[unityByFreedom]

The author writes,

> I was reckless, taking my mom’s car out for joy rides without permission, skipping class

That may be after 16 years of doing outrageous things to get attention at home.

Some psychologists in the 1950s [1] suggested kids will do whatever gets them attention while striving for a way to participate in the family. That can include bad behavior. If they don't receive attention for good behavior, then they can gradually find their way towards things that will definitely get attention, like getting into mom's makeup, throwing around food or dirty diapers or whatever. Today, many psychologists suggest using positive discipline [2] to reinforce good behavior while weaning bad behaviors.

Often a family might have one "good" kid who excels in school while another struggles. Why is that? Aforementioned psychologists suggest it is because each kid finds a way to "stand out" in their family, and families who dote on the good child may reinforce the chosen behavior of both children.

In your case, maybe your family did effectively use positive discipline, or you were an only child, or you were the "good" one in your family.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Dreikurs

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_discipline

[thrashh]

One thing I’ve learned at this point is that almost l no kid or adult is actually irrational.

If someone seems irrational, it’s because their shoes are so different from any that you’ve been in. You simply have never experienced anything like their life (because if you did, you’d be like them).

And you can’t actually ask someone to explain their own behavior because everyone only lives one life and they rarely know in what way their shoes are different from someone else’s.

[noduerme]

This goes along with my own observation that when someone you just met says "I'm a really fucked up person," you should believe them no matter how attractive they are.

[DiggyJohnson]

This inspired me to stop saying this as a joke lol

[noduerme]

Heh. Yeah, avoid it. One girl who said that to me killed herself by hanging a couple years later with an electrical cord in the backyard of a rehab facility. And the girl after her who said something similar is in rehab now. Ain't no joke. I think when people say that jokingly, they know something I don't. I appreciated the honesty I thought they were giving me, but I was too young to realize how seriously they meant it. I don't even know if they thought they were being serious. But they knew.

I'm a dude who thinks about intentionally walking into propellers or windmills to take my face off, and turn into a fine red mist. So it's not totally weird I'd date women with suicidal tendencies. But yeah, if you say that kind of shit out loud, it's usually coming from somewhere true. I'm a pretty fucked up person. I'm trying with all my strength not to be one, to the people who matter to me and the people who count on me. But recognizing the dark ones so they don't fuck with you is essential to survival.

[unityByFreedom]

> you can’t actually ask someone to explain their own behavior

Yeah I think that's best done with a therapist who will take time to guide someone through their past. Asking a kid why they acted out, or an adult why they did something crazy, is almost rhetorical. They're not going to know the answer without a deep dive into how they grew up.

[noduerme]

OTOH it's a little shocking if you actually ask people and get them to think about it. Like, my friend's 8 year old kid was always hitting his 6 year old sister, so [my friend, the mom] would hit him and punish him when he did it. I said did you ever ask him what he thought his sister felt when he did that to her? So next time he hit his sister, my friend sat him down and said "What do you think that felt like to her, being hit by her older brother?" And didn't let it go, she demanded an answer. The boy was dead silent for about a minute and then buckled and apologized, and apparently hasn't hit his sister since then. The mom thanked me when I saw her and says she never would have thought of that approach. Far be it from my childless ass to give parenting advice. She's a very, very smart woman. But I think we too often think of self-reflection as some kind of adult thing we can't do on our own, or need deep therapy for, when sometimes someone just holding up a mirror to you can do it in an instant.

[unityByFreedom]

That was nice of you to ask him to reflect.

Some psychologists suggest that kids fight because they subconsciously know it gets their parents' attention. So when a parent breaks up fights it can unintentionally reinforce that behavior.

[treis]

>If someone seems irrational, it’s because their shoes are so different from any that you’ve been in. You simply have never experienced anything like their life (because if you did, you’d be like them).

I disagree with this. As an example, a video came out the other day of a Chicago Transit Authority employee getting into an altercation with some guy. "Some guy" pushed him to the ground and walked away. The employee very slowly (he was quite obese) rose to his feet, pulled a gun, walked after the guy, and then shot 14 times hitting him 3 times. In short, he murdered the guy on video in the middle of a crowded station. There's no way that's not irrational behavior.

[thrashh]

You can be 100% rational but 100% wrong. A computer is 100% rational but whether the output is right or wrong depends entirely on its input.

I make this distinction because if you want to change someone's mind or behavior, assuming that they are irrational is a non-starter. You won't make any progress. Once you get past that, you realize that they are actually being rational and that there are deeper obstacles that need attention.

[treis]

>You can be 100% rational but 100% wrong. A computer is 100% rational but whether the output is right or wrong depends entirely on its input.

Yes, but people are not computers. They are, at times, driven by emotion and impulse.

[unityByFreedom]

I think the parent commenter is suggesting that employee may have experienced some past trauma before that event. None of that excuses the behavior, nor does it excuse them from the consequences. Also, I would not call it "rational". I think that comment is just saying the hate could come from some past incident, and that it can be helpful for society to know the roots of violent behavior.

[legacynl]

> I disagree with this. As an example, a video came out the other day of a Chicago Transit Authority employee getting into an altercation with some guy. "Some guy" pushed him to the ground and walked away. The employee very slowly (he was quite obese) rose to his feet, pulled a gun, walked after the guy, and then shot 14 times hitting him 3 times. In short, he murdered the guy on video in the middle of a crowded station. There's no way that's not irrational behavior.

"If someone seems irrational, it's because you don't understand the person" "Thats not true, because I didn't understand why somebody did something, so he must be irrational."

IDK if you know what circular reasoning is, but you're suffering from it.

The video in your example doesn't fully explain the situation. You don't know these people, you don't know what happened before, you don't know if they know each other, you don't know what the other guy said/etc.

I personally don't know what the circumstances are, but I do at least admit, that in the infinite amount of possible circumstances there are at least a couple which allow for a sane/rational person to shoot somebody in broad daylight.

> There's no way that's not irrational behavior.

There's a book called 'Thinking fast & slow' that talks about questions like these. "Is someone's behavior rational?", is a very hard question to answer for your brain, unanswerable even. Still your brain quickly comes up with an answer: 'it's irrational', disregarding the fact that this by itself might arguably be irrational, how does the brain do this? What is this answer based on exactly?

To answer hard questions quickly like that, your brain has a trick: it doesn't actually answer THAT question, but secretly gives the answer to a different question, that merely looks a lot like the original question. In this case, I suspect your brain is actually answering: "If I had an altercation on a crowded station, and somebody pushes me to the ground, WOULD I slowly get up, draw a gun, and shoot the guy 14 times?" The answer is no, so the 'answer' to the question is this guy being rational is also 'no'.

So basically your brain is transplanting your own experience, your own set of learned behavior, yourself, into the situation that you saw in the video, and then decides: "Well, I wouldn't do that, so conclusion: this guy is crazy". But ofcourse out of all the possible upbringings, experiences, lifes you could have, you only have 1. So you will never truly know how it is to be someone else.

The only way to know if the shooter in your video was rational or not, is to ask why he did it.

[treis]

>"If someone seems irrational, it's because you don't understand the person" "Thats not true, because I didn't understand why somebody did something, so he must be irrational."

Who said I didn't understand why the guy shot him? I certainly didn't.

>To answer hard questions quickly like that, your brain has a trick: it doesn't actually answer THAT question, but secretly gives the answer to a different question, that merely looks a lot like the original question. In this case, I suspect your brain is actually answering: "If I had an altercation on a crowded station, and somebody pushes me to the ground, WOULD I slowly get up, draw a gun, and shoot the guy 14 times?" The answer is no, so the 'answer' to the question is this guy being rational is also 'no'.

Uh, no that's not what I did.

>I personally don't know what the circumstances are, but I do at least admit, that in the infinite amount of possible circumstances there are at least a couple which allow for a sane/rational person to shoot somebody in broad dayligh

In this case there isn't.

[mxkopy]

>Uh, no that's not what I did.

...I'm not sure you can shake off Nobel prize-winning research like that and retain any credibility.

>In this case there isn't.

I think you didn't count some of those infinite possibilities.

[kayodelycaon]

I’m probably a rare person because I can and do understand other people and myself to the level they aren’t foreign to me.

What I’ve noticed is all humans seem to operate on the same frameworks. It’s just filtered through their nature and experiences. Mental illness is just another filter.

Maybe it’s because my bipolar brain has a lot of hard, untreated mileage in it. I’ve experienced so many emotional and mental states that there is little I find difficult to relate to.

[paganel]

> taking my mom’s car out for joy rides without permission, skipping class

Those are all just "things that kids do", or they used to be some years ago, pretty sad that "skipping classes" has transformed into a "reckless" thing that risks getting you, as a kid, quasi-institutionalised.

[dillondoyle]

That was my reaction too. Especially if joy rides means a licensed kid taking the car without permission.

[Cthulhu_]

It's not to be normalised though. I sorta-knew a kid like that (he ended up living at his grandma across from our street after his family fell apart due to marital reasons); he was also mid teens or so and went joyriding in her car. Which nobody would probably find out or care about, but he ended up parking it against a tree if you catch my drift. He was unharmed thankfully, but it could have ended badly.

It might be "things that kids do", but it shouldn't be normalized or tolerated. Especially children, there's a lot of things that, until they can understand themselves, they need to be Told. How many things did you (dear reader) do growing up that, in hindsight, you think "wow that was stupid / reckless / I could've died"?

[paganel]

I agree, but there's a difference between "needing to be told" and "institutionalising your kid" because of it.

[Gareth321]

>"Today, many psychologists suggest using positive discipline"

From Wikipedia:

>"It is based on the idea that there are no bad children, just good and bad behaviors."

Given the fact that we've known for decades now that behaviour is roughly 50% nature (and 50% nurture), this foundational (implied) premise is unequivocally and demonstrably incorrect. Some children are "bad" and need to be taught not to hurt others. This parenting style is growing in popularity and I don't think it's a surprise that we now see an epidemic of kids with mental health problems.

I recommend listening to this lecture from Jonathan Haidt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E&t=569s

Children certainly need boundaries and rules. They need corrective measures when children rebel. I think it's clear that a lack of negative punishment is leading to all kinds of negative outcomes for children.

[unityByFreedom]

> Some children are "bad" and need to be taught not to hurt others.

The title of this post is relevant. OP "obliged" because he was told he was bad. The point is to not do that.

> Children certainly need boundaries and rules

Rules are paramount in "Positive Disipline". From the section "Creating Rules" [1]:

> In her book entitled Positive Discipline, Jane Nelsen emphasizes the importance of not only creating clear rules, but of making them fair...

Positive discipline is anything but permissive parenting. The point of the statement you quoted is simply that all kids can be guided towards good behavior, because as you said, nurture and nature both contribute.

> I think it's clear that a lack of negative punishment is leading to all kinds of negative outcomes for children.

To each their own, but I agree with Dreikurs that natural consequences are enough to teach kids the lessons they need to learn. Forgot your lunch money? Figure it out. Maybe it's hard to convince your kid to brush their teeth because the consequences are so far in the future, but if you take a moment to explain the importance of healthy teeth, they will hear you. The idea is to build a forthright, trusting relationship with kids so they feel comfortable coming to you with the harder problems later. I'd argue that using harsher measures pushes kids away so that when they do struggle with more advanced concepts later, they feel left adrift. On the other hand, if your parents were "tough" with you and you still have a good relationship then maybe that works for you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_discipline#Creating_r...

[DiggyJohnson]

I appreciate your response and I apologize for the brevity of this one, but I worry that pretty much everything in the second half of your comments is based on a highly-idealized perspective of the situation.

What if you try and be fair with a kid and they just never understand fairness? What do you do if you need the kid to follow rules so they don’t get in trouble? What are the “natural consequences” for a kid who keeps hitting his classmates on the playground? Law of the jungle?

[orwin]

> What are the “natural consequences” for a kid who keeps hitting his classmates on the playground?

My little brother did that, he was like 6 or 7. My father pulled him from school for a week, brought him to work. At the time he was a social worker, finding jobs for excluded people and helping reinsertion through work, in a rural area (not as rural as some areas in the US, but very rural for western Europe). Gave him some books, pens and blanck sheet to draw, took him to lunch, probably had him "work" a little (he did basically the same to me when i was 14, only it was only work). He also send him to judo classes. Worked pretty well i'd say.

It wasn't a punishment, it was more of a "timeout". Also, all kids understand fairness, they just don't always have the same understanding. You just have to explain it, before the act. You can't say "don't hit people" to a kid and expect him to understand, ESPECIALLY if he has been hit before. Also, this would have been a lie, as he can hit people. And to teach how, when, why and why not hit people, a martial art teacher is probably better equiped than a pacifist father.

[unityByFreedom]

> What if you try and be fair with a kid and they just never understand fairness?

If that's your kid, speak to a therapist. There's definitely more to good parenting than a single concept, and more than anyone could relate on HN. By mentioning natural consequences and positive discipline, I'm only introducing topics which are described in more detail in books. I mentioned natural consequences specifically as an alternative to punishment which I don't think works. Adlerian psychology suggests misbehaving kids subconsciously want to be punished because that's how they learned to get attention. By the time they're adults, they act out all the time as a matter of habit.

[flycaliguy]

For my style of positive parenting a lot of it comes down to clearly illustrating for my kids that they enjoy many privileges around the house. These privileges are conditional on their behaviour in the house. That is basically the foundation and then it’s positive parenting on top of that with privileges lost when necessary. All lost privileges or up for debate and negotiation, there is no confusion or all mighty authority.

[dahfizz]

Have you ever interacted with a "troubled" teen?

This comment is not based on reality. It's laughable, really. There are kids who cannot be reasoned with. You try to explain the importance of healthy teeth to troubled teen and they will respond "I don't care".

"Natural consequences" are not sufficient. A troubled kid will drink himself into the hospital over and over. A troubled kid will have run ins with the law over and over.

These kids are labeled troubled because they are.

[hef19898]

Assuming they really are troublesome, that justifies torturing them into compliance? On which legal ground are they basically imprisoned?

If they are so troublesome that they are a continuous threat to society (e.g. murders or serial sex offenders), there are legal ways to get them into psychiatric clinics (those means are easily abused as well so). If they are not, well, in a free society you cannot prevent people from ruining their own lives.

Most "troublesome" kids, so, are nowhere even close to these categories. And if they turn out to have really troubled lives after wards (e.g. drug abuse and everything that comes with it), I'd say most of that was caused by the "treatment" they received previously.

just to take your example of a drinking teen (being German my threshold for that would be considerably higher then the US one at that), how do you think such a teen, with already existing problems of substance abuse, would behave after going through months or years of mental and physical abuse? Turning sober? Or falling deeper into that hole?

I'm puzzled that I even have to argue against a system that, as was proven time and again, results in very serious child abuse.

[dahfizz]

You're creating a false dichotomy. Obviously these abusive camps are bad. That doesn't need to be said.

Irrespective of the camps, OPs parenting advice is bad, insulting, and deserves to be called out.

[unityByFreedom]

Your solution sounds like we should try nothing,

> There are kids who cannot be reasoned with.

Are you familiar with an approach that can help?

The approach I mention has been around for over 70 years.

[unityByFreedom]

> These kids are labeled troubled because they are.

Well, again, the title of this post shows the results of that attitude. Years of misbehavior and a well written story from a lucky one who made it to the other side, no thanks to "tough love" bootcamps according to him.

Every kid looks up to someone, whether they see that someone in person or on a screen. Becoming that someone, or a trusted figure for a teen, is a lifestyle change. Building trust takes time, and it can be lost in a moment.

[erdos4d]

I'm certain you can find teens who have such attitudes and behaviors, but I'd argue that every one of them was made that way through years of abuse and neglect. Does it help them to look at them as fucked up, irredeemable, etc? Cause that is exactly how your comment reads.

[denton-scratch]

There's a tendency to explain away behaviour as being the result of a person being "bad". It's a lazy way out.

> healthy teeth

So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right". If you have charge of an unruly kid, I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.

> These kids are labeled troubled because they are.

Gosh, that sounds rather black-and-white - they're "bad" because they're "bad". I think the word "troubled" here is serving as a dog-whistle; a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".

[dahfizz]

> So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right".

That's unnecessarily combative. Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?

> I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.

Dental hygiene was OP's example.

> a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".

I agree that most of the "troubled" kids I've known have been traumatized. But traumatization does not necessarily lead to being "troubled", and being "troubled" does not require traumatization. In any case, it does not excuse illegal, damaging, and destructive behaviors.

[mxkopy]

>That's unnecessarily combative. Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?

If all you did was explain to them the importance of healthy teeth, then denton-scratch is justified, all you're saying is that the kid cannot be reasoned with because they didn't listen to your explanation. Show them a root canal. Let them talk to the local crackhead. If your kid doesn't already have trauma and they aren't listening, most likely you aren't trying hard enough or aren't creative enough in your approach.

[denton-scratch]

> Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?

No, I'm not. I'm arguing that poor dental hygiene isn't in the same universe as getting drunk, stealing your parent's car, and wrapping it round a tree. Or beating up small kids at school.

It seems an awfully trivial misdemeanour to bring up, in a discussion of "troubled" kids and abusive incarceration.

[mxkopy]

>This parenting style is growing in popularity and I don't think it's a surprise that we now see an epidemic of kids with mental health problems.

Mmm, let's ignore the profound changes in society, as well as the life-altering technologies... Yeah, being nicer to your kids is making them fucked up.

[blackbrokkoli]

The nature/nature discussion is definitely still on and riddled with over-confident takes made in the past that now seem silly.

I would very much refrain from using the phrase "given the fact" here, and a video titled like a Buzzfeed article might not be the best evidence either

[moffkalast]

> I don't think it's a surprise that we now see an epidemic of kids with mental health problems

To be fair, it's likely those mental health problems were there with most generations but went undiagnosed.

We don't have a pandemic of cancer today, people just used to die from other shit before it got to them.

[mensetmanusman]

“To be fair, it's likely those mental health problems were there with most generations but went undiagnosed.”

Unless you don’t believe self surveys of the children themselves, it is unequivocally worse now.

[moffkalast]

> don’t believe self surveys of the children themselves

Sounds like that would be very subjective and hard to compare?

[noduerme]

>> maybe your family did effectively use positive discipline, or you were an only child, or you were the "good" one in your family.

You omit the many sadly common cases for legitimate rebellion and escape, such as sexual abuse from stepparents or foster parents. Those unfortunately can't be remedied with "positive discipline" and they don't make a child the "bad" one.

[unityByFreedom]

Right because neither the OP nor the parent comment gave any hint they had been abused. There's no question that abuse is harmful.

One of the tenets of "positive discipline" is that disagreement and rebellion are expected. By accepting such behavior, a trained therapist may earn a child's trust. And, that can be helpful to a school or therapist to discover if abuse is occurring.

That said, if you know a kid hasn't experienced abuse, you might wonder whether or not they receive any attention for doing good things. They may be acting out more because that's what got them attention. What constitutes "acting out" is very personal for each family and individual.

[DiggyJohnson]

Are you extending the conversation on purpose? Sexual abuse and trauma don’t seem to weigh into this story at all.

[noduerme]

No, often the reasons why kids act out in ways that adults don't understand is that those kids have suffered abuse. A kid who's been abused may end up being violent, suicidal, addicted to drugs or all the above. The schools and parents may not know about the abuse, so their answer is to use extreme discipline. This just makes things worse.

I brought it up because it is usually an underlying reason for kids doing crazy shit because they don't give a fuck anymore. It's not always the reason, but it's way more often than most people realize. You think your kid hasn't been molested. There's a good chance he has.

43% of men report having been sexually assaulted or harassed in America. Actual penetrative rape numbers are around 20% of women and 5% of men, which equates to 20M+ men in the US at a minimum [1]

[1] https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics

[denton-scratch]

> You think your kid hasn't been molested. There's a good chance he has.

This.

If they get therapy, there's a slim chance that that therapy will lift the repression and expose the trauma; but it's usually repressed for good reasons, and exposing it will just lead to more trauma. But if you can make them feel safe and loved, you have a reasonable chance of addressing the unwanted behaviour.

Consigning them to a coercive regime in another state isn't going to make them feel safe and loved.

[hef19898]

>> Consigning them to a coercive regime in another state isn't going to make them feel safe and loved.

Especially when you have them snatched at night from their safe space. That alone is serious trauma. And should be illegal, regardless if the parents are ok with it or not.

[denton-scratch]

> Sexual abuse and trauma don’t seem to weigh into this story at all.

Sexual abuse and trauma underlie all child psychological problems, according to my ex, who has spent her career as a child psychotherapist. In fact she says that literally all psychological problems have their roots in repressed trauma.

I think she's an extremist; she hasn't convinced me that schizophrenia and manic depression are caused by trauma. But bad behaviour and non-compliance? Absolutely.

[wolverine876]

IIRC a tenet of developmental psychology that the worst thing for children is neglect - it's worse than abuse (and that isn't downplaying abuse in any way), because the abused child is getting attention. Children are absolutely dependent on their parents for survival (literally, food, water, shelter, protection, safety), for understanding the world, for learning. Neglect, the absence of parenting, is terrifying.

[selfhifive]

I was neglected and it has made things difficult for me. I learnt how to smile by practicing with a mirror and have no reference point for what a genuine relationship is. Never been hugged and still am terrified of getting touched affectionately. Anti-social and feel lightyears behind my peers in social aptitude. Don't know how to respond to affection and tenderness and have responded with angry outbursts in the past. It's a hole that takes some getting out of.

[wolverine876]

It's heartbreaking to here, and to think of, including imaginging the child. FWIW, from some random person on the Internet with no expertise, and without knowing you at all ... one of the best things I've learned is to start with the relationship with yourself. Have compassion for and love yourself (in a healthy, not a narcisisstic way). That's a relationship you always will have, no matter what happens outside, and as it grows you can extend that love to others. Maybe that's helpful (and maybe you've already heard that!).

[unityByFreedom]

A toddler can get your attention by breaking something if you neglect them. Physical abuse of a toddler is far worse and teaches them to internalize, rather than express, their emotions.