
The Hand Licking Incident - DoreenMichele
https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-licking-incident.html
======
zaroth
This is a great anecdote to describe a formal approach which is called
_positive discipline_.

We assume as adults that children who do things that are not what we want or
against our instructions need “discipline” in order to learn they should have
made a better choice.

This fails on the most basic point. Young children are, in most cases, not
making a conscious choice at all in these cases. They are not thinking in
their brains, the same way we adults imagine a conscious decision making
process occurs, weighing the concequences and choosing a certain path. They
are not deciding to be bad because it is easier/more fun/worth it at that age.

Positive discipline is not actually discipline at all. It is fundamentally a
realization that children make “mistakes” because they weren’t actually
_capable_ of doing what was asked of them.

The essence of positive discipline is the search for the underlying reason a
child is not capable of following your direction at that point in time / for
the task at hand.

Barring an exceptional case, (younger in particular) children are straight up
desperate for attention and affection of their parents.

Sometimes this is the hardest thing in the world, as a fully functioning
adult, when your child is doing something
[annoying/destructive/insulting/dangerous/disgusting] after the n-th time
you’ve told them not to. Adults respond to punishment / negative reinforcement
very differently than [young] children.

In particular keep in mind this is primarily a _learning_ experience for a
child to develop coping skills and the ability to regulate their emotions. The
skills don’t develop very well from a basis of fear of reprisal in my opinion.

I’m not always able to practice positive discipline with my kids, but I can’t
count the number of occasions where I’ve pulled out that tool in response to
some stressful situation and watched the sheer relief/release on my kid’s face
when they manage to actually communicate outloud to someone that will listen
that thing that had them so upset or feeling sad/mad/lousy.

~~~
gowld
You're right that you can punish a child (or an adult) into understanding
something they can't yet understand, but you can punish a child (or an adult)
into refraining from a behavior, unless the person is incapable of
understanding cause and effect. Billions of people (and animals) have learned
to restrain their impulses out of fear of punishment. It's fundamental to how
mammal brains work.

~~~
jschwartzi
The problem is that teaching people to restrain their impulses using a fear of
punishment is totally different from getting them to change their behavior
because they understand why the behavior is bad. When you simply punish
someone without teaching them to understand you create a system of unwritten
rules where the person is unsure whether any particular action will result in
a punishment or not.

But if you can create an understanding of why the action was bad then you can
give the person a toolset to understand whether their future actions will be
bad. And hopefully you can create a society of people whose behavior is
determined by their understanding of right and wrong and not by whether or not
they think they will be punished for something.

I think you're grossly oversimplifying the way people work if you don't see
the difference here.

~~~
ksdale
This. If parents expect their kids to obey for fear of punishment, they’re
teaching the lesson that you obey people who are stronger than you.

Out in the real world, when someone tells you to obey because they are
stronger, you tell them to stuff it. It is widely agreed that in society,
people need better reasons to be obeyed than that (even if the strong do tend
to get their way more often...).

I think what you said about understanding future actions and disconnecting
them from punishment is spot on.

------
rukuu001
I love this story.

Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad.

Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did
not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in.

We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem.

Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy.

After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us there was a "BIG FROG"
(said with wide eyes, mouth turned down) in his room.

Turns out that over the traffic noise he could hear a frog croaking outside
his window. It was a noise we'd all just dismissed.

Opened and closed the window to show him it was outside.

Asked him how big he thought the frog was. Held his arms out as far as they
would go. I showed him a video of a tiny croaking frog on my phone. Not the
same as the outside frog, but close.

He was ok after we showed him the window was locked, and the frog wouldn't be
able to get in.

~~~
benj111
>Little kid logic

My favourite is when you ask a crying child where they hurt them selves, and
they point to the table they just walked into.

Edit: Or have a paddy because they can't join the banana they've just cut in
half, back together again.

~~~
syllogism
The first one's just ambiguity isn't it? "Where did you hurt yourself? At
Timmy's place"

~~~
benj111
Yes, but its an example of how small children think

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Sometimes adults also think like this, in slightly less obvious ways.

~~~
SilasX
Right, there's that old joke about the radio show that separately asked the
husband and wife of a couple "where they had sex" and the second one
interprets it as "which orifice" rather than "where were the two of you
located when it happened".

~~~
gowld
Mallrats:

"He wants to have sex in a really uncomfortable place"

"Like in the back of a Volkswagon?"

------
MRD85
I don't get why people find it so hard to empathise with a child. I've solved
a bunch of my youngish children's problems by taking the time to try to figure
out their reasoning and talk to them about it. I've had a huge chip on my
shoulder about parenting for years. I'm a single parent of a 3-year-old and a
5-year-old and it's been this way since the youngest was a baby. I've had so
many bad experiences, especially when my boy was a baby, where people have
treated me poorly because I was a dad with his kids. I've put in so much
effort towards parenting because I want to prove the world wrong. I very
rarely get angry about anything with them because I realise a lot of their bad
behaviours are simply what children do. I correct what they've done wrong but
I don't need to be angry about it.

The best analogy I've got is "if there is a dog that's a known chewer and I
leave my shoes outside with it and my shoes end up chewed, who is it fault?".
I'm the responsible adult with functioning cognitive skills, the dog simply is
acting on instinct. Little children don't have developed cognitive skills, and
their behaviour reflects what their environment has allowed. If you want to
change behaviour you need to consider why it is occurring and work on
countering the root cause.

~~~
Loughla
>people have treated me poorly because I was a dad with his kids.

That's interesting. Honestly, I've found that I get passes for many mistakes,
because the bar to being a good dad is set so low in most peoples' minds. If
I'm not hitting them and basically know their initials, I seem to be a
success.

What has your experience been? If you don't mind me asking.

~~~
MRD85
I'll give some examples, keep in mind that individually these aren't too bad
but they add up over time and wear you down.

* Being asked by a doctor "where's the mum?" as the first question when I've taken to the children to the doctor.

* Getting a lot of offers for help because of an assumption of my incompetence. i.e. during kindergarten induction for my daughter, I was asked if I needed help with some of the jobs like covering books. I was the only man in the room.

* Getting glared at while playing with my kids at the playground. If you're actually playing with your kids and not sitting on your phone then suddenly you'll find ALL the little kids near you wanting to play. Mums don't like adult men playing near their kids, even if it's with their own kids.

* While Christmas shopping with two kids in tow I've received comments like "giving mum a day off huh?".

I feel I'm doing an amazing job as a parent so the constant assumptions just
do my head in.

~~~
air7
Sounds annoying. However I feel this is a universal problem for anyone who is
an anomaly. We all use generalization heuristics, and overall it severs us
very well. The "price" is wrong judgement for the rare cases. However it's
still a better algorithm than discarding generalizations (if that was even
possible) because most things are normal, by definition.

What I learn from your comments is that in your area mums usually take their
kids to the doctors, single dads are viewed as more incompetent, mostly women
play with kids at the playground, and men Christmas shopping with two kids are
more likely to be married than single.

You are the anomaly and therefore are being wrongly categorized. This is not a
personal thing at all! Quite the opposite, it's a manifestation of how your
peer group is perceived by the general public. I bet that people that get to
know you change this perception and adapt it to you, personally.

~~~
mncharity
> We all use generalization heuristics, and overall it severs us very well.
> The "price" is wrong judgement for the rare cases. However it's still a
> better algorithm than discarding generalizations (if that was even possible)
> because most things are normal, by definition. [...] You are the anomaly and
> therefore are being wrongly categorized. This is not a personal thing at
> all!

Perhaps it might be interesting to picture instead a female engineer,
repeatedly being dismissed as a receptionist. Or a black male engineer,
repeatedly assumed a janitor or intruder and getting grief. And then see if
you're still happy with those comments?

~~~
MRD85
Not the person you replied to but the one above him. Interestingly enough my
experience with this type of judgement has made me much more aware of the
challenges of other people in minority situations. I am a white male but in
the world of being a primary parent to babies I'm a minority. I understand how
minorities in a professional setting might feel the need to be beyond
reproach.

------
beaconstudios
I tend to think that almost every time someone is doing something you don't
understand or don't like, you're better off understanding the reason for the
behaviour than trying to quash it. Even if you desperately want it to stop,
they're clearly doing the thing as a means to address something so if you want
to stop them using the current solution you should have a better solution to
hand or the problem will once again be unaddressed and the behaviour will
resume. You can't offer an alternative unless you know the cause in the first
place. This approach makes sense for children (presumably above a certain age)
and adults alike.

~~~
exolymph
Seems like a manifestation of Chesterton's Fence!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

~~~
fzeroracer
This is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer
should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor-
happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange
function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down,
gleefully assuming that it's useless.

~~~
xondono
This reminds me of the infamous comment block:

// // Dear maintainer: //

// Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,

// and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,

// please increment the following counter as a warning

// to the next guy

// total_hours_wasted_here = 42

Edit: to improve legibility

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Indent 4 spaces to format as a code block instead of flowing together or
separating with blank lines as paragraphs:

    
    
        // // Dear maintainer: //
        // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,
        // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
        // please increment the following counter as a warning
        // to the next guy
        // total_hours_wasted_here = 42
    

Note that on narrow windows or mobile screens this doesn't wrap and needs to
scroll sideways for long lines (though these are wrapped to 60 characters),
which is annoying

~~~
logfromblammo
If a viewport cannot handle gracefully lines of 80 characters, it is not the
fault of the person writing the 80-character lines. If a code block is the
right answer, I would hope that people use it, rather than attempt a
workaround just to avoid a flood of gripes from people on mobile who don't
want to scroll right. Fix your scrolling issue by fixing your scrolling issue,
not by trying to retrain everyone that posts on HN to cater to mobile viewers,
in lieu of just marking the text that requires differentiation of newlines
from other whitespace.

Also, you only need to indent 2 spaces:

    
    
      Everyone- use code blocks whenever you need them.
      Mobile users- don't complain about code blocks.

~~~
kortilla
The viewport can handle lines of 80 characters. The problem is that HN indents
so far and even truncates on the right so you’re working with like 40 chars
visible.

------
djsumdog
I thought this was going to turn into an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder story.
I use to wash my hands when I was younger .. a lot. I couldn't give an
explanation because there wouldn't have been a rational one to give.

Instead I was just put on a bunch of drugs, all of which didn't make the
compulsion go away, but did make me not want to wash my hands. Since I felt
like I couldn't do certain things without washing my hands, I pretty much just
watched more TV and became more lazy and useless.

I still have OCD, I just hide it a lot better these days.

~~~
dustycat
I have no medical qualifications, so take this for what it's worth, but I was
told by a psychiatrist specialising in child development disorders that
excessive hand-washing is one symptom of Asperger's syndrome.

~~~
tapland
It is one of the factors that they check for as part of an ASD (Autism
Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis, yes. But if it is severe they will strap on the
OCD diagnosis as well.

------
cryptonector
It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child
behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like
blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin
problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_,
maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else.

Young children will not figure these things out by themselves. Parents need to
"debug" these problems. Doctors may not be able to help until you have some
idea.

It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors
with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for.

~~~
warent
> "It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors
> with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for."

I couldn't disagree more. This seems like a step in the wrong direction. The
last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we already do
into the bucket of "strange." Actually, even saying that parents need to
"debug" these problems may be going too far. Humans are much more complicated
than a machine that must work "just so."

~~~
Faark
> The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we
> already do into the bucket of "strange."

I couldn't disagree more. Having had a proper manual for my human body would
have been amazing.

I had a less intense but somewhat similar issue to OP's child. I was licking
my lips and therefor got bullied for using "lipstick". Both stopped only after
on one of those occasions a kid in their mentioned licking can cause it, while
i pretended to ignore them. I'm quite thankful to him and wish i could help
others just like that.

Another is being lactose-intolerant. No idea when I became that, must have
happened quite late. But it took me embarrassingly long (mid twenties) to
figure out, change my diet and thus get rid of those messy bowel movements.

I see little value in not having those kind of knowledge available and instead
having to find out yourself. And parenting would hardly be possible without
understanding your child's behavior. If you have a problem with calling it
"strange" or "debug", I'm fine with calling it something else. But i doub't
many here care about (those) labels.

~~~
gugagore
I don't believe you replied to the spirit of the parent comment, since having
red lips, and having messy bowel movements are not human behaviors, but are
symptoms.

I bet what the parent has in mind is, for example, behaviors such as stimming.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Stimming = self-stimulating.

I didn't know that word (but knew the sorts of [repititive] behaviours -- like
rocking, hand waving -- as an indicator for ASD.

------
Robotbeat
One thing this reminds me of is how much of a game-changer language
development is when you're trying to help your distraught child. There are few
things more frustrating than a screaming/crying child that is too young to
communicate why they are upset... You feel bad for them and want to help them
so much... And once they're able to communicate, 9 times out of 10 it is
relatively easy to address (although sometimes the underlying problem might be
they're very tired, etc).

Of course, when a child is very upset, they're also often unintelligible, so
one of the most important things is to (at very least) remain calm so they
have the chance calm down enough to communicate with you.

(One of my children has a speech impediment... it's not easy for everyone, but
it is sooo helpful when communication can happen.)

------
hogger
This reminds me of something that happened with our child. She started pulling
her hair out at night as she fell asleep. Large clumps were pulled out over a
month or two and every night there would be small amounts of hair removed.
There was a lot of pressure to go to a psychologist from her GP and medication
was suggested too. We were talking about it a lot and her hair was getting
thin. One night we gave her a new stuff toy, and suggested to her that if she
needed to pull hair or was thinking about it, put the dolls hair. It was a toy
penguin. Plucking penguin has many bald patches now and the hair pulling
stopped that night.

~~~
exolymph
You might enjoy this similar anecdote from an SSC post.

> The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I’ve seen in the
> mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get
> along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but
> people were at each other’s throats about the Hair Dryer Incident.

> Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every
> morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn
> down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was
> off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really
> checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

> It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was
> really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think
> a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving
> back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she
> thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go
> out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she
> would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush
> back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors,
> she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book,
> and none of them had helped.

> So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her
> “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”

> And it worked.

> She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d
> left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d
> look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right
> there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So
> she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

It's a great essay overall. Link: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-
categories-were-ma...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-
were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)

~~~
chasingthewind
This is a great solution! Now I just have to figure out how to disconnect my
gas range and put it in my car every day :)

~~~
howard941
Point an IR-sensitive webcam at the range.

Now I just have to figure out how to remember that I locked the front door
when I forget to do the verbal "door locked, check" drill

~~~
pergadad
Do something new each day. A song, a gesture, a phrase. That makes then memory
unique.

Or just get a lock that closes itself...

------
bitexploder
Parenting is like that. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, operant
conditioning is a thing. Humans are still mammals. Parenting gets simple when
you can detach and not be caught up with your own ego. Barring abnormal
psychology, kids are pretty fun to teach and watch grow. My one key lesson is,
especially with younger kids, they aren’t doing whatever they are doing to
cause me distress. Most of parenting is that simple. Of course when kids get
older they may purposefully push buttons, but taking a step back, it still has
those same motivations they had when they were younger. Adults behave in a
more sophisticated manner, but some times, often even, there is that inner
mammal obviously driving behavior and it all it takes to see it is the ability
to detach.

~~~
Nomentatus
Right, your job is to help the child grow and learn. Whether it looks - to
other parents, teachers, etc. - like you are a good parent is very much beside
the point, and usually a conflicting goal you need to detach yourself from. In
fact, paying attention to that is narcissism. See Preacher's kid syndrome.
Similarly, whether their behavior is impeccable today isn't the point, whether
they're learning skills for tomorrow is the point.

~~~
bitexploder
We are big on Montessori at my house. The philosophy there is basically what
you said: kids are adults in the making and parents are just their guides. Ego
leads people to think they own their kids and such, but we are just stewards
of our kids for small but key part of their life. Many parents struggle with
this idea that kids are their own agents and you are just there to help them
grow. It seems obvious, but when you really embrace this philosophy it seems
to have a huge impact for most people.

~~~
ptx
This is interesting because it helps explain the American interest in
Montessori. But in other parts of the world these ideas are the mainstream
consensus view rather than a fringe ideology. Quoting the United Nations
website[1]:

"The Convention [on the Rights of the Child] provides a universal set of
standards to be adhered to by all countries. It reflects a new vision of the
child. Children are neither the property of their parents nor are they
helpless objects of charity. They are human beings and are the subject of
their own rights. The Convention offers a vision of the child as an individual
and a member of a family and a community, with rights and responsibilities
appropriate to his or her age and stage of development. Recognizing children's
rights in this way firmly sets a focus on the whole child. Previously seen as
negotiable, the child's needs have become legally binding rights. No longer
the passive recipient of benefits, the child has become the subject or holder
of rights."

[1]
[https://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30225.html](https://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30225.html)

~~~
bitexploder
I would not call Montessori a fringe ideology, but I would also say it is not
very mainstream. A lot of non-Montessori parents reach the same conclusions,
Montessori just has it baked into the learning system. As a parent you are
kind of all in. We have public (charter) Montessori schools here in CO that
are top notch. Anyhow, you are right, and, I would guess, this is new for a
lot of American parents. Also, just cause UN says, doesn’t mean other first
world nations all buy into it :)

------
gwbas1c
When I was almost 11, I started sucking on my knuckles because they were dry
and cracking. My mother immediately knew what the problem was and showed me
the hand cream. She didn't need to scold me or make a big fuss.

Honestly, this article really isn't about "the hand licking incident." It's
about all the drama in the mother's life at the time; the drama in the
mother's life was unrelated to the hand licking. In all honesty, this article
would be much better if the author got to the point about the dry skin very
close to the beginning, and then described why the drama in her family
distracted her from understanding her son's problem.

(To re-iterate, the article isn't about hand-licking, it's about the mother's
drama.)

As a relatively inexperienced parent of 2, the hardest lesson for me to learn
is that it's not about me, it's about them. The second hardest lesson to learn
is how to get my kids to explain their various aches and pains.

~~~
scott_s
Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of
discovery as the author. That path of discovery is one of the main points of
the essay, as the author clearly generalizes that experience to broader
situations. It's easier for a reader to see more applications if they _felt_
that discovery instead of just being told about it. Guiding readers along a
discovery path is an effective rhetorical technique.

(It is also the structure of a lot of comedy and mysteries. Which should
indicate that we tend to like the technique in what we read, watch and hear.)

~~~
gwbas1c
> Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of
> discovery as the author.

I almost stopped reading. To put it quite bluntly, if she had put "the point"
one line further, I was going to close the browser. The drama in the author's
life was so unrelated to the problem that it really distracted from the point.

Without the preemie and the move, it could have easily been, "the school year
ended, my son went to camp, we went on vacation, and sometime during the
summer I noticed that my son stopped licking his hands." Or, it could have
been, "my son spent the summer in the hospital and stopped licking his hands
while he was in treatment."

My point is that the whole incident with the move and the premie is so
fundamentally unrelated to the point, that it detracts from the strength of
the article itself. Her son didn't stop licking his hands because of the
stress of the situation, he stopped licking his hands because it was summer
and the heat wasn't running.

~~~
inimino
> I almost stopped reading.

It seems the article wasn't for you.

> fundamentally unrelated to the point

The point (I got) was that life became overwhelmingly busy in other ways,
freeing the author from obsessing over the hand-licking behavior, which
sometime during this period went away on its own, almost unnoticed.

Generally, when an author includes a ton of irrelevant details, it's possible
that they need advice on writing well, and it's possible that the details are
actually relevant to a point which you may have overlooked.

------
chasontherobot
This article is about parenting, but I think it also applies to management.
How often have you been dealing with a crisis at work when management is
pressuring people to put in a solution, any solution and it ends up just
making things worse or causing bigger issues down the line?

~~~
khazhou
What's helped me cope with pressure from bosses was the realization that when
they're shitting on someone, it's usually because their own boss is shitting
on them (and on upwards). Then it's less personal, less an issue of someone in
authority judging your performance, and becomes more of a team effort/problem:
I will try to fix the issues, so that my boss's issue goes away, so his boss's
issue goes away, and then we'll all be happy.

~~~
delinka
But a good manager is a shit umbrella, keeping the shit off you. I'm
supportive of providing solutions so that everyone's lives improve, but one
must be careful not to give the impression that the way to make the underlings
perform is to let the shit roll downhill.

~~~
khazhou
True, but I'm not saying it's a going thing to roll shit down... I'm saying
that it would behoove people to realize that when their manager is angry, it's
probably because their manager is angry at them. One can do with that insight
what they will. Personally, it helps me cope with stressful situations, to
realize I'm not the odd man out, and that everyone struggles to get it right.

~~~
delinka
I'm afraid you've misunderstood. I'm saying that when you see shit happening
and do these things to make improvements, you [unwittingly] train the
management stack that this is how they get improvements: by sending the shit
downhill.

~~~
fiter
What's your proposal on how to handle the situation?

------
abalone
The parent may have misdiagnosed their child here. This could be Transient Tic
Disorder. It's super common. Kids get random physical/vocal tics, including
licking fingers/hands. Usually they just go away with time. Not much you can
do and definitely stressing out your child won't help. There's no "reason" for
them.

As for why the child said it was because his hands were dry: I hate to say it
but maybe the poor kid just wanted to stop their maybe-a-bit-intense parent
from "grilling" them about it again.

------
jameslk
Sounds like a case of criticism vs feedback. From:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-
ent...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-
entitlement/201212/one-thing-will-ruin-perfectly-good-relationship)

> Criticism focuses on what’s wrong. Feedback focuses on how to improve.

> Criticism implies the worst about the other’s personality. Feedback is about
> behavior, not personality.

> Criticism devalues. Feedback encourages.

> Criticism implies blame. Feedback focuses on the future.

> Criticism attempts to control. Feedback respects autonomy.

> Criticism is coercive. Feedback is not at all coercive.

------
glitchc
I dunno about this story. When I saw my son lick his hands the very first
time, this was the convo:

\- Are your hands tasty? No \- Are your hands dirty? No \- Are your hands dry?
Yes!

Problem solved. Plus a quick visual inspection will usually confirm dry hands.
It’s not like an insidious disease with no visible symptoms.

~~~
scotty79
For me it wasn't easy. When I was about 30 I noticed my hand itch like hell.

Visual inspection revealed a lot of small wounds that were cause of the
itching.

I tried washing them thoroughly and drying (no effect beyond temporary
pleasure of hot water similar to scratching).

I put on them some cream with steroids that supposedly helps with wound
healing. This helped for few days. Then the problem reoccured. I applied the
cream again. This happened few times.

In about a year the problem came back. I didn't want to abuse steroids so I
thought if I just wash hands and seal the wounds with any hand cream they will
heal quicker. Worked just as good as steroids stuff. Only then I realized that
my skin is probably just cracking because it's dry from vold weather and dry
air.

At no point before my skin looked or felt dry. I never had this problem before
in my 30 years of life. It was a new problem for me and lacking knowledge it
was very hard for me to debug. The fact that I hate to have anything oily on
my hands didn't help. Even now I put cream only on the side of hands that
crack and only after they crack first time this season.

I would very much like to have a troubleshooting guide for the human body,
right from the start.

I got something like that but limited in scope to pains caused by damaged
muscles. The book is organized so that you can go from knowing where it hurts
to knowing which muscle is damaged and what movement you need to do to gently
excercise and stretch this muscle. Both things were surprisingly
counterintuitive when my pain was caused by small muscles around the spine.

~~~
crimsonalucard
go to the doctor. Could be athletes hand.

------
g5095
Wen I was in Kindergarten, my teacher called in my parents to tell them that I
had learning difficulties. My mother asked why the teacher felt that way, her
answer: 'He won't sit on the mat with the other children for story time'. My
mother asked the teacher, 'Have you asked him why he won't sit on the mat? he
usually loves stories at home.' She called me over in front of my teacher.
'Why won't you sit on the mat with the other children for story time?' 'I
don't know how to cross my legs' I replied.

Children are people too, sometimes it's okay to talk to them.

~~~
tome
When I was about 5 I was in a gym class and the teacher told us all to "sit on
our backsides". I and half the class didn't know the word "backside". I think
I ended up assuming my "backside" was the side of my back and lying on the
floor on my side. Some of my classmates ended up in similar positions, much to
the bafflement of the teacher!

~~~
amyjess
At around the same age, also in a gym class, I had a teacher who would
pronounce "sit" as "set". I had no idea what to do when he told us all to
"set".

------
n4r9
> He felt we were interfering with his solution to his problem, not helping
> him. He was too young to understand the cause and effect relationship, and
> the way the adults around him had handled it just ensured that he would
> never come to us to ask for help with his real problem.

This passage really resonated with me. I fall into the same cognitive trap as
that kid on a fairly regular basis. It happened between me and my parents
until well after I left home, and it still happens between me and my wife and
close friends. I've been aware of it for a while but have never seen it so
clearly articulated. This has motivated me to redouble my efforts to take a
more mature approach internally.

~~~
api
I feel like the same phenomenon sometimes happens with adults at the scale of
civil society. People start doing strange things like believing silly
"alternative" conspiracy theories, withdrawing from society into online
alternate realties, etc., and instead of trying to communicate and figure out
why we just insult them and call them stupid and crazy.

Humans are not perfectly rational and they are not always able to even
understand let alone communicate their problems or motives. This is especially
true if they're under stress or suffering from mental illness, addiction, or
abuse.

------
falcor84
A great story which really resonated with me from the operations / reliability
engineering perspective. It is very common for junior engineers to jump into
an action in case of a big outage before really trying to understand the
problem.

One example I've seen multiple times was to deal with a repeatedly crashing
process by restarting yet another process. In some cases, this may help, but
in others it can make the situation much much worse. Instead, the advice I
took to heart is to delay action until you have a mental model of the problem,
and how the planned action would resolve it (and if possible, sense check it
with another engineer).

In the best case scenario, you would have a trusted (well-tested) mitigation
procedure that would provide you with enough time to recreate the issue and
test the proposed solution in a staging environment.

~~~
gugagore
I think when something is very uncertain (because it's hard and/or the
engineer is inexperienced), it's not possible to develop a mental model that
lets you plan a course of action. However, taking a slightly directed, non-
destructive action can sometimes reveal more information to you.

The idealization of this is coming up with some hypothesis, and testing it,
which I think is covered by your approach. But what if you don't know enough
to even know the right questions to ask. You may be dead in the water if you
don't allow an unplanned action.

~~~
falcor84
Agreed, there definitely no magic bullet hate. At the end of the day it's all
about being pragmatic.

------
drieddust
> The hand licking incident strongly reinforced my commitment to just stop and
> not do things that I knew didn't work. It made me more committed to not "put
> out the fire with gasoline," even in the face of social pressure to the
> contrary.

To this effect only, I have started a journal to keep my behavior in check
while dealing with kids. Needless to say it has helped me a lot and often
times I have caught myself in the act instead of taking things personally just
because it's socially unacceptable. Earlier my default mode if thinking was to
treat a kid as an adamant adult ready to shoot you down is just a not worth
it.

------
gcc_programmer
Am I the only one who thinks the parent is to blame for this because she
didn't have the common sense to give gloves to her kid in the cold weather...
To me that's unacceptable.

~~~
arkey
I just want to comment in a constructive way on this.

Do you have kids? If so, have you thought about, sorted out and covered all
the things that would be unacceptable? What about what other people might
think unacceptable, but you don't? If you however don't have kids, imho you
are hardly entitled to criticise.

There are many legit reasons that could cause the mother to not necessarily
provide gloves. Then again yes, maybe she wasn't paying attention. Who knows.
That's not even the point.

It's very easy for us here to voice our opinion and openly criticise. But it
would be sad if that's what someone gets for being open about mistakes they
made and how they finally worked it out.

~~~
gcc_programmer
> Do you have kids? If so, have you thought about, sorted out and covered all
> the things that would be unacceptable? What about what other people might
> think unacceptable, but you don't? If you however don't have kids, imho you
> are hardly entitled to criticise.

You are overcomplicating things, while I keep them concrete: gloves in cold
weather is common sense. I do not have kids (so points for you I guess), but
it's a strawman argument: are you saying people cannot comment on situations
that are not directly applicable to them? This is too weak. A more
robust/practical approach is that I act the way I speak: when I have kids, I
will make 100% sure they always wear gloves in cold weather :)

> There are many legit reasons that could cause the mother to not necessarily
> provide gloves.

There are exactly 0 reasons, especially since she later was telling the kid to
wear them. Children need to wear gloves in cold weather otherwise they are
cold. It's also recommended for adults.

> Then again yes, maybe she wasn't paying attention.

That's my point.

> That's not even the point.

Agreed: her point is completely different, and <unpopular opinion> to me the
gloves are the signal in the story, the rest is noise</unpopular opinion>

> It's very easy for us here to voice our opinion and openly criticise

It is. If you put out your opinion in the public domain, you should expect
support and/or criticism. People will attack your ideas, even if they are
good. You are criticising me, yet I am not feeling sad at all.

~~~
arkey
Hey, thanks for the constructive reply. Reading everything a day later I do
feel like my comment was maybe a bit too intense in tone, although I still
stand a couple points:

> A more robust/practical approach is that I act the way I speak: when I have
> kids, I will make 100% sure they always wear gloves in cold weather :)

Which is very commendable, but bear in mind you might be forgetting things, or
deciding different on things that are obvious for other people and not for
you.

> If you put out your opinion in the public domain, you should expect support
> and/or criticism. People will attack your ideas, even if they are good. You
> are criticising me, yet I am not feeling sad at all.

Totally agreed. I just think that the tone and the intention behind the
criticism is quite important.

Anyway, I understand your point better know, and realise that maybe I did to
you exactly the same thing I'm (constructively I hope) criticising you for.

------
jexah
Hate to break it to you, but nobody was saying you should pour the alcohol on
the fire. They said to put the fire out and you happened to be holding alcohol
so you decided to throw alcohol on it.

Nobody said that the hand licking was "Bad Behavior [and] Absolutely Must Stop
At Any Cost". They looked at you like you didnt know how to teach your child
how to be polite in public, and you chose that you must do whatever it takes
to stop yourself appearing that way.

The fact that you were trying to solve a problem without knowing the cause was
silly, and I'm genuinely happy for you that you've learned from that
experience, but the worst part is that you attribute the blame to outside
forces.

Sentences like "They made me make the problem worse by telling me to fix it"
and "It's their fault I failed because I didn't know how to solve the problem
and guessed" come to mind.

"It might result in worse things happening to my relationship to my child than
him being mad at me about this one thing. So I tried to comply with this
expectation that my child needed to stop and I needed to be the one to make
that happen."

There is more shifting blame in this paragraph. Somewhere you missed the part
where "to comply" is to achieve the outcome of your child no longer licking
his hands, not to assault him.

Society views parents who hit their kids worse than parents whose kids lick
their hands, so I have no idea where you got the idea of compliance being to
hit your child.

It's nice that you learned one lesson, maybe you could learn something from
how you wrote the article, and if you can remember, how you felt when you
wrote it.

------
Tempest1981
My favorite is when non-parents tell parents, "why don't you tell your child
to stop doing that?"

If only it were that simple.

Or "explain that it's for their own good". Sure, logic should work.

------
brumm
This reminded me of a book[1] I discovered via a tweet from @codinghorror, and
his follow-up article[2] about it.

[1]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769016.How_to_Talk_So_Ki...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769016.How_to_Talk_So_Kids_Will_Listen_Listen_So_Kids_Will_Talk)
[2]: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human-
beings/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human-beings/)

------
ilaksh
My take on this is that sometimes problems are really hard to solve on your
own or at all at the time. It seems like if there was money then the behavior
was so persistent that it actually warranted outside help from some type of
specialist. So instead of just continually putting pressure the husband should
have acknowledged that it was not a normal parenting issue and looked for a
psychiatrist or something.

The other part of this is that it seemed like the real solution only came when
the child was able to communicate better. So this reminds me of many technical
problems I have had in a way. Most technical problems cannot talk of course.
But they were similar in that the solution only came when the true cause of
the problem came to light. Anyway maybe there is some commonality between a
pre-speech child with a behavior problem and a thorny technical issue.

I guess I am lucky in a way that I only need to deal with technical issues
because systems usually operate on a totally logical basis and it seems much
less stressful than dealing with children.

~~~
taneq
The thing that jumps out at me is that it took months and months to ask the
simple question, "why are you doing that?"

Also, in this case the undesirable behaviour had a perfectly benign and easily
fixable root cause, but that's not always (or even mostly?) true. In many
cases my kids will be misbehaving because they're not getting what they want,
eg. icecream for dinner or to not go to bed on time. In cases like these, it's
the parents' job to say no. Of course it's very important to understand the
child's real motivations but often it's going to come down them just wanting
something they can't have.

~~~
xenadu02
Small children often can’t articulate the reasons why they do something. If
pressed they’ll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense (but isn’t
true nonetheless). If you suggest a reason to them they’ll immediately say
yes. If you offer a list of reasons they’ll immediately claim it’s the first
or last choice offered.

I have no doubt that she asked him repeatedly why he was doing it but either
he couldn’t answer or by that point the shame and pressure from himself
teacher created a mental block that prevented him from answering.

Taking the pressure off is absolutely the right thing to do.

~~~
mncharity
> Small children often can’t articulate the reasons why they do something. If
> pressed they’ll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense

This reminded me of a UI Design principle, that users themselves often don't
understand why they dislike a user interface, so their complaints and requests
need to be explored, rather than taken at face value. Otherwise, when the
first request is implemented, it may then replaced by another, and again,
until the root cause is uncovered and addressed.

A very fuzzily remembered example was something like puzzling requests for
data-entry form tooling, and the root cause turned out to be a multiple-page
form lacking a "I can see it all, and see that it's right" confidence
property, which was resolved not with tooling, but by simply making the form a
single page.

------
setgree
Like many of you, I wish that more of my peculiar behavior as a kid had been
tolerated. I think this is getting better over time. My grandfather got beaten
for being left-handed, my dad failed 4th grade for poor penmanship, I got
briefly put on ADHD medication for being unable to sit still -- but this
trendline is encouraging.

Cnservatives (e.g. Kevin Williamson) sometimes say: "Don't just do something,
stand there!" The lesson is that not all problems can be solved quickly or
well or through active attention. In general this is an underrated response,
IMO.

(Bumi in Avatar season 2 makes the same point: "I'm going to
do...nothing!"Neutral jing FTW.)

------
g051051
The headline made me think of this: [https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2012/04/13](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/04/13)

------
rootedbox
Seems like something simple that one could have asked a doctor.. "My kid keeps
licking their hands.. any ideas?"

Also even though the article the mother seems to think that they have gotten
to root cause.. there may be more of a cause.

Dry hands is often because of the compulsive action of washing ones hands too
much. So now there are 2 compulsions washing hands and licking hands to keep
them dry.. By replacing licking hands with moisturizer you will still have 2
compulsions.. cleaning hands and moisturizing too much..

A 2 second google search will also bring up thousands of pages about kids
licking hands.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_A 2 second google search will also bring up thousands of pages about kids
licking hands._

Google did not exist 24 years ago when my now 31 year old son was 7 years old.
The company was founded Sep 04, 1998, just over 20 years ago.

Note to self: Work on more clearly signalling context and time frame to my
readers.

 _Also even though the article the mother seems to think that they have gotten
to root cause.. there may be more of a cause._

The article mentions in brief that he has health issues. He got a proper
diagnosis a few years later when he was fourteen. That helped enormously with
a long list of complicated issues.

So his hand licking was likely rooted at least in part in the fact that he has
a condition that significantly impacts his epithelial tissues, which includes
but is not limited to skin.

------
Carpetsmoker
So the teacher, grandparent, and father never bothered asking why he's licking
his hands, and his mother only after a lot of drama, including spanking(!!)

I get that being a parent is hard and try to hold off my judgements on stuff
like this over the internet, but ... I am not wildly impressed by this teacher
or their parenting.

I'm glad that at least the mother came to her senses later on and decided to
treat her child like a human being.

~~~
adwn
> _So the teacher, grandparent, and father never bothered asking why he 's
> licking his hands, and his mother only after a lot of drama, including
> spanking(!!)_

No, the mother did ask:

 _" I tried grilling him about why he was doing this so I could find some
solution."_

The article doesn't imply that she asked him only _after_ spanking him, and it
seems unlikely that she did.

 _Edit: fixed the quote from the article._

~~~
Carpetsmoker
Looks like something went wrong with your copy/paste there, since you copied
the same twice. But I assume you meant:

 _" I tried grilling him about why he was doing this so I could find some
solution. He couldn't explain it and the terror in his eyes was disturbing."_

That doesn't really sound like asking to me, but more like telling him off
while also asking a question somewhere in between.

~~~
adwn
> _Looks like something went wrong with your copy /paste there_

Oops, you're right, thanks! Fixed.

> _That doesn 't really sound like asking to me, but more like telling him off
> while also asking a question somewhere in between._

After re-reading that part, I'm willing to concede that your interpretation is
probably closer to the mark than mine.

------
michaelmrose
This is really interesting and insightful thanks for sharing.

------
khazhou
Eh, this article was a bit "Reader's Digest". Parent tries to solve problem,
gives up and lets fate have its way, problem goes away when parent wasn't
looking, parent-child have a moment of trust which reveals that the problem
was something simple all along. Life lesson learned.

How about when it's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold
climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but weird in
middle school and socially+career-limiting in an adult. Or an aggression
issue. Or one of the many spectrum issues, which won't go away by moving to a
warmer climate.

I agree with the article on not getting angry, but I'm not going to get a new
life lesson from "if your kid trusts you they will open up."

~~~
DoreenMichele
_How about when it 's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold
climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but weird in
middle school and socially+career-limiting in an adult. Or an aggression
issue. Or one of the many spectrum issues, which won't go away by moving to a
warmer climate._

Author here.

I had all of those issues. Both my sons are Twice Exceptional. One has a bad
temper and is prone to violence. They both likely qualify as ASD. One had a
serious speech impediment. He still has a speech impediment, but most people
don't realize it.

All of those were easier to deal with because my kids trusted me. Trust was
absolutely critical for resolving the hardest problems.

It's one post, so it's not going to answer everything. Hopefully, things will
get fleshed out over time in a useful way for parents with such concerns,
assuming I can get engagement and also find time to do this kind of writing
instead of freelance writing to keep the lights on and food on the table.

~~~
sdrothrock
> Both my sons are Twice Exceptional

I've never heard of this before -- what does it mean?

~~~
DoreenMichele
Gifted plus special needs. Often described as "gifted and learning disabled,"
but it's really a gifted child with any disability.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional)

~~~
sdrothrock
Thank you! It says that it came around in the mid 90s, which would have been
when I was in elementary school, but I've never heard of the term despite
fitting in the group. I wonder if it was related to a certain set of
schools/philosophies.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I learned the term because I was homeschooling and active in the oldest online
gifted community. I kind of was rubbing elbows with some of the luminaries in
gifted education circles. So I was kind of in on the ground floor.

I believe public schools were much slower to adopt such concepts.

~~~
sdrothrock
That makes a lot of sense! Thank you. Do you know if it is (yet/still?) in use
in public school systems in the US?

~~~
DoreenMichele
No clue. My youngest is 29 and I have no grandchildren, so I have no current
involvement with the school system.

------
jason_slack
This made me stop and think about how I've raised my children. I'm glad this
was posted.

------
hyperpallium
Reminds me of "active listening" in _the 7 habits of highly successful
people._

------
benj111
Slightly off topic but would throwing an alcoholic drink on a fire make it
worse?

90% of drinks aren't going to be strong enough anyway, but what about neat
spirit (<50% alcohol)? My hypothesis is that the alcohol might cause a brief
fireball, but the water has a higher boiling point so would smother/absorb
most of the energy?

Obviously don't try on electrical fires.

Edit: Clarity

~~~
mcv
Strong liquor is used to flambe food, so strong drink is definitely flammable
in some circumstances. Beer and wine probably aren't.

~~~
benj111
You need to heat it first though, it isn't exactly easy to ignite, and it
doesn't set fire to the food either.

Edit: Spelling

------
neerajkrdh
>> The more he licked his hands, the more he needed to lick his hands.

A perfect example for thrashing.

------
georgebarnett
It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes”
a behaviour, rather than simply causing the issue to be hidden and breaking
down trust and then later having it resurface many times worse.

~~~
Baeocystin
Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually
spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I
think she made the right choice the times she did.

To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned
about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an
outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of poking around outlets
again. No, it did not make me resentful, and more dedicated to wirepokery than
before; my parents were consistently trustworthy, so I took their fear
reaction as something I should genuinely respect. And that very small amount
of added fear in my life quite possibly saved it. If I got spanked for every
little thing, I could easily see that shifting to resentment. But
appropriately, rarely applied, I can say with certainty it worked for me.

~~~
nostrademons
There are plug covers you can buy for < $0.10 each that solve that problem.

Hell, my parents also told me when I was ~4 not to stick anything in the
electrical outlets. No spankings were involved. I listened because why
wouldn't I?

(Well, at least until senior year in college, when I was like "What happens if
I strip an Ethernet cord and stick it in an electrical outlet?" I'd missed the
exploding-wires demonstration in my physics course, y'see. Did not get
electrocuted, though I did get a spectacular pyrotechnics show.)

~~~
Baeocystin
Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are
potentially a choking hazard.

Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in
safety. FWIW.

[https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-
fro...](https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-from-
electric-shock-554)

(These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure
my parents would have used them.)

>I listened because why wouldn't I?

So did I, about a vast majority of things, until I didn't, because I thought
electromagnets were cooler than verbal warnings were deterring. I think you
will be hard-pressed to find a child anywhere in the world that doesn't push
boundaries.

~~~
manmal
You are arguing that the spanking AFTER you tampered with a wire saved you.

First, you could have died before the spanking. Punishment after the fact
never rights a done wrong.

Second, at the age of 4, if your parents had just sat down with you and told
you that you can die from electric shock, don't you think that would have made
a lasting impression either?

~~~
adrianN
I wouldn't trust a four year old to understand what death means.

~~~
tempestn
My kids are six and four, and explaining to them that something could
seriously injure or kill them is definitely enough to prevent them from ever
doing it. I can't imagine spanking them to try to make a point, but if
anything I expect that would influence them to trust my warnings of potential
injury less.

~~~
gambiting
As a complete anecdote - I remember when my parents told me when I was very
little that eating rotten/mouldy food could get you seriously ill, I think I
even asked if you could die from it - to which they said that yes, you could.

And after that, I had a complete phobia of everything that seemed even
slightly off. I became incredibly picky, because that one spot on the slice of
cheese _could_ be mould or because the ham smelled not how my 8 year old brain
thought it should smell like.

No spanking involved, but the psychological damage was much greater I think.

~~~
tempestn
Yeah, that's true, you definitely do have to be careful with that kind of
thing. Kids really can take things to heart and believe them so strongly that
it's difficult, even when they know you're the one who originally gave them
the information, to moderate it. I usually try not to speak in terms of
absolutes, but let them know what _can_ be dangerous, especially for kids who
don't yet have enough experience to know which situations are dangerous and
which aren't—so if they want to use/touch/whatever it, please ask an adult
first. So it's not the thing itself that's inherently dangerous, but rather
using it before you have enough experience. (Still do have to emphasize the
potential danger though, lest they one day decide they do in fact have enough
experience now.) This seems to work well for my kids, but of course ymmv.

------
Kiro
Sorry, but I'm not buying the "oh, it was just dry hands all along". Hand
licking is a very common symptom for children with OCD and/or autism. She
should have taken him to a doctor.

------
DanBC
I don't understand why this example of abusive and poor parenting has got so
many upvotes.

~~~
benj111
Is it abusive and poor?

No ones perfect, and parenting is the ultimate 'make it up as you go'. Could
they have done better? Probably. Did they learn from their mistakes? Yes.

~~~
csixty4
I realize the author learned from the situation and I hope they're a better
person now, but I would certainly consider their behavior abusive.

It's fortunate the kid was just dealing with dry skin. Imagine if it was
something like OCD where they were dealing with an irresistible compulsion and
had no way to express what they were experiencing. Is spanking an acceptable
response? How about one or both parents telling them to just stop? Rubbing
spices all over their hands so an already terrible experience becomes worse?

Perhaps I'm too invested in this because I grew up with an undiagnosed
neurological disorder and was punished similarly. The punishment and derision
from my parents took a serious mental toll on me that I'm still unpacking.

~~~
benj111
Isn't the line for abuse subjective? Doesn't it partially rely on the
motivations of the 'abuser'? If you circumcise your male child for religious
reasons, is that abuse? What about forcing them to eat their vegetables?

Maybe we're just arguing semantics here? For me abuse is a strong word and
something that social services should be getting involved with.

~~~
DanBC
Physical violence towards a child is always unambiguously abusive.

The only exception is if that child is eg running at you with a knife seeking
to harm you.

In this country I would have made a referral about the school's poor response,
and I know that would have been investigated. And I would have made a referral
about the response of both parents and I know that would have been
investigated.

~~~
benj111
Which part would you say is physical violence? One of my examples or the
original post?

------
chasing
> Meanwhile, our relationship grew more acrimonious. He clearly no longer
> trusted me and this was beginning to poison all our interactions.

> Finally, I had this moment where I felt that my efforts to ramp up the
> pressure to force him to stop had crossed some line. I felt I was turning
> into an abusive parent.

#$@#%?!??!

What the hell is wrong with this person? It's hand-licking. The child isn't
sticking forks in outlets or punching teachers. Laugh at it if you can't
figure it out and get on with your lives.

> I was a young homemaker, financially dependent on my husband, and I was
> feeling enormously pressured by both of these people. I also felt they both
> had real careers and didn't genuinely respect me. They both felt it was my
> job and mine alone to somehow make my son stop licking his hands entirely.

This also sits really weirdly with me. Doesn't matter who's working and who
isn't: The child has two parents. Parenting is a collaboration. (If you feel
disrespected as the non-working parent, that's something to be worked out
between you and your partner, not your child.)

~~~
darkerside
You've obviously not been in a position like this before, so let me share a
thought. It was really difficult for the author to admit these things. She
didn't paint herself in a positive light. You were treated to raw honesty in a
way that is ever more rare in a society where our words can haunt us for
decades. And you react, not by appreciating this gesture, but by judging it,
and from a wildly underinformed perspective.

It's ok not to have empathy for situations you haven't been in, but I
recommend you handle it by asking and seeking to learn. Not to say you don't
have some valid thoughts in there, but man, you are missing out on a ton of
unspoken context.

~~~
chasing
Okay, but she did write it up and it wound up on Hacker News, so I do feel it
reasonable to comment on. Don't assume I didn't think about the piece. And I
cringed hard specifically _because_ of my empathy for the child in that
situation, having his relationship with his mom harmed for reasons he didn't
understand.

I did apologize for the tone in a direct reply to the author -- that's fair.

Also: Maybe don't assume what positions I have or have not been in as a
parent.

~~~
darkerside
You're right to have comments, and my only gripe was with the tone. Having
been on both sides of it now, parenting is just really hard. And there really
is a ton of social pressure to get it right, like no other pressure you've
had. Get your job wrong, the worst case is you get fired (for most people
without life or death jobs). Get parenting wrong and they literally take away
your child forever.

I'm sorry for making assumptions. It seemed pretty clear to me that you
haven't been on the other side of this, and there would be nothing wrong with
that anyway. Different phase of life and all that. And in sorry for what
you've been through. Being abused by a parent, who should be your source of
all things good and loving, is a terrible thing.

------
porphyrogene
You struck your child because he was licking his hands.

Sometimes things are so hard and so overwhelming that you become a slave to
your overwhelming misery and do things that you would never do with a sound
mind. That does not mean that those actions are exempt from criticism. Most of
the people on death row were likely of unsound mind when they did whatever
landed them in that pointless punitive boondoggle.

If you can stomach abusing a child physically with intent then you and your
spouse will likely continue to abuse him in one way or another when things get
a little too stressful. As a former abused child I can assure you that he will
forget. Then, when he is able to see children from an adult’s perspective, he
will remember. He may bury his contempt and convince himself that you were
right and that he should hit his own kids. Or he may lose respect for you. The
latter would be the healthier response.

