Yeah, after having three kids with widely different temperaments, I can only offer two pieces of advice to other dads:

- You're going to have to change diapers anyway, so you might as well get good at it. I was a one-man Formula 1 pit crew of diaper changing. AMA.

- Invest in a vasectomy.

Wait. After three kids your advice only covers the first 2-3 years?!

Since I basically followed both of those pieces already, am I good?

> After three kids your advice only covers the first 2-3 years?!

Yep. Good luck.

AMA: what about the super runny pound of goop poo that leaks through both nappies.

Just deal with it. It's going to happen, just notice as quickly as possible and then go and clean the baby (washing, not wipes, just hold him in one arm, use the shower head and in a minute its all clean)

They use sawdust to clean liquidy messes at the subway so...

Buy a dog.

Cannot recommend this one enough, many household messes will be gone in no time with a dog that does his/her part

I think it's also that a dog will also respond differently to a third party (the trainer) than how they respond to the owner with whom they already have a relationship. The owner could use the exact same techniques as the trainer, but the dog will respond differently.

Same thing as why organizational change can be more effective when lead by an external change agent than an internal one.

I saw this behavior in speech therapy with my second. He would refuse to vocalize to his mom because he knew she would eventually cave and give him what he wanted, but when the speech therapist withheld a toy until he vocalized, he responded very quickly - likely because he was unsure whether she would cave as mommy does.

This helped us realize that, in this case, we really were the problem. We needed to, in some cases, be more firm. At first this resulted in a lot of tantrums, but once the child's expectations changed then he behaved with us similarly to with his speech therapist.

Exactly the same thing is true of a child with their parents compared to other caregivers.

I think that's what a ot of trainers and coaches don't understand. When people (or dogs) meet somebody new they listen much more to that new person. So the coach thinks his method is perfect.

But after a while people will regress to their old habits.

I'm not sure why that would humble her. If she trained dogs, then she already knew 99% of the dogs out there with behavioral issues are a direct result of the owner. There are VERY rare circumstances where it's just a genetic defect (for lack of better term) in the dog, and it just has insurmountable issues. After fostering/owning roughly 75 dogs in my life, I can say 9 times out of 10 that consistency and discipline are lacking in households that have a "problem dog".

Ironically enough, the exact same consistency and discipline are pretty vital for a child as well. They need a little structure in their lives to feel secure. (No, I'm not talking helicopter parenting or scheduling every second of your child's day).

You are exhibiting the Just World fallacy. It makes you uncomfortable to believe that sometimes the universe is random and chaotic, and that sometimes there are dogs and children whose bad behavior really isn't the fault of their handlers, so you shield yourself with a dogmatic (no pun intended) belief that it's always someone's fault, even when the empirical evidence (like a crummy Chihuahua owned by a professional dog trainer) suggests the opposite.

Which is not to say that it's never the fault of the parents/owners. It probably is, the majority of the time. But to suggest that as a universal law, as you have done, is silly.

> You are exhibiting the Just World fallacy. It makes you uncomfortable to believe... so you shield yourself...

This is bulverism. You haven't presented evidence that tw04 is wrong. You've just assumed they're wrong, and presented a condescending explanation for why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism

And as they said, you're not actually disagreeing with them.

So you didn't bother to read my post? Because I never once said it never happens/is universal law. I said it is the majority of the time... you know, exactly what you just said.

You were not very precise with your numbers. You say "99%", "9 out of 10" and "very rare". To a lot of people these mean "negligibly small". With dog training, child rearing and most everything else in life you increase your chances for success by a lot if you follow certain rules. But let's not look down at the people who fail. It may be their fault or it may not be their fault.

How are 99 % or 9/10 not precise numbers?

And "very rare" was a comment on "99 %", not a quantity on its own.

HN is the one place where I expect readers to interpret numbers literally.

Are 9/10 and 99% the same number to you?

Would you describe a random number generator outputting 5 when picking between 1 and 10 as "very rare"?

1/10 != 1/100 != "very rare"

They are for separate things.

It humbled her because in the past she would have blamed the dog's behavior on the owner and she would have known exactly how to fix it. Now she has a dog that doesn't respond to her methods.

The more likely explanation is that she is not properly applying her own methods, because it's harder to evaluate something that one is personally experiencing, as opposed to something happening to another person. The article even talks about this.

This is not unique to kids and pets. It is why even experienced athletes have coaches, for example.

9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100?

99 % dogs, 9/10 children.

9/10 dermatologists

"Here [at the Yale Parenting Center], we deal with two kinds of children. One is that they are very aggressive and have serious psychiatric problems. And the other one is that they come in for normal kinds of issues that parents just want some help on."

I don't think these people are just dispensing pop psych advice in magazines or once a week. It's a clinic.

His punishment could get him arrested here (Norway) as well. They have pretty strict limits on violence towards children: They put it as none, including but not limited to spanking.

I've never seen a child physically punished here in Norway, in fact it is very rare indeed to hear a raised voice. Usually when you do hear a raised voice and see a misbehaving child it is a visitor or, occasionally, a refugee.

I remember being shocked when on holiday in Sweden, Gothenburg, a couple of years ago I saw an American (speaking American accented English at least) man slap a misbehaving child in the street.

In thirty years of living in Norway I have never heard of any child known to my family being spanked.

I think that the reason for no corporal punishment here is simply because children are expected to behave themselves and that it is assumed that they are, to a degree at least, rational beings who can be persuaded to behave instead of compelled.

Your story reminds me of my spouse: He was visiting the US and somehow wound up in a Chuck E Cheese. Playing for the children was war scenes, with tanks and soldiers. He was pretty appalled it was acceptable for children due to violence.

And children were one of the things that does seem very different to me - shockingly so. I'm American, and most children are fairly quiet. But they are much more free to roam, within some reason and allowed to play quite often, even while at school. I'm going to guess all this helps out quite a bit along with your last points.

There was something else going on. Physical violence is not a cure for any known disease.

I have two kids, and as angry as they can make me, I always find that calming the situation down is way better than escalating it.

> Physical violence is not a cure for any known disease.

Since when somebody disagreeing with you is a disease?

bluejekyll really should have said disorder.

If you have a kid who is getting bad grades in school and has behavioral issues, and the underlying cause of it is ADHD, then no amount of physical discipline, even up to child abuse like closed fist punches, throwing metal chairs, screaming at the top of your lungs while doing it, etc, is going to fix that. All it will do is breed resentment. And if you want to have a relationship with your child after they turn 18, I'd strongly recommend minimizing that.

And I'm speaking from personal experience as a child who went through that. My grades were as bad my senior year as they were from elementary school. The fear wasn't enough to make my brain neurons fire the same way as the other children around me.

(I also object to the labeling of anything that doesn't perfectly mesh with our conformist modern day upbringing as a 'disorder', but that's another topic. Given the realities of our system not adapting to the needs of people, but requiring people to adapt to the needs of the system, I'd reluctantly support medication over physical abuse.)

> then no amount of physical discipline, even up to child abuse

All physical discipline is child abuse. That's why it's illegal in most of Europe.

The obvious exploitation vector is deliberately pissing you off to make you feel guilty and lose confidence. I think my father used to be like you for the first two years or so, then he grew up :)

> Physical violence is not a cure for any known disease.

Setting bones? Fixing dislocated shoulders?

These are activities meant to do something else but the pain is a side-effect. These are actions of treatment. It's a stretch to call it 'violence'. "Force" is a word which comes to mind instead.

> leather belt fixed him within a year

Lot of Indian parents (including mine) follow this approach.

It was very common everywhere until about 10-20 years ago.

My mum even keeps her collection of broken wooden spoons.

I am very interested in the progression of societal intervention in parenting. I, like many others I'm sure, was beaten occasionally as a child. It was not done maliciously or for pleasure, but as a learning aid. Strangely, I learnt pretty quick.

I get that people don't approve these days, and I know it's almost impossible to draw a legal line on when spanking is discipline and when it's abuse. I'm not sold that I agree on the party line that it's an inherently bad thing though. Just a tool that can be misused. I doubt I'll be having kids though - so it's a problem I won't need to deal with.

> It was very common everywhere until about 10-20 years ago.

I keep hearing this mentioned as why "kids these days" are so stupid/weak/emotional/etc, without any proof.

I'm curious if there is any (popular) research in these areas that I can show otherwise (or not!).

I don't know any research, but here (Australia) it's gone from perfectly acceptable to illegal in a generation. As I said, my mum has her broken wooden spoon collection (Dads belts were more durable) but my nephews aren't familiar with the concept of a spanking, let alone a belt or having your mouth washed with soap for swearing.

It was removed from government schools in the early to mid 90's and eventually made illegal in private schools too.

There is a lot(!) of research on spanking (some links below) but there is a quote I heard go around attributed to Cicero, born 106BC, that I think is a better answer to your question: "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

Similarly I remember in my college history of communication class, we were very interested in if the Internet would destroy relationships and power dynamics (I'm dating myself, Internet was new at the time) and we spent a lot of time looking at how upset people were with the rise of literacy, such as in Hunchback of Notre-Dame there is the sentiment that the book will destroy the church.

All this to say we have been complaining "kids these days" basically since they invented spoken language. Possibly we see kids differently today in western culture because we control more of their activities and time so we get more pushback ("I don't want to go to music class!") or simply we spend more time with our kids now than generations past and rather than allowing them to run outdoors with their friends, we see them running in restaurants and other non-ideal places.

Anyway, research on spanking/hitting as promised:

Gershoff's overview of past research - Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now To Stop Hitting Our Children - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768154/

American Psychological Association 2012 overview - http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx

Pediatrics article linking spanking to increased child aggression - Mothers' Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and Subsequent Risk of Children's Aggressive Behavior - http://m.pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2010/0...

Canadian Academic publication overview - Physical punishment of children: lessons from 20 years of research -http://m.cmaj.ca/content/early/2012/02/06/cmaj.101314.full.p...

Abstract of article correlating spanking and later abuse - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18779030

Thanks, I've heard that dubious quote before, but still have no doubt elders have always complained about "kids these days" for as long as there have been kids and a way to complain about them.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm aware of the link that physical punishment has on development, but what I wanted to know is if "kids these days", regardless of cause, are actually less capable/more entitled/etc. If there's even a way to measure such abstract claims.

In my own personal experience I would initially say yes, but I think this is where it is deceiving. For example, when I was in school I did my work and turned it in and didn't notice people who whined about their grades despite not doing any work. Now I am older and from talking with teacher friends, they constantly complain about students who act so entitled.

I think to myself, I don't remember anything like that. But those students could have existed, how would I have known at the time? Even if I didn't have my rose-tinted time-machine glasses on?

Anyway, this is all pretty obvious, just rambling.

I think it's a little of both. The thing with kids, and dogs, is that the training has to start from day 1. You let a little bit of laziness in, and they take advantage. It compounds (kind of like eating that extra slice of pizza over a few years).

I have had both kids and dogs, and trained both in pretty much the same way (don't tell their mom).

But again, that is my sample size of me.

I think some breeds are just kind of fundamentally flawed.

Were chihuahuas bred to be obedient or were they bred to be toys and possibly food?

I heard they were bred to be alarm dogs. Nothing was getting close to your camp if you had a chihuahua. That's why they never shut up, and they are so difficult to ignore. My friend from Mexico told me that - he's not a dog authority by any means, but it sounded legit to me.

Chihuahua are an old breed and I don't think we know their true history. Old breeds tend to be healthier and more compatible with humans though, as we have worked all the bugs out.

No idea. They are very good lapdogs. Our dog is actually very nice and cute but she just doesn't learn anything. T

I have agree with you half don't, I train Australian Shepherds and I can say without a doubt that positive enforcement works better then positive punishment. I have worked with 2 Chihuahuas in my lifetime, but were little pieces of shit that don't respond to anything either way.

So I guess we should clicker train our black/brown haired fat kids and the blonde skinny ones are screwed.

Seriously though, your post makes me think about how dogs/child teaching is all in what you have and psychologist (maybe news) try to apply one method to all of them. It just doesn't work, some kids need one thing and others need something else. We live in such a crazy complex world.

Probably bred to be rodent dogs.

I think you're right about adjusting the method according to the child but Kazdin is a director of the Yale Parenting Center, and they seem quite experienced in dealing with "problematic" children. But also, giving an exhaustive method to complex social issues, e.g. parenting, isn't really possible because of all the edge cases you may have, which is why we have "free form" methods like therapy, I guess?

I think the problem is with the entire field of psychology they don't take people's personality into account. And I think it takes lot and lots of practice to even start getting at that because you have one personality as a psychologist and your entire theory of mind is based on your own perceptions of what you would do were you in the other's person's shoes. It takes a lot of experience to get over that level of understand and start to take other people's temperament into account before even thinking about that. Not to mention even our models are not good because we don't really understand ourselves that well.

http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/fish.html :

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. "Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."

"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."

"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

---

Do you know that they don't because you know the training that psychologists get, or because _you_ don't and you haven't had that training?

Similarly, do you know that the models are bad because you've studied how they don't fit people, or do you think that those models don't fit you?

Psychologists do study personality. But despite that I still think as human beings our theories of mind are based on our own understanding of our mind. Those neurons that fire in our brain emulate the behavior in our brain. So the advice that any psychologist gives is based on that. But I am not a fish, so I don't know how it is like to be a fish, a psychologist in this case.

I have just received bad advice before from a psychologist and looking back on it was because they don't know me and could not have known me in the few hours I spent with them. In order to know me they would have to go through a lot of people, and very few people are like me in personality terms. So to know me they would have to go through many many people before they had enough experience with people with my sort of psychology or temperament... to give me any sort of advice that would work with my temperament and actually add value to my life.

> I have just received bad advice before from a psychologist

Exactly. It doesn't take much Zen magic to figure out when someone is useless to you. (OK, maybe sometimes it does, but nevertheless it doesn't.)

Plus it's doubly off-putting when they are being useless while feeling good about themselves because they think they are helping. I have a gut feeling that some psychologists are driven by their own insecurity about being useful.

One of the biggest causes of poor dog behaviour is failure by the breeder to properly socialize the puppy. Puppies should be handled frequently, starting from newborn and preferably by as many people as possible. This imprints the dog with the concept that human=boss,parent,good person.