f13.net

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/22/Southpinellas/Video_shows_police_ha.shtml

Two video links are on the right hand side.  This just shows the utter emasculation and fagtardery of the current educational system.  This kid needed to be SPANKED until her behind was raw by the teacher in the very first instance.  Its all this BS nonsense about not being able to touch kids that spawns terrors like this.  I remember even when I was young at my tiny, rural public school that teachers even grabbing a kid on both arms and dragging them into a corner or the principle's office or a closet did wonders for their behavior.  I saw kids even get hit in high school.  And did anyone sue?  No, if you went home and whined to your parents that you were disciplined they would say "good, if you were misbehaving you deserved it".

An ounce of prevention at an early age is worth a pound of cure.  I know that vice principal and teacher meant well, but all their effete simpering in telling the kid "you have to make good choices" and "you have no right to hit me" does more damage to kids than new laws or more funding can ever cure.   

The irony is thick with this one.

I'm all for more (justified) child abuse.

A couple weak smacks upside the head of a young child fixes any and all problems right quick.

On a personal level, I think the kid needs a good spanking.  The child clearly understands authority when it's presented in the form of police; she ought to have a similar respect when it's in the form of the principal.

On a professional level, I understand why they did what they did; I train my wife's employees in similar techniques.  We teach physical restraint as well, however, for those times when it's called for.

Having said that, while I don't see anything improper with the methods they used, I think they let it go on far too long.  I would have called the principal and escorted the little terror to the office within (at most) a couple of minutes and let the principal work on the problem there, up to and including the police if need be.

And don't let the kid back in school until the parent provides proof they've done something about the discipline issue.

What was the job of your wife again ?

This is completely and totally unacceptable behaviour in any environment.

The mother needs to pay for all of the items that were destroyed, publically apologize for the actions of her child to the parents of the entire class, publically apologize to the teachers and principals, and be required to place her child under pyschological evaluation.

She also needs to be required by law to attend parenting classes, and her child should not be allowed in any public education payed for by taxpayers until she has been evaluated as being able to interact normally with society.

This is the type of kid that 2 years from now, will be carrying a knife or a gun and kill people unless she is straightened out RIGHT now. Arrest was too good for her--her parents need to spend at least a night in jail for the actions of their child.

Spanking probably is far from an optimal 'solution', but it does work in the immediate short term in terms of coopting a form of obedience.

Models aggression as conflict resolution, though, so as a means of punishment, i don't reccomend it.

Would make things way simpler for the school, though.

Just to add insult to injury the entire Tampa area news medias only concern with those videos is that the police put hand-cuffs on the kid.  Meh, I watched the videos, they only used just enough force as neccessary to keep the child from hurting herself.

The editorials are making statments about how this is going to be how the world views american police as brutal thugs that abuse children.  I'm thinking more people need to have been beat as children because they have no concept of what the term brutality means.

The kid trashes a room and the mother takes her side. Grats on parenting there. Let me guess, why wasn't daddy available for comment? 10 to 1 says because he's in another state or in the state pen.

Maybe the little girl was acting out at school because she knows her ass won't get kicked there. My household was a total dictatorship when I was a kid, and the only time I ever acted out was at school. Granted, I never woulda acted like that little girl, because I knew I would've been walking funny for a week if I tried to pull any of that shit. One time during parent-teacher conferences the teacher showed her "good" and "bad" behavior chart. When my dad saw all the bad marks, I knew I was in trouble. But he first took my side and harshly criticized the teacher for making a spectacle of kids who were acting up. Then he took me home and I got my spanking.

The fact that the girl knew she was in trouble only when the cops came is startling at best. But I never saw a better candidate for Ritalin in my whole fucking life.

Edit: hitting kids only serves the purpose of making them fear the punisher. Fear spawns hate, hate spawns more violence. Even though I turned out fairly okay having grown up getting hit when I fucked up, I actually question my own future ability to parent sometimes, because my first instinct is to hit a kid throwing a tantrum (I don't have kids).

Screw that. Teachers in some schools should be allowed to have tranquilizer dart guns with specially made little-kiddy-darts.

So - the kid destroys property. Gets arrested.

Action...Consequece. Seems like a good lesson to me.

Everyone (who's taken Psych 101) knows that the most effective way to get someone (or a pigeon) to do something you want is to reward them. And withholding rewards is actually more effective than administering punishment. That little girl prolly doesn't have much left to take away but her freedom. It makes me sad, but reinforces my belief in my own fucked-up, Orwellian law. People should be put on manditory sterilization until they can prove they're fit to parent.

Edit: typo

Problem with children that reach this stage is that they have learned that this kind of behavior is what earns them what they want.  Fuss enough, and people will give you whatever to shut you up.  Coupled with timeouts and instruction, spankings can be a good way to establish authority.  Unfortunately, too many parents think swatting at a behind whenever you get upset is good parenting. 

That's because people reward undesirable behavior by caving whenever the kid throws a tantrum. That always infuriates me. I know! Offer Timmy a cookie whenever he starts kicking and screaming in the grocery store! That'll be SURE and deter him from doing it again!

A good parent should be able to establish authority without falling back on their obvious physical superiority. Being the hand that giveth and the hand that taketh away should suffice if it's done from the get-go.

Yes.  There are very few instances where phsyical punishment is warranted, the only spanking my son has received was after he was told not to do something dangerous (this case play at the top of the stairs) and only after first a stern verbal warning and time out.  He started playing in the same spot again about thirty minutes later and earned his first spanking, this was almost a year ago now (he is four and a half).  Reward for good behavior and denial for bad.  It works.

I'm curious how many people on here have kids.

You just said the same thing she did. The kid thows a hissy fit. Gets what they want. Positive reenforcement for teh win!

I don't know what the school has in the way of rewards that can be withheld, except maybe recess.  Been a long time since I was in the public educational system.

I do understand behavior support.  Regardless, there are umpteen other kids in the classroom.  While it's good that the kids see the teacher resolving conflict through non-physical, least-restrictive means, it's inappropriate to have the child disrupt the class for that long.  Kids seeing the teacher acting civilized and that nobody is getting hurt is good; kids seeing teacher be ineffective is bad.  It damages the relationship between the teacher and the children.  Especially with kids, who do require limits in their life to feel safe.  Children like to know where their boundaries are.  They test them, but they need them and ultimately feel better for having them.

At some point in your behavioral crisis management, you have to quit giving options and set some limits instead, and lay out the consequences if those limits are not heeded.  

Sometimes those consequences do involve the police.  My wife has had to have more than one of the developmentally disabled folks she works with arrested for things like assaulting a staff member--not because she wanted to or the staff member wanted to, but because it was the inevitable consequence society imposes on things like assault, and it's necessary for them to learn that.

That is fucking atrocious. Just an absolute insanity.

You can find blame in this scenario in one fucking place. This child's fucking mother is a complete waste of fucking space whose uterus should be scraped out and left on the side of the road with a "No entry" sign on it. She is obviously an unfit parent.

The child had absolute no respect for authority. None. Had I screamed at a teacher "NO!" once when I was that age, my mother AND father would have tanned my hide. The teachers were allowed to paddle me then. Not only would my parents have spanked me (not beat, spanked, there is a difference), but I'd have had a lot of other consequences to deal with that did not involve physical punishment. More chores, restriction on play time, early bed times. Had I done this bullshit, I'd probably have been sent to military school.

The child didn't fear authority, and didn't respect authority, and that's solely on the parent(s). The mother has not only not instilled any respect on the child, it appears she has actively rewarded this kind of "acting out" behaviour. If it were me as the head of the school board, I wouldn't let that little shit anywhere near any of the public school's in my district, nor any other children of this fucktard parent. Let the bitch pay for private schooling. Make HER pay since she obviously doesn't want the kid to have any consequences.

The fact that she's fucking suing the police for restraining the kid is just priceless. Would she rather the police just hand her a fucking baton or a gun and let her have her way with that too? Fucking ridiculous.

I want to first say that I would -never- advocate violence against a child but on that same token, I would never tolerate violence -from-a child either. That was a disgustingly sickening video of parental abuse and neglect, to me that signals unbelievable problems at home stemming from the mother and/or the father, or the lifestyle in which the child is brought up in. And if not that, then a very severe behavioral problem that needs to be addressed specifically, targeted and quarantined. This child is under developed and in no way deserves to be around other children or in any place that does not have restraints and doctors.

That child is beast like. In every fashion. Beating at the teacher like that and wrecking walls.

I never advocated spanking in the classroom -  Until now.


Oh and by the way, about the Tranquilizer Dart. I completely agree with that. All teachers should be certified and allowed to use physical restraint and/or method of tranquilizing a dangerous student if the correct criteria is met and it is extreme. If my child starts beating you as a teacher. you have the right to restrain him or her in the best and safest way you see fit and laws allow.  In no instance would my child -ever- be allowed to hit another teacher and/or student OR act in the way this little demon spawn did.

I do.


Not quite.  She stated excluding negative reinforcement (spanking, etc) is the way to go.  I stated my preference to included it as part of overall discipline, which includes positive reinforcement.  It's not a disagreement whether positive reinforcement should be a factor (and IMO, even a dominant one), just whether negative reinforcement should play any role.

On a side note, I have an uncle and his wife who are both teachers.  They have both stated their feelings that teachers should have the option to neuter some of the children they teach.  The statements are usually only half-jest.

Actually, I stated that witholding positive enforcement (e.g., no dessert) is more effective than inducing negative consequences (e.g., spanking). But positive reinforcement of desirable behavior is the most effective of all tactics. In the case of brats throwing tantrums, many parents inadvertently reward the tantrum by giving in.

Let's all go out for ice cream! Yay!

You are making a tacit assumption here that the child understands not only cause and effect (which they probably should due to simple evolution, but not always), but that the parent knows how to demonstrate the cause and effect, and the reward as well.

And from a pure behaviour modification standpoint, positive reinforcement only works when the reward is something that the subject wants more than they want to perform the action itself...just look at doing a shit job that pays $75 an hour...it's easy to say that "sure, I'd live underneath a latrine and shovel shit as it falls for $500 an hour", but I'd venture to guess not for very long...

Physical restraint is dangerous with children, btw, especially small children (under about age 5.)  No restraint is perfectly safe, even when done correctly--and it's real hard to do it properly on a child.  It's also fucking annoying to deal with afterwards, since federal law requires monitoring of the child for the next 24 hours in case of delayed physical consequences of the restraint.

That child, left undisciplined, will become unsafe to fellow students and staff.

I didn't watch the entire video, but didn't someone say the child physically attacked the teacher? At that point (and yes, I know there are considerations, but still) it's assault by a minor, and the teacher has the right to defend themselves with reasonable force--obviously, the force needs to be quite reasonable since it's a 5 year old, but you don't give up your own rights by being a teacher if you are assaulted.

And I have to agree as well with someone that noted that the only "public" reaction (other than here) has been against the cops, not the parent: I still feel the parent needs to go to jail, or at a minimum no longer be granted the rights of public schooling--that's OUR money that kid is taking up.

I'm not really making an assumption so much as I am pointing out that you can get a pigeon to do a backflip if you give the fucker a food pellet. That's why I brought up the classical psychology experiments in which such feats were accomplished. Yes, the reward has to be worth it, but a candy or video is usually enough. These are kids, remember? The kid doesn't necessarily need to already understand the cause-and-effect relationship; this is what they're supposed to be being taught by the parent. A kid that touches a stove, gets burned, and doesn't put two and two together to figure out that stoves mean pain is probably autistic or profoundly retarded.

/sarcasm

No - thats what the cops are for VDL....

Not arguing with that, but it implies that the parent can actually show the kid "do the right thing, you'll be treated right". Obviously it seems that the parent can't do that, or the kid can't understand it!

Behaviour modification isn't an easy thing, and it doesn't sound like the parent in this case is particularly suited to be able to do it.

Frankly if one scary hour in police handcuffs convinces this kid that wrecking class rooms and punching at teachers is bad I am thinking it is a good lesson. I have to say that the teacher in the picture is patient beyond my feeble comprehension and needs a cookie or a stiff glass of vodka for putting up with that behavior and using the schools guidelines to try and deal with the issue as well as she did.

From my reading of the link and other articles she followed through exactally what she is permitted to do as well as humanly possible. 

If the handcuffing shocks the child into realizing that she was being very bad without actually harming her in anyway I could not fault the cops for it.

kaid

Yeah, I think the one thing we can all safely assume is that the parent in this case has not made any attempt to do any parenting. That kid is feral. But for most functional humans, saying "if you're good when we're in the store you can pick out a candy bar" is sufficient. By the time a kid is old enough to start throwing tantrums, they're old enough to be talked to and/or reasoned with (to an extent).

Here's my problem with the "No negative reinforcement" philosophy. It is in total and complete opposition to the way the world works once the child leaves the protection of childhood. Total. The world is a harsh bitch. She will rip out your guts and show them to you just because she can, whether you are acting positively or negatively. When you act negatively, often she responds with almost devestating negative force.

A child that has never seen negative consequences for his actions does not understand how the world works. He does not understand that the world is not just HIS oyster, but everyone's oyster. The child is ill-equipped to deal with being told no, with being rejected. Negative consequences are not just removing positive things, i.e. removing the video, withholding the favorite snack. Because those really only work when it's shown that that is just the first step. If that's the ONLY negative reinforcement the child gets, he quickly learns to do without for the momentary joy of doing whatever it is he wanted to do that was bad in the first place. Child's minds don't usually work on the long view, only the transitory short view. There has to be levels, because sometimes just withholding the positive will only encourage the child to act up further. You've already removed the only control method you have, you can't escalate it. They know it can't get worse than it is.

But with the negative reinforcement of spankings, you CAN escalate it. It should be the last resort. Always. But since it's never a pleasant thing, never a thing the child wants, it should be used when called for, or it should at least be a bargaining chip. It should be the ultimate show that, "While you are a free will and I love you, you will RESPECT MY AUTHORITY." Without that authority at the base of everything, what good are other authority figures? If you don't respect that your home will be one filled with punishment if you act up, neither school or eventually jail will be something the child fears or respects as a punishment.

Children need rules, and they need to learn that not everything comes their way. And they need to learn that there are others with authority over them, the alpha and omega of which are the parents.

Restraint is usually not your best option, especially when it's a small child.  When I say "unsafe", I mean "risk of death", to the tune of approximately 150 people per year.

Weigh your options, there's other methods, so don't go there if there's any other means.


You can defend yourself without ever restraining anyone. It would be a much simpler, safer and more matter to herd the child to another location where they can't disrupt class or endanger anyone else. 

To a padded cell, perhaps?

I used to nanny this one 3-year old who actually made me question my own ability to parent. This kid was completely gifted at identifying and pressing all buttons you have (he did this to the day care teachers too, not just me). One time he started trying to physically hurt his infant sister. His mom was there this time, so I just observed. She went through all of the "healthy parenting" motions, using a quiet, yet stern voice, trying to ask him why he was upset, threatened to not let him watch his video, threatened to have nap time early, etc. but nothing would deter him. He started trying to hit the baby, and wouldn't stop until his mom threw him onto the couch and SAT on him until he was too exhausted to keep fighting. Then she took him to his room and administered the rest of the punishments that she'd threatened (no privileges). She used physical force to restrain him, rather than to hurt him, and I totally support that. I, personally, wanted to bludgeon the little fucker, but this is why I have no children.

Edit: btw, a pillow over the face doesn't really count as a restraint, although it's often tempting.  :wink:

I don't disagree with you completely, however, there is a time/age consideration for this sort of thing.

Take sexuality as a perfect example.  The world is full of sexuality.  The society here (In America) is, granted, totally fucked up...but taking that for granted:  Society here considers, say, 12/13 too young to be having sex.  I realize that in other parts of the world this is normal/natural, but bear with me here...

A child who is over exposed to sexual content/behaviour prior to a certain age (I believe developmentally it is pre-8 years of age) has an exponentially higher percentage chance of becoming sexually active at an earlier age.  Negative reinforcement through spankings has shown to increase the same violent tendencies (not necessarily criminally violent, but violent in the sense of beating on other children, cruelty or misbehaviour to animals, etc etc) in the same age range of children.  So while negative reinforcement may work in the short term, it has far reaching consequences beyond the moment.  Taking care NOT to overexpose the child to this sort of behaviour can stop the proclivity for that sort of behaviour in teenage children, when that sort of behaviour becomes more destructive.

What Astorax says rings true. My brother and I received spankings for misbehavior when we were kids, but mostly the punishment seemed overboard for whatever it was we did. We also fought a lot, using our fists, not just with each other but with neighbor kids, too. Sometimes after receiving a spanking we woud literally troll the neighborhood for some kid to wail on. We're only two years apart, so eventually this escalated into some real violence, basically until I hit puberty and became a "woman" (my dad always stressed it's not okay to hit women). I grew out of it, but my brother still has a tendency to put up fists when he's pissed off at someone, and if not for his newborn son, would probably still be getting into street brawls today. And I am still a bit scared of how he'll deal with the issue of spanking when his baby gets old enough to be defiant.

Some thoughts.  If the child was exposed in utero to drugs, then generally by the age of four/five they will begin showing signs of behavior similar to the video.  Don't know from what little information we have at this point if that parallel can be drawn.  As SuperPoptart pointed out, at the very least the child's home life should have a serious harsh light of day shined on it.  The parental responsability around this case is frightening.

Haemish, I agree with alot of what you said, but I have also seen children raised where no loud voice or threat of physical intimidation was involved and those children were amazingly well behaved and grew up to be amazing young adults.  Of course, TV was not what I would say overly prevelant in those kids' worldview, but the fact you could be at a gathering of 30 or so with zero problems is just amazing.  The main facet here is our culture is slowly moving to letting non-family members do the child raising.  I hate that my son is in day care for 9 hours a day.  Only consolation I have is I got my homework done and feel good about the school / care facility he spends his week days at...

This of course comes down to parental responsibility, like you said.  I personally am an example of a child that was raised without ever having been touched physically in disciplinary situations despite behaving rather atrociously at times (all kids do).  But even the worst of scenarios can be taken care of without physical discipline in the form of spankings or yelling as long as the parent is patient and level-headed enough to deal with the situation.  It's EASIER to haul off and spank the kid and make them fear that repurcussion.  It requires less thought, forethought, planning and...well, for lack of a better word, cunning.  Both are effective in the short term, there's no question about that.

It's the PARENT's responsibility to teach their child when something is or isn't appropriate behaviour.  Television can be horrifically destructive to this as most of what our culture deems 'entertainment' is counter-intuitive to how we OUGHT to be behaving.  Having parents reinforce a lot of this (the mother suing someone for trying to impose some discipline on their child) only makes matters worse.  I question this mother's right to be a mother at all given that they're clearly teaching their child that destructive behaviour is acceptable.

If there were a fair and decent way to determine fitness to be a parent I'd be all for enforced sterilization until such requirements were met.  Unfortunately, given that those in power are rarely equipped to make such distinctions, such a law would never be acceptable to anyone completely IMO.

I thought that perhaps this was a crackbaby issue, but if the mother has the audacity (or clarity of thought?) to threaten litigation, it didn't seem likely. Unless the mom is adoptive, as some people do with children of drug-addicted mothers.


There clearly isn't a way that doesn't border on eugenics, hence I called this (truly fantastic) idea Orwellian. Even it didn't border on eugenicist, someone will always find fault with the eligibility criteria and/or evaluation methods. 'Fair and decent' doesn't exist in this world, or else we'd all be Socialists.

..and if you put a pillow over their face before you punch 'em, it doesn't leave so many telltale marks! :)  j/k  I've worked with folks with mental illness and developmental disabilities, and I have a two-year old child.  Believe you me, I'm well acquainted with the wish to be able to telepathically explode someone's head at times...

Padded cell is a bit extreme; I'm just saying moving them to a spot where they can't hurt someone else is easier, safer and all-around better than keeping them in the classroom and using physical force there to prevent others from getting hurt.  I've put people in restraint, and you wind up just as exhausted as the person you're holding.  But, sometimes ya just gots ta do it.

I understand holding the child to keep them from hitting the baby; positives outweighing the negatives there.  For the record, though...restraint by sitting on someone who's down?  Big cause of deaths like the ones I mentioned.  Absolutely not recommended as a method, folks. (I wish I could give one that is, but there's no way to properly teach it via internet message board; the legal and liability issues are prohibitive.)

Also a good way to spoil a child.  It's more like "you are expected to be good in the store; you lose your privledges and/or get punnished if not".  Otherwise, next thing you know the child feels entitled to a candy bar every time they enter a store.  Cut/paste that sense of entitlement to every other occation to which they are bribed for good behavior.  I mean, I got to work ontime this morning, and nobody gave me a cookie :(

At some point, rewards must give way to expectation, and expectations give way to punnishemnt for failure to comply.

Yes, true, however! The classic psychology also say that rewards are at maximum efficacy when they are not given every time, but just sometimes. This is why gambling is so addictive. Of course, you can't tell a kid he'll get a candy bar then not give him one, but if you do it once in awhile, you can see results. If you come to work on time today, that's what you're supposed to do, no cookie. If you always come in on time, every day, don't you kinda expect a cookie on review day? I mean, you know you could get away with a little tardiness every once and awhile, so do you do it? Or do you actually make a point of always being on time? And if you do come in on time every day, don't you kinda hope you'll get rewarded for it?

That's the reason why adulthood is a drag. No one ever says, "good job", they only tell you when you screw up. Or sometimes, they don't even tell you that, you just find out you're not up to snuff when they let you go, or pass you up for the promotion, or whatever.

The bribery thing isn't really the point I was trying to get across. Keep kids happy, duh, but not at all costs. But happy kids are usually good kids.

While i normally stay well away from pseudo-political and/or social discussions on teh intarnets, i feel that i have to chime in on this occasion. Not having seen the video (dial-up ftw!) something Roac said has struck me as unusual. Forgive me if i read it out of context, but when someone says "you are expected to be good in the store; you lose your privledges and/or get punnished if not", the thing that stands out immediately in my mind is... why is the child expected to be good? Should not the child consider what we define as "being good" a normal state of existance. Because it seems to me that when the child has to be told to "be good in situation x" there is a definite problem with the parenting and the situation needs (or needed to be) addressed well before the punishment/reward stage.

 - meg

"Be good" is shorthand for "don't be too rambunctious".  There are times when it's okay to run around and yell (at the park), and times when it's not (at the store).

oic. Hrm, well, maybe it was just the way i was brought up - never did see the need to run around going spastic at the playground.

 - meg

It's not even a question of "going spastic" - the whole point of going to the playground is to get some exercise so you don't turn into Jabba the Hutt by the age of ten from sitting on your ass all day.  Didn't you ever play tag with other kids?  Or climb on things?  These are both very healthy playground activities that are considered inappropriate in the supermarket.   :wink:

Well, you see i grew up in Russia. We played tag, of a sort. With bricks. A sort-of "brick tag" if you will. And i also broke quite a few bodyparts climbing up things (and subsequently falling off).

Of course, we also did not have supermarkets, so that may rule out certain behavioural qwerks.

What i meant to say was that having seen plenty of examples here in Australia of kids in the supermarket going absolutely batshit crazy because mommy would not give them a candy bar does not really relate to physical exercise. I see plenty of kids all around on friday afternoons, running around in their football jerseys, kicking soccer balls and they all seem quite happy. But it seems odd to me, to transplant this behaviour to the supermarket. Physical activity is one thing (and something kids these days sorely need to have imposed on them), but having a child throw a tantrum because they don't get what they want seems and entirely different matter.

It seems to me that most kids actively enjoy kicking a ball (and/or whatever), whereas the issue of candy bars is mostly a thing of discipline. This then carries over to the playing of tag in the supermarket; a child needs to be made aware of what a supermarket is for, not through a "reward-punishment" system, but by being made to understand that a supermarket is where you buy things. If a child has to be punished because they misbehave in a supermarket then there is something already wrong with it (the child, not the supermarket).

Or, at least, this was the way i was brought up.

 - meg

Most kids under the age of 3 don't have their abstract thought processes well developed enough to connect the words "when we go to the supermarket, don't run around" to the reality of actually being at the supermarket and not running around.  Even the most angelic child will need to learn via clarification and correction now and then - in fact, many adults are the same way (ask anyone who's tried to enforce a work process - most people will mess up a few times and need to be reminded of what they're supposed to be doing).

Of course, there's a world of difference between that and yelling because you're not getting a candy bar.  Any kid who yells to get his/her way is being a little shit regardless of where they're doing the yelling, and they're probably doing it because at some point the parent caved in to the yelling and taught the kid that yelling is an effective way of getting candy.

Oh i most certainly agree that clarification is the way to go, but it just seemed to me that in the example given, the correction of a child's behaviour through "bribery"was definitely not the correct approach. But taking your suggestion of the work process further, can it really be considered the fault of the employees if the person supervising said work-process needs to clarify something? Or are we simply going round and round a rhetorical chicken-and-egg question of what is at fault: the bad instructions or the stupidity of the worker/child.

Which of course leads right back to the issue of parents who should have been shaved, sterilized and destroyed rather than being allowed to have kids.



On the other hand, this Lacuna Coil song is really, really good...

 - meg

I just can't relate to any of this.  In grade school I got the strap 3 times - and I would say it was a disincentive.  I don't know how teachers - or even parents - cope today.

Drugs...lots of drugs (the legally prescribed kind).

And it works because they expect it.  The pigeon, rat, or whatever will click the bar nonstop because it expects a reward.  You are still back to the situation of having a child having learned "behave to get a cookie".  And they will look to their reward-dispenser to get it.  And who might that be?  Oh, one more loop - what might the consequences be of a 3 year old, who is slightly smarter than a pigeon, and who might figure out how to manipulate the system?  Because kids never do that.

I dunno, just dunno--but if you start thinking about the way our society has gone the last 25 years, and then think back to when all this "positive glowy goodness in raising your kids" all started, there just seems to be some sort of temporal causation here.

I can't even tell if things are -exactly- the same as they were 40 years ago, and it's just our media society that makes you know about it more, or if it's really getting as bad as it seems to be, but shit is going downhill FAST, and maybe, just maybe, it's a bit of "spare the rod, spoil the child".

Someone from here I think quoted, "Children are barbarians that need civilization beat into them"--and as rough as that sounds, it's true--civilization, societal contribuatory existence, and simply being nice aren't biological drives--they are almost exclusively learned behaviours, and not easy (or fun) ones to learn, as putting others (family, tribe, nation, whatever) "above" our own personal needs adds a completely new dimension to evolution.

I'd like to believe all the current thinking regarding how to raise a child, and I'd also like to think that we as human beings would respond better to this type of positive upbringing as opposed to negative reinforcement, but damn folks...9 year olds are killing each other, and 11 year olds are robbing banks and shit. That's not a sign of a healty society or species.

Sheesh, bring back corporate punishment as soon as possible i think.

Kids heal quickly for a reason.

Behave or you'll have to work at WalMart!

Enron ftw?

You are absolutely right.  If at all possible the child should be removed from the classroom and placed in a room, by themselves (with a teacher, don't be foolish) so they can scream to their hearts content and not disrupt the class.  The problem being, at least in my county/district that laws have been passed that a classroom of students cannot, under any circumstances be left unattended, at anytime.  Therefore another teacher must come in to deal with the problem.  Stacked on top of this is the fact that most states are suffering under a lack of funding for teachers, and schools in general.  Which means most teachers are completely on their own in the classroom.  If a problem arises from a student that teacher must deal with the problem in front of the entire class, leading to the "two is a conversation, three is an audience" syndrome.

Wow, can't tell I went to public skoolz, eh?  I meant to include "productive" in there...


Office staff--principal, vice principal; hell, get the secretary to do it.  I know they're busy too, but they're the only backup the teacher's got these days.  When I went to school, the teacher would/could leave us alone for a few minutes if they needed to.  Which lead to much misbehavior for those few minutes, until the lookout told us the teacher was returning.  Not that we ever fooled the teacher, but we were young and stupid and thought we could...

You know, I notice that when someone mentions spankings, people tend to have bad associations, as if I'm advocating hauling off and smacking a kid the minute they get bad. If you have to resort to this type of immediate violence, you have already failed.

In my entire childhood (up through about age 10), I got spanked maybe 5 times. I wasn't a devil child, but I had a temper and a spoiled attitude and I threw my temper tantrums. I never got anything for the tantrum except a runny nose from crying and a hoarse throat. And if I threw my tantrum and continued to act up, or talked back to my parents, I got the stern, "You're overloading your ass," from my father. That tone of voice, with that phraseolgy let me instantly know, I'd exhausted all my slack. The next one was going to end up in a spanking, followed by being sent to my room without desert or tv for the rest of the night. The spankings weren't hard, or instantaneous; I got a chance to think about them, to dread them. They were completely restrained, but they still hurt, and afterwards, I got a hug and the rest of my punishment.

That's what I mean. Just belting a kid does no good, and probably a lot of harm. You have to be methodical and consistent in punishment. Violence is not there just for violence's sake, or for fear, but as a logical progression of authority being exercised. The wait for the spanking was a hundred times worse than the actual spanking.

The reason the negative association is there, is because 99% of the time, it's NOT what you're describing here.  More often that this, it's a parent getting fed up, grabbing the screaming kid, tossin' 'em over the knee, whippin the belt off and smackin the heck out of 'em.  More often than a patient controlled response, it's a knee jerk response, which more often than not isn't truly warranted.

My particular point is, that the same response would have been gotten by simply skipping the spanking, and the ensuing hug to show that the parents still love you, and go straight to the sending to the room, etc.  My parents just tossed my brother out on the front porch when he threw tantrums, and closed the door (sliding glass, they could still see him, just not hear him as well).  When he behaved like a reasonable human being again, they let him in.  The reasoning was, while under this roof, you respect us and our rules.  When he didn't, they put him on the porch until he would.  Worked like a charm.  Never had to lay a hand on him.

There's always alternatives to spanking, it's just not a necessary form of punishment/discipline as long as the parents are willing to get creative with the punishment.

A lot has changed that has nothing to do with society's trend to treat children better - we've been amazingly inhumane with children over human history.  Those changes were long overdue - like a lot of things people today want to change about our world it seems few are aware such laws were put in place (often in the face of decades of opposition) to minimize terrible cruelties.

The external factors today are much nastier and more pervasive - it's not that anything new is happening but what is happening is just so much more comprehensive with less room for mistakes.  Sensory overload is unprecedented.  The information communicated is unprecedentedly worldly.  It's no longer possible for middle class families to make it on one paycheck without risking financial ruin, and today's latchkey kids have much more to contend with while they're unsupervised.  Communities are rarely as cohesive as they once were - people move around, never develop attachments, don't have each other's back, and there is no willingness to intervene when it's needed.

It's easy to be a well-behaved kid when you're not so subject to the external factors.  Growing up in the 'burbs I got into a helluva lot more trouble than my wife and her two brothers did growing up on a farm.

We as adults haven't yet decided if we want a culture safe for kids, or one uninhibited for adults with childish impulses.  An awful lot of adults demand "the right" to be bad children rather than mature adults.  We see a lot of that here on f13 when we get on the FCC etc.

That said nothing excuses what we saw.  The mother in question may be pretty jammed up - holding down three jobs, sliding into bankruptcy, and no family/support network.  But any sympathy I might have had was gone when she jumped in bed with the first sleazebag ambulance chaser that came along.

That's just lousy parenting.  Doesn't mean that spanking is bad because the parent in your scenario have no clue how to be parents.  It's no better than parents who bribe their kids for behavior and spoil them to death in the process, and giving us the almost obscene sense of entitlement that too many children have.

I second Haemish, since his experience is pretty close to mine.  It was discipline with a very clear, spelled out purpose.  In my case, spankings were always for lying, and lying only; behavior issues were delt with by revoking privledges (TV, etc).  Dunno that the specific application meant as much as the framework that it was in.  What was more important, IMO, is that they had clear policies in our house, they made efforts to teach me in them, and the consequences were set.  Lying was the worst for them since it indicated utter disrespect, and something they were going to be sure to re-establish. 

Never had any desire to go beat up my sister or neighborhood kids afterward.  Neither did my sister.  Then again, we didn't get 'beat' in our home either.

Nationwide parenting tests must be given. You fail, we raise your children in a boarding facility. You can visit on the weekends. Don't breed again.

Haemish,

Like the Avatar and what you wrote.  Very well said.

Roac,

I was about polar opposite till this last post of yours.

Pococurante,

Nice read.

Paelos,

Thankfully we live in a society where we can have drastically different viewpoints.

The whole situation just makes me want to go GGGRRRRRR...  Seeing bad parenting in action makes my teeth hurt.

I'm pretty toungue-in-cheek about the situation, but I do know people that have children that should never have had them. There's no real solution to that short of a breeding liscence, and we all know that won't happen. Ah well.

If there were ever a birth control chemical with zero side effects for anyone and a simple antidote, I'd be 100% in favor of introducing it into the water supply.  My strong suspicion is that most unfit parents are people who didn't really want kids but lacked the ability to use birth control effectively.  People who actually want to be parents tend to do a better job of it.

I had an odd experience a few years back that fits in this topic, so I'm curious as to what you folks think of it:

A friend and I, both in our late 20s at the time are walking around a fairly nice shopping mall.  A lady comes walking by, with her kid in tow - wailing like an air raid siren. Full out tantrum, bloted puurple face, the works. Annoying as hell to listen to.  Basically, mom was ignoring him utterly, just going on about her shopping while we all got to try and stop the bleeding from our ears.

Without going out of our way, we walked past these two. My friend very calmly bends over towards the child, puts his finger to his mouth, and goes "shhh". Well, I quickly learned where the child got his volume from. That mom went ballistic.. ranting in my friends face about how dare he do that to her child, etc, etc. I could see my friend internally debating decking the woman, but ended up just chuckling and we moved on.

I agree with the idea of not giving in to a child's tantrums - but does that give a parent the right to let their child make life hell for everyone in a two block radius around them?

Some parents just refuse to scold their children, especially in public. When I worked at a mall bookstore, years ago, they put us in a new store, all gussied-up. It was great... except they put the kid's section right by the register. So if you worked the register, you got to hear every single spoiled, loudmouth kid in the world totally go apeshit on their parents and anyone in range. From the "I WANT!" crowd to the ones who were left with one of those "sound" books to keep them busy, we got them all. Nothing like seeing some mentally deficient little crumbsnatcher repeatedly press the same sound button over and over and over while drooling and practically sweating boogers.

But my favorite was the lady whose child pissed the floor. She calmly told us what had happened, then just left. No offer to clean it up, no apologies, just "HERE'S THE PIDDLE KBYE!"

WoW I would have asked her where she lived and then pissed on her rug.

Yea, I'm afraid to even try to relate my retail sales experiences with kids. I worked at a discount department store when I was 17, started as the janitor and worked my way up to sales (its easier to promote from within when the company doesn't offer enough pay to even get homeless people interested). So what departments do I get? Shoes and toys. I probably threw out an average of a dozen toys a night that had been mangled right through the package by some little cockmuncher who's parents believed that toy department is synonymous with daycare.

A few years later, I got a 2nd job at Christmas time working a graveyard shift at Toys-R-Us. They actually would employ a crew of six people from midnight to 8:00 am just to clean up the mess made by the neanderthalls that had gone through the store that day. I'm not talking cleaning - just putting everything back on shelves in a sensible order.

Christmas time in retail is the trauma that birthed my unending hatred of humanity.

MMOG's just refined it to a white-hot point of stabby loathing.

(http://www.zelluloid.de/images/szenen/382c6b8bd1f80.jpg)

That would be like, not cool, man. What if her rug really tied the room together?

LOL, nice, 10 points for the Big Lebowski reference. :)

When I worked in a bookstore once the kid's section was next to the register also. If kids screamed, I told them, in front of their parents, that they needed to use their indoor voices, please. If they didn't, I would ask them to leave, parents included. I would simply explain that the noise is disturbing the other customers. My boss fully supported this, as she and her partner were DINKs who hated "screechy babies", as she would call them. I'd get some dirty looks from parents, but it's the parents who have to be responsible. If kids were really good and read quietly, I would ask their parents if it was okay to give them a cookie, of which I kept a stash under the register. When the happy lil' tyke came up for a cookie, I would just say, "this is for being so nice and quiet". If everyone in this god-forsaken country kept a stash of cookies to randomly give people (especially kids) when they're doing something good, the world would be a happy place full of rainbows and unicorns and I would be gladder for it.

True dat.  It ain't enough just to tell someone when they're doing wrong (although it has to be done), you need to also let them know when they're doing something right.  Grease the wheel once in a while and it might not get squeaky.

*hands voodoolily a cookie*

Thank you for the cookie, Astorax. I needed that.

(http://www.leadtogold.com/tmp/cookie-face.jpg)

(edit) because images are hard.

This kind of stuff makes for happy memories with kids.  I can still remember the old man who treated my four-year old self every time we went into the Red Goose Shoe Store (http://search.ebay.com/red-goose-shoes).  My three brats remember such places and we often wind up shopping there so they can earn their forbidden fatgrams.

I don't take DINKs opinions on kids very seriously.  Kind of like listening to a virgin comment on sex positions - interesting less for what they say then how worked up they get speechifying. ;-)