[X] My Assistant

Five words: None of your fucking business.

-snip-

Abuse, of any kind is "our business". All it takes is for us to sit their and do nothing and it will carry on. But that isn't the point, you missed the bigger picture. As a Judge he allowed people abusing their family to walk free. THAT is the bigger crime.

If you, personally, want to beat you wife and kids, I honestly encourage it. Just leave my family alone and I don't care what you do. But chances are your kids will reenact what happens at home, to my kids and that is when it becomes a BIG problem.

Her being disabled is not even relevant, what is important is the method of discipline used. Physical violence seldom, if ever works. We can observe this in the animal kingdom, where animals have to fight to stay the alpha of the pack. Animals (of which we are included) respond better to positive encouragement than intimidation. When we train dogs, we give them snacks when they do good, and nothing when they do bad. You don't see someone taking a whip to a dog to teach it to 'roll over'.

The story may have clouded peoples vision and he will be judged long before he ever sits before a court. But outside of that, abuse in the home effects us all once it stops being 'in your home' and starts affect 'my home'.

Animals (of which we are included) respond better to positive encouragement than intimidation. When we train dogs, we give them snacks when they do good, and nothing when they do bad. You don't see someone taking a whip to a dog to teach it to 'roll over'.

Dogs listen to you better if you dominate them, you are supposed to take over the alpha role. That is your job as a dog owner.

Dogs listen to you better if you dominate them, you are supposed to take over the alpha role. That is your job as a dog owner.

Yes, if you exude an absolute confidence. What you don't do is kick them and beat them up to show your dominance.

As to your earlier comments about putting people in a room or other crap, the point is to find things that effective, things that any specific child will appreciate. If putting someone in their room is not punishment, perhaps not allowing them to do something they were really eager about would be better. If they do something that you show your anger, your disappointment, your dislike for such actions. If you have been doing this from the very beginning they will feel that more than anything. They should have come to care to please you, at least to a certain extent.

Positive reinforcement from the very beginning will naturally inculcate this desire. I'm talking baby years, toddler years. I know plenty of parents who are kind of passive and just respond to things in those early years or even cold, and willing to scream for the toddler to just shut the fuck up because its screaming was driving him crazy. Children with bad principles or behavior don't spring up from nowhere and I'm firmly a believer that the parents had a chance, a good chance in most cases, to have done the right things to let the child grow up in a good way but have failed. Responsibility must be heaped on the parent in those early years when the parents control the vast majority of choices for the child, from waking time to foods eaten to activities to what kinds of things are available in terms of intellectual and cultural content. Parents have so much control over those early years.

As for negative enforcement, it is certainly not about doing any specific action like "grounding" or whatnot as if that was the only other way to coerce behavior. You should know what is valuable to the child. It could be anything: food, time with friends, doggie, books, long baths, whatever, tv, movies, you should know. Not knowing what your kid enjoys and does not enjoy shows you up as a not so capable parent.

Treating a child as if a child understands how the world works is just misguided. Their brains really are not fully developed and you saying so doesn't seem to make much sense. As an example, I often find that parents often just say "this is bad thing" and don't bother explaining why its bad and use physical "discipline" as you call it to enforce it because they say so. I have nothing but contempt for use of unnecessary force

Physical coercion is not necessary if you are a capable parent. Its easier in some cases to use a blunt weapon just because its easy. Pure physical pain will teach 'em respect and all that crap. I don't like it at all as if we lived in some primitive era, it seems so unintelligent and crude. I don't understand why you think behaviorism is treating someone like a dog. Frankly, those whippings you got are also effective from behaviorist principles. Conditioning is the way the world works, it just happened to be that you were conditioned using physical pain. And the use of physical force seems very animal-like to me, not like you're treating them as "reasoning" beings as you seem to imply.

-Vakuen

This post has been edited by Vakuen: Nov 4 2011, 11:12

Dividing this post into two parts, as when it was in one part, the forum refused to put quotes in quotes.

I know it's long as hell, so if you're bored, just read this:

To be frank, this clearly wasn't abuse. It's painfully obvious, and buying into the thought that it was just shows how easily everyone is willing to take any information at face value. This was discipline pure and simple. Dramatized far too much. But discipline nonetheless.

To my mind, this clearly was abuse. For the discipline:
- no shouting would have been necessary,
- no expletives would have been necessary,
- telling the child all the generalised things about her position in the world and in the house - things she would remember for a long time - was unnecessary, harmful, and probably untrue,
- telling the child the parent(s) are sorry for their actions but they have to do it was very necessary *during* the administering of the punishment, not some time after,
- physical violence to the extent necessary to administer the punishment probably was necessary, but it was not done effectively, and it led to hitting the child in random places. This assumes there was no other choice than physical punishment, which I doubt - there is a big range of actions parent can undertake that would have much better effect on the child than physical punishment in the long run.

========================================================================
The rest.

So what do the bleeding hearts suggest for one's options if their children are being shitty? Sometimes smacking them upside their stupid fucking heads is the only option.

Agreed.

Parents aren't allowed to have any control over their children. You're not supposed to spank them, that's physical abuse. You're not supposed to yell at them, that's mental abuse. You're not allowed to isolate them, that's emotional abuse.

That's law getting a bit too far - if you can't influence your children in any way, impose any limits, there's no way to direct their growth until the world imposes its limits on them when they're to old to adapt. I don't support such law.

It's important to find out if this is dramatized in any way, because it sets a dangerous precedent. If the public accepts this without any proof, any credence or anything resembling a logical approach to the situation, then what's to stop other kids from doing the same thing? And if that works, it's going to become more prevalent. So when does it stop?

When it becomes more prevalent and the law gets changed the other way around.

When are parents supposed to be the moral compass? When are parents supposed to discipline their shitty offspring?

That depends on the child and the parent, unfortunately. For some pairs there's probably no solution to this problem. Both the parent and the child get their morality from analysis of the world around them. If they reach different conclusions, and the parent doesn't back off, and the child isn't crushed by the parent, they won't see eye to eye, ever. That's to be expected if you want to have children - that they'll hate you forever.

Parents are there to lead, to guide and, unfortunately, they are there to hold control over their children up to a certain point. They aren't there to be buddies, or pals, or friends with them.

That presupposes the parent isn't a moron unable to guide anyone anywhere. For some paprent,s yes. For others, definitely forget it.

And another thing to consider: What if this was an isolated incident? Did anyone think of that? If this happened all the time, this wouldn't be the first point we would have heard about it considering the severity.

There's been some speculation about it, but friends of the family provided information that it wasn't, and also you don't set up cameras in preparation for an isolated event.

An addition to this, she made this recording to show why he shouldn't be a judge in their town.

I'd say he shouldn't. But I don't expect at the age of 16 she made this recording with this purpose in mind, only to wait 7 years.

That's what Dlaglacz was talking about, since this video hits close to home to you, you immediately side with the victim and don't see some of the other facts about the situation, like how the girl has been blackmailing his father with this video for 7 years, getting her things like a Mercedes Benz and cellphones and stuff, only to finally release it when it was convenient. In reality, probably both sides share some of the fault, and both will end up losing in this situation(judge will lose his job, girl won't be able to depend on her dad's money anymore)

I actually don't care about the 'victim' at all, whoever the victim is in this particular case. I am highlighting the fact that the recorded videoclip provides very good example of prolonged angry parent/emotionally attacked child encounter, to ponder upon. Even if the child is a blackmailing bitch nearly all the time, and the father still loves her nearly all the time, this one recording can shows multitude of parents how to keep control over their anger and not let it dictate their behaviour. We don't pick our children like we can pick our partners, we can end up with genetically chosen homicidal maniac for a child. We still should do our best to be fair at all times.
About specifics, it doesn't seem like she's been blackmailing him or that he was upset about it, based on his own short interview with the press. And it doesn't seem that she depends on his money, in fact it looks like she's glad she doesn't anymore.

Then again, you forget that not everyone is wired the same way. Different people respond to different input.

It didn't work for you, but some of the absolutely deviant, awful children I've seen don't really regard "Oh, please stop screaming." with anything more than ignorance.

You forget, clearly, that there is a line between discipline and abuse.

It seems to me that the line is mostly between the parent choosing to discipline the child against themselves, or the parent clearly enjoying it. The non-verbal communication is paramount, and in course of many such encounters the child can learn if the parent has to do it, or if the parent likes to do it. Still, the same thought can be applied to any human contact.

So equating all discipline with abuse is equally as ignorant as all the snot nosed brats being obnoxious, rude and puerile in public. And most of these obnoxious, rude and puerile children often grow up to be the same when they come of age without any direction placed on them, be it physical or otherwise.

Definitely. It seems to me though, that the need for discipline usually arises from parent not having long verbal communications with the child in the past, with parent doing things in the past that make the child lose trust in the parent. The divide has to grow over time before it can show up.
I have friends who, when they limit their children in any way, always tell them why, and allow discussion and argument, and are sometimes persuaded. I also have friends who chase their children, shouting 'No!', and 'Don't do it!' after them. Which children cause more trouble and are unbearable to their surroundings, how do you think?

Those weren't screams of pain and they weren't screams of terror. If you're in enough pain to scream that loudly, your brain isn't able to articulate the words you want to say until it's over. And terror and pain don't overlap, so if that was terror, her body language is all fucking wrong, and I don't buy the Palsy.

Not pain, yes. Terror, definitely. Perhaps her body language looks fucking wrong to you, can't help it.

If you're really buying into this, then that's too bad. But looking at this from a viewpoint of behavioral analysis shows just how much of a show it was.

Bullshit.

So, let me get this straight. You assume discipline is a negative thing because it makes the child feel bad?

Discipline has to make child feel bad, but it's very important that the feeling is connected in the child's mind with its own actions that have led to discipline, and not with parent being an asshole. If the parent is generally being an asshole, all the discipline will do is turn the child against the parent.

Going off myself as an example, and not as if I were some sort of be-all, end-all rule, but when something makes me feel bad or hurt or whatever, I typically don't do it again. And that's kind of the point. That's how it worked when I was a kid, on the rare times when I would act up and be a shitbag and my parents gave me a whipping. I would stop because I didn't want to have that happen to me again. Take away my video games? I didn't care, because I was clever enough to find ways to get them back and put them away again before they got home from work. Put me in my room? I'd go to sleep or play with my toys because I didn't care about the outdoors because by that point I had no interest in the outdoors. Those finer tools didn't work because they were ineffective. I don't like getting hurt, but I like figuring things out, and they provided me with puzzles to work out.

You associated the pain with something you've done, and not with your parents working out their anger on you. It's all the consequence of your parents generally not working out their anger on you, of who they are. Not of the discipline itself.

I'm not going to treat my children like some kind of behavioral experiment. I'm not going to give them a snack whenever they do something right or take away their ball when they do something wrong because they're not a fucking dog.

If you're the right person for the job (and likely you are, as you've been taught well) this will work for you. Completely identical actions won't work for parents who aren't trustworthy for the child through their life as a whole. Who didn't give the child the chance to learn how they tick. Who showed the child that they are random and their actions aren't proportional to reality.

Humans are creatures of reason, no matter the age, and treating them like some kind of lower life form that can't understand simple things is just absolutely disrespectful. Not to mention naive. Of course you can't exclusively use negative reinforcement because in most cases it begets rebellion which creates a violent child, and you can't exclusively use positive reinforcement because in most cases it puts the parent in a light of being a pushover and in no position of control which creates an entitled child. You have to use a balance of the two, otherwise you're a goddamned idiot and should be punched in the fucking throat.

That assumes the parent is a creature of reason and not instinct. Your parents likely were not. Mine are.

I also liked how the girl in the video turned around when the mom asked her to, but not when the dad told her to. She kept being rebellious to the father making the beating worse.

You are mistaking the signs. She wasn't being rebellious to the father - she was being defensive. She trusted her mother, as she knew her to be a reasonable person, but she knew her father to be a beast of instinct and knew it was more dangerous to her to turn her back on it.

Let's not forget the whole reason WHY she got whipped. She was basically stealing games and music from the internet after being told many times to discontinue the act. I for one thinks she deserved the belt whipping.

I never did and never will. Sharing is the moral thing to do, as, unlike with scarce resources, it doesn't deprive the original owner of anything.

I fail to see the reason why having cerebral palsy would lead her to become fond with technology. She seemed perfectly fine in the video, just putting on an act in front of the camera.

As I said in the opening post, this doesn't have anything with the case, and is likely just her putting this fact in original youtube video in anger, with intention to get her more support from viewers.

The lowest rated comments in that first link were the most logical ones. People nowadays are stupid. Damn parents don't know what's best for their kids. If a kid does something very bad or very dangerous, you gotta make sure they don't do it again. There's no guarantees, but it's better than nothing. You get a better response from a child with a kind word and a smack than just a kind word.

It doesn't matter what you do for the punishment only. It matters who you are, all your life. If you are a good person to be with, you will never need to punish a child. If you are an asshole, no punishment will help - smack or no smack. The abuse, punishment, and child's actions are a secondary result of a child being brought up among people with which it doesn't feel mental contact. Timid children in such families back up into themselves, and are considered 'good'. Brave children rebel, and are considered 'bad'. But it's all the same mechanism - keeping withing boundaries of one's own mind space, pushed upon by others you don't wish to contact.

It is possible to be 'good' parents, do everything 'right', and your child will still hate you for you just being there, and not being the kind of people they want around them, and not having a choice. If you feel you're entitled to your child's love, perish the thought - it will only lead to worse contact.

Physical violence seldom, if ever works. We can observe this in the animal kingdom, where animals have to fight to stay the alpha of the pack. Animals (of which we are included) respond better to positive encouragement than intimidation. When we train dogs, we give them snacks when they do good, and nothing when they do bad. You don't see someone taking a whip to a dog to teach it to 'roll over'.

This.

Also, completely agree with Vakuen.

tl'dr: It might be unavoidable to be emotional in such moments when you are a parent and you love your child. Turning your emotions against the child is what makes you an abuser. If you can't punish without turning your emotions against the child, you are not qualified to punish at all.

Not pain, yes. Terror, definitely. Perhaps her body language looks fucking wrong to you, can't help it.

Body language is universal, sweetie. It doesn't change from person to person. A man cowering is going to look like any woman cowering. A woman being afraid of an action is going to look like any child being afraid of any action. A child being defiant is going to look like any man being defiant.

Body language doesn't change from person to person.

Facial expressions don't change from person to person.

She is being defiant with pure contempt on her face, definitely not fear, based purely on body language.

This post has been edited by radixius sparkle: Nov 4 2011, 16:05

Body language is universal, sweetie. It doesn't change from person to person. A man cowering is going to look like any woman cowering. A woman being afraid of an action is going to look like any child being afraid of any action. A child being defiant is going to look like any man being defiant.

Body language doesn't change from person to person.

Facial expressions don't change from person to person.

She is being defiant with pure contempt on her face, definitely not fear, based purely on body language.

Body language (mostly) does not change from person to person, but the perception of it can.

But anyway, after some reflection, here is my personal conclusion on this debate...

I think educating a child with violent discipline should always be avoided. Like tokendood pointed out, you must try to take the "alpha role" with love and encouragement, not with terror.
Doing it with terror might indeed have a more immediate effect, yes, but only for a while. It's a short-sighted way of educating your child. You're also teaching him a very bad sense of morality (you can try it as an absolute last resort, but do it mildly or it will get even worse). I compare it to a dictatorship of which the leader keeps the people under his control with terror and threat. While it may work for some time, the people someday WILL stand up and rebel and push the dictator off his throne.
If you educate your child using a system of encouragement and reward for good actions (which is after all how the human brain and our whole society in fact works!), it works just the other way around, and I believe it is much better. Initially, you might not notice much difference and it seems not to work. But if you try to keep this system up, be patient with your child, give him some time to develop his thinking this way, eventually in most cases he will learn, and grow up to become a loving, calm and rationally thinking person.

This post has been edited by Lolicon_of_Sin: Nov 4 2011, 17:26

Now while I have "skimmed" all the replies to the thread I am quite sure I have missed relevant remarks on the topic and if it has been brought up by someone before me I offer my apologizes in advance.

I grew up in a abusive home, being beat like that video showed would have been EASY compared to the beatings I received on a daily basis. I see that as corporal punishment though the yelling and degradation was a little over the top.
I suppose though that what it boils down to in my view is in the manner in which you were brought up.
If you go back 30 years they were still giving corporal punishments in schools as a result of rule breaking. Go back 50 and it was not unheard of for you to be sent outside to CHOOSE your switch by your parental units for being bad.

There's as always a fine line to being disciplined and being beaten and as one who has lived on both sides of the fence I see it taken from one extreme to the other with no regard for the basic principal being maintained. Yes, I believe in the adage "Spare the rod, spoil the child" but I don't believe in beating the child without first giving the reasons for the punishment as well as establishing the amount of punishment being inflicted.

Body language is universal, sweetie. It doesn't change from person to person. A man cowering is going to look like any woman cowering. A woman being afraid of an action is going to look like any child being afraid of any action. A child being defiant is going to look like any man being defiant.

Body language doesn't change from person to person.

Facial expressions don't change from person to person.

She is being defiant with pure contempt on her face, definitely not fear, based purely on body language.

Actually, this response only shows me you are supremely confident in your ability to read facial expressions of people correctly, and since I'm quite confident you are wrong in this case, there's no point discussing this matter any more.

Also, way to ignore the other points I brought up.

Oh. Yeah. And I just lost all respect for you (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I just think its funny diaggefuckstick thinks war isn't as bad as child abuse. Motherfucker unless you've experienced war you have no right to say this shit is worse than war so fuck you and the stupid horse you rode in on.

I just think its funny diaggefuckstick thinks war isn't as bad as child abuse. Motherfucker unless you've experienced war you have no right to say this shit is worse than war so fuck you and the stupid horse you rode in on.

There's more of it. And it goes on for very much longer. I'm comparing the individual events and experiences one can have in some families to individual things that happen in war.
From time to time there's news about 1-2-year old baby that's been beaten her whole life, until she lost her eyesight, hearing, or died from it. That's, according to you, nothing compared to what might happen in a war? And some of these people were just disciplining a child, cause it cried.

There's more of it. And it goes on for very much longer. I'm comparing the individual events and experiences one can have in some families to individual things that happen in war.
From time to time there's news about 1-2-year old baby that's been beaten her whole life, until she lost her eyesight, hearing, or died from it. That's, according to you, nothing compared to what might happen in a war? And some of these people were just disciplining a child, cause it cried.

I was horribly abused as a child, so much so as to get tossed around from place to place without seeing my birth mother for years. After heavy abuse the only thing that made me realize it wasn't as bad as I thought was my experiences in Iraq. There is nothing worse than war. Those who say otherwise either didn't experience actual combat or are so weak that they think their childhood was worse than what happened in war.

This post has been edited by Pseudoshy: Nov 5 2011, 15:14

On the list of evils, child abuse is probably among the minor ones.

On the list of evils, child abuse is probably among the minor ones.

I think your biased on this, I'm not sure why... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

"List of evils" sounds interesting. New topic mayhaps? Do it! Do it noaw!

I was horribly abused as a child, so much so as to get tossed around from place to place without seeing my birth mother for years. After heavy abuse the only thing that made me realize it wasn't as bad as I thought was my experiences in Iraq. There is nothing worse than war. Those who say otherwise either didn't experience actual combat or are so weak that they think their childhood was worse than what happened in war.

Now, I realize this is an extreme case....but I just thought I would mention it anyway.

[en.wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29

"Parents and child abuse

Genie's parents lived in Arcadia, California. Genie was their fourth (and second surviving) child, and she had an older brother who also lived in the home.[3]

Genie spent the first 12 years of her life locked in her bedroom. During the day, she was tied to a child's toilet in diapers; some nights, when she had not been completely forgotten, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. Indications are that Genie's father beat her with a large stick if she vocalized, and he barked and growled at her like a dog in order to keep her quiet. He also rarely allowed his wife and son to leave the house or even to speak, and he expressly forbade them to speak to Genie. By the age of 13, Genie was almost entirely mute, commanding a vocabulary of about 20 words and a few short phrases (nearly all negative, such as "stop it" and "no more").[4]
"

This is clearly not what we were talking about for the most part in this thread but heck, I just wanted to show at least one of the most famous examples of child abuse. And what parents can really do to their kids if they choose to.

-Vakuen

Another example of the public siding with the supposed "victim" and just believe everything that comes out of the 3rd party spectators. Then they add a few scoops of emotional turmoil on it. I see this all the time on the news that's why i always find things out for myself and de-configure,reconfigure, asses and produce my outlooks.

This isnt really all that bad (cept for a few fucks here and there) ive seen worse happen at friends house when i was younger. He was acting like a real dick to his mom and she put the beat down on him i would've been shocked if it wasn't for the fact it was justified so i started laughing a bit.

If she is really such little bitch then she deserves it (maybe a little less of it but still). Certain actions as a parent towards there kids can be justifiable up to a point. You obviously have to correct someone if they do something wrong but you shouldn't "attack" when it isn't wrong(or for no reason) cause that is when it becomes "abuse". AN IMPORTANT thing to bring up would be that different people have different definitions for ABUSE.

Remember your kids arnt dogs or long term social experiments.

Pros:

She sorta had it coming

One less person pirating games

I hope this post wasnt one sided.

Pros:

She sorta had it coming

One less person pirating games

I hope this post wasnt one sided.

Well, one less person pirating games is a con to me, but that's off-topic. She might have had it coming, ie. the parent had a reason to punish, but then, this sort of situation could have been handled much more responsibly, with better effect, and also, I doubt the reaction was proportional to the reason. If it happens once a day, or once a week, it's an indication that the parent can't bear emotionally living with the child, is overreacting, and should be temporarily separated from the child. Which often makes the child realize some things as well.