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Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

Yes. And it, too, is psychological torture. I know, people call it educating and raising a kid. Hackernews users don't understand my point because it is too progressive and subtle to understand. I stand firmly for children's rights not to be harmed, all the way through. All the way.

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> Hackernews users don't understand my point because it is too progressive and subtle to understand.

Or they just disagree with it. Your point is not that hard to understand, but without providing any alternative course of action it doesn't sound very practical.

I am curious to know how you would prevent a child from running into the road given that said child isn't yet mentally developed enough to understand the risk. And they will do it over and over regardless of how well or in how many different ways you try to explain the risk to them.

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_Americ...

Just checking, but are you saying it's okay to hit a child in that situation?

Who said anything about hitting a child? We were talking about grounding them.

Kenji said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901382

> Kids used to get a slap when they misbehaved. [...] I'd take the slap over the other things any time of the day.

And when this specific instance (child runs into road) has come up before there are always people saying they'd hit the child.

So, I'm just checking if that's what jasonkolb meant or not.

As you can see many people reading your comments are evidently literally unable to imagine the kind of parenting you're talking about. It stirs up a lot of emotions that most adults have put to rest and forgotten. You start poking those old sore points and suddenly out comes the poop-flinging (downvotes in this case.)

I can remember my bewilderment: once when I was a little child my mom was scolding me for something and then the phone rang and when she answered it she wasn't mad. I understood that her being mad at me was a choice she was making, but I couldn't understand why she would do that. Why was she being mean when she could just turn it off?

Our society is very neurotic, the evidence being that people will justify physical and psychological torture of children and get very upset when you dare to point out that it's stupid, cruel, and unnecessary. It's a memetic disease, anchored with trans-generational trauma, and rationalized to normalcy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_Americ...

I greatly appreciate your comment. I often feel alone with my opinions on hackernews. You are completely right, what you are describing is a case of emotional manipulation (using anger as a tool to increase compliance) and bad parenting can even go all the way to emotional terrorism (causing intense feelings of guilt if one does not do what the parents want). Whether it's physical or psychological harm - the usage of such methods displays lack of emotional maturity and patience in parents.

Cheers :-)

Yeah, and my parents weren't even that bad (among my friends in high school, for instance, they were pretty well-regarded.)

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