SMBC Comics Forum

Oh that is just special. I fucking hate overly accommodating parents like that. Doting, adoring, "Oh, isn't she special?" My aunt has a kid who only eats rice crackers and white bread. Refuses to touch anything else. Honestly it's kind of disturbing how little of even that she eats. If I had a nickel for every time a visit involved a surprise quest for one of us to go out and buy her kid some rice crackers when we've got a beef roast or turkey dinner laid out in front of us I still wouldn't have been reimbursed for the cost.

Expecting others to accommodate your brats needs to stop being socially acceptable behavior. Don't even get me started on neighbors who think it's fine for their kids to be playing in my lawn fucking with my garden, or these communal extended families that will just send out a swarm of children sixteen strong at once. Bony little hands that break everything they touch. Stealing my rhubarb and taunting my dogs. Not exactly fond of kids in general, but when the parents deliberately choose not control, discipline, or even just refuse their children what you get is a soulless monster that would give Lovecraft nightmares. Plus it's just insufferable to even watch these parents interact with their children.

I love how the kids always win arguments with their parents. What ever happened to hitting?!

lol. So true. Winning an argument with the rents was unheard of when I was a kid. There were time we both knew I was right and I still got a firm swat for my attitude. Now you see these parents being all "Well I'll be darned if you're not just the cutest little ball of ignorance ever. Yeah, ok. You don't has to be punished no more" meandering off into cooing sounds that confuse even the child.

When I was a small child I might get a spanking, but there was no hitting once I was old enough to realize that the pain was minimal and over quickly. After that punishments became things like scrubbing all the walls and hardwood in the house. Or the dreaded sitting in the corner for hours on end. When you are a kid there are few punishments worse then sheer mind numbing boredom and most the ones that are worse are seriously abusive.

One of my friends swore if he somehow ended up with offspring that he would secretly put small amounts of opiates in all their food and when they were bad he would just stop and let them suffer withdraw. Thankfully, I don't think anyone would ever let him care for children.

Well, they did that with the Jem'Hadar, and they seem to have turned out okay.

DS9 JOKES

The punishment of being struck doesn't come from the pain. If the parent's doing their stuff right then in retrospect you'll realize they never actually hurt you at all, or that if they did it was minor like some manner of bug bite. The punishment is in the shock that comes from having been struck by a loved one. It is in effect an emotional blow rather than a physical one. Even once you reach an age where you know it's an entirely emotional experience it still doesn't help.

Few punishments worse than mind numbing boredom? Well sure. I can dig that. Personally my parents never assigned chores as punishment though. Seems like that would send a kind of messed up message. Chores were always just something we always did because they needed to be done.

I do agree that parenting can be done just fine without physically striking the child and thus should be if it's within your abilities, but they've gotta be getting some kind of discipline. Whether it's a swat to the back of the head, a grounding/time out, a sever scolding, whatever. You see these little shits who's parents don't believe in discipline and they're just not tolerable. The parents aren't doing them any favors from this either, as it's pretty clear they're just not even close to on a path of development towards being a functional adult. The other kids hate them and they don't know why. Grades suffer because they never learned to respect authority or even just to listen when someone's talking. Parents need to discipline their children. Beyond that I'm not questioning their methods so long as we keep everything humane. When I talk of striking a child I would hope we all know I don't mean to strike them as you would an adult. It's mostly show and calculated to cause no damage. Still, you know how kids are. If they're shocked sufficiently they won't even notice they're not in pain until someone tells them.

Heck, I myself was the only of my siblings to be struck. Firstborn so there's all that trial and error involved. By the time the next ones got going they'd refined their methods to the point that it wasn't really needed. Secondborn got a whole lot of the yelling, scolding, all that verbal stuff. Third born they mostly just talk things out with her and get her to understand why whatever behavior is needed from her. I was certainly always the kid who learned with the fewest repetitions though^^ Of course the youngest has somehow been independently motivated since preteens, and I do think that's largely because with her it's become about her own parentally instilled values rather than constantly seeking parental approval and avoiding parental wrath. I gotta say it's pretty neat to see.I wouldn't have thought an elementary or highschool student would do their homework for reasons other than fear of retribution or a well developed desire to please, but there she is already functioning on a level I didn't achieve until college. I'm really quite proud of her, and remind myself of how she's developing when I get frustrated by how lenient the parents are with her. Can't argue with results and all

I, too, believe that children need to be violently beaten as a prerequisite for learning and discipline.

My parents stopped hitting me by the time I turned 13. Something to do with me being 180 pounds.

Gangler wrote:The punishment of being struck doesn't come from the pain. If the parent's doing their stuff right then in retrospect you'll realize they never actually hurt you at all, or that if they did it was minor like some manner of bug bite. The punishment is in the shock that comes from having been struck by a loved one. It is in effect an emotional blow rather than a physical one. Even once you reach an age where you know it's an entirely emotional experience it still doesn't help.

Maybe, but getting hit by a loved one never actually caused me any emotion pain. If I had known it was in anger then it may have. But I was fully aware that it was solely to punish me and teach me that there were consequences for bad behavior and did not reflect in anyway on how my parents felt about me. As a punishment, it was pretty minor.

Few punishments worse than mind numbing boredom? Well sure. I can dig that. Personally my parents never assigned chores as punishment though. Seems like that would send a kind of messed up message. Chores were always just something we always did because they needed to be done.

Yea, we did chores which were defined as, "Anything we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it." But they were fairly normal things and we were always told to do them in the morning or when there was not much else going on. If it was a work detail punishment, it was usually some rather horrible chore and we had to do it by ourselves when everyone else was off having fun. The punishment was that we had to do an undesirable job alone while others had fun instead of doing it together at some other time.

Kaharz wrote: Yea, we did chores which were defined as, "Anything we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it." But they were fairly normal things and we were always told to do them in the morning or when there was not much else going on. If it was a work detail punishment, it was usually some rather horrible chore and we had to do it by ourselves when everyone else was off having fun. The punishment was that we had to do an undesirable job alone while others had fun instead of doing it together at some other time.

Cool cool. Like I said I'm hardly going to argue with results.

Gangler wrote:Cool cool. Like I said I'm hardly going to argue with results.

Yea, I was once told that good parenting takes hard work, dedication, fairness and love. Successful parenting is mostly down to luck. That was a joke to some extent, but parents only have so much control over how their kids turn out in the end. Myself and my two siblings are excellent examples. We were all treated more or less the same. There was of course some inconsistency, but we were fairly close in age so most of that was due to my sister being treated a little more leniently due to her gender and being the first born. She turned out to be the perfectly socialized one who rarely strayed from the straight and narrow, I rebelled a good bit more but stayed out of serious trouble and turned out well eventually, my brother on the other hand... well I don't think he has murdered anyone. So he has that going for him.

Sometimes I'm a little surprised about how good me and my sister turned out. I've begun to realize, over the past few years, how crazy and shitty some of the things I grew up with were. Granted I also recognize that it is probably due to those things that we are who we are.

Kaharz wrote: Yea, I was once told that good parenting takes hard work, dedication, fairness and love. Successful parenting is mostly down to luck. That was a joke to some extent, but parents only have so much control over how their kids turn out in the end. Myself and my two siblings are excellent examples. We were all treated more or less the same. There was of course some inconsistency, but we were fairly close in age so most of that was due to my sister being treated a little more leniently due to her gender and being the first born. She turned out to be the perfectly socialized one who rarely strayed from the straight and narrow, I rebelled a good bit more but stayed out of serious trouble and turned out well eventually, my brother on the other hand... well I don't think he has murdered anyone. So he has that going for him.

Yeah. True that. Honestly the families I get most suspicious of are the ones without a "Bad seed" child of sorts. If you've popped out six children and not one of them has an attitude then I don't know what's happening but I'm leery of it. Especially when it's Brady Bunch type shit where they're never not smiling no matter what's happening and don't seem capable of mood fluctuations.

My brother is only a couple years my junior and got largely the same policies. Like I mentioned he didn't get struck like I did, but he started out as this golden boy of purity while I was the problem child. Now well... he hasn't killed anyone, but his life is such that his social circle includes those who have at times. Generally not on friendly terms with them either. It worries us. Don't get me wrong, he's a good kid somehow possessed of a code of honor that would feel more at home in Victorian England. I often compare him to Merv from Sin City. Think he was born in the wrong era. Would have been right at home as a Knight in service to his queen or a Crusader enforcing his lord's word with steel. A gentleman tradesman known for his chivalry. Still, delinquent would be a more than accurate descriptor. I hope he manages to pull his act together and get a highschool diploma. He really was meant for better things.

My children will not be genetically identical to me or an extension of my consciousness, so why should I have any?

I personally don't care about that too much, but I also just can't bring myself to see them as a sound investment. Expensive as all hell and what do I get? A marginal chance that they'll take care of me in my old age? My money would be better spent on a retirement plan.

You do get to mess with their brains and condition weird responses into them though