Child rearing.

[bluestarultor]

Since this has become an issue in the thread about the 14-year-old boy's arrest, I figured maybe a dedicated thread might be useful to see what page we're all on or maybe for the mods to dump that part of the conversation into if they see fit.

Some highlights:

*post dump*

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

I can describe most parents I run across in one word. "Defeated."

It takes gusto to raise a child, if you don't have that then don't even try!

Originally Posted by Seil

You know, I can't find a story just like this to prove a point I had about people getting far too worked up about pedophilia in today's society.

It was a story about a father at a fairground, and his kids (along with several others) were going down a big slide, or something like that. Anyways, the father took a few pictures of his kids having fun while some other parents asked him to stop taking pictures. He asked why, and they told him they thought he was a pedophile. A comment which caused the guy to find the cops, or the nearest security guard, and get the guard to affirm that the father was in the right.

Originally Posted by Invisible Queen

As someone who was raised in a small community where the concept of strangers, let alone of not trusting them, never really came up, I can say it's pretty awesome to be "far too trusting". Yeah, you get hurt some, and some people take advantage of you, but it's worth that as it turns out people in general are pretty good, and trust makes it easy to build very close friendships.

Just thought I'd throw that in with the parenting debate.

Originally Posted by Yumil

The problem is without teaching them not to trust strangers, if one of those child rapists does show up and the kid trusts him, the kid's fucked(both literally and figuratively).

Teaching your kids not to trust someone till they've earned it(in particular, at that age, pretty much just people you trust yourself) is not a bad thing and will probably help them in life later on when people like to take advantage of people who are far too trusting.

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

While that's partly true, there's a difference between teaching them to be discerning and paralyzing them with fear. What happens when they actually need to ask for help? Maybe it doesn't come up much, but then neither do kidnappings. By teaching them to be discerning, as in knowing what is and isn't appropriate, kind of like we used to when I was a kid, it's more for them to absorb, but it's ultimately better for them because they're not crying themselves to sleep every night over all the bad, bad men that are out to get them.


Edit: Actually, thinking more on it, no, that's not true at all. Not only are you paralyzing them with fear, but you're breeding a policy of mistrust, which probably makes for a very jaded individual and could hamper their ability to make connections for the rest of their lives. After all, if they're taught people are all assholes, they hold no faith in them and you end up with someone like (oh, the irony) me*. The fact of the matter is that pedophiles are incredibly rare, and they don't just stumble across kids to molest. They molest kids in their own families or neighborhoods, or go to places where kids congregate. A kid is more likely to get hit by a bus than meet one randomly walking down the street. By teaching kids when NOT to trust people instead of teaching them when TO trust them, you open up many more possibilities for them to interact, where if you close that all off, you likewise impose a limit on how far they can reach out to other people.


*note: I had other things teach me people could be jerks. My parents actually got the strangers thing right.

Originally Posted by pocheros

QFT

Caution is what kids should be taught. By insulating your children they won't be able to tell the difference between a safe and an unsafe situation, and will either end up trusting everyone or no one. The differences between these situations can be very subtle and if you aren't given an idea of what normal behaviour is, you have nothing to compare them against. Potentially you will blindly walk into danger because of your failure to recognize these cues. On the other end of the spectrum, you will potentially be fearful of people when 99.9% of them don't have ill intentions.

I could go on and on about how this relates to women specifically- about weird mixed messages that tell women to feel guilty if they are not polite and complacent, yet ever vigilant about the variety of rapists and serial killers that lurk around the corner. A common reaction among raped women isn't "how did this happen to me?" but "how did I let this happen to me?" Pretty fucked up that the blame is placed on the woman. Then they (the media) point out that she accepted a drink from a stranger, or wore a skirt on the bus, or whatever, so now it's HER fault for not heeding the sage advice of society to be fearful of everyone and never leave the house. Not very good tools to work with, yeah?

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

I think this was referenced before, but since Seil was kind enough to provide a link, I'm just going to drop this follow-up essay on the woman who let her kid ride the subway alone:

http://theweek.com/article/index/963...icas-worst-mom

Not an issue: his rape and murder after a year of doing so.

It's probably clear where I stand on the issue of child freedom. Kids can't be protected forever, because when they lose that protection, they can't function.

I also believe in spankings (pain is a good educator and spankings aren't exactly lethal), letting them go out and get scraped knees, and generally letting them be kids. I think we're doing far too much to protect them from bogeymen that aren't really there and letting lawyers decide how we can raise them. And I think that's utterly wrong.



But what do you all think? For current parents, how are you raising your kids every day? For future parents, what are your plans?

[krogothwolf]

I believe in punishing the kid. I believe you have to figure out what works for your child in the form of a punishment. Spanking,grounding,taking away privileges. Kids respond to different things. I was the only one of my parents 3 kids to get spanked because that's the only thing that worked on me. If Annabel needs to be spanked, she will, but I figure she'll be easy enough to figure out that privileges or groundings will work.

I'm not going to put her in bubble wrap and protect her. People think that doing that allows them to be "kids" longer, but I don't think that is really the case. I think doing that makes them unprepared for what will happen in the real world. Babying them doesn't really help them out and just seems to make things worse.

One thing for sure, I am not letting her have any sort of cell phone that calls more numbers then mine and wife's and 911, at least until she is between 16-18. Anything else is just moronic to me.

(Funny story, my company got a complaint from some 12 year old's mom because people were accidentally dialing his number instead of a supervisors cell phone a 9 instead of a 6. She was complaining because it was ringing in class and getting him in trouble, so I was wondering why she wasn't telling her son to turn of his damn phone when he's in class, instead of yelling at people for miss calling by accident.)

But yeah, she'll be punished, and she wont be spoiled. If she decides to have a hissy fit to try and get a toy she wants at a store, we are leaving. I don't care for what reason we're there for, the minute she does that we leave, she goes to bed when we get home or right after supper depending on the time.

I am so teaching her how to roller blade, ice skate and bike the hard way, the real way.

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

One thing for sure, I am not letting her have any sort of cell phone that calls more numbers then mine and wife's and 911, at least until she is between 16-18. Anything else is just moronic to me.

I'm not going to tell you how to raise your kid, but it seems to me that in an increasingly cell-phone connected world amongst teens, that 16-18 is quite a bit too old to get your first cell phone. I'd wait until her freshman year of high school at the latest, 7th grade at the earliest. Fact is that kids these days use their phones for organizing every bit of social interaction and by neglecting to give your kid a phone until her junior year of high school (or after she graduates) you could accidentally end up raising a hermit.

But hey, she's your kid- these are just my 2 cents from somebody who grew up in a time more similar to the one she'll be growing up in.

[Token]

Originally Posted by Fenristein Wolfowitz

I'm not going to tell you how to raise your kid, but it seems to me that in an increasingly cell-phone connected world amongst teens, that 16-18 is quite a bit too old to get your first cell phone. I'd wait until her freshman year of high school at the latest, 7th grade at the earliest. Fact is that kids these days use their phones for organizing every bit of social interaction and by neglecting to give your kid a phone until her junior year of high school (or after she graduates) you could accidentally end up raising a hermit.

I dunno. I got my first cellphone a year ago, and I'm not any more of a "hermit" than your typical aspie kid. Besides, with facebook and what not, we can still have social lives without phones.

[Azisien]

Well kids are basically like dogs in intelligence, you can rear them pretty well with a slew of simple behaviourist techniques. And then you can start throwing in more abstract, logical techniques like, a decade later or so.

I'm kind of on the fence at times with safety and stuff. I'd say in general there's over-protection of kids, but then I think of... Pretty much half of all the girls I know either have been raped, assaulted, or been in a situation where a pedophile is propositioning them.

So I guess my conclusion is, inevitably, men are gross.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Azisien

Well kids are basically like dogs in intelligence, you can rear them pretty well with a slew of simple behaviourist techniques. And then you can start throwing in more abstract, logical techniques like, a decade later or so.

I'm kind of on the fence at times with safety and stuff. I'd say in general there's over-protection of kids, but then I think of... Pretty much half of all the girls I know either have been raped, assaulted, or been in a situation where a pedophile is propositioning them.

So I guess my conclusion is, inevitably, men are gross.

I think that says more about what happens in your part of town than it actually says about anything in a general sense. 50% are abnormally shitty odds.


Also, kids are way smarter than dogs. Dogs don't devise elaborate plans to steal goodies and then go through with them and have them actually work. Nor do they have the ability to coordinate the way human siblings often do. Brothers may fight, but God help you if you manage to get them both against you.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

I think that says more about what happens in your part of town than it actually says about anything in a general sense. 50% are abnormally shitty odds.


Also, kids are way smarter than dogs. Dogs don't devise elaborate plans to steal goodies and then go through with them and have them actually work. Nor do they have the ability to coordinate the way human siblings often do. Brothers may fight, but God help you if you manage to get them both against you.

Naw, they really ain't much smarter. And I don't live in a bad area. It's not a utopia, but... Lots of worse places to be.

[Seil]

Okay here we go:

This is my link to the story that Blues attributes to me up there, the one about the father brandede a pervert for photographing his kids having fun at the fair.

A thread Nique started about "Princess Parenting" that I found when I was searching for the above link.

A thread about third graders - being smart enough to organize and plan here - attempting to attack their teacher.

Just a thread about licensing parents.

Okay. That's all the links I have for today, I think. Now, to the issue at hand: I don't have kids. I have a few small relatives - my niece isn't one yet and my cousins are one and three respectively. I can see on one level how it would be hard to keep up with them; they're fast and love to explore.

But on the other hand, as I mentioned in the previous thread, they're smart. They don't have the experience to back up their decisions, but Quinn knows her name and number and has a general idea of who to trust. Colby is shy and doesn't hang around with anyone he doesn't trust - that being people he doesn't see every day. He is remarkably quick though, and gets around very well, problem solving to get from the floor to the chair to the counter to the cookie jar.

[krogothwolf]

Kids aren't stupid, far from it(though knowing a name doesn't seem that smart since I;m fairly sure Annabel knows hers already because when you say it she looks at you. They are pretty much bombarded with their name from birth so it would take an incredibly stupid kid to not know their name.)They're just naive, innocent and inexperienced and uneducated, and unprepared.

Edit @ Fenris: Freshman highschool is 15-16 so that about fits the bill. I just don't see a point for a 12 year old to be walking around texting people and calling everyone. We'll have a landline(or mine or the wife's cell) and a computer. But I don't see a point in her needing a cellphone to do all that. I really didn't have much when I was growing up. Video games and toys I got mostly from garage sales. So I got an NES well after it's release, same with and SNES and Genesis. We had one TV for everyone. One computer with craptacular internet we weren't really allowed to use. It wasn't untill I was 16 that we got anything worthwhile. Didn't really care cause I still had fun.

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

Edit @ Fenris: Freshman highschool is 15-16 so that about fits the bill. I just don't see a point for a 12 year old to be walking around texting people and calling everyone. We'll have a landline(or mine or the wife's cell) and a computer. But I don't see a point in her needing a cellphone to do all that. I really didn't have much when I was growing up. Video games and toys I got mostly from garage sales. So I got an NES well after it's release, same with and SNES and Genesis. We had one TV for everyone. One computer with craptacular internet we weren't really allowed to use. It wasn't untill I was 16 that we got anything worthwhile. Didn't really care cause I still had fun.

In Canadaland does freshmen year start at 10th grade or 9th grade? Here in the US, 9th grade signifies the beginning of high school, so our age references might be a bit off.