SHAMING YOUR CHILDREN right or wrong?

SHAMING YOUR CHILDREN

A Cranky Saturday opinion post

 

Opposing opinions are welcome, (wrong, but welcome), however, please…no name calling…that means you, you big stupid head!

 

There have been several stories in the news lately of parents who chose to teach their children a lesson by forcing them into embarrassing situations. 

Several weeks ago, a girl who was caught stealing was forced by her parents to wear a sign saying “I am a thief.”

The latest story is of a mother who made her daughter wear thrift store clothes because she was teasing another student about the tacky clothes she wore.

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/bully-forced-to-wear-heinous-clothes-by-mom-as-punishment-right/

Oh..so that's why my daughter got mad at me.  Who knew they were heinous clothes?

I guess this is punishment for a 10 yo girl.

 

These make interesting stories.  There is some kind of satisfaction in hearing of these brats getting a taste of old fashion medicine, kind of an eye for an eye thing, but is shaming your children an appropriate punishment?

The experts say no:

“Shaming can damage the parent-child relationship. Children quickly learn they cannot trust their parents. Children need to feel safe and secure and to be able to trust their parents. Without such safety and trust, children’s brains do not grow and organize optimally. That means children are at risk for thinking, acting and behaving in detrimental ways."

I’ve read this piece of wisdom several times and it seems to me you could just as well substitute spanking, grounding, taking away allowance, lecturing, time-out or withholding dinner for “Shaming.” The expert's opinion sounds like gobbledy-gook to me.

Still

I don’t think the sign holding thing would serve to adjust a child’s behavior.  The shame of holding a sign and admitting to theft would only work if the child was in fact ashamed of stealing.  If he was ashamed of stealing then any less conspicuous punishment would probably be a preferred method to adjust the behavior.

(If I could throw "optimally" and "detrimental" in there I could be an expert.)

Yet

The case of having the young daughter wear cheap tacky clothes as punishment for the bullying behavior of making fun of another girl’s wardrobe might just be very productive.  Letting a bully get a taste of their own medicine, which she surely did get, strikes me as an effective way to make a point.

Experts of course disagree

“The National Association of School Psychologists says parents who discover their child has been bullying should take active steps to curb the behavior. NASP suggests explaining to the child why bullying is wrong, discussing alternatives to aggressive behavior by role playing, establishing rules regarding such behavior and reporting incidents to school officials.”

This sounds very professional and authoritative.  If the parents were trained psychologists perhaps they could give role playing a shot.  Certainly explaining why bullying is wrong and establishing rules regarding such behavior would solve the problem.

I believe the above advice should be the last resort. 

I think the way to stop bullying behavior is to hug the aggressor.  Love the mean right out of them. 

When that doesn’t work, make them wear funny clothes to school and embarrass the hell out of them. 

If that doesn’t work, try the expert's advise. 

Try role playing.  Take the role of the bully and beat the crap out of the child.  Then explain why that was wrong.  “Friggin hurts don’t it!” Establish rules regarding behavior, “Do it again and I’ll beat the crap out of you again.”

The preceding opinion was that of a cranky old man, and not necessarily that of management…Mrs. Cranky.

COMPUTERS…can’t live with em can’t live without em

COMPUTERS…can’t live with em can’t live without em

 

I don’t know how I used to live without my PC.  Maybe it was solitaire with actual cards, TV, or even reading, but I can no longer survive without it.

My first laptop worked great except for some reason the wireless function only worked at home.  The frustration this caused when I visited my son or we went on a trip was unbearable, so I broke down and bought a new laptop.

The new laptop picked up a virus which turned off my virus protection. 

I KNOW!!

I paid the Geek Squad to fix that issue and along with a few bucks, it cost me all my files.  Fortunately my files were backed up, but bringing them back in a form I could work with was a royal pain.  Six months later my computer would not open at all.  It was another virus, even though I paid for Norton Antivirus.* 

RT - DO NOT CLICK ON WEIRD WEBSITES THAT STALK YOUR BLOG!!

Anyway

I took the PC back to the Geek Squad and they removed the virus along with every file on my computer.  This time I lost a bunch of unpublished posts, which I hate rewriting stuff because…hell that’s another post.

Anyway

I spent a day reloading my “new” PC with Microsoft Word, Norton Worthless, and all the files I did have backed up.  When I tried to do some actual surfing on the “fixed” PC, it was ponderously slow.  So slow that is was unusable.

I brought the PC back in to the Geek Squad and demonstrated its unusable slowness.  The on-duty geek was confused.  He finally decided it must be my browser as he has seen issues with IE 10.  He changed my browser to Chrome and voilà!  The machine was back up to speed.

Back home again, I took some getting used to the new browser (Change and I do not get along without a fight) and all was well with the world.

Until

I decided to play a little online poker to which I am addicted.  It was like 1998 and a modem all over again.  I lost 4 million fake dollars (still painful to an on-line addict) folding pocket aces and then timing out and getting thrown off the table when I was the big chip leader. 

Suddenly, all my applications were slow again.  For jollies I switched back to IE 10 and WTF, the PC was once again back up to speed.  The next day it was crap again so I switched to Chrome.  It was good for everything except the on-line poker.  So…back to IE 10 and it works great again for all applications.

OMG, I have a female PC, and it must be the wrong time of the month.  My backup PC works just fine, so it has to be masculine as I understand the monthly thing lines up with cohabiting females. 

Anyway

What do I do now?  Sometimes the PC works well. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes IE 10 is the cure, sometimes it only works with Chrome.  You know that if I take the PC to the Geek Squad she will work just perfectly. 

These lady PC’s don’t act up with those that understand them.  

 

 

*Norton Antivirus did not pay for this mention…though I’m thinking they might just be that stupid and incompetent. 

I Wrestled In High School...Part II: The Chest

I Wrestled In High School, But I was Not A Wrestler

 

When we last left the Young High School Cranky, he was preparing to wrestle a 225 pound human chest.  Emaciated from losing seven pounds in one day, young Cranky was waiting to get his ass beat.

If you missed part I, find it here:

http://joeh-crankyoldman.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-wrestled-in-high-school-but-i-was-not.html

Part II: The Chest





 

By the time my match was to begin, the varsity had finished with a win.  They all gathered around the mat to watch me be destroyed by “The Chest.”

In the first period, I stayed away from “The Chest” and the second period started 0-0.  “The Chest” was huge, but he was slow and not very skilled.  In the second period I scored a point with an escape, and stalled as best I could the rest of the period…1-0.

In the third period my man escaped and tied the score 1-1.  Then with less than a minute in the match I managed a takedown for 2 points and took the lead 3-1.  In a desperate attempt to escape, “The Chest” made a beginners mistake and raised his inside arm.  I leveraged his arm and had him almost on his back for a near pin making the score 5-1.  With 20 seconds left, I could have stood up, giving “The Chest” one point and then stayed away until the horn blew giving me a huge upset win as everyone in the gym had expected me to be easily defeated.

Instead of standing up and taking the virtually guaranteed win, I tried for a pin.  I had “The Chest” three quarters of the way on his back.  The entire Varsity and Junior Varsity teams were chanting, “PIN, PIN, PIN!” I reacted to the chant by pressing further and further for the pin.  As I attempted to force “The Chest” to his back, I slipped more and more over his giant thorax until my weight was suddenly too far over the mid-point of his body.  With 8 seconds left in the match, “The Chest” simply rolled over and dragged my unbalanced body onto my back.  The referees hand came down with a slap a second before the horn went off.  I lost a sure win by getting greedy.  I lost by a pin.

In three seconds I went from having my back slapped by my teammates for a great upset victory, to having my back slap on the mat for a loss.

Ten minutes later, weak from famine, exhausted from the match and dejected from the last second loss, I hit the shower.  My head under the cold spray of water trying to cool off, “The Chest” came over hand extended and offered me congratulations, “Hey, great match, for a while there I almost thought I was going to lose!”

“Thought you were going to lose!  Thought!!  Are you kidding me!  You were beat, all I had to do was stand up and the match was over.  You lost except I got greedy and your only freaking move the whole fight was to roll over on that gigantic chest of yours!”

Actually I didn’t say that at all, I just shook his hand and said, “Thanks, good match.”

By the time I got home, I was over the lost match that I should have won.  It would have taken days for a wrestler to get over such a loss.

I wrestled, I was never a wrestler.