Gye Greene's Thoughts

Gye Greene's Thoughts (w/ apologies to The Smithereens and their similarly-titled album!)

Monday, May 12, 2008

Two bad parents

At the shopping mall over the weekend, I saw two examples of bad parenting.


1) A dad was carrying his whimpering son, about 8yo. The dad punched him in the upper arm, I suppose to get him to quit whimpering. Didn't look like a guy-thing, "buck up" sort of punch; looked like a hit.

Various child development studies have shown that physical punishment is NOT the most effective form of punishment, and actually has adverse effects: it's all about consistency, and follow-through -- NOT the size of the punishment (e.g. a sixty-second time-out vs. a spanking). Just enough to make the misbehavior not worth the punishment.


2) In one of the parents' rooms, there's a fenced-in play area. A dad asked his son (6yo?) to come out, it's time to go. The kid shook his head and moved further into the play area. Dad asked two more times; kid refused, kept playing. Dad finally had to go into the play area and physically carry the boy out.

And the adverse consequences for the kid? None. No stern talking-to; no "time out"; NUTHIN'!!!

Which means that, the next time the dad tells the kid to do something -- there's no reason for the kid to obey. Tons of advantages to continuing with his own thing -- and no disadvantages. These are the same kids that the parents will wonder why they're such difficult teenagers, never listen to what the parents say...


Good golly.


--GG

2 Comments:

At May 16, 2008 6:25 AM, Blogger timidvenus said...

wow. its disturbing to me that parenting is so common, yet so underlearned. does that make sense? i mean, when i found out i was going to have a baby i worked my tail off to learn about everything i could, discipline included, and have been so shocked that something so important (parenting) is obviously not seen as that important to so many...

 
At May 16, 2008 1:28 PM, Blogger Gye Greene said...

I think that parenting is an under-appreciated skill -- and that folks (1) think it's easy, and/or (2) that they'll just do it how their parents did it, and hey, I turned out fine, so I'll do it that way, too.

The fact that you actually thought to read up on the topic shows that you're (probably! - I haven't seen you in action) ;) a good parent. :)


There's a great Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert sets up a Parental Certification business -- pointing out that in order to be a parent, all that's current required are certain working body parts.

Ayep.


--GG

 

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