Kids and parents... or vv.

[probes]

Interesting. Looks like finally the pendulum is turning back.

How touchy-feely parenting and therapy have created the loneliest, most helpless, depressed, and fearful young people ever. ABIGAIL SHRIER reveals six 'bad therapy' tactics that could be harming your children

Having had a childhood of roaming freely around the village and forests, coming home in winter with frozen toes and being reprimanded by Father - how can it be that you have no brain to come home before the toes are white and stiff??? (no lifelong damage, though) - and having done my share of idiotic things (like tasting Daphne because it looked like lilac), I've always wondered if the 'constant surveillance' and mandatory no-pressure-whatsoever (especially at school) is right. Well, and I was a total nervous wreck when my daughter went driving on her own for the first time. But one has to, at one point, nothing doing.

(P.S I'm sure Fox has a thing or three to say, and I agree)
(P.P.S the 'therapy' part might have gone to the 'Sussex' thread?)

[Hydromet]

We always worked on the "No blood, no sympathy" principle. Seems to have worked well so far.

[Pinky the pilot]

We always worked on the "No blood, no sympathy" principle.

As I approach my 70th Birthday (September) and I think back over the years, I tend to think that the above quote was, more or less, how my now Late Mother and Father acted.

From around age 10 I was well aware of what was expected of me, and my backside suffered if I transgressed past a given limit!

If I am now honest about it, my Responsibilities were paramount! Any 'rights' were mere sideshows!

Dsepite the fact that I still caused my Parents more than a little grief in my early teens, I still think that they got it fairly right in the end!

Indeed, the very day I passed my Commercial Flight Test, I joined both Mum and dad at a then somewhat Classy Restaurant in the Barossa Valley and bought them Lunch. As we left, walking off with Dad on one side and Mum on the other, I put my arms around both and said "I love both of you!"

I think they may have appreciated that.

[1DC]

At the age of 17 when I was disappearing off to see the world my Dad said don't go in the pub unless you have the price of two pints because you might meet a friend and always tell the truth because then you will always remember what you said.My Mother said always always consider others before yourself and if you don't know the difference between right and wrong by now Ive let you down. She hadn't! It was always stiff upper lip in our house whinging and moaning wasn't allowed.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I've never been a parent, and I am very conscious from my decade or so of being in loco parentis that it is not easy.
Whenever complimented at parents' meetings, I would always thank the parents themselves for doing the essential groundwork and for backing me up, and I meant it.
There are things boarding school teachers can do that real parents can't, like hand them off to someone else, or find a colleague and request they play 'good cop' to counter the 'bad cop' some incident requires you to play. Or v.v.

My mother is fond of saying:

'I have raised four healthy children, and none of them are in prison, and none of them are in politics'

which are laudable aims, especially as S2 and D2 respectively were at risk of these.

I think my three most effective tactics were:
1) To get kids doing what they had learned to do, as soon as they had learned it, especially with regard to self direction/authority.
For the quieter ones, I would point out that the ultimate responsibility remained mine, and that therefore I trusted them with some aspect of my authority.
'You get the credit if it works, I take the heat if it doesn't'
2) To encourage them to experiment, so that they could make mistakes and learn from them in the relatively safe environment of school, before they encountered difficult situations as adults in the real world.
3) To question their actions relative to their own aims. How is what you are doing now going to you help you achieve what you say you want? And get them to understand by reasoning that one of the two needed to change.

Kids are scared of complete responsibility. Frankly, the vast majority of adults are too. They generally only want the responsibility for the stuff they know they are good at. Getting them to push the boundaries keeps them busy, helps them learn, and keeps them off your back.

I think we have to recognise that society has made my three tactics very difficult for most parents (and indeed for all boarding school teachers now, which is why I quit).
Both parents working, and not being able to switch off when they walk out the door of work at 5pm, highly limits how much teaching parents can do.
It's difficult to let your kids experiment when the government will take them away for the kind of things our parents encouraged us to do.
And it's hard to apply a reasoned approach to adulthood when there are so many lazy, talentless criminals in power and/or famous. Example is a powerful thing.

[OFSO]

Nice, Fox, good advice.

[PHXPhlyer]

Fox3 is correct regarding the complicity of our parents back in the day.
Memories of being driven down a busy highway while my cousins and I sat on the tailgate of a pickup truck, dangling our legs and dragging our shoes on the roadway, with the occasional loss of a shoe, having to yell for a stop to retrieve it.
When I rode a dirt bike solo for the first time and slid down an embankment on my side to avoid being launched onto aforementioned busy highway, and landed in a muddy ditch, my father's first concern was the condition of the bike.
I had to clean away the mud and return the bike to my cousins nextdoor before I could tend to my shortage of skin on the left side of my body.
The fact that I didn't officially break my first bone until I was twenty one was, looking back, was clearly a miracle.
Times are definitely different nowadays with instant communication and real time location service, but also a more dangerous social environment.

PP

[llondel]

I did all sorts of stuff as a child that I got away with because I knew more about what I was doing than my parents did (electrical/electronic stuff mostly, but also some chemistry). Got bitten by it a few times, too, and looking back now, some of it could have been lethal so I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I remember getting to university and learning that undergrads weren't allowed to work on anything over 50V, and my immediate response was to ask how they'd ever learn proper safe practice if they couldn't get zapped a few times? I'd been playing with old valve radios and building stuff that involved a couple of hundred volts, as well as some dubious incidents with mains electricity so I'd developed an automatic set of actions by that point which had largely eliminated such incidents.

On the other side of that, because I was aware of danger, I found it much harder to stand back and let my son learn the hard way.

[OFSO]

Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young) said it all.....

https://genius.com/4186106/Crosby-still ... -a-goodbye

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I was a very safe child. The only time I went through the knees of my trousers was saving a younger cousin from running into the road between parked cars. I read a lot. I did sports, but avoided contact sports. My parents thought I would become an actuary or an accountant.

Then I signed up to do the most dangerous job in the World.

[Opsboi]

Then I signed up to do the most dangerous job in the World.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's body-double?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Keith Richards' drug taster.

The 27th, in fact

[Opsboi]

Keith Richards' drug taster.

The 27th, in fact

Lumme...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The previous 26 all had to be handled by the undertaker at Porton Down, and I think were all buried on Gruinard Island.
Fortunately, it turned out I was allergic to cocaine, made me sneeze if I was even in the same room, so I switched to a nice, safe job in the RAF.
Keith did his own tasting from then on, I believe.

[Opsboi]

The previous 26 all had to be handled by the undertaker at Porton Down, and I think were all buried on Gruinard Island.
Fortunately, it turned out I was allergic to cocaine, made me sneeze if I was even in the same room, so I switched to a nice, safe job in the RAF.
Keith did his own tasting from then on, I believe.

You chose well, not flying Boeings

Respect

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Inside knowledge. My uncle worked at the Tornado factory, so I knew they'd been built OK

..and I had actually been around aeroplanes for a while

My flying hadn't improved much, but at least I now didn't need a cushion to see out.

[Opsboi]

Inside knowledge. My uncle worked at the Tornado factory, so I knew they'd been built OK

..and I had actually been around aeroplanes for a while

first flight.jpg

My flying hadn't improved much, but at least I now didn't need a cushion to see out.

Bet you wish you'd kept the sandals

Very, er, collectable...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Now that's a cue to get back on topic. The coat was made from a blanket, but my mum insisted on new, well fitting shoes for all of us.
Even when I got to my teens and was paying for everything else from my own pocket, I had my shoes bought so I wouldn't be tempted to go cheap.
None of my siblings or I have the slightest foot problems as a result, and we were able to discover for ourselves that good footwear, well cared for,not only looks a lot better but costs less in the long run.
So I am in unfashionable Clarks sandals, but I am comfy.
So that's one thing my parents were very authoritarian on, but for which I am grateful.
My sisters did not complain either, since they both have very big feet and couldn't fit into fashionable stuff anyway.

[probes]

Very cute little Fox

Ok, something that can't have been made up, because ... how would such an idea come to one to make it up?

Buying a round in the pub is branded potentially 'triggering' for students at top university. Students were given helpline numbers in case the lecture was too distressing.

[Hydromet]

^ Good grief!