Not just sounds like... it is child abuse.
People would do well to read up on trauma informed care and Adverse Childhood Experiences.
People would do well to read up on trauma informed care and Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Not to lionize enduring abuse as a badge of honor, but I grew up in the rural American South several decades ago. School paddlings were common in my religious school, as were mouth-washing with soap (for cursing), and forced prayer.
Aside from giving me a distaste for authority and organized religion, I wouldn't regard these things as traumatic.
My Polish friend grew up putting bread-bags in his disintegrating shoes, so that his feet wouldn't freeze. My Salvadoran friend's father was basically scalped alive by drug dealers because he wouldn't serve them in his restaurant.
The upper end of the trauma scale goes far beyond dog biscuits.
It sure does. And change starts with the next generation. Society advances through normalizing more civilized behavior in youth.
I sat there until the school day was over.
To this very day, despite having had some tasty ones, I still have an aversion to omelettes. Even the name makes me recall the gross taste.
So, that's some light trauma, I guess. But it's just a shitty-tasting omelette, same as a shitty-tasting dog biscuit. It's not fucking child abuse.
A little bit of hardship builds character, but it can be a fine line between "good" hardship and abusive hardship.
Society has swung too far in the lenient direction and we have a generation (or two) of entitled snowflakes who often can't deal with the simplest aspects of life.
1) Humiliating a child is trauma. HN can disagree all they want, but HN is wrong. It is trauma. Trauma in children have physical effects. Their brains develop differently. This is proven. Emotional trauma is one of the most impactful forms of trauma, but also one of the least ... recognized (for lack of a better word).
2) Being overly lenient on your child or giving everyone a trophy or just not discussing with your child that sometimes you're gonna lose or fail is setting them up for a very hard life and this parental behavior is wrong. When they become adults they don't have the tools to understand how to handle failure. This can lead to all sorts of psychological issues.
I call bullshit.
You're generalizing a whole generation, a generation that's growing up during a time of rapid change and upheaval. I could easily counter that Baby Boomers are the snowflakes who grew up coddled, but I actually don't think this is the simple truth, either.
Just because it's easy to share stories online of people who need Safe Spaces from their professors giving them a B+ doesn't mean the whole generation is emotionally crippled because their parents didn't give them enough chores to do.
Or maybe there was a lot of other abuse in your upbringing and this was normal to you.
But overall, being forced to eat something you don't want to eat is a normal part of growing up - kids are fickle and don't realize that some things gotta be done because they're good for you.
Being forced to eat dog biscuits is obviously all-punishment-and-no-broccoli, and serving me a shitty omelette was clearly memorable enough to turn me off of them for life, but if I were to make a things I'd work on to improve myself, dealing with the psychological trauma of poorly cooked eggs is waaay down on the list by any objective measure.
How far do we dig? You basically suggested I get therapy because I don't like omelettes. I later on admitted a lot of stuff that would probably adversely affect people, but I seem to be coping with it fine. Do we recommend that everyone undergo therapy because they had to eat broccoli? Because a dog bit them? Because they didn't get that pony for their birthday?
We're human beings with human being brains that can cope pretty decently with varying levels of unhappiness, and get through it.
If your dad beat you with an electrical cable, please get therapy. If your dad made you mow the lawn in 95 degree weather, then you might need therapy to cope for it - depending on your individual mental state - but it's not an absolute indicator that you're suffering and need medical assistance.
ConceptJunkie pointed out about society swinging in a lenient direction. I don't think I agree with him specifically, but I do agree that some people can overcorrect and see abuse where there isn't none, and think someone needs help when they might not.
I did suggest that you learn about developmental trauma because I think it's empowering to understand in a deeper way how we are affected by our experiences, and how others are by theirs.
Just because we are fine and don't need therapy doesn't mean we can't benefit from more understanding.
Children who are subjected to trauma, their brains develop differently! This isn't a coping mechanism of the brain! It just plain doesn't develop correctly.
http://wellcommons.com/groups/aces/2011/jul/22/this-is-a-bra...
My stupid omelette is not one of those things.
No, being hauled in front of the class as a target of humiliation is trauma; the dog biscuit is an incidental part of the mechanism.
> Holy hell you people must have had some privileged childhoods.
Having had far worse experiences in my own childhood does not prevent me from recognizing that public humiliation of this kind is traumatic.
Doubtlessly effective, but is a culture of collective punishment, where we all beat the shit out of Tim for the next 15 minutes, really something you want to inculcate?
To be clear, I find nothing wrong with Tim himself not getting recess. Individual punishment doesn't necessarily entail humiliation (which I think is the inference you're making).
(Aside, consistently rewarding good behavior is not a great way to modify behavior either, as behavior reverts shortly after rewards stop. Inconsistent rewards are better; encouraging self-motivation is best.)
Offering up choices is good. "You cannot have another yogurt, but you can either read a book or go play outside." Children need to have some control over their lives and when they feel they don't have it, they act up.
Not to mention if I had a child and someone force fed him anything I'd be filing charges.
Privileged childhood? Nah, I was subjected to public humiliation a few times too. Though I was lucky to have a mother who both recognized the injustice in such and knew what strings to pull to get those responsible held accountable.
Imagine you fucked up at your job; brought down the production server or something. And at the next team meeting, your boss brings out a dog bowl with moist dog food in it and tells you to get on the ground and eat it. And if you don't, you'll get demoted.
That's fucked up, right? No different than forcing a kid to eat a dog biscuit because he chatted too much.
Modern disciplinary theory promotes the idea of "natural consequences". If someone were chatty in my classroom, the natural consequence is to separate them from whomever they're chatting. It's both a punishment (can't sit near friends any longer) and solves the problem (not near those kid wants to chat to). Alternatively, if the kid just speaks out a lot and ignores material, start asking them to recap for the class what we just went over. Again, both a punishment (has to do extra work) and solves the problem (forces better attention, redirects attention-seeking behavior). No humiliation needed beyond simply getting called out by the teacher for the disruption – again, a natural consequence.
Public humiliation is especially insidious in multicultural classrooms. While western students may take public humiliation in stride (as me and my co-conspirators did), students from some backgrounds (e.g. east Asian) take public humiliation, especially from an authority figure, extremely harshly, making such disciplinary actions a very poor idea.
We live in a civilized society with lots of behavioral research. No need to resort to arbitrary public humiliation to enforce discipline.
Except that you intentionally changed a lot of details to make it seem even less pleasant? So yeah, it would seem that even in your mind it's different. I'm all for NOT doing this in a classroom. I'm not saying it's remotely a good idea, or appropriate. Although I'd also wager that the overwhlmling majority of the research you refer to has been published after the incident took place. I got physically beaten in school, and that also doesn't happen. But that and this are pretty low on the scale to be considered abuse and trauma. Another comment even said that the dog biscuit has nothing to do with it being abuse, but that it's the humiliation aspect. If being called to the front of the class for being too chatty is traumatic abuse, you are in for some serious problem in life and you need to get that settled sooner rather than later. If you consider this abuse, more serious abuse will be taken even less seriously by even more people. If you were made to eat a biscuit and are haunted by the horrific memory, you need to get over it and focus a lot more on what other people are going through.
Or am I misunderstanding and there is some stronger word that I'm not aware of for getting beaten up, forgotten, abused etc?
Otherwise I feel we are mixing basically privileged kids like
1.) myself (poor parents, no tv, mostly didn't get to play football with the boys at my age until I was approaching teenage)
with kids who
2.) has been beaten or otherwise abused, suffered food deprivation either as punishment or because no food was available etc.
While I sometimes foolishly could wish I was accepted in childhood I really don't want to pretend I suffered a lot.
I even think that it would just make me weaker.
But I think everyone here can remember a time they were forced to do something humiliating by one's peers. That's a basic form of bullying, which studies have shown has lasting effects into adulthood. [1] Great distress + psychological injury = emotional trauma. ("Great" and "injury" are again broad terms so we could keep going here…)
Being forced to do something humiliating by an authority figure – even as a punishment – is not really much different from being forced by a peer. It's arguably worse, since the authority figure models to the child's peers that humiliating this child is OK. It's not really excusable when there are plenty of other disciplinary options available. (Certainly I've never taught at or attended a school that found it necessary to keep a supply of dog biscuits at hand.)
Yes, being beaten or denied food are much worse – the stronger word I would use there is "child abuse". Doesn't mean that denigration by an authority figure isn't traumatic.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/long-term-effects-o...
It is pretty awful role modelling too. I do not want my children to grow up and abuse power like that - no matter what job they will have.
In all seriousness, people who had a little hardship when young are much better equipped to handle real hardship when it comes along. And even if real hardship never comes along, they are better equipped to sacrifice to improve themselves. We've made a huge mistake in making it too easy on our kids, and I'm saying this as a parent who's done the same thing, to a large extent.
Also, generations that grew up during bad times (like war) had higher criminality rates then later happier generations. People from bad socioeconomic situation had worst results then spoiled middle class kids. While you are not serving your children well by spoiling them, too much hardship has worst statistically measurable consequences.
Yet also, I remember some humiliating experiences that ended with me not willing to try activity that lead to experience - ever. Or at least not when someone is looking.
Still can't find much about how humiliating it is to be punished for disrupting class, though.
o/~
Goggles.
You love your goggles.
They will keep.
Your.
Eyes.
From.
Burning up!
So wear your goggles,
Upon your eyeballs.
If you don't,
You.
Must.
Sing! (+repeat ad nauseam) -OR- Stay out!
o/~