Parenting 101...No Facebook.

[FeeO]

I got the beats as a kid. I don't think it did me any good and don't and have never hit my kid. But I spend a lot of time identifying what his current currency is and taking it swiftly away from him if he behaves badly. He doesn't often behave badly. It works. But you have to be willing to have your kid hate your ass for an hour, and I think a lot of modern parents are too narcissistic for that.

The shit his classmates pull on their parents is mindboggling to me though, so I definitely agree that kids don't respect their parents. I hear parents whining at their kids, begging them to behave! Jesus, have some fucking pride and own your kid. Don't raise a jerk.

 

[IschKabibble]

I got the beats as a kid. I don't think it did me any good and don't and have never hit my kid. But I spend a lot of time identifying what his current currency is and taking it swiftly away from him if he behaves badly. He doesn't often behave badly. It works. But you have to be willing to have your kid hate your ass for an hour, and I think a lot of modern parents are too narcissistic for that.

The shit his classmates pull on their parents is mindboggling to me though, so I definitely agree that kids don't respect their parents. I hear parents whining at their kids, begging them to behave! Jesus, have some fucking pride and own your kid. Don't raise a jerk.

My parents tried to take shit away from me. Never worked. It only made me sulk and plot to get the thing back before they returned it.

One time I was playing with my next door neighbor as a child (5 or 6 years old maybe), placing upside down nails under his Dad's tires and watching behind the bushes as he pulled out. Unfortunately for our ridiculous little selves, but fortunately for my grown, hindsight-capable self, all of the nails got knocked over and didn't pierce the tires. His Dad saw us hiding and was curious what we were doing. He was able to piece the puzzle together when he came home and found the nails still sitting there.

He told my Dad about it, and as a physical medicine doc who treats primarily auto injuries, he was all too familiar with the consequences of something like a tire shredding while traveling at high speed on the highway. Later that day when I saw my Dad, it was one of the two or three times I've truly feared him as a man. He's usually a very gentle guy. Would give any person the shirt off his back if needed, but in that quick, instinctual moment, he decided he needed to teach me a lesson about how serious my immature gameplay was.

He picked my skinny ass up off the ground the slammed me up against the wall...hard. He got right in my face like a drill instructor and was screaming at me about how stupid I was and how I could have potentially killed the guy. He was practically foaming at the mouth. Did I get hurt? I don't remember exactly. Might have busted me up a little bit to get slammed like that, but I do remember very precisely the exact look in my Dad's eyes when he was scolding me that day.

There's another, less interesting story about the only time I got smacked in the face by my Dad, but it's not even worth re-living honestly. I was being a little brat and a quick little slap to the face brought me back to reality. Sometimes you've gotta make an emotional impact on your child if you truly hope to steer them away from a particular crowd, idea or mindset. Advice won't be enough today when kids can just as easily get "advice" from their peers on the internet.

 

[FeeO]

My parents tried to take shit away from me. Never worked. It only made me sulk and plot to get the thing back before they returned it.

One time I was playing with my next door neighbor as a child (5 or 6 years old maybe), placing upside down nails under his Dad's tires and watching behind the bushes as he pulled out. Unfortunately for our ridiculous little selves, but fortunately for my grown, hindsight-capable self, all of the nails got knocked over and didn't pierce the tires. His Dad saw us hiding and was curious what we were doing. He was able to piece the puzzle together when he came home and found the nails still sitting there.

He told my Dad about it, and as a physical medicine doc who treats primarily auto injuries, he was all too familiar with the consequences of something like a tire shredding while traveling at high speed on the highway. Later that day when I saw my Dad, it was one of the two or three times I've truly feared him as a man. He's usually a very gentle guy. Would give any person the shirt off his back if needed, but in that quick, instinctual moment, he decided he needed to teach me a lesson about how serious my immature gameplay was.

He picked my skinny ass up off the ground the slammed me up against the wall...hard. He got right in my face like a drill instructor and was screaming at me about how stupid I was and how I could have potentially killed the guy. He was practically foaming at the mouth. Did I get hurt? I don't remember exactly. Might have busted me up a little bit to get slammed like that, but I do remember very precisely the exact look in my Dad's eyes when he was scolding me that day.

There's another, less interesting story about the only time I got smacked in the face by my Dad, but it's not even worth re-living honestly. I was being a little brat and a quick little slap to the face brought me back to reality. Sometimes you've gotta make an emotional impact on your child if you truly hope to steer them away from a particular crowd, idea or mindset. Advice won't be enough today when kids can just as easily get "advice" from their peers on the internet.

Respect to your Dad. All of this seems like appropriate parenting to me, with appropriate levels of physical discipline. I can't promise that if my kid did something absolutely dangerous like that, I wouldn't think some kind of physical emphasis was necessary. So far taking his BB8 robot away does the trick. I hope it always will (or the equivalent).

My parents whacked us for all sorts of offenses, so there wasn't much logic to it. But they hit each other too. It was stupid, chaotic, humiliating, and made me defiant and resentful. If there's a clear correlation between dangerous action and judicious physical discipline, the way your Dad showed, I'm not necessarily anti.

I once, in Vancouver, saw an elementary-age child in the midst of a tantrum tear away from her parents and dart across a busy street, making people slam on their brakes, and then taunt her parents from the opposite side. When her parents reached her, they pleaded with her and begged her never to do anything like that again. Like holy fuck dude. I'd spank you or put you against a wall for that, right after I hired someone to pummel me to a pulp for my parenting incompetence.