Jonathan111

My wife and I and daughter are in Houston!

I naturally hated canned asparagus. Imagine in your mind a leaf of iceberg lettuce with three or four spears of canned and heated asparagus and then a generous dollop of mayonnaise. Now imagine a seven-year-old defiantly sitting alone in a dark kitchen refusing to eat some stupid, evil concoction! I was not allowed to leave the table until I had finished my dinner even though everyone was in bed.

A4E, You did great, Thank you for taking the time to engage that person in conversation. I wonder if some conversations we have with people are fruitless but actually, we don't know how close they are to changing their mind. Time for an anecdote: My wife discovered that our 5 year old daughter had used markers on several of her dolls and her legos. Because of how my wife was raised, she was totally distressed on how to "address the problem" so she decided to not mention it to our daughter until my wife and I had a chance to discuss it. I asked my wife, "How do you feel about what our daughter (Annabel) did?" "Well, she ruined her dolls because I can't wash the marker off! I don't know what to do! Should we take her dolls away until she figures out how to take care of her stuff properly?" I thought for a minute going over how that scenario might play out and dismissed that idea as a total lose-lose. I then asked, "does Annabel own her toys?" "Yes, of course." my wife replied. "What do you think the reason was as to Annabel's decision to 'explore her creativity' in this manner?" I said. My wife then saw the look in my eye and smile on my face and exclaimed, "THAT'S IT! She just thought she was making her dolls more pretty! She was being creative!" "Did we not give her the toys and told her that her toys belonged to her? Is our daughter free to do what she wants with her possessions? Do you think that Annabel will discover on her own that marking up her dolls is irreversible and that the changes she made she will have to accept?" "Wow..." gasped my wife, "I was totally stressing on what to say to Annabel... To make this story shorter, we waited till we saw that she was playing with one of her modified toys and asked if she liked the new colors she chose for her doll... Our daughter then begin what was to be a 30 minute conversation of what colors she chose and why and what turned out good and what did not and it was really interesting her thought processes as to her creativity. She did ask if we could clean them and we said, "we can try together but I think it might be permanent." We complemented her on her "new designs" and "choice of colors" and then said that she is free to do anything she wants to her toys but that some choices are regretfully long lasting. The lesson that my wife and I took from this is that her actions were self-correcting and only required us to point some things out. We never showed displeasure or anger towards what she did - only genuine curiosity and interest in her choices. Weeks later, Annabel said our of the blue, "I don't think I'm going to put make-up on (color) my dolls anymore, I don't like the way it looks."

That is the first time I have seen that website you mentioned levi w, worldstarhiphop.com. I read through several pages of video titles and I am reminded again why I hate the set of values promoted by hip-hop culture... It subjugates women as either sexual objects or property, glorifies violence and drug use, it holds the idea that general thuggery is manly or masculine, and that property is won by scam or theft, it promotes the notion that (for the most part) sports or music are pinnacle achievements in society.

This comment: "I was often beaten, sometimes quite harshly. This has made me into what I am now; a comparatively mild-mannered person, who has a fairly good lid on his temper. I do not hate my parents; they taught me virtually everything I know, and that is a debt that I can never repay. You, at the young age of fifteen, have very little to go off of. I encourage you to cultivate patience and foresight, and also be mindful of your inexperience. It's too soon for you to think about kids, I would imagine, but whatever you do, do not spare them from physical punishment. A kid has to learn that actions have consequences, and whatever your methods may be, a lesson hard learned is almost always a lesson well learned." reminds me of this:

Below are a couple of videos from the Youtube prepper/Homesteader. He is quite religious. I want to present these for comments because I think when we observe the wrong way, it helps us parent the right way. I picked Wranglerstar since he has a mix of good values with some not-so-peaceful moments and it may illustrate a mid or low ACE score that many of us struggle with.

Why does it always have to be "strange men"? And how many children know what "strange" means in concrete terms? I explained to my daughter the difference between Type I and Type II errors of judgement. I quote Michael Shermer here: "Imagine that you are a hominid on the planes of Africa and you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator or just the wind? If you assume it is a dangerous predator and it is just the wind, you have made a Type I error, but to no harm. But if you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator, there’s a good chance you’ll be lunch" I then said, What if you are on the playground and you see a girl your age and her mother. Do you go up to them without your mommy and start of a conversation? Are they good people or bad people? If you think they are good and it turns out they are bad, what type of error did you make? We talked a bit more and she completely understood - and she is 5 years old.

I cannot figure out how to delete this topic...