This is the thread where we judge other people's parenting

you gave your kid a BAG OF OREOS and a juicebox for her fucking lunch

child protection is a good pretend rationale for another thread of prissy moralistic veiled bigotry

how dare they let that horrible man hack into their baby monitor!!!!

that whole story is lol

prissy moralistic veiled bigotry

(considers the source of this inspirational quote. moves on.)

“All that junk she’s buying is just loaded with sugar, too,” said Gaither, identifying with uncanny speed another critical flaw in her fellow shopper’s grocery selection. “No wonder her kids are acting out like that.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/woman-a-leading-authority-on-what-shouldnt-be-in-p,35922/

looooove being gay just so I can judge other people's parenting.

loooooove being human just so I can judge other people's parenting.

nah when you're gay the difference is couples wanna hang with you because you don't have kids stories to share

do you want some context for my tongue-in-cheek thread nakh or do you just wanna play superior

irl I don't talk to anyone about my kids, & I shun people who want to talk about those sorts of things, so I'm just treating others as I want to be treated.

my own kids are obviously the best but no one else irl needs to hear about that. online it's a different story of course, it's easy to ignore, but irl convos demand too much attention for anyone to be bored

or do you just wanna play superior

does he ever play anything else?

I have no idea, never paid attention to him

lol somehow through the onion article I got to this:
https://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/the-parenting-move-i-couldn-t-help-but-judge-192911788.html

The trend of judging chocolate milk should fucking die.

I love that *that* is the parenting move she *couldn't help but judge.* "I've held my tongue for years, but chocolate flavored drink?! I can stand it no more!"

my 7yo niece has atrocious table manners, interrupts conversation constantly, and is granted nearly every whim by by my sister. I judge in silence.

is the lego movie thread about judging people's parenting for paying to have their children marketed to or is it worse than that?

not really altho there's some of that. I don't really see how its any different from any other blockbuster in terms of marketing tbh - apart from the fact that it was pretty fun to watch and was cleverly constructed. which is not something I ever say about Hollywood blockbusters, ftr.

also in true thread spirit - parent the other day who was playing on phone while 5yo child bullied a baby I JUDGE THEE

The one that I hate (yet still sometimes do when I'm out of energy) is the half-hearted "cut it out" followed by... no follow-through.

"A diet fueled by food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry:"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/09/too-much-of-too-little/

^for the thread starter

That 'linda, listen' vid just makes me think of how many time that kid saw his dad argue with his mom. And everyone thinks its sooo funny

http://youtu.be/TP8RB7UZHKI

I drank a chocolate flavored box drink every morning when I was 5-6 and I turned out fine except for my permanent physical and mental disabilities.

i've heard that you're cute, at least

parent whose child took a shit in the shower at the public pool and left it for someone else to clean up - I JUDGE THEE

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hello-stranger-on-the-street-could-you-please-tell-me-how-to-take-care-of-my-baby

I did some LOLing.

here, I'll do some judging, too:

Jeff and I were out and about with the kid and a woman was shopping with her toddler and presumably the toddler's grandmother, and the woman picked up the kid and I don't know what happened, but the woman yelled, "OW! Molly!" then put the toddler down and said, "I am DONE WITH YOU." And the toddler cried some fat sad toddler tears and raised her arms up to her mom, who was not having it. Grandma to the rescue.

NOW I don't know what Molly did. She may have stabbed her mom in the face with an OXO Tot baby knife for like the tenth time that day. And I don't have a toddler yet. I have a cute, squishy infant who most of the time is pretty chill and easy to handle (which isn't to say that I haven't been bitten on the nipple or bashed in the mouth with a cute little forehead or kicked in the tit so I get that babies hurt sometimes) and I am generally a big time cuddler but man alive seeing that toddler cry and reach for her mom was rough.

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

also basically i think it's weird to not respond immediately to any time your kid is crying, i guess the theory is you're trying to show them you won't give in or maybe teaching them independence but i think it's pretty wrongheaded. but also some people think little kids are manipulative and not merely scared!

That makes sense to me. It's like the whole mindset that you shouldn't pick up a crying baby because the baby is trying to manipulate you. I mean, the baby IS trying to manipulate you if you want to look at it that way, but only in the same way you are trying to manipulate a restaurant server when you ask for a menu and a glass of water.

xp!!!

So far, I am completely unable to not respond to our child when she's crying. "Cry it out" is right off the table for us, although I'm not saying I won't get to a point where it feels like the right (or only) thing to do.

imho i don't think it's ever 100% necessary, but then again we're a couple of hippies over here, we were cosleeping with him for two years until he decided on his own he wanted to sleep in his bed one night and then he never looked back.

I think it's a matter of what works for the kid and for the parents. If the parents are on the edge of sleep deprived psychosis because they are up until 11 trying to comfort a child to sleep, then up two more hours trying to do all of the household chores they couldn't do because they spent three hours putting the kid to bed and can't take two three hour naps throughout the day, crying it out sounds pretty necessary and is probably less harmful than having cranky zombie parents.

But I'm hoping that we won't need to do it because it might kill me.

true, we were zombies for awhile. though not really that cranky!

ha, i stopped judging parents who "cry it out" when i realized that our dedicated effort to avoid "cry it out" has probably resulted in more many more hours of crying than our friends' kids who did cry it out

We do a hybrid thing where we go in after 5 minutes and put the pacifier back in and rub the belly for a second then leave again. Then wait 10 minutes and do the same thing. Then 15. None of our three kids went longer than the 15 minute mark. Definitely lessens the blow (for me) and lets them know you are still there for them. After two or three nights they were good to go you just lay em down and they go right to sleep (for the most part). We wouldn't do this until they were at least five or six months tho. Works for us.

Same here--go in very fast the first couple of times, soothe and re-dummy and check nappy/teeth/hunger, then leave it for a bit longer the next time and usually there's calm after a couple of minutes

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 9:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also basically i think it's weird to not respond immediately to any time your kid is crying, i guess the theory is you're trying to show them you won't give in or maybe teaching them independence but i think it's pretty wrongheaded. but also some people think little kids are manipulative and not merely scared!

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is pretty much how I want to parent.

Holy shit at that whole "I am DONE WITH YOU" episode upthead. I'm about to cry fat toddler tears just thinking about it.

I know. I want to be empathetic to the mother because mothers get so much pressure to be perfect and all that and I don't know her life but it made me super sad, too.

my littlest played a "game" she called the "Old Buffet" when she was a toddler. it involved chasing us down and then biting us. we were done with that too.

also short from abuse, violence, or emotional or other kinds of neglect, there is very little i will judge a parent on. this shit's fucking HARD. i don't care how much of a hippie you are. everybody is exhausted. toddlers are demanding as fuck. it is easy to snap or be irritable if you are on such little sleep and your kid is high-strung and unrelenting.

what i will judge is people without kids judging other parents (again, short of the abuse/violence/neglect/etc). i 100% think this is something that is difficult to understand if you haven't lived it.

There are all kinds of way to be a bad parent without being abusive, neglectful or violent, though.

yea i might be overstating it a little. just saying that everybody will snap at their kids unfairly at some point, probably many times. probably even say some really hurtful shit at some point. it's not great but i think it's shitty to judge it without first having some empathy and self-awareness

Oh I'm judging everyone. Everyone!!! I never say anything though, so no one ever knows

http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/r/rare_soulrnb-here_comes_the_judge(custom_records).jpg

here, I'll do some judging, too:

Jeff and I were out and about with the kid and a woman was shopping with her toddler and presumably the toddler's grandmother, and the woman picked up the kid and I don't know what happened, but the woman yelled, "OW! Molly!" then put the toddler down and said, "I am DONE WITH YOU." And the toddler cried some fat sad toddler tears and raised her arms up to her mom, who was not having it. Grandma to the rescue.

NOW I don't know what Molly did. She may have stabbed her mom in the face with an OXO Tot baby knife for like the tenth time that day. And I don't have a toddler yet. I have a cute, squishy infant who most of the time is pretty chill and easy to handle (which isn't to say that I haven't been bitten on the nipple or bashed in the mouth with a cute little forehead or kicked in the tit so I get that babies hurt sometimes) and I am generally a big time cuddler but man alive seeing that toddler cry and reach for her mom was rough.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, August 6, 2014 2:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 3:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the mom. Sometimes these moves are not parenting choices in the sense that they're supposed to help the child learn something, they're parenting choices in helping the child by letting the parent step away and regroup. Saying "I am done with you" isn't cool obviously but sometimes getting a breather is necessary to regain sanity. Like a "time out" isn't just for a kid, it's also for a parent to get their shit together and figure out next steps without a kid screaming and flailing in your face.

Also parenting is really fucking hard but this tweet made me laugh

https://twitter.com/ChelseaVPeretti/status/495255649488359424

na otm xp

yeah totally otm.

It was the "done with you" followed by the crying/arms up that suggested that whatever the woman said/did to the kid reached her that got to me, probably on a personal level that I need to explore with my therapist. And like I said, I don't know what kind of toddler hell that woman had been through prior to that moment.

Being able to step away is super key. Best if you can say, "Hey grandma, take Molly here over to look at something on the other side of the store while I take a few nips from my hip flask and do some deep breathing exercises" but what's best and what we can manage are rarely identical.

Fun fact: the three main points emphasized in all of the new baby pamphlets the hospital gave us were: 1) you can't spoil a baby, so it's cool to pick her up if she cries; 2) back to sleep! and; and 3) don't shake the baby but if you think you want to shake the baby, just put the baby down in her crib and close the door and take a break.

I'm probably feeling more sympathetic because Evie was being really difficult all weekend and we had a battle over ???? that took over most of Sunday afternoon and it sucked.

I'm sorry. That does suck.

More judging:

This woman just rolled her double wide stroller into the coffee shop where I'm working and it contained THE CUTEST TWIN BABIES I HAVE SEEN.*

*since I looked at DJP's pictures of D&J.

this whole time I thought you meant you were a BARRISTER

lol

timely: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/08/mother-shakes-child-in-public-do-you-step-in

Anyone have any thoughts on those who give their 3 yr old daughters the full Disney princess treatment?

I don't know if I've ever met one of these full-fledged Disney princess kids. They must be out there. I've met enough adult Disney fan weirdos to extrapolate their existence.

My daughter's very big into Frozen and mildly into other the other princesses. I don't even know how this stuff happens. But what do you mean by the full Disney princess treatment?

Buying them a castle.

i know several daughters who full-on decided themselves that they wanted the full disney princess treatment. the moms and dads in each case (especially one of them) are basically the complete opposite of 'disney parents'

it's a difficult situation when your kid wants to explore and pursue something that you may be uncomfortable with. i'm not there yet since my kid is still not even 2 but i imagine it's hard

that said though i imagine there are plenty of parents who encourage that shit

When she was little I more actively pushed back against the princess stuff, but it's basically impossible to avoid if your kid is around other kids. I don't want to shut down stuff that makes her happy but if she wants to play princesses with me, I try to subvert it by insisting that I get to be a princess too if I want (instead of a prince), or bringing in other toys like dinosaurs or cowboys.

I don't think this is really what omar little was talking about originally but it's something I think about a lot.

carl's I'M DONE WITH YOU mom reminded me of a weird thing Mr Veg & I witness in Target recently

We were standing in line for returns, and a Young Angry Mom behind is saying in a very loud frazzled voice "NO. NO. YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. NO. YOU ARE WAY TOO OLD TO BE PULLING THIS STUFF. GET RIGHT BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. I'M WARNING YOU."

From the the tone of voice I was guessing the kid must have been 4 or 5.

But I turn around and all I see is a tiny little toddler that's barely walking, standing there in a diaper and a tshirt the middle of the aisle, just staring up at her Mom like "?"

We laughed about it when we left but I did feel super bummed for her exhausted mom who's having long angry one-way conversations with a tiny little human in the middle of Target.

I mean, I'm imagining it's not solely about playing dress-up. My daughter doesn't play dress-up too much, although she has a couple cheap plastic tiaras and a growing collection of fairy/butterfly/bumblebee wings that she'll throw on once in a while. When my son was her age though, he wore superhero outfits every chance he could (when not at daycare, basically). He had several and would change them repeatedly throughout the day.

During our pregnancy, we intended on raising our daughter as a rugged tomboy. No pinks! No purples! No princesses. But even very early on, we felt like we noticed her displaying and being attracted to what we thought of as stereotypically feminine behaviors and traits. But we keep it balanced, to be sure.

xp:

Heh. I was yelling at my son in the grocery store over the weekend. But it was a lighthearted kind of yelling. He was acting like an insufferable smartass (an unfortunate aspect of his current developmental stage or whatever) and I was joshing him about being ready to smack him or how he was cruisin' for a bruisin' or whatever. I have never hit or even spanked either of my kids and he totally played back with the joke. Then we go over one aisle and we run into one of the librarians from his school. I don't know if she heard us or was paying attention, but I reallllllly hope she didn't get the wrong idea.

But what do you mean by the full Disney princess treatment?

i'm talking about like a dozen princess dresses worn all day in and out of the house, princess bday party with cinderella in attendance, frozen and cinderella in constant rotation, disney trips all the time, and so on. i realize it might actually be pretty common and some of those things probably aren't too bad and perhaps some people might think it's okay, it just seems a bit overboard to me.

One of our relatives works at Disney and is suuuuuuuper into it and got Ivy a little Disney Princess dress and bloomers that said "DISNEY PRINCESS" on it and involved tulle and sparkles. It was a summer outfit and Ivy outgrew it before the weather cooperated but I'm not sure if I would have put it on her anyway. I'm cool with pink stuff and things that read as "girlie" because those kinds of things comprise only part of Ivy's wardrobe* and her room, toys, books, and other baby accessories are pretty much universally gender neutral, plus when she starts having opinions, I want her to know that being a girlie princess is a viable option. Like, it's not bad because it's girlie and princessy. It's bad because some people insist that is the only option available to girls.

Howeverrrrrr I have issues with Disney as a media company in general with the gender essentialism and racism &c so for that reason, if Ivy shows tendencies towards princessness, I will probably try to steer it towards generic princess and not Disney Brand Princess (tm). I only have so much energy, though, and I would prioritize deprogramming her from a bazillion other bullshit messages she's going to get as a female** over a love of Disney-specific princess stuff, plus I am totally going to take her to Disneyland when she's tall enough to ride all the good rides so who knows.

*plus a lot of Ivy's clothes come from my mom, who definitely digs the girlie pink look.
**Every day on the bus: "What a pretty little girl! Smile! Smile for me! Can you smile?" and I really want to snap "My child is not a performing monkey and she doesn't have to smile if she doesn't want to!" and just generally liking it when people say positive things about my daughter. I am not cool when strangers touch her but I'm not sure what to say about that.

the only people who will randomly touch my kid are middle-aged ladies who like to pat him on the head. my kid on the other hand likes to walk up to other people, put his hand on their knee, then run away. on occasion, he likes to pat women on the leg or slightly higher when we walk past them. : /

"What a pretty little girl!"

I try to smooth this stuff out by referring to her as "kid" as much as possible, for example "Oh, you are my sweetest little kid!" In sorta the same tone as the "pretty little girl" comments. But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something. I think about this stuff a lot.

punctuation went out the window in that paragraph. sheesh.

Oh, and I didn't even finish my thought either. Need a nap.

But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something.

So I'll give her more girly girl complements. She has a special way of saying "girl" - sounds kinda like "girl-ah" - which she delivers with a little bit of sass. I'll throw that back at her to let her know that I think she's as pretty as she wants to be.

When Ivy's keyed up, she definitely likes to reach out and touch people on the bus. More often, she'll just stare. Like, intense, minutes long eye contact that has prompted more than one person to remark with some discomfort, "She's staring into my soul."

We ride the bus with one of her daycare classmates who just turned 1 and he is a hilarious and adorable ball of energy who spends the entire ride climbing all over his amazingly patient mother and grabbing people or people's bags. He and Ivy actually held hands for a about 15 seconds the other day (and then he got excited and yanked her arm) and it was cute as fuck.

My favorite interaction was when we sat down next to a rough customer looking at his phone. He looked up at Ivy, who was staring at him like she was trying to read his thoughts, nodded and said, "Hey little man," then went back to his phone. I liked that he was basically acknowledging her humanity without making a big deal out of it, plus I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

my daughter went through a princess phase around the ages of 3-4. It never got that out of hand imo - she got a couple princess outfits that she would dress up in for parties or special occasions, she would draw lots of princesses etc. We took her to Disneyland and she was v excited to meet Cinderella. She seems to have mostly grown out of it by this point (and moved on to superheroes - if she dresses up these days it's usually wonder woman although she still has loads of other dress-up clothes of various types). We did nothing to really encourage the Disney stuff, iirc one day she saw some coloring books at a friend's house and it was like "yup! that's for ME!" and then I humored her by sitting through a few Tinkerbell movies and whatnot but it didn't really bug me or my wife.

xp

I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

lol this is what I call any male child under the age of 16 tbh

one time i was sitting outside with my kid at a cafe when he was maybe a year old and he was just staring at this woman opposite us and she looked at him and looked at me and said, "the combination of you two is making my hormones act up."

anyway i have zero issue with princess stuff, i think it seemed like princess boot camp though, they really want her to know how special she is. i mean, like every parent does, but i mean they want her to know how REALLY special she is. there's a bit of a difference.

Like, intense, minutes long eye contact that has prompted more than one person to remark with some discomfort, "She's staring into my soul."

:D

i'm talking about like a dozen princess dresses worn all day in and out of the house, princess bday party with cinderella in attendance, frozen and cinderella in constant rotation, disney trips all the time, and so on.

I might get a little judgey about this but it's hard to say who's to blame - the parents for indulging the child, the corporation for instilling the desire in the child in the first place, or the child for being obsessive (probably plenty of blame to go around tbh). There is a line where this behavior gets kind of creepy, like jesus christ isn't there anything else you can encourage your child to be interested in.

I feel similarly about kids and sports, and especially specific sports team allegiance, and especially when the allegiance is handed down from an equally obsessed parent.

Well you live in Cubsland, of course you should be ashamed of those people. #GOCARDS

especially when the allegiance is handed down from an equally obsessed parent.

lol no danger of this from me, most of the time I feel like the only adult male in existence who loathes professional sports. at most they'll get it from my dad, who's a Giants fan. Which is fine, he comes up to visit, we go to a ballgame, no big deal.

^pointedly sat in the next room while my entire birthday party watched the US tie Portugal.

hey I wanted to talk to Justin!

Lady on eastbound trans-Atlantic flight with three well-behaved kids who spent entire flight with eyes glued to in-flight entertainment and made no attempt whatsoever to get her children to stop watching dumb videos all night and maybe sleep for a second: I judge you, but given the triple-exhaustion-meltdown I saw brewing as you were trying to leave the plane to make your connecting flight, you will be paying for that mistake for the next few days.

that may have been my wife!

ime (with kids) there's no more price to be paid for that than for usual eastbound jet lag

Maybe after staying one place watching dumb videos for one flight, they'll be fast asleep for the entirety of the second flight.

She was speaking Hebrew, and VIE is really popular for flights to Tel Aviv -- if that's where they're headed, the second flight will be about 6 hours. So the Motion for Reconsideration of Judgement is granted. Sorry, anonymous parent!

Sunny took our 2-year-old daughter to Australia a few years ago and reported getting more stink-eyes than ever.

The 2-year-old is now five, and we're all going back down there in December - this time with her five-year-old brother.

This is a safe place, 3WU, thread title says it all, so I'm not judging your judging. But if they sit still and watch dumb videos for 15 hours, I'll take all the stink-eyes I can get.

2-year-old is seven.

not gud with math

kids were well-behaved, as I said, so I didn't give the mother the stinkeye -- but the new "improved" VIE is a confusing nightmare and not nice to make connections at any more, and based on the plane-exiting drama, I was picturing her having to drag three confused kid corpses to the next gate, which I wouldn't wanna do to myself or my kid (they looked 3, 5, and 7 to me).

corpses would be easier to drag, tbh.

nah wasn't us, it was start of June & not to Vienna. but o/w sounds familiar!

I flew ahead of the fam & behind me was a woman flying with four+ kids and they were all awake all night, left the overhead lights on too, but I dunno, it's hard to get too mad since those flights are so horrid under the best of conditions. & she had a fascinating north carolina / irish mixed accent.

Instant classic: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-finds-link-between-breastfeeding-always,36823/

lol

' But if they sit still and watch dumb videos for 15 hours, I'll take all the stink-eyes I can get.

― pplains, Saturday, August 23, 2014 11:21 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink'

Fucking A

http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/a42773f0f710e5f67d09a9c8ec77c641/200694984/anMobaby2.jpeg

tomboy niece insists on princess dresses but wears them playing football, not fussed either way tho tbh

judging parents with kids who don't make flying a nightmare for all parties is notmimo

i kind of think spanking is bullshit

well not really even "kind of", i just think it's bullshit. outdated. shit people did in the 40s and 50s. we should be beyond that now.

Yup.

I'm not going to find it because Twitter is a rushing river so it's long gone, but a friend tweeted something about how you've also got to take a look at a society that expects children to be perfectly behaved at all times. There's a lot of pressure on parents, more pressure on some parents than on others, to keep their kids docile in public. There's also the consideration that misbehavior in black kids especially is met with harsher public/social/school consequences than that of white kids, up to and including the American police force's tendency to shoot young black men for looking dangerous and then literally getting away with murder, so when you weigh all of that, spanking a kid might seem like the least harmful path to take.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's complicated, which doesn't mean I think that hitting children is okay (I really don't, I'm sorry, I know many people were spanked as children and turned out fine, but I really truly believe that it is not okay to intentionally physically hurt children for any reason) but it does take some of the wind out of my righteously judgey sails.

https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/status/510548657301905408

feel like certain people believe kids are being monsters when they act out in public instead of just being kids, and those dark looks I sometimes see aimed at the parents def ante up the pressure to get kids in line. Not individual looks, I mean they really do seem to indicate an attitude of "how dare this disturb the rest of us?" It makes some parents feel like they're doing something wrong.

xp that's an interesting point in that tweet but at first i interpreted it as an argument not to spank (until i finished reading it), like spanking just reinforces the notion that you have to be well-behaved all the time, and all the pressure on parents moves them to take a physically violent action toward their kids.

also does his tweet kind of assume that spanking is more effective than other disciplinary measures?

meant carl's friends tweet, not the tweet jeff posted

My wife spanked our son before I came along. She wasn't comfortable with it, but didn't know what else to do. Now she trots me out as the "big guns", even though I've never laid a hand on him in anger ("...but I'm beginning to think that 10's not too old to start!" is what I say to him).

Anyway, yeah, I wish I could better search facebook timelines for select quotes and comments the few times that I've gotten into it with people about spanking.

Me: Studies show that children who are spanked &c.
Outspoken and Aggressive fb friend: My mom used to beat my ass and I turned out just fine!

-or-

Fb friend: But my cousin was spanked and he turned out fine - he's a POLICE OFFICER!

Lots of successful people were spanked

OJ, bin laden, margaret thatcher, bieber, etc

Friend of mine used to get forced to eat hot mustard as a kid which I thought was way weirder

Oh, hotsaucing. I met a woman once who disciplined her kid like that. I wasn't interested in getting to know her further.

I've known some people whose child discipline style made me wonder if I should have ever known them in the first place.

Yes, but hitler was spanked. And Judas was spanked for the first time just before betraying Jesus.

On an unrelated note, what is the ILX -parenting crew's opinion on walking your kid on a leash?

Depends on where you are. On a regular street? At the park? I think that would be weird. In a crowded public place where there's a risk of becoming separated, we've found one of these harnesses to be valuable.

http://www.daftdaddy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DD-leash.jpg

Like, a shopping mall. A museum.

marcos - the friend is 100% anti-spanking. This is what she is saying, "like spanking just reinforces the notion that you have to be well-behaved all the time, and all the pressure on parents moves them to take a physically violent action toward their kids" and she's saying that it is a bad thing. Basically just pointing out that decisions on how to discipline kids are not made in a vacuum. I'm kind of speaking for her now, but she's into the positive parenting (the no discipline parenting) for her kids so I'm fairly confident that she would not argue that speaking is more effective than other disciplinary measures.

Although I think if you're goal is to keep a child quiet and still on command, spanking probably is most effective. But her, and my, response would be akin to omar's statement, that kids are kids and shouldn't have to be quiet and still out of the parents' fear that they are going to bother other people with their kidness.

lol My dad was made to eat a spoonful of black pepper by the nuns in Catholic school. I didn't realize anyone had done that since 1959.

Physical punishment in parenting is one (very bad, indefensible) thing, the fact that misbehaviour at school would get you caned across your outstretched fingers is another. Outlawed in the UK in the late '80s, I think, but very much a part of life when I was a kid. Kind of astonishing to think about now. Imagine being a British teacher in the '60s or '70s - "yeah, not looking forward to Double Geography with 3C, then there's some marking to catch up on over break - but at least I get to inflict ritualistic ABH on some of the slower kids after lunch". I managed to talk my out of the cane a few times.

Thumpings at home? Yeah, not as bad as many, I'm sure, but it did not do me any good at all.

I wasn't sure whether it was okay to judge this bc maybe there were behavioral issues I wasn't privy to but I saw a kid who must've been 6 or 7 yrs old the other day in a supermarket being pushed around in a stroller which he could barely squeeze into, feet kinda dragging on the floor, and he had a pacifier in his mouth. Maybe there was a good reason for it??

carl xp - got it, i just didn't read it well enough, my error.

You're supposed to get those pacifiers out of their mouth by the time they're one.

We waited (too long) on Henry and lost it right around when he turned 3.

So yeah, 7 would be a bit much, unless there's some other problem happening there.

http://i780.photobucket.com/albums/yy85/jmadisonbiii/tumblr_kvlx1bDrIl1qatq7bo1_500.jpg

btw, here's something i found during that enlightening google image search:

http://thingd-media-ec2.thefancy.com/default/235885787_0f7f7d7e1c01.png

I am pro-kid leash and will probably get one for Ivy when she's toddling because we live on a crazy busy street frequented by asshole drivers and I'm terrified that she'll break away from me run out into traffic. My own fear aside, leashes are cool because then the kid can walk around without having one arm yanked up over her head at all times, and give her a chance to interact with the environment a little more since she has both hands free.

xp caning across the fingers jfc. Although when I was in elementary school, the principal could paddle students unless the parents sent in a note saying that he wasn't allowed to. So fucking weird and awful.

xp I feel like a kid that big in a stroller with a paci must have some developmental issues.

wow a racist pacifier what will they think of next.

a billybobproduct, no less.

We briefly tried a leash with Beeps. She'd do this thing where she'd run and then jump like she's taking off, forcing me to raise up the leash and have her fly past the pavement within inches, like Tom Cruise in that Mission Impossible movie.

carl xp - got it, i just didn't read it well enough, my error.

― marcos, Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:54 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Equally likely that I didn't communicate it very well initially. I've been staying up way too late working lately and I've got mashed potato brains today.

xp holy shit good parenting reflexes!

We haven't got Abby's pacifier out of her mouth. It's a source of conflict between my wife and I. A doctor told us once* that it was okay to let her keep it until she was 4 or 5 and that it may help her breathing, in light of some problems she has with sleep apnea. I view it as reasonable to keep the binkie in at night like a mouthguard. My wife just lets her keep it in all day, which irritates me.

*doctors say ALL KINDS of shit, don't they?

BEEPS

Yeah, that move's awesome. I love action kids.

I'm against physical punishment for kids but singling out certain parenting behaviors (as long as they don't actually pose a serious threat to the child's safety/health) as especially taboo bothers me a lot, and it seems like there's this particular liberal taboo about physical things that I find out of proportion, considering all of the non-physical ways one can seriously harm a child emotionally. In other words, light spanking is something I'm choosing not to do, and that I would encourage others not to do, but it's also something I don't think we should get to the point of legislating against, demonizing parents for, etc. Inconsistent or arbitrary non-physical punishment is going to harm a child a lot more than occasional, controlled, fairly applied physical punishment imo. And getting on the soapbox about these easy, bright line rules is a nice way of avoiding the complexities of good parenting, which is really about a lot more than just not doing these five harmful things.

I was spanked as a kid (between the ages of I dunno, probably 4 and 8 or so?) and never really felt damaged by it or unfairly punished or whatever. My wife, on the other hand, suffered way more serious physical/psychological abuse from her mom and is horrified at the thought of inflicting any similar damage on our children so there's no spanking in our house. Fine with me, whatever. Veronica doesn't get so insanely out of hand that spanking her would do any "good" anyway so it doesn't even really occur to me as an option.

I was also spanked a few times and I find it hard to believe that they have any special significance in my overall childhood. Much worse were times when my dad merely yelled but seemed out of control angry.

And even those, I don't think they were some kind of defining trauma in my life. There are overall things my parents didn't do that I think made a much bigger difference to me than specific momentary things like that that they did do.

Physical punishment should absolutely be legislated against. Yes, you can do bad things to your kids mentally with non-physical punishment, but that doesn't mean that "occasional, controlled, fairly applied" physical punishment is OK, under any circumstance. What is often the case is the spankers are doing the bad shit mentally anyway. Just the threat of violence will fuck with you mentally as a kid. It's goddamn barbaric.

I don't think there's any problem w a kid that is made better by physical punishment of any kind tbh.

I'm not saying it makes physical punishment "OK", I'm saying that parenting is a messy process in which lots of bad things inevitably get done even by well-intentioned parents and we can't be legislating against all of them, that the harm of getting overly involved in people's parenting will outweigh the good while not actually making the parents better parents.

That's such a bizarre argument.

My mother was a counselor (dealt with really fucked-up parents, etc.), and her attitude was that she understood that sometimes a parent could "break" and smack a kid, and she didn't condemn them for that. What she did not go in for was mechanized, routine spankings. Not sure if this was a totally justifiable viewpoint, but it makes sense to me, to some extent. However, seems like the less you can let your kid know that they can "break" you, the better.

That's such a bizarre argument.

― Jeff, Thursday, September 18, 2014 12:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
It's not bizarre at all if you have any experience with the interaction between mandated reporters, child welfare services, the legal system, and poor parents

^^

Marriages can be a messy process in which lots of bad things inevitably get done even by well-intentioned spouses. So we shouldn't stop men from smacking their wives around, because it would be getting overly involved in their lives and will outweigh the good while not actually making him a better husband.

yeah I'm with Hurting here

And I say that even having seen that, in some cases, reporting and getting social services involved did a lot of good, so I'm not saying never involve the state in parenting. At least in the Bloomberg era and on, NYC child welfare services seems pretty well run to me and does not jump to easy conclusions. But the times I'm talking about involved pretty severe conduct -- severe physical abuse, severe neglect, or sexual abuse.

oh good we're at the unhelpful analogies stage of the argument

xp

Sure, there is something compelling about the argument "we don't accept assault on an adult, why is it ever ok on a child?" And the answer is "It isn't, but what do you do about it? Fine the parent? Jail them? Take away the child? What do you do with the child?" An adult woman can decide whether to press charges, whether to leave, and if she leaves is at least theoretically capable of living on her own without the spouse, none of which is true for a child. My dad once punched me on the shoulder and left a huge bruise, in a shopping mall. It wouldn't have done me a shred of good if police stepped in.

BTW I retaliated by kicking him in the ass really hard as we were leaving.

I think the thing is that the damage done to a kid by taking them away from their parents (especially given our current child welfare system) is usually worse than whatever their parents are up to.

Yeah, and the good thing in NYC at least is that my impression is they are very hesitant to take away the kids, and that there are other a lot of intervention steps that come first.

this thread took a turn

Yeah, I'm done. Sorry, had a momentary lapse in judgement where I forgot that arguing about anything on the Internet isn't a good idea. Back to cat gifs.

The "I was spanked and turned out fine" argument is dubious because "I am fine" is how we mentally, subconsciously, rationalise our lives and how we act and I imagine that abuse victimes often need to tell themselves they are fine so they can overcome their past. I know I would rather tell myself I turned out OK than have to deal with the everyday psychological problems of domestic abuse.

I'm not making an argument just reporting my own experience. but thanks for being patronizing, that's always a good look.

Is this the most controversial I Love People-Making discussion ever?

I had intended this thread to be jokey (judging other people's parenting is p much nagl and also as a parent its always easy to sympathize with other parents' travails/harried decision-making/exasperation etc.) but things seem to have taken their own course

all started after i merely posted "i think spanking is bullshit"

https://38.media.tumblr.com/aea6154365ff5486049a0c3e837b2a41/tumblr_mk0k416nTW1qkfwf2o1_r1_500.jpg

you all need a spanking

My wife spanked our son before I came along. She wasn't comfortable with it, but didn't know what else to do. Now she trots me out as the "big guns", even though I've never laid a hand on him in anger ("...but I'm beginning to think that 10's not too old to start!" is what I say to him).

Can I even begin to express how much I actually would like to lay into him these days? Such an insolent smart-ass! The temptation is so great.

"You know, when I was a kid..."
"Oh yeah, well things were DIFFERENT in the eighties."
"Get over here you little...." *whack!* *whack!* *whack!* *whack!*

spanking: that's a paddlin'

I remember how "the principal" was a term of terror in elementary school because of the paddle proudly displayed on his wall. it didn't stay on his wall all of the time, as kids at my desegregated school learned all the time. You can infer the ethnicity of who got most of the paddles, in the enlightened state of Florida.

Oh man. One of the stories was that Mr. Horton had holes drilled into his paddle to decrease wind resistance while another one said he somehow had rigged up an electric paddle.

My mom had made it known that I was not to be punished capitally without a face-to-face visitation first, so I basically walked around elementary school like one of those South Africans in Lethal Weapon 2, boasting of my diplomatic immunity.

Good lord, punished corporally.

Not limited to Florida, or a bygone era.

http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/expansive-survey-americas-public-schools-reveals-troubling-racial-disparities
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/

teachers spanking kids, now *that* is something that should be outlawed

we had the holes story too. I saw the paddle once, I saw no holes.

also the word was that you had to drop your drawers & get the spank bare-assed, which seems...problematic. not sure if that was true?

I was not to be punished capitally

I lol'd

I grew up in a house where spankings were administered but the line got real blurry between whether you had actually done something that deserved a spanking or if you just happened to be in the way when mum was having a bad day

to a kid there's no difference, either way they walk away believing they deserved it

for me THAT's why spanking is bullshit

 I basically walked around elementary school like one of those South Africans in Lethal Weapon 2, boasting of my diplomatic immunity.

Irl lol

or if you just happened to be in the way when mum [or dad] was having a bad day

Would say it's this in 99.85 percent of the cases.

The holes and electric paddle legend were rampant in the elementary schools I attended, too.

Opposite in my case- it was a smack on the hand or butt, which was probably extremely light but the *fear* of it was the worst. Getting a plastic ruler smack on the hand was the worst punishment. It was never uncontrolled or lashing out or 'violent'.

I'm not exactly for spanking kids but I think this is the most acceptable way? I was never scared I was gonna get thumped for no reason, or anything.

this article has a map (that I can't figure out how to embed here) showing which US states still permit corporal punishment. the states that do...will not surprise anyone.

i'm with Jeff on this one. i don't see why a child's rights should be any less than an adults although what can be done about it, i don't know. spanking has zip to do with discipline and a whole lot to do with the parents own anger issues/immaturity. teach a child that the correct response to not getting your way is violence and that's exactly what they'll teach their children. or maybe they'll just stab mom and dad to death in their sleep. (j/k sorta)

obviously there is a spectrum here and education is far more helpful than removing the children in the majority of cases.

and Veg totally OTM

The "I was spanked and turned out fine" argument is dubious because "I am fine" is how we mentally, subconsciously, rationalise our lives and how we act and I imagine that abuse victimes often need to tell themselves they are fine so they can overcome their past. I know I would rather tell myself I turned out OK than have to deal with the everyday psychological problems of domestic abuse.

― boxedjoy, Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think part of what I'm getting at is that growing up is a little more complicated than a dichotomy of "abuse victim" vs. "turned out ok." Also this is a pretty insulting suggestion.

itt a shit-ton of condescending white ppl (and marcos)

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/16/the_racial_parenting_divide_what_adrian_peterson_reveals_about_black_and_white_child_rearing

That's a good article. Thanks.

IANAP but the 'i turned out fine' argument or the 'it's something that hardly stuck with me' both seem like weird arguments in support of hitting kids: do you really think you would have turned out so much less fine if you hadn't been hit by your parents? if it made such a little impact on your life in the long run, what was the point of using it over other discipline methods? pretty much me and all my friends were physically abused to some degree growing up. our parents considered it 'discipline' but it was definitely abuse - uncontrolled, anger-driven, designed to humiliate as much as punish, belts/kettle cords/shoes/hairbrushes often used in place of an open hand, faces/heads the target as often as the butt/back of the legs.

but who is handing out spanking permissions to parents? oh yes, you're ok to spank your kids bc you don't do it in anger and you don't leave marks, and you only do it as a last resort. nope, you're not allowed to spank bc you have anger management issues and use it for every little indiscretion your kid commits.

dan, i know you've talked about this before, and it's great that as a kid who was spanked you turned out totally awesome - but how much less awesome do you honestly think you would be if you just hadn't been spanked? i'm truly not judging your parents - since clearly the spanking had no negative effect on you, and it wasn't abusive - and i know you posted on ned's fb thread that none of your friends had had the experience of being so abused. but consider that a lot of ppl do not ever discuss how badly they were physically abused as children, even with close friends. and i'm not gonna cast any judgment your way if you decide to spank kids, bc you are clearly not the kind of father who use it abusively.

i don't really want to go into how negatively it affected me growing up, but i will say that being physically abused is a contributing factor to why i don't want kids - i know i'm capable of the same behavior as my mother and bc of her i don't trust myself to manage my anger around my own small child.

i guess my point is: where does the line get drawn? how do kids see that line?

i really don't want to come across as condescending bc obviously i don't have kids and don't plan to, and i think every single one of you seem like you're doing amazing jobs raising awesome kids, and i wish my parents had been half as good as any of you.

I may be condescending but I'm as white as marcos iirc

I think the "This is the thread where we judge other people's parenting" thread is the ideal place to be condescending.

'i turned out fine' argument or the 'it's something that hardly stuck with me' both seem like weird arguments in support of hitting kids

literally no one on this thread has argued this. thanks for your non-parenting 2cents.

I was also spanked a few times and I find it hard to believe that they have any special significance in my overall childhood.

thanks for your non-parenting 2cents.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 18, 2014 3:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

NAGL

i don't really want to go into how negatively it affected me growing up, but i will say that being physically abused is a contributing factor to why i don't want kids - i know i'm capable of the same behavior as my mother and bc of her i don't trust myself to manage my anger around my own small child.

I mean you don't need to be a parent to be a voice of experience here...

saying you were not negatively impacted by spanking /= I AM ALL FOR SPANKING YUP LET'S HAVE IT, YOU OVER THERE I'MA SPANK YOU

and that's why a lot of ppl who were abused as children don't like to talk about it. and i think you're taking what i said and making it hyperbolic.

i mean, you just posted that your wife was physically abused and as a result absolutely won't spank your kids. so i don't really get why you're giving me such a hard time.

literally no one on this thread has argued this. thanks for your non-parenting 2cents.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 18, 2014 4:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was also spanked a few times and I find it hard to believe that they have any special significance in my overall childhood.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Thursday, September 18, 2014 4:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Um, maybe you should read my prior post where I said "I am against physical punishment of kids" -- where exactly did I argue in favor of spanking as a parenting technique?

so i don't really get why you're giving me such a hard time.

strawman arguments not helpful ime

xxxxxpost good article DJP...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/18/adrian-peterson-corporal-punishment-science_n_5831962.html

Actually what you said was "I am against physical punishment of kids but..." and then a paragraph of equivocation that stepped right up to the line of saying "spanking your kids is ok" without actually saying it.

I honestly took Hurting's comments to not say so much that "spanking your kids is ok" but "child service detectives shouldn't police every single act of corporal punishment."

But that was a few hours ago and I haven't slept much since then.

multiple xposts to just1n3:

Honestly? If I hadn't been spanked, my shoplifting phase might not have ended when I was 5, and considering that I lived in a regressive small town/exurb with a bored police department that looked for excuses to do something, there's a chance that I would have washed out of the gifted program in junior high and been dumped in the truant pile.

I mean, we're talking about a town/school district where in middle school I got several days of detention that involved cleaning the cafeteria for defending myself when a bunch of my classmates decided to spit on me. What would have happened to me if I hadn't been a "good kid" and was still shoplifting at that point? These are the questions I ask myself when I look back on my parents' discipline methods. I can't speak from the perspective of someone who has suffered abuse because I didn't suffer abuse.

Could my parents have raised their kids without corporal punishment? Sure. We were all smart children and, generally speaking, inclined to be good. Would my family have been granted the same leeway to parent without corporal punishment as an equivalent white family? I really fucking doubt it, and I really fucking doubt it to this day, and the fact that it doesn't statistically make things safer for black children is a fucking black eye for this country's values, and the blithe glossing over of those inherent issues going on in this thread and pretty much everywhere else I see corporal punishment discussed enrages me and reminds me that there's a little Mary Dalton lurking in the hearts of most of my white associates.

(I didn't suffer parental abuse, I should say)

Serious Q: who is Mary Dalton? Google was no help.

The daughter from Native Son

thx, get it now

Suffering abuse definitely clouds my views on spanking so it's probably better for me to hang back & let others weigh in... all of the stuff that has come up in the last two weeks has raised some ugly memories and it makes it a much more emotional issue for me than perhaps is even warranted itt

I recall being spanked twice as a kid. Thinking back on that, my dad's version of spanking didn't hurt. Like, cause no actual physical discomfort, much less some sort of physical harm. It certainly got my fucking attention, which is why I remember the two times it happened! Does it make a difference whether the "spanking" act actually makes a kid hurt, physically? I honestly don't know, IANAP and will never have a dog in this fight.

thanks for your non-parenting 2cents.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 18, 2014 3:13 PM

i'm an avowed non-parent and found this extremely shitty. just to put my 2cents in, thanks

Ok... I do have a little bit more to say here, more to get it out of my head than anything

My Mum doled out all punishment in our household. We were spanked, and a great many of those times well within the corporal-punishment-in-the-home handbook because we were pretty unruly kids

But then you mix all of that in with being given a blood nose for leaving a wet towel on the floor...Mum throwing a punch when she decides that a lighthearted family tickle fight has gone too far...cuts on your face from Mum's wedding ring after a well-timed backhand

That's all one experience of corporal punishment. It *was* abuse, and it was simultaneously also punishment meted out for swearing, bad behaviour, stealing, lying etc.

I can't tell you that I turned out worse. I won't say I turned out better. But I will say that I can't recommend it personally because it confused the fuck out of me and it scared me.

Personally, I can't view Corporal Punishment vs Abuse as an either/or proposition because it was all the same thing for me as a kid & it took me a long time to learn that there was even a difference.

No shade on anyone's childhood experience or current parenting methods. I just had to get that out of my head somewhere, release the steam etc

But I am glad that the opinions voiced here have made me think about my experience in new ways. Yr all good eggs imo

VG I think it's safe to say that none of us think what happened to you is ok and I'm sorry you went through it.

I won't spank my kids. I've hit Aidan a few times and that was when my anger got the better of me and he was hitting me, and I felt like shit as soon as I did it. I was hit as a child and it made a big difference to how I grew up. I wasn't a naughty child, I didn't like being told off, but if I was being told off and got upset then my dad would give me 'something to cry about'. Now I realise that he has a problem dealing with emotion but that didn't help me at 5 years old. Obviously my issues aren't just over spanking but dealing with emotion, but until I had kids I just assumed that I would parent the same way. When it came to it though I just couldn't do it, that it wasn't about disciplining but about making me feel better, and I didn't want my children to feel how I did.

How's about this for judging, my sister spanks, and I hate being there when she does, because she doesn't do it on the spur of the moment she warns her daughter that she's going to do it, and I know exactly how her daughter feels. I feel the hopelessness of her situation, and also see the resentment that will build up and get in the way of her relationship with her mum, as I saw it happen between my sister and our mum, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Justin3 and Veg, your stories are heart-breaking and sad, and made me think harder about my knee-jerk stance which was, "spanking your kids is fine and sometimes necessary if they don't respond to more reasonable, mature forms of discipline." Like, maybe the potential for it to cross the line into abuse is too great, so it shouldn't be fine? But still, it does kinda rankle because I feel like my parents were pretty awesome, and people on this thread essentially say, "no no your parents were barbaric and abusive because they spanked you."

What DJP said here is pretty close to my feelings about having been spanked as a kid:
Honestly? If I hadn't been spanked, my shoplifting phase might not have ended when I was 5, and considering that I lived in a regressive small town/exurb with a bored police department that looked for excuses to do something, there's a chance that I would have washed out of the gifted program in junior high and been dumped in the truant pile.

in my case it wasn't shoplifting but stealing things from my classmates in order to fit in with "the cool girls" in 2nd grade.

Dan, that's a great article and an aspect to this discussion I had only been dimly aware of before. Thank you.

in DJP's last post I don't understand the following question: "Would my family have been granted the same leeway to parent without corporal punishment as an equivalent white family?" Can you explain that further for me?

we grew up battered but it was far from the worst we dealt with tbph. we were badly raised kids and subsequently a nightmare to manage, but iirc- I may not- the intent was merely to punish/seek revenge for our behaviour (or oftentimes our parents' unhappiness) than any real attempt to manage us.

I don't and won't have kids but don't think a swipe on the arse is the same thing- nothing like the same thing - as the higher levels of physical abuse detailed by some ITT, and especially not in the context of a safe, happy and structured family upbringing.

in DJP's last post I don't understand the following question: "Would my family have been granted the same leeway to parent without corporal punishment as an equivalent white family?" Can you explain that further for me?

First, read the article I linked upthread.

Now, consider this: in society in general, if a black child and a white child are misbehaving in exactly the same way, which child is likely to get the harsher punishment? Which child's parents are more likely to be contacted by an authority figure, whether that be a manager at a store, a teacher or administrator at school or an officer of the law? If this misbehavior happens in public and the parents are present and the discipline is non-corporal, which family is more likely to continue to get disapproving glares and/or comments?

Before answering, remember that we are talking about a society where people came together to hold rallies and fundraisers for a police officer who killed an 18-year-old black male for jaywalking.

So you're talking about leeway as "avoiding disapproving glares", ok I understand. I wasn't sure what kind of "leeway" you meant, whether you had something legal or otherwise compulsory in mind. That's a good point.

Oh you mean contacted by authorities too.

I don't follow how corporal punishment is involved here though: are you taking for granted that it's more effective at curbing bad behaviors than non corporal options? I don't take that for granted.

all serious study indicates that spanking & worse forms of "corporal punishment" (one ought to say "physical" imo, at the least) are ineffective; arguments in its favor are almost entirely anecdotal, along the "it happened to me & I'm ok" line. you'd have to live life twice to say whether a parent who spanked you might have gotten better results by finding some way of communicating / disciplining that didn't involve physical punishment, but again, what studies we have on this say that it does more harm than good, and that what good it does is really questionable.

HAVING SAID THAT, the "acting up will get you killed" argument in that Salon article is really potent; if I thought my son might act up and get shot, would I then say "spanking is needed to make him understand that acting up has physical consequences"? Impossible for me to say; in this town, my son's not going to get profiled. But it's a compelling argument that feels much better than the very common "my parents hit me a lot, and I don't consider myself fucked up, so I plan on hitting my kids" horror that I've been seeing cresting my Facebook feed for the past week.

I was joking with my brat of a kid again last night "you KNOW you're not too old for me to start spanking you, right?"

He says "oh yeah, [girl from down the street] was spanked growing up. That's why she's so well-behaved. DISCIPLINE." Firmly smacks his hand into his other hand, looking me in the eye. "DISCIPLINE."

hahaha

how's life, based on everything you've posted, I'm a fan of this kid.

I read the article and it's helping me see things more clearly. But one thing I don't see is, as aero put it, is: "spanking is needed to make him understand that acting up has physical consequences." Why is it NEEDED? Why be so sure that no non-physical option will work?

Oh come now.

i think it's an interesting question.

Ok, if you prefer: what reason is there to think that physical punishment is a more effective means to make a child understand that acting up has physical consequences, than non-physical punishment?

I say this as a Latino father of three.

Michael Eric Dyson. Apologies if already posted:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/opinion/punishment-or-child-abuse.html?_r=1&referrer

Dan, do you think it was solely the spanking that put you on the right track? I'm sure there were other factors too and I'd be interested to hear them.

Have some serious problems with that Dyson article.

Pathologising the use of corporal punishment amongst African Americans exclusively in terms of slavery is kinda dumb at best. If you're not feeling so charitable, its malicious, patronising and wrong headed.

I also just find it doubtful as an argument, since physical punishment is found in cultures throughout the world and is very, very old. I do wonder though if it's disproportionately used in lower classes, like are the rich everywhere less likely to hit their kids (because they don't need to be "kept in their place")?

Yeah the idea that African Americans learnt to beat their kids when they landed in the new world is ridiculous. I imagine there'd be some correlation there if you were to look at stats but you'd probably see some manner of variation along, religious, geographical, racial lines etc. Either way I'd be reluctant to point to any one motivating factor as a primary impetus, though the idea that bad behaviour in rich kids has lesser social consequences is hard to argue against.

I'd venture it has higher social consequences, just not for them

er greater social consequences, I guess would be more precise

yeah "consequences for them" I should have said

like are the rich everywhere less likely to hit their kids (because they don't need to be "kept in their place")?

Probably more of the rich aren't actually involved so much in raising their kids, outsourcing it to nannies, 'the help', etc etc

A lot of French parents hit their kids, even really bourgie sensitive left-wing types. Many French people think it's crazy NOT to hit your kids. Their reasons are always the same: the fear of of a smack is enough to keep a kid quiet and ruly. Which from what I can tell is the over-riding goal of French parenting, to have children who keep extremely quiet and eat all their food and then vanish at an appropriate time. I can't tell you the number of times I've eaten dinner with a French family, and their child is at the table with us, and no matter the age of the child, whether it's 4 or 14, they don't say a word, and their parents make zero attempt to involve them in any of the dinner table conversation. And because I'm a stubborn fucker I always steer the conversation around to the kid, and loop them in, and nearly without fail they look like a deer in the fucking headlights.

That's pretty different from my experience in France. I wonder if that's a regional thing? I spend more and more of my time here in the south, and attitudes seem more relaxed in every way, including with kids. At public functions when a parent is speaking I see their kids run out of the crowd and hold onto their parents' legs---down here. I haven't seen that in Paris.

is involving kids in dinner chat an American thing (asking as a UK person)? I remember eating a meal with some US relatives as a child and being mortified that I was expected to take part in the conversation, though to be honest I wish could get away with not saying a word in these situations as an adult, French children aged 4 to 14 are getting a pretty good deal imo xp

I'm speaking mainly about Bordeaux!

xpost

It is entirely possible that different practices coexist in different social bubbles and that my experience doesn't stand in for everyone's but it's definitely something I've noticed. Maybe I'm over-egging it in my mind because it feels of a piece with France's retrograde attitudes towards a whole host of social issues? (race, gender, fashion, etc?)

By the way that article DJP links to is definitely one of those "a HA" articles that I'm incredibly glad to have read, and which makes me feel like I have been a fucking cro-magnon for not accurately realizing before now

yeah I don't know about Bordeaux social customs. but today in my youngest's classroom (in an ordinary French public primary school) her teacher brought his toddler son to class, and the toddler roamed around during class. Granted it's Wednesday so it's only a half day, but I thought it remarkable. of course this is Marseille where everything seems kinda ramshackle (and yet mostly works).

see Marseilles I've always thought of as kind of cool and different from the rest of France but I fully admit that's based on absolutely nothing beyond some gut instinct; i've also heard horrendous stories about racism there

Marseille is totally chill and yeah it feels like a different country here, except for the boulangeries everywhere. it's *way* more integrated than anywhere I've lived in Paris.

still: we've seen some cops here wild out in what seemed a racist way (on a mother whose kid was crying a lot at a tram stop, but we got there pretty late in the event so I don't really know). but I've seen way worse in Paris.

is involving kids in dinner chat an American thing

I have no idea but around our dinner table it's blatantly obvious that my daughter expects to be involved in whatever we're talking about, and will offer her opinions/make up shit/ask random questions solely in order to participate. which is fine with me.

We were allowed to talk but only on topics my dad would be interested in, because if it bored him or anyone started having too much fun, he'd change the topic to an engineering project.

I know I know, not everyone's family can be as warm and wonderful as mine.

Grew up in a household where we sat around a dinner table and my parents made sure to try to involve me in conversation. Now that I've got my own family, we mostly just sit around and watch TV during dinner (we don't have a table). I'm fine with that. We have plenty of conversations at other times.

judging you so hard rn

jks

kind of

tv is such a point of tension in my house, i need to figure it out, short of allowing my kids to watch everything they want, whenever they want, or throwing the TV out the window

Oh, we are pretty TV-friendly, but primarily use it for decompression. The kids don't want to be all cramped up in the house watching TV. They would rather be active and outdoors or playing with toys. I can't even use it as a "babysitter" anymore when I'm tired - my little girl has other plans for me. So we let them watch as much tv as they want, but they really want very little. Dinnertime, bedtime, for the most part that's it.

Veronica gets max a couple of hours of TV on the weekends. Which is great cuz mostly I get to watch old Justice League/Batman cartoons or Pee Wee's Playhouse or Teen Titans Are Go! with her or whatever.

Judah's too young for TV yet (not yet 2).

I totally let Ivy watch TV when I need her to sit still for something or if she just will not go to sleep, I will sometimes give up and sit on the couch with her and watch TV with the lights off. Also sometimes I have the TV on when she's playing on the floor and she'll stop to check it out occasionally, but these days she's mostly more interested in seeing how fast she can get to any number of off-limits areas of the living room/office than she is in watching Law and Order reruns with me.

I had intended to be more of a hard ass about TV but it turns out my too tired to be much of a hard ass about anything.

My too tired to type good either apparently

upworthy on my facebook feed trying to stop us from judging!

http://www.upworthy.com/a-fantastic-photo-series-to-help-us-think-about-judgment-spoiler-alert-we-have-to-stop?c=ufb4

I judge every parent who reposts an Upworthy link but that doesn't really have anything to do with their parenting

(now if you'll excuse me, I have some ClickHole links to share)

wife & i have always watched TV in very limited way to begin with, pretty much just a movie a week, occasionally we'll get a TV series through netflix but only watch it after J goes to bed. we have never in our years together been channel-surfing people and we don't have cable. we barely receive standard network TV and have to fiddle with an antenna whenever my mom visits and wants to watch the nightly news. so J (2 yrs old) has never watched TV.

im totally judging you right now

Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix aalows I wouldn't get a shower before lunchtime Monday to Friday

Dammit.

Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix allows me to have a shower before lunchtime Monday to Friday, and use the very rare cot naps (naps are short and almost always during walks in the buggy) to do a bit of housework. TV is on for about 30 minutes a day on top of that, giving me some zone-out time while F plays but he usually doesn't notice it. I'm basically on sole duty from 7.30am until 7.30pm, so while I'd rather we were a telly-free zone I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

JUDGING: a former colleague told me how her son had terrible table manners and no amount of ticking off had resulted in an improvement. So one day, she told him she was making pizza, his favourite, for dinner. She served it up to the whole family, then took a pot of mud from the garden and dumped it on his plate. "That's your dinner, because you eat like a pig." What a bitch.

That's creative...

Did it work?

She didn't say, but her glee when she told me he cried told me that story wasn't really about her son.

My son would've asked for seconds.

sounds like a weird thing my nan or my mum would have done

there is a woman who regularly camps out in front of the Embarcadero BART station with her daughter to spare change. They are there all day. The daughter looks to be about maybe 8 or 9. For all kinds of reasons, I find this deeply disturbing. I have no idea what this woman's story is. I'm sure it isn't pleasant. Sometimes I wonder if I should call child protective services (surely this child should be in school? anywhere but on the street begging for money?) but then what would I say? After all I don't really know what's going on. But I stop myself from giving the mom money because I don't really want to encourage her to continue exploiting her kid as a prop, if that is in fact what's going on. Or maybe she just wants to keep her kid with her at all costs because she's all she has; totally understandable. There's got to be services available for someone in her situation, especially in this city... anyway I'm conflicted between this knee-jerk judgmentalism ("how could anybody willingly subject their child to this") vs. my personal politics which are always to err on the side of generosity/compassion and I end up doing nothing, which solves nothing. >:(

I am skeptical of people who beg with their kids.

I mean you're right, there is absolutely no reason that girl shouldn't be in school. In fact, she might very well be getting free meals at school, so it's hard for me to think that that person isn't just using their daughter to earn more money. I mean desperation is desperation, but there are some lines that seem like they shouldn't be crossed. I feel the same way about people who pretend to be asking for donations for shelters or organizations.

Sry I mean she *would* be getting free meals if she were in school. Probably access to other services too (not to mention education).

Schools want to know where you live, btw, and if you don't have a home address to give them, they probably have a reporting burden to get interested in how you're living pretty fast? I don't know what the levels of removal into state custody are like but it's something I'd definitely be afraid of as a parent.

Plus if the kid's in school, someone has to walk or take her there in the AM and pick her up in the PM and that means two round-trips a day for the parent, which has both $$ and time costs.

My wife has taught numerous homeless kids at her public school. Also IDK how San Fran is but in NYC you're pretty unlikely to lose your kids unless you are actually severely neglecting/abusing them, not just because you are poor or homeless, whereas not sending your child to school actually does put you at risk of trouble with child protective services.

As for transit, there are often services provided by the school district for that as well (not to mention that, even if not, the cost of a BART ride for the child would probably be cancelled out by the cost of two free meals for her child).

I fully respect your effort to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there's a reason you don't see more people begging on the street with their kids -- most homeless families send their kids to school, and even the ones that can't don't usually beg on the street with their kids.

I know for a fact that sf serves homeless kids in school w out removing them from parental care. But you do have to get your kids to and from.

christ our school district requires our 401Ks and utility bills.

i don't feel like judging this woman is justified unless you have a handle on her housing, occupational, psychological etc situation

If she has psychological (or drug) problems that prevent her from getting her child to school or getting her services, that's all the more reason for a social service agency to step in. I used to feel a lot more on the side of thinking that child protective services is this scary agency who takes away poor people's kids as a punishment for being poor. My experiences, via what my wife and other teachers I know have seen, have been very different -- kids saved from regular severe beatings, sexual abuse, extreme neglect, and in most cases not taken away from the parents (there are a bunch of intermediate steps they can take and this is a last resort -- again NYC I am talking about so it may be different elsewhere), although in one case a mother's sexually abusive boyfriend was restraining ordered, and in another case a child was moved from one relative to another (relative caring for him was mentally disabled and not really capable of providing proper care). There are probably still bad cases, but my impression overall has improved a lot.

It's nice to not be judgmental, but if the kid is basically never in school that's not only illegal but the child is losing out on a lot of services she could get as well as any chance of a better future for herself. So without deciding whether the mother is good/bad/doing the best she can with insufficient information, it still seems like calling an agency might be an option to consider.

i used to see a father/daughter pair with signs asking for money on one of the freeway offramps near santa monica. she looked to be about 12 either way. i don't know the truth of it, but it was really creepily staged. he had her front and center and literally holding a tattered doll.

That's great to hear! I hope CPS continues to do the difficult and draining work that they do--every social worker I've ever known has been incredibly patient and hard-working, it's really terrible that their own caring is used to burn them out p much every time, because the system is just not funded or supported the way it should be.

But outcomes in the system look different for different people. There are significant racial disparities in how kids' cases are treated, for instance. Just, you know, pretty much every other kind of way to offer to help this lady is more helpful than being mad at her for not keeping her 8-yo in school.

"Sometimes I wonder if I should call child protective services (surely this child should be in school? anywhere but on the street begging for money?) but then what would I say?"

Believe me they're aware. There have been stories in various local outlets about this woman/child (struggling to find evidence but I find a similar case from 2009 where it looks like a 4 year old kid was taken away by CPS.)

This it?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-better-plan-needed-for-4-year-old-panhandler-3291876.php#photo-2439639

Yes.

Sad story. A little hard to get the full picture from just that column and I can't find others.

this is a different kid, a daughter, not sure if it's the same mom

in other parental judgment news:

motorcycle enthusiast dad who bought his 6-year-old daughter a "junior" motorcycle which subsequently fell on her and broke her leg, requiring her to limp around on crutches for months, I judge thee.

Oh god. We used to have a guy in our neighborhood who zipped around on a scooter with a helmetless kid on his lap.

I get wanting to share your enthusiasm/hobbies with your kids but maybe don't get your child a toy that can literally crush their bones.

Six years old! kid can't read yet, maybe get her a book instead.

there was a kid i knew growing up who, starting in first grade, was riding around on motorbikes and in competitions (sometimes without helmets!)

then in seventh grade he was killed in a rifle accident after he and another classmate had done some target shooting in the backyard.

Not defending it or anything, but the culture where I'm from introduces ATV's and dirt bikes pretty early. I didn't have one when I was 6, but I did have my own ATV around 10. I probably should have been killed at some point, I was pretty reckless and did some dramatic acrobatics off of it at times. No helmet. I thought it was awesome since there wasn't much else to do around the house.

In fact, my father has already bought our 11 month old daughter a small dirt bike! Of course she can't ride it, but I think the idea was to have it there for her when she's ready. Of course, it is unlikely we would ever allow it.

So yeah, keep kids off those.

"this is a different kid, a daughter, not sure if it's the same mom"

I mean Yes that was story from 2009 I was referring.

xp: yeah. Had a fun discussion about that culture a few months agohere. Particular highlight:

Oh man. Don't me started on ATVs. I used to work at a hospital specifically for people with brain and/or spinal cord injuries. Do you know how many patients we had who had tumbled off an ATV? Like, all of them.

― kate78, Sunday, June 1, 2014 9:00 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my friends and i used to play tackle football in a vacant lot near my house. "fondest" memory: me passing to one of my friends and then he got tackled across the middle and broke his collarbone and we spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to fix it so we could keep playing while he begged us to just "push it back into place, i'm okay!" all the while tears streaming down his face.

xpost I can think of probably a half dozen examples from my home area where that has happened, at least with serious brain or spinal cord injuries. I'm sure there are many many more less serious injuries. The worst I ever did was fall directly on my tailbone and that hurt for several days. Oh, also burned my leg several times.

(XP) Collarbone kid should have been a cyclist.

Of the eight or so people I've known to have died in motor vehicle accidents, three of them were on ATVs.

my wife is always astonished by how many people i knew growing up when i was a kid who died in crazy accidents, i always explain that sometimes there isn't much to do out in the sticks except drive real fuckin fast. my best friend, my other best friend's gf, the guy who sat in front of me in english class, the homecoming queen of the class ahead of me...all of them went in car accidents within a couple years of each other.

Yeah we had a lot of car/motorcycle accidents too.

It was awesome getting your own mode of transportation, be it a ATV when you're ten, or a car when you're 16. It was really like the ultimate freedom and required because everything was so far apart. Otherwise you're stuck on the farm.

Now everyone just does meth. Probably less safe than driving.

i'm pretty sure half the people out on the country roads between the NW burbs of chicago and rockford are currently on crank

driving on those straightaway two lane rds with 55 mph limits scares me now

Six years old! kid can't read yet, maybe get her a book instead.

what do you mean, six-year-olds can't read?

i think he meant that particular six-year-old can't read?

so a book would be a good gift

yes

i don't feel like judging this woman is justified unless you have a handle on her housing, occupational, psychological etc situation

― smoochy-woochy touchy-wouchy, (sunny successor)

i spend a good deal of my introspective time (ie not all that much time tbh) wondering how our gang of four would've turned out had someone taken the time to call some kind of services on our behalf in eh say 1992 or so. i've never been able to come up with a plausible scenario where things turned out much worse for anyone involved (tbrr it was rural ireland and the church still had much of their stranglehold, for all i know ppl were ringing about us every week to no avail).

I brought this up on a totally different thread but I have several high school friends/acquaintances who talk about their kids being indigo children and whenever I see it, I alternate between intense sadness and hysterical giggling.

closer they are to fine?

lol I went to click the bookmark link because it's in the same spot as the like button on Facebook

I'm now judging myself

Several?! JFC d get new friends.

Oh well I guess they are your hs friends so you probably ahve.

haha wtf had to google indigo children

Although no scientific studies give credibility to the existence of indigo children or their traits, the phenomenon appeals to some parents whose children have been diagnosed with learning disabilities and to parents seeking to believe that their children are special. Critics view this as a way for parents to avoid considering pediatric treatment or a psychiatric diagnosis.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/11/06/colma-shopper-attacked-after-telling-mom-to-calm-down-child-throwing-tantrum-natalie-bree-hajek-richardson-nordstrom-rack-punched-assault/

I have a lot of sympathy for the puncher

Yeah I mean, clearly the mother was wrong to punch that irritating should-have-kept-her-mouth-shut dipshit in her face but it's not like I don't understand the impulse, and so far my kids haven't had the opportunity to really have a public tantrum.

yeah petty violence is definitely defensible

haha it is an unfortunate situation but I have little to no judgement here for the parent. People telling parents to calm do their kids need to stfu imo

Insert louis ck joke

i got in a fb argument with my friend over this. but that shushy lady is so punchable. it's nordstrom rack not a goddamn library get over yourself

I am more of a slapper. I would have slapped her.

When your child misbehaves in public, I at least, feel the eyes of the world and judgement of the ages on me. Thankfully, so far, has not been more than twice. I stay cool and try not to get too nervous or anxious (under assumed pressure) because that is no help to my situation and my child will pick up on it. When I can and am lucky enough to have a distraction that works, I use that. If not, I do start making my way out of the area and outside to a bathroom or into the truck.

If during this process I were to receive any comments at all that I would perceive as negative, in my state, I would release all tension on whoever decided to make themselves available. Before I had children, if there was a child throwing a loud tantrum, I'd get away from it. I did wonder once why a mother continued to roll her screaming child through Target at 9pm. It really irritated me, this kid was loud, but I hurried out of there. I felt bad for them both.

no shame in punching skrillex.

lol Manhattan parents

Uber-well-groomed couple come in with their maybe 11-year-old daughter, everyone super thin and dressed in designer shit and with fancy haircuts and whatnot, and I just caught a moment of the mom saying to the daughter in this totally forced, fake-sounding, very anxious way "Well yeees honey of course you can just have a coconut water if you want why don't you just have a coconut water that'd be fiiiiiine" -- it just sounded like a person who didn't know how to actually relate to her daughter like a normal human being, like she had to "act" with her daughter.

Actually I have an advice question, perhaps worth asking here:

We've had problems with our downstairs neighbors for a while -- they can't tolerate any noise and bang on the ceiling, and a couple of times they have come up to complaint, always rudely, never a civil introduction. We have a toddler and the floors are thin (we do 80% carpeting with pads but there's only so much we can do to contain our jumping bean).

Last night their teenage son came upstairs, was presumably home alone, and just started shouting and cursing the second I opened the door. I basically told him "I can't really do anything about it right now" because my daughter had a friend over and they were tough to completely contain, and when he got even more furious I told him "I'm done talking to you now, have a good night" and shut the door in his face. He started angrily pressing the buzzer. I'm wondering if I should go speak to his parents about it -- the way he approached us was really offensive and pissed me off. If he had asked nicely I would have done more to control the noise.

This is the thread where we judge other people judging other people's parenting

the circle completes itself

yea hurting that is some bullshit. i have no tolerance for people complaining about noisy kids in an apartment building. kids are noisy, there is nothing that a parent can do about it.

Yeah, that's not OK, hurting. Especially since they have kids themselves!

We've just moved into a flat which has single professionals above and below and I feel horribly guilty about all the shouting our teething little guy is doing at 4am, but at the same time there's exactly 0 we can do about it.

marcos otm re: Hurting's neighbors sorry they are assholes

Yeah I have no doubt that they are assholes, just wondering if it's worth talking to these assholes about their asshole son.

Also a lot of it is really just the dynamics of the building -- hollow walls etc., sound really carries. Floor is also creaky. They apparently had an ongoing feud with the couple who lived there before.

(lived in our place before)

i don't think it's worth it tbh, since you mentioned they are generally rude as well. from now on i really think that every time they come up to complain you just say " "I'm done talking to you now, have a good night" and shut the door like you did with their teenager

the good part of me says invite the people up, meet your kid, give them a gift (I probably stole this idea from ilx)

the normal side of me says "this too shall pass", yelling at you is annoying but it doesn't "mean anything"

Def not inviting them up at this point -- too much bad feeling already, but I thought about going down and trying to have a civil conversation with them at least. The irony is that a few months after we first moved in was K's 2nd bday party and we left them a note about the noise, and they actually wrote a note back thanking us for our civil communication or something like that. But they have never once communicated civilly to us (other than that reply note), they just bang on the ceiling or send their idiot son up.

if there's anything that quiets a baby its loud banging coming from the floor amirite

BTW haven't said so yet, but we have another one on the way so they are in for a treat ;)

(said so on ILX)

well toddler I guess in K's case

xp

congrats hurting! we have one coming next year too, in april

Congrats!

congrats marcos!

Ilxors doin it, I love it

Hey awesome you two! Congratulations!!

And I would bet if you tried to talk to the neighbors about their son, they would just get really defensive, like how dare you defame our beloved boy. I might have to have the conversation anyway but I'm pretty direct with neighbors about that kind of stuff, for better or worse.

I just feel this very old-fashioned old man feeling welling up in me, like "somebody needs to teach that kid some respect"

hire him as a babysitter, see how he likes it

so my wife just got back from a visit with an old friend of hers who had a new baby and now I have been made aware that this exists: http://praisebaby.spinshop.com/

Gross.

BORN TO WORSHIP

yeah they're god-i-ness is a bit of a sore spot

How is this any grosser than any of your other standard "manger babies" type merchandise?

R.I.P. Brittany Murphy

I look forward to Shakey's officious updates.

Although I find that stuff weird, my daughter's Jewish preschool get's a lot more god-y than I was expecting too, it's kind of weird having her coming home talking about "adonai" and "neshama" and saying blessings given that we're more or less atheistic. But I figure we'll explain when she's older.

How is this any grosser than any of your other standard "manger babies" type merchandise?

― pplains, Tuesday, January 20, 2015 9:22 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is actually real?

I wish!

I like you and your husband, but I question your decision to leave your 8 yo with a history of behavioral problems (incl repeatedly threatening to murder family members and classmates) at home by himself while you take your younger child to the library.

That's actually illegal in some states I think, there are often minimum ages to be home alone.

In Maryland it's 8, but we didn't let our kid stay home alone until he was 10.

So many states with no minimum: http://www.latchkey-kids.com/latchkey-kids-age-limits.htm

My state's included in the "none" column. Here's how we define it: "Leaving the juvenile alone when the juvenile is too young to care for himself…" I've known 17-year-olds who would've fit that description.

Minimum age in Kansas is six. Why even make a law, Kansas?

Six only if a firearm is present, eight otherwise, iirc.

6? Jesus christ.

parents who insist on going outside for a morning run when it's 5 degrees out and roll their freezing children in a jogger stroller, i judge thee. your kids are not warming up. they are not exercising like you are. they are fucking cold.

Illinois is 14???? Shit, we're probably going to break that law.

xpost, just bundle them up in one of those stroller sleeping bags and put a windshield on the stroller, they'll be find. Toughens them up.

14! my parents definitely should be in prison.

parents who insist on going outside for a morning run when it's 5 degrees out and roll their freezing children in a jogger stroller, i judge thee. your kids are not warming up. they are not exercising like you are. they are fucking cold.

― marcos, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 2:10 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

Delaware recommends 12, although there's no law, which is good because I was letting myself into our apartment after school when I was ten.

hah here in France there's no legal age, and I see lots of kids ages 8 and younger going around town alone, to/fro school, even riding public trans.

back in Illinois I suspect we have taken liberties though. 14! that's nuts.

In Maryland though, there's a current thing where some parents are under investigation for letting their kids walk home together.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

hah here in France there's no legal age, and I see lots of kids ages 8 and younger going around town alone, to/fro school, even riding public trans.

kids are probably all drunk on fine wine too

man have I told you about school lunches here?

all stinky cheese and foie gras I assume

yes on former; don't think they've had foie gras yet. but it's four courses every day: entrée, main dish, dairy, and dessert. and they get 2 hours for lunch (including a recess). in the USA they get 15 minutes, no joke. which is all you need to scarf down your corn dog I guess.

15 minutes? my kid gets an hour

We get half an hour lunch, half an hour recess. The 1/2 hour recess is insufficient, imo.

Doesn't school get out late in France though?

my little one gets out at 4:30pm each day, whereas yeah in the usa it was 2:30pm. still 15 minutes is horrible.

i heard an encore broadcast of jennifer senior on fresh air this morning talking about her book "all joy, no fun" about modern parenting and there was a really interesting segment about sleep deprivation. has this been discussed here?

i was wondering whether or not judgement of other people's parenting would increase if one is sleep deprived and struggling to do one's best, only to see other people not following suit. i have a lot of friends who have privately told me that they feel completely squashed by the constant eyes looking at them and evaluating their success or failure. they're doing their best, but it leads to a lot of guilt and general bad feelings. i wish they didn't feel this way, but nothing i say makes any difference, in no small part because it's not something that affects my life (I don't have kids and I don't sit around thinking about other people's parenting). Still, since it affects the lives of virtually all my closest friends, i was wondering if anyone thinks there's a connection between sleep deprivation and vocal judgment of other people's parenting?

not trying to start a conflict, just wondering what ilx parents think

No way, I'm more understanding of other parents since I became a parent, not less.

Me too. I'm my own harshest critic but I don't really care what other people think of my parenting. And when it comes to other people, in most cases I think parents are just trying to do their best for their children. There are times when I think somebody might look at me critically, say, for paying more attention to my phone than F when we're on a train. But they wouldn't know that F is desperate for a nap and will fall asleep in his buggy if ignored.

it's possible that they're hypersensitive to it bc they are sleep deprived -- that has occurred to me. it's weird because these are not people i would have thought would really care what other people thought but it's weird how frequently they talk about it (when i manage to talk with them at all and by talk i mean email or text)

i find most other parents to be empathetic, it's the ones who don't have kids who seem a mite judgey sometimes.

IDC about other people, parents or not, judging me. But I do judge other parents all the time, but mostly in silence.

Everything is harder when you haven't gotten enough sleep for a year or two.

i know! that's what i'm saying -- i am trying to understand how maybe there is a relationship between sleep deprivation and the tendency to judge/feel judged. it just bums me out because i know people aren't being as harsh on my friends as they think people are being but my friends are so tired and worn out that i think they just slide into feeling blue. it bums me out on their behalf. this is why i asked.

i was wondering if anyone thinks there's a connection between sleep deprivation and vocal judgment of other people's parenting?

just to be clear - are you referring to parenting-related sleep deprivation?

or just regular old garden variety sleep deprivation

IDC about other people, parents or not, judging me. But I do judge other parents all the time, but mostly in silence.

^^^this

bear in mind I started this thread in the spirit of comedy, I don't really go around yelling at people about their shitty parenting. and we're all very supportive of each other here ime

the former

Maybe you're more likely to discuss what other parents you know do vs what you do and compare, and sometimes that gets judgey. At the same time I'm much more sympathetic when I see a random parent having trouble with their child in the street or something.

and my friends i'm referring to are not on ilx
i just get bits and pieces of these difficulties from them periodically

Maybe you're more likely to discuss what other parents you know do vs what you do and compare, and sometimes that gets judgey.
this, basically
and what i'm wondering, just idly and without malice, is whether sleep deprivation makes ppl extra sensitive about this
and the answer is probably yes but i wanted to see what you guys thought out of curiosity

I have no idea really, I'm going on 2 1/2+ years of constant sleep deprivation myself

if people do judge my parenting I'm not really aware of it and if I was well hey fuck them what do I care

that's easier for some people to say than others, ime -- and this is why i brought it up
i did not expect my friends to be so fragile, but sleep deprivation makes some people mean and some people fragile
no?

I'm sure it affects different people differently, mostly it just makes me out of it

LL I feel like you are talking around a specific bad experience

maybe
i don't know, and that's why i asked!

no I mean it just sounds like you were recently hanging out with some specific parent friends who freaked out about something and kind of shocked you and you're wondering if it's normal, ha

maybe
i wish we were hanging out
it was just via email/text (they're my college friends, only one of them is local)

The family of a six-year-old US boy staged his mock kidnapping because they thought he was too nice to strangers, Missouri police say.

dear god

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/f4/f47db4327d68f7bc38f0feab94c9632177ff2ecf4a31ee6836c1f86096aecc0a.jpg

Bike-helmeted dad riding a bike down a busy street while carrying your (unhelmeted) toddler in one arm: i judge you

I get IA about kids and parents biking where the kid is wearing a helmet and the parent is not. I mean, I don't care if anyone wears a helmet or not, just goddamn match, especially if you are forcing your kid to wear one.

eh I've witnessed too many bike accidents in this city - every time I see someone on a bike without a helmet I instantly think they are morons, but protecting yourself while endangering your kid is next level

I generally can't take seeing a little kid on the back of a bike in a busy urban area. When I consider what a high percentage of my friends who bike regularly in the city have been in at least one accident, it just seems like an unacceptable risk to me.

kid wasn't even on the back, dad was literally cradling him in one arm while steering the bike with the other. In the middle of rush hour traffic on a busy 4-lane street!

A-ok with your judging there.

I see kids balanced on handlebars or--on one notable occasion, sitting between Dad's arms on the top tube?--pretty normally. At first it seemed absolutely crazy, but I think it's just an offshoot of using bikes to get around. You don't have other transpo but you do have a bike? There you go.

Tbh I find it freakier when parents have their kids on the back in carriers. I'm sure I'm wrong and the data won't bear me out, but it seems like you could do more for your kid if they were right there in your arms than strapped into the back of the bike if it goes flying.

NB ianap

Kinda hard to react to a situation while holding a kid, I would think

Yeah I meant they're usu not holding the kid, the kid is holding on by him or herself (!!!!!! I KNOW!!!) while the adult has hands on the handlebars. It just doesn't surprise me anymore, I guess.

this kid wasn't old enough to hold himself up/hang onto handlebars (a practice I would be more forgiving of if the child is above-toddler age, ie, probably able to jump off to safety in the event of an accident)

This feels like a 'hey I could walk outside tomorrow and get hit by a bus. Crazy, horrible things happen all the time' attitude which is def one of IA hot buttons.
Firstly, you're not getting hit by a bus tomorrow because you won't be idly standing in a bus lane because you know it will increase your chances of getting hit by a billion percent. Can you not give your kid the same courtesy? Yes, horrible, crazy things happen everyday, a good chunk of which could probably be avoided by a simple choice like getting your ass on the sidewalk or not dodging through traffic on a bike with an infant on the back.
Secondly, I understand this 'any of us could die at any second' is probably a mental safety mechanism to keep one from losing their mind thinking of what could happen but it always seems to be paired with the certain(ly false) belief that 'nothing truly bad will ever happen to me'.
I don't know. It's just all so complementary and contradictory and flippant as fuck

Thirdly, install your kids car seat correctly, buckle both of you in correctly, wear a helmet if you're on a bike. These things will in no way comprise your constitutional liberties.

wife and I feel like we are watching a slow motion trainwreck with this friend of hers that is 6 months pregnant and exhibits zero signs that she is emotionally/psychologically capable of raising a child. She is prone to long blog rants about how she "doesn't even like babies!" and hates being pregnant and feels crazy all the time (she was p crazy before tbh) and it's like ... uh honey you have no idea what you are in for

is she doing it alone?

No, thankfully. She does have a partner, they've been together a lil over a year i think. He's a spock LARPer

She sounds like she could use counseling? Not that that excuses her for being a brat about becoming a parent but "feels crazy all the time" sounds like more than brattiness.

The final line of Οὖτις's response quickly undercuts the mild relief brought by the first.

haha

Oh she's in therapy allright

I would link to her blog but then I'm afraid she might find this

let me see if I can do this googleproofing thing

Change thread title to "This is the thread where we prejudge other people's parenting"

heh

Doesn't even like babies / hates being pregnant / feels crazy all the time pretty accurately describes our birth mom's pregnancy experience and is why she went with adoption.

A friend of mine boasted after their baby announcement, "It's cool - I'm up at five anyway getting ready for my daily bike ride."

And I was just all quiet and heh.

Oh cute, he has a daily recreation routine he likes to follow?

lol

tbf his routine does not appear to have changed at all (if 5am bike trail facebook photos are to be believed) but this guy is totes high on life

I wonder if the mom's routine has changed...

hmph.

My kids have both decided that they like to stay up late this summer. REAL FRICKIN' LATE. I mean, what are you gonna do, tell an 11-year-old he has to go to sleep at 9 o'clock in the summer? He's up until the wee hours watching Netflix. The 4-year-old isn't much better. She'll just sit there giggling and yodeling in her bed until like 9:30 or 10. I have to wake up between 4 and 5 every day for work, so trying to stay up later than these guys is like crawling through the desert on my hands and knees in search of water. It has put a serious cramp in downtime with Mrs. Life.

I give your post a D- for lack of judgmental content

Oh shit, I thought this was the regular parenting thread. My bad!

i read some of that blog :/

she may shame me into laying off my allcaps ranting bcz hoo boy

maybe i'm alone here but i think it's not cool to link to that on here

you're not alone

I'm going to nuke it.

You are SO desperate to get back out on the piss that you will, despite protestations about wanting to breastfeed, suddenly switch to formula at 9 months and force a giant bottle down your baby's gullet at 6pm, and then have the temerity to have a go at other mums in the group for judging you because you don't breastfeed anymore despite none of them having said anything about it because, y'know, every baby's different? Also, despite living 9 miles away from most mums in the group you always insist on gather-ups being as close to your house as possible, despite one of the other mums, who has twins, living 9 miles away in the OTHER direction, so having to travel 15-18 miles, WITH TWINS, and never moaning about it? And you're A TEACHER?

/ vent

That's kind of mainly on behalf of E.

hanging with cousins + their kids for the holidays and the amount of casual junk food consumption is thru. the. mafackin. roof. pointless to fight it much - when in rome - but dang dog. dang. coupled with hot dogs/pizza/burgers for every meal i've taken to sneaking off and handing my kids fruit on the D.L just so their guts still work.

parents who removed their kid from tiny pre-pre-school co-op thing we just joined because the coordinator insisted on the right to serve kids both fruit AND vegetables and you don't let your kids eat fruit I say wtf

San Francisco in a nutshell

don't even start with nutshells

lol

I like how me and Tracer's posts are like polar opposites of the same problem

Overweight slouching unkempt hillbilly at the playground who whined like a spoiled child when his sweet 3 year old asked him to push her on the swing interrupting his cell phone call.

"Push me, daddy?"
"Graciiiiiiiiiie! Gawwwwwwwwd! Uuuuuunnnnnnnhhhhhhh!"

Man, how did you even get somebody pregnant?

embarrassed to admit how often that question pops into my mind

It was like the scene from wet hot american summer where Paul Rudd refuses to pick up his dishes, but with a Mudvayne fan instead of Paul Rudd.

lol

Overweight slouching unkempt hillbilly

Come on, now.

not to be mistaken for the overweight slouching well-dressed hillbilly

Xp: good point. Not relevant. I'm hella overweight too. I'm just mad at this bozo.

Mum I ranted about the other week has no announced she won't be going to anymore NCT meet-ups and has left the WhatsApp group they had.

Sounds like she has stuff going on. tbf I am quite desperate to drink a lot of gin atm. switching to formula seems like more effort though.
J seems to be cutting 4 teeth in quick succession :/

i've heard qualifications and arguments against this but it is just so fucked up to keep hearing stories about parents leaving their kids in hot cars, like do you fucking get it?

I just read a stat somewhere that like half of the deaths from that every year are actually the result of parents FORGETTING the child is in the car (and often due to forgetting to drop the kid off at daycare on the way to work). Which is unfathomable to me, and seems like it has to be either the result of total exhaustion (working 100 hour weeks or something) or being high/drunk.

it was unfathomable to me as well until the day that we were driving somewhere with the boys in the car, I don't remember where, and I dropped my wife off at a fast food restaurant to get us some food and then parked and went inside to help her carry stuff out and she looked at me like I was insane and said "WHERE ARE OUR CHILDREN" and I went "oh yeah, we have kids now" because since they were asleep and facing backwards in the back seat, I had completely forgotten they were there

Total exhaustion fairly common ime
Although the idea of having a nice quiet baby in the car is lol to me

^^^ yeah my kids are never silent in the car (unless Judah has fallen asleep)

like so
//c1.staticflickr.com/1/486/19772086290_35c14f6570_n.jpg

sleeps like a boss

I think a lot of it is sleep deprivation.

xp awwww

so my wife's friend that we were concerned would turn out to be a horrible parent is apparently well on her way to turning into a horrible parent - against that admonitions of her friends/family/doctors/the internet since giving birth a little less than a year ago she has the kid watch TV with her (no matter what she's watching), parks the kid in front of the TV on their own, etc. And this is a woman who watches a lot of TV. She is unswayed by arguments about cognitive development - hope yr kid doesn't turn out to be a behavioral nightmare + moro! Glad we live in another city ayiyyiyi

Welp, the kid will probably grow up to be a heavy consumer of television, just like her/his mom.

a safe bet

Miraculous society really, where you can get through life that way and still live to a fairly old age by historical standards.

allow me my petty feelings of superiority

growing up we had these neighbors down the block. the dad i never saw, the mom would park herself in front of the television all day and long into the night. there wasn't a single night i drove home past their house that the light from the television couldn't be glimpsed through the window. they had three daughters, each of whom got into increasingly crazy amounts of trouble, and i'm pretty sure the parents never really kept a single eye on them. i just heard that a few days back the mom died sitting on the couch in that same house while watching tv. i hadn't driven by that house since i was 18.

That has an almost folk tragedy quality to it. She was the John Henry of television watching.

What are the developmental disadvantages to kids watching tv?

What are the developmental disadvantages to kids watching tv?

standard line I hear from childcare professionals (ed directors, Kaiser pediatrics, etc.) is that any screentime prior to the age of 2 or so is not recommended

American Academy of Pediatrics statement (2011): http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/1040

How is your baby supposed to become an Einstein without watching a video?

I was raised in a limited-television household and my children who have as much access to media (tv, games, phones, computers, tablets) as they want are far more intelligent and mature than I was at their respective ages. Also we keep sweets openly around the house and they eat them rarely, rather than bingeing on them out of scarcity on the rare occasions when they come around. I dunno. I realize that's anecdotal and correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's worked well for us.

have studies been done on how sub-2-yr-old children react to music?

I was 1 yo when TV taught me to speak English. I'd wake up at 6am, turn on the TV and watch 'English for new Australians'.

my children who have as much access to media (tv, games, phones, computers, tablets)

how old are they? I forget. Bear in mind my comment is strictly about infants - once kids are talking/social/in school etc. it's a different story

http://i.imgur.com/ESUjomK.jpg

IMO that's a mother who knows that making eye contact with a sleepy baby wakes them right up, and is silently cursing the well meaning stranger.

Either that, or she's texting the father to ask where the hell he is, because he was meant to be back 10 minutes ago.

xxxp: 5 and 12, but they watched television or were exposed to it as infants/toddlers. I really wish tablets had been available back when my older kid was little though. The educational games they have now are great.

Updated AAP guidance on media for under-twos: http://www.aappublications.org/content/36/10/54">'Beyond 'Turn It Off''

Guy in facebook neighborhood parent group needlessly interjects pro-gun talk into a thread about a burglary (the victim had actually thwarted the burglarly without a gun, and the burglary only happened because the burglar thought no one was home).

Among other things, he said that his own dad keeps a loaded shotgun on the dresser, and that he doesn't worry about going there with his young daughter because she "doesn't scale things."

Later he posted an unrelated thread about the experience he and his "roommates" had with Verizon fios or something. Lol you no-custody-having, responsibility-shirking manchild motherfucker how about you stop offering opinions on gun safety and home protection.

Just realized same dude also posted a pretty pathetic post in another group I'm in about issues with seeing his daughter on weekends -- it actually sounded like his ex was being difficult, but the fool also still had not bothered to get a lawyer and no official custody arrangement had even been set as a result, his ex just had the daughter during the week and then made him jump through a few hoops to get her on the weekends. Dude is just not an adult, basically.

ie an average american

facebook neighborhood parent group

here's where this all went wrong

ha yes

btw this is NYC, so gun nuts are a relative novelty

Would you post to facebook photos of your kid sleeping in hospital bed, admitted for meningitis, as well as hospital mask selfies, y/n?

jfc no

yeah, I mean

also, the long-ass post accompanying the hospital mask selfie (which, afaict, depicted a zany, smiling expression) noted that the kid had asked for no more pictures of him to facebook.

But aside from respect for privacy and basic dignity of my own kids, I just cannot imagine being in the state of mind to even THINK to post photos to facebook while that's going on

i took a picture of my cat when he was seriously ill and at the vet for my wife who was at work at the time because she wanted to see how he looked. i then deleted it from my phone because it seemed unseemly and weird to have a picture of a my sick cat.

When my daughter was in the hospital with pneumonia, I don't think I posted anything to facebook, and I post a fucking lot

I would not do that.

Would you post to facebook photos of your kid sleeping in hospital bed, admitted for meningitis, as well as hospital mask selfies, y/n?

appropriate use of this thread fwiw cuz fuck no

You don't even use Facebook at all!

Not sure if I'd do this. Maybe? When my kid was in the hospital for surgery back in '08, I didn't. Nowadays, maybe? I think I put pictures on Flickr.

true this was an easy one to answer for me lol :)

but seriously if one of your boys said "please don't post this on facebook!" I assume you would respect his wishes...

Not if it was hilarious.

but seriously if one of your boys said "please don't post this on facebook!" I assume you would respect his wishes...

That's true.