. 1-2 is generally plenty.

There is something called a speedloader for revolvers, which is just slightly slower than a magazine to reload. This guy [1] while not really going too fast, reloaded three times and shot 24 well aimed bullets in 45 seconds (starting at the 1:15 mark). I'd say that qualifies as many many round in under a minute with only a few pounds of pressure.

The second video [2], while obviously a world class shooter, shot 12 rounds, all on target, with a reload in the middle in less than 3 seconds.

Now, are you going to claim that this somehow doesn't qualify as firing many rounds in under a minute? The parent was comparing automatic and semi automatic saying that don't matter. well, i'd agree and extend it to the guns i said, but if we want to go with your quote: >You take a revolver and a box of ammo and I'll take an AR-15 and let's see who can fire more rounds. That's completely ridiculous.

I'll take a fully auto AR and some ammo, you take a semi auto AR-15 and let's see who can fire more rounds. That's completely ridiculous.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC9Lahi-TqQ [2] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-tFQ1H4Awg

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