I've read about that, and some of what we often hear about that is a bit questionable. Sometimes, obedience without question is necessary. If you tell a kid to hold still because there could be a rattlesnake, and you're in the wilderness somewhere, and that kid goes, "But why?" and doesn't obey you, then the kid could bet bitten and his life could be in danger, especially if you can't reach any emergency services.

In some cases, it could make the kid think like a computer. Teaching students to follow all these little directions and to obey them exactly, the way students are often taught in Japan, can turn them into little drones.

If the kid asks "but why?" you'll have to explain that rattlesnakes are poisonous and that they shouldn't mess with it. Simple as that. Blind obedience won't help them if they come by a rattlesnake and you're not there. Teach the kid how to act around snakes or other potentially dangerous animals or situations, and they'll be prepared for when or if it happens. If the kid knows the "why" of things, they'll also be aware of the "why not". Also, if the kid respects you, they're going to hold still if they sense you're serious.

A lot of accidents that involves kids has to do with their curiosity getting the better of them. You can't always be one step ahead if all you're concerned about is to keep them away from danger. There's nothing that sparks curiosity more than not being allowed to do stuff, or not knowing why you're not allowed to do stuff.

Kids actually need to know what danger is, to know ho to deal with it. You can pad them in bubblewrap and let them sit in a corner all day, but that won't help them through their life. Kids should be allowed to test their wings, and the parent's job is to let them do so within reasonable borders while at the same time not hindering them too much.

Explaining while the kid is in a place where there aren't any rattlesnakes, that's fine. Blind obedience will help him if there is a rattlesnake just inches away from him and he needs to stay still while you take a stick and pull the snake away from him.

You are right though about curiosity being sparked by not being allowed to do stuff. I believe that if parents don't want their kid to watch a certain show, maybe they should get him up at a certain hour and make him just sit quietly on the couch and watch the show, even if he's busy doing something else. If they want their kid to eat only healthy food, then for a day or so, give the kid only the foods you don't want him or her to eat. It's the radish cure without forcing the child to eat the whole thing at once. Or you could let the kid eat all the candy he wants to eat after trick-or-treating, and when he gets sick, you can say, "That's what happens when you eat too many sweets. Do you want some more?"

That's learning consequences of actions, and kids should learn that. Force-feeding them anything might not be a good idea, though...

If the kid actually asks to watch the show, then you'd have to see if it's age-appropriate for the kid to watch it. You don't let the kid watch shows the're too young to process. That's why shows have age limits. You can say no. You're the parent, after all. You should explain to them why - "there's too much violence so you'll be scared and have nightmares" could be one explanation.

If you want the kid to eat healthy food, make sure the whole family eats healthy food, and that you don't have too much unhealthy food lying about. Tell them that candy is for Saturday and certain holidays or other occasions, and stick to it. Don't buy them candy if they start screaming in the grocery store, or get candy as a treat on a regular day. It's all about learning good habits, and the kids learn those habits from the adults around them.

If the kid eats too much candy at Halloween, then they've learned the consequences of overeating candy. You could be a very responsible parent and split their candy into portions, so they don't eat too much at once. Maybe let the kid split up the candy.

Something that will do good is to give responsibility to the kid. Let them help make dinner, let them have easy chores, and let there be consequences if they don't do chores or other important things. Don't give them a sore behind, but instead give or take privileges. Things like one hour extra of TV, or no candy when Saturday comes. And don't punish them beyond those privileges. That'll help teach them consequences of their actions in a way they can actually understand and learn from. Let them learn good and bad choices have good and bad consequences. Also, stick to it. If you lax up on the rules, the kids will take advantage.

My parents weren't like that. My dad was especially bad about banning shows like Smurfs and making multiple excuses for the bans without really explaining why. I think he would've been more successful in discouraging me from watching my favourite shows if he had employed the method that I mentioned in an earlier post - the radish cure. If he had made watching those forbidden shows as boring as going to Church well, I wouldn't have wanted to watch them.

There are an enormous range of consequences available in this world that don't provide learning experiences, they provide caskets. All the talk in the world doesn't mean squat when there are immediate and severe enough consequences.

Or to put it another way, I'd punch you in the mouth if it kept you out of doing something immediately and disastrously consequential, and I don't know you. Sometimes talking is for afterward. It's not always an option that's compatible with safety.

You keep bringing up all of these kumbaya easy parenting situations. They aren't all easy lessons like not eating too much candy. Real parenting involves realizing your child is sometimes a very tiny moronic crazy person with a death wish that needs saving from themselves, immediately. Your primary responsibility as a parent isn't your "healthy well-adjusted child" thing you keep harping on. That's a bonus, and honestly your kid is going to have so many outside influences that all the lectures in the world won't guarantee all of that. No, your first and foremost job as a parent is to get them from the crib to out of the house alive. Everything else is negotiable, and the fact that this has to be spelled out explicitly is a testament of goodness for the modern world, but if you manage to raise your child where they're not crippled, maimed, or killed you can be reasonably assured that in adulthood they're unlikely to be much more dysfunctional than any other person of their tax bracket.

If you really want to make your child better? Be rich. Never, ever, be poor. Spanking doesn't even enter into it. Your kid's economic circumstances (and possibly minority status, depending on where you are) are probably more informative than any "abuse" that doesn't involve significant relationships with child services or the police somehow.

JDacapo, isn't forcing someone to do a lot of what they wanted to do in the first place a bit against the purpose? What if you ended up really liking the show? Then that method wouldn't exactly have worked, would it?

I mean, if someone wanted to make me hate radishes, they could force-feed them to me and I'd start hating them almost immediately. However, if they wanted me to start hating my favorite TV show, then I would have to watch the entire series 3-4 times before it started getting boring, and that's a lot of episodes... I've eaten chocolate until I almost puked, up to several times, but I still love chocolate.

Suffice to say, I don't believe that "cure" works very well. Some things you just can't wean people off by 'force-feeding' it to them, and it goes against the purpose.

Mistermook, of course you can't teach kids every single consequence of every single action. That would be impossible. But you can teach them the principle of there being consequences for every action. And that's something you can teach them whether your family has brim-full bank accounts, or your family live on the streets. As for the rest of what you said, I'm not entirely sure it had anything to do with what I've said at all. In my opinion it's better to have some ideals to strive for, than to not have a single clue how you want to raise your future kids. At least you'll have some idea of what your goals as a parent will be. The kids you raise probably won't perfect no matter how you try to raise them, but at least you can say you've tried your best. One thing I do know is that I'll never sink so low as to hit/slap/spank my kids, for any reason. I'd rather try every other method a hundred times over.

Also, the "tiny moronic death-wish" phase tends to calm down a little when the kid is old enough to figure out that stuff hurts if you run straight at it or fall from it, and that's also around the time when they're starting to get old enough to stuff some sense into their brains. Also called learning by doing. Tripping and falling in a safe enough environment will eventually teach them to be careful, so they're ready to run loose in bigger and more dangerous environments. You can't protect them forever, but you can teach them to think, so they don't easily get into the kind of dangerous situations that would lead to a casket.

You can't always choose your economic situations (unfortunately), but you can choose how to raise your kids in the best way under the circumstances your family is in.

I guess I'm pretty old school in that way. That's how parents used to often discipline kids they caught drinking beer, smoking or doing other things they disapproved of. The beer? That would probably not be kosher today. However, with cigarettes, that was even shown in a Calvin & Hobbes comic, where Calvin's mom gave him a cigarette to try. One drag and he wondered why cigarettes were so hard to quit.

JDacapo, you keep mentioning all these situations where parents hurt kids for their own good as if it's normal or necessary. I get that you were brought up in that environment and so that is your normal, but you need to understand that children don't need to be scared or hurt to teach them a lesson.

You would have been a good person even if your parents didn't do what they did to you.

And you could end up a bad person in spite of all the talking in the world too, right? You guys don't imagine that by drawing some line in the sand you're creating a situation where a kid isn't going to turn out to be just as terrible as any other human being, right? I'm getting this vibe where you're all "if I just talk to all these children I don't have yet, I will erase a quarter million years of evolution and instinctual assholery! BEHOLD MY WORDS ARE PERFECTION!"

Which doesn't even address the fact that words can be just as harmful or worse than physical interactions. You know, the folks who grow up completely fucked up from all of the neurosis of bad communication as opposed to "Well, I got spanked once. But it didn't leave a mark, so..."

Simbalena, thank you for your kind words, but believe me, I was a real bitch as a kid. I did lots of things that endangered myself and others, and nowadays I'm glad that my parents cared enough to correct me in the ways they knew how. They were old school, but I know they loved me and that they still do. They weren't perfect, as they didn't really teach me to think, but rather to follow directions like a computer. Still, the correction they gave taught me to respect others and to not be a bitch. They also prepared me for the real world, where one mistake could land someone in trouble with the law or even in a casket in an instant. When I read the article "Five Parental Dick Moves You Hate (until you become one)" it made me realize more that my parents were doing this to help, not harm me.

I'm not a Mother, but I have a lot of experience in taking care of kids of all ages. I have learned that timeout, taking things away, not allowing treats are just as effective-if not more effective- than spanking. There was a two year old little girl I used to keep, and if a stranger ever came up outside the door/on the porch when I put her in timeout, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if they thought I was beating her to death and called the cops. However, I think swatting hands (only hard enough to let them know something is wrong) is okay, especially when they are too young to understand timeout, etc.

I think it's way too easy to go overboard when spanking/paddling. My sixth grade teacher left a bruise on a few different boys when he paddled them. I was spanked with a switch up and down my bare legs as a child (which really hurts) and had red marks/welts all over my legs. I also remember hearing someone say it's not a big deal to leave a bruise on a child, because it will heal. Also people have said if a child bites you, bite them back to teach them not to do so.

One more, someone I know said, "Don't spank a child just to hurt their feelings, spank the hard enough to hurt them." I do not agree with that at all. Teachers in my elementary/junior high (it was all one very small school) did paddle students. However, the my sixth grade teacher is the ONLY one who intentionally paddled hard enough to hurt. The others paddled just hard enough to hurt feelings in order to let the students know they did wrong. I'm not sure if thats worded exactly right, but I think you can get what I mean.

Well I think it's just great that all you folks without kids are such experts at raising them, given how much experience you've got on the subject. I've watched a lot of documentaries on biology, not to mention all the porn, so don't think I'm not going to chime in on having a vagina now that I can wave at that and go "it's just as good as the actual thing." Who knew that all those old conservatives were right? You don't actually have to have one to know what's best for one.

I know it's easy to go overboard. I think you have to be dominant, not aggressive. Do it like the dog-whisperer maybe. Or maybe I just like that "Tsst!" episode of South Park. I mean, watch that episode sometime and see what good all the 'talking about feelings' did for Cartman.

I had been spanked 5 times in life by my dad and it was more reprimanding than abuse.

If you're talking of beatings, I lack the pronounced psychological maladjustment and blurred vision that could arise from prolonged beating.

I had been spanked 5 times in life by my dad and it was more reprimanding than abuse.

If you're talking of beatings, I lack the pronounced psychological maladjustment and blurred vision that could arise from prolonged beating.

Eh why the double post?

I clicked "Agree" and "Love" for this. There is a HUGE difference in asking kids to do something for you or someone else every now and then and making them do everything all the time. A guy my parents work with's wife/girlfriend (not sure what she is) is HORRIBLE to the guy's twelve year old son, has been for years. She makes the poor child do EVERYTHING around the house, even sleeps on a cot in the barn's kitchen and leaves him to sleep on the cold, hard floor. She is horrible. She is not teaching the boy anything. She won't even let the boy sit next to his dad on the couch, and all kinds of horrible stuff.

If I ever got a call saying my kid/s (if I ever have any) was bullying and/or breaking the law (no matter how to what extent) they would be grounded for no less than a month. Obviously, I have a zero tolerance policy for both.

I do think that true respect has to be earned. However, I think kids and adults should be polite and not hateful toward others.

It's a bot who's parents didn't raise it not to talk back.

That's just horrible that the chick is doing that to his son. Why can't he just make her stop or have her move out? That is completely INSANE! Someone needs to flippin' call the Social Worker. Another reason why I'm gaining some respect for the Sims Social Worker - she may be overzealous, but at least she doesn't let kids suffer, and they can't go on this 'my parents are molestering me' bullcrap.

And thank you for those nice words. I know I'm quite oldschool, but I think all kids have it in them to be better. They just need to be trained to be good people.

Whereas I accept that all kids also have it inside them to be vicious, evil human monsters despite all the training in the world. Therefore, make the best decisions you can at the time and don't stress about it too much. You are not the single input into your child. As long as you don't screw up too badly one way or another everything will likely turn out utterly average - slightly dysfunctional and broken, but capable of holding down a terrible job and occasionally hating you despite all the best efforts in the world or what form those efforts come by. And they'll probably love you still and you'll probably be impressed sometimes regardless, and everything as far as the world is concerned will all work out fine. Try to get them to adulthood with all the parts in the same place as you got them with, so someone might wipe your ass when you're 90.

Yay, welcome to parenthood.

Lemme guess... you've had experience in that?

I think kids do have the potential to be vicious monsters. It all depends on which dog you encourage them to feed. Certain methods of punishment, like corporal punishment, should be accepted when parents administer them. I mean, what good does it do to take a kid from parents who spank him, only to put him into a foster home where the parents maybe give him shabby, hand-me-down clothes and using the stipend to buy stuff for themselves and any biological children they have? I think in this case, the CPS might be doing the children more harm than good by taking them from a functional family and placing them with strangers who are only fostering kids for the money they get.

I haven't clicked "love" or "agree" yet, but will after I post this. You are 100% right about that woman, I didn't even tell the worst thing. The nicest thing I can say about the Father is that he doesn't care. Social Services around here isn't very effective. They call to warn parents that they're coming and won't take any action of the house is clean, there is food, and if the kids appear well cared for on the surface.

I also agree about kids being taught to be good people. I know kids that I am terrified of what they will become if something doesn't change RIGHT NOW. They have never been taught to behave and other stuff.

Oh, it gets a lot worse that that.