Taken from asperger

[conuly]

I can safely say I'm disgusted.

Sure, you teach the kid to do something "because I said so". And as soon as you're not around to boss them - or they're old enough to move out, they won't do it anymore. Alternatively, you end up with a kid like me, who will never do something for that reason, because "that's not a reason". Sure, you punish your kid... and then you forget about them? Prisoners in jails aren't expected to stay there indefinitely because, well, we forgot when you were supposed to get out.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I have this strange idea that when you treat your kids with less respect than criminals get, you're just setting yourself up for problems.

Comments

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

urge to kill rising. Because i said so is such a fucking waste of time. that ALWAYS led me to an arguement which i would win, if not by any other reason then by proving they didnt have any evidence. Which would usualy end up in further punishment from the teacher concerned. Which led to being classified the biggest problem child at my primarty school. My parents were smart enough to not try that once I'd reached age 3 and a half and could out argue em on petty shit.

[conuly]

Exactly. I think back on my childhood, and I honestly can't remember ever backing down from that argument - I'm probably wrong, but.

[leora.livejournal.com]

My childhood was mostly bad, but it had some really great aspects to it. One of those was that my parents and most of the adults in my life didn't try to use "because I said so" as an excuse for anything. And because of this, I was more willing to trust them if they said they'd need to explain later, if it was lengthy.

I was just barely 2, my birthday is in early August and my father's in late September, when my mother was shopping for a dress for me to wear to his birthday party. I remember this event myself and have heard retellings of it, because apparently the other parents in the store found it so unusual. I hated trying on clothes at that age (and for more than the next decade for that matter), but I knew I needed a dress for the party. My mother was looking through the dresses. I saw one that I liked - it was green, which was a hard sell because my mother just doesn't like the color for some reason I've never understood. But I pointed to it and said something along the lines of, "I like this one!" Then I asked if it cost too much. She told me it was about the same price as the others. Then I asked, "Is it well made?" this was the only term I knew to express the concept that if something is cheaper, but also of poor quality, it will wear out too fast and turn out to be more expensive in the long run. She told me it was fine.

So, I told her I wanted that one. She told me that she'd add it to the group of dresses I'd try on, and if I tried on all of the other dresses nicely, I could try it on last, then she'd consider which to get based on how it looked on me. I agreed. We did this. She was surprised to find it did look pretty good on me, and I got the dress that I wanted.

This struck me as completely sensible and normal. Apparently other people found it very strange. They asked how old I was, and were surprised to find I was two. I know that part of it was that I was a weird child, but part of it was that I was treated with respect and expected to act sensibly. I didn't throw a temper tantrum ever in my toddlerhood, because it never occured to me... I didn't think of it. I didn't learn about temper tantrums until I was older, and using yelling and screaming just would seem such an odd thing to do.