Parents are Borrowing from Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer | Hacker News Reader

Parents are Borrowing from Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer

nytimes.com

15 pointswallflower16 comments

But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots —

I have three sons, aged seven, five, and three, and... well, let's just say that I have become a connoisseur of child-rearing books, and "children should call the shots" is not exactly a running theme. The hippy-dippiest of such books in my library, The Discipline Book by Sears and Sears, uses the phrases "fix your child's behavior" and "train your child" on page three.

I think there are certainly a lot of parents who mis-discipline their children because they want their children to be their friends, or because they don't want to suffer the short-term pain of dragging a tantrumming child to his room in exchange for maybe eventually preventing tantrums in the long run. (I certainly plead guilty to the second error.) But "be an authority figure" is not a new concept in the child-rearing literature, and it's not even an old concept that the Dog Whisperer has rediscovered.

Maybe there are parents whose children are driving them nuts, but who are so full of themselves that they never even think to crack a book on the subject of disciplining children, and then they watch this TV show about dog training, and dawn breaks over Marblehead.

I searched the full text of this story for "Cartman", "South Park", and "Tsst", and finding none of them, decided not to read it. I'll bet that not one parent who claims to be "taking mental notes" about Cesar Milan has not seen that show.

same here, I bet the writter of that article is getting his inbox flooded right now for doing no research before writing the article.

In the commentary for that episode Matt and Trey explained that they really believed it would work on children. They had viewers tell them it actually helped them raise their kids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5UvsHKtcyY

“We thought that obedience was the enemy of love. We didn’t want the kids to be afraid of us, but after a while we found ourselves wondering: do we have to do what they say the whole time?”

That sounds rather confused - one isn't the opposite of the other. Kids not having to be afraid does not mean you obey the kids.

There was a show in the UK where they trained husbands like dogs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4457416.stm

Interestingly, much like Super Nanny (and I believe Dog Whisperer, though I've not seen much of it) they generally showed that "bad" behavior in the Husband (Child/Dog) was often a direct result of the behavior of the Wife (Parent/Owner) and much of the changes involved the Wife (Parent/Owner) changing how they deal with things rather than directly changing the Husband (Child/Dog).

One example was a husband who never helped with the chores. The cameras revealed that every time he tried to help his work was immediately criticized and often redone afterwards by the wife. Confronted with video evidence the wife realized the counter-productive nature of her actions.

This however didn't stop a reverse-sexism backlash as seen in the link above.

once you accept that

1) humans are animals

2) before the age of 10 or so children are pre-rational

parenting should make a whole lot more sense. children do not come into this world ready to accept logical reasoning as justification for behavior modification. you have to train them that the alternative is unacceptable.

Re #1: meh. I guess you're right, though it's not a terribly useful point in this discussion.

Re #2: Bullshit. You've clearly never spent any time around kids if you think that kids younger than ten are "pre-rational". Kids start to reason way before age 10.

start being the key word. look into brain development. the field of child development has known for years many things that parents refuse to apply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development...

I like the line: It takes 20 years to make a human being, but it only takes 9 months to make a savage.

Kids can certainly engage in rational thought at a young age, but when your three-year-old is screaming "WANT CANDY!", it's not a good time for a rational explanation for why the child is better off waiting for healthy food at dinner time.

(Of course, generally speaking, when adults are screaming their heads off, it's not a good time to rationally engage with them, either....)

1) Yes

2) I would guess that you have not spent much one-on-one time with young children. Kids are really much more people than most adults think.

South Park did an episode on exactly this - called 'Tsst'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsst

Direct link to episode (legal): http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103795

What's the protocol on telling your child "I raised and treated you like a dog"? Do you have to wait until they're 18?

You soften them up for the news by telling them "I worked like a dog to provide for you".

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