221–230 of 358 posts
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
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We are big on Montessori at my house. The philosophy there is basically what you said: kids are adults in the making and parents are just their guides. Ego leads people to think they own their kids and such, but we are just stewards of our kids for small but key part of their life. Many parents struggle with this idea that kids are their own agents and you are just there to help them grow. It seems obvious, but when…
This is interesting because it helps explain the American interest in Montessori. But in other parts of the world these ideas are the mainstream consensus view rather than a fringe ideology. Quoting the United Nations website[1]: "The Convention [on the Rights of the Child] provides a universal set of standards to be adhered to by all countries. It reflects a new vision of the child. Children are neither the property…
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.
My take on this is that sometimes problems are really hard to solve on your own or at all at the time. It seems like if there was money then the behavior was so persistent that it actually warranted outside help from some type of specialist. So instead of just continually putting pressure the husband should have acknowledged that it was not a normal parenting issue and looked for a psychiatrist or something. The othe…
The thing that jumps out at me is that it took months and months to ask the simple question, "why are you doing that?" Also, in this case the undesirable behaviour had a perfectly benign and easily fixable root cause, but that's not always (or even mostly?) true. In many cases my kids will be misbehaving because they're not getting what they want, eg. icecream for dinner or to not go to bed on time. In cases like the…
Parenting is like that. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, operant conditioning is a thing. Humans are still mammals. Parenting gets simple when you can detach and not be caught up with your own ego. Barring abnormal psychology, kids are pretty fun to teach and watch grow. My one key lesson is, especially with younger kids, they aren’t doing whatever they are doing to cause me distress. Most of parenting…
Did we read the same article? Conditioning failed. The solution was to respect the child as a complex being with trust and agency and ask him why. The parent specifically regrets her attempts to train the child like an animal.
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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.
Parenting is like that. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, operant conditioning is a thing. Humans are still mammals. Parenting gets simple when you can detach and not be caught up with your own ego. Barring abnormal psychology, kids are pretty fun to teach and watch grow. My one key lesson is, especially with younger kids, they aren’t doing whatever they are doing to cause me distress. Most of parenting…
From the late Utah Phillips -- "Little Kids are assholes, but they are their own assholes, and you have to respect that."
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You've obviously not been in a position like this before, so let me share a thought. It was really difficult for the author to admit these things. She didn't paint herself in a positive light. You were treated to raw honesty in a way that is ever more rare in a society where our words can haunt us for decades. And you react, not by appreciating this gesture, but by judging it, and from a wildly underinformed perspect…
Okay, but she did write it up and it wound up on Hacker News, so I do feel it reasonable to comment on. Don't assume I didn't think about the piece. And I cringed hard specifically because of my empathy for the child in that situation, having his relationship with his mom harmed for reasons he didn't understand. I did apologize for the tone in a direct reply to the author -- that's fair. Also: Maybe don't assume what…
I'm sorry for making assumptions. It seemed pretty clear to me that you haven't been on the other side of this, and there would be nothing wrong with that anyway. Different phase of life and all that. And in sorry for what you've been through. Being abused by a parent, who should be your source of all things good and loving, is a terrible thing.
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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.
We already know the causes and cures for most common ailments. People aren't exactly queuing up to do more exercise, eat healthily etc, etc.
For example, I'm having my sixth pharyngitis in less than a year. When I go to the doctor, the doctor only thinks "pharyngitis -> Pills A and B -> here, take these pills".
This will fix the problem. For now. What will happen in less than two months? I'll be back, to repeat the same procedure. Is this how the rest of my life looks?
Shouldn't the doctor try and discover what's the root cause of this? Pollution, some allergy, stress, what would i know...?
This is my personal case and it's becoming frustrating, but the problem is i know about many other similar cases. I really can't complain about the health service in my country (Spain, Barcelona specifically) because you will get the attention you need to not die, whatever happens to you, unlike many other places. But for things that are not critical as a punctured lung? "Take these pills and get out me office."
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>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.
The first one's just ambiguity isn't it? "Where did you hurt yourself? At Timmy's place"