

Parents are Borrowing from Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/fashion/22dog.html?_r=1&hp

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sethg
_But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and
child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots —_

I have three sons, aged seven, five, and three, and... well, let's just say
that I have become a connoisseur of child-rearing books, and "children should
call the shots" is not exactly a running theme. The hippy-dippiest of such
books in my library, _The Discipline Book_ by Sears and Sears, uses the
phrases "fix your child's behavior" and "train your child" on page three.

I think there are certainly a lot of parents who mis-discipline their children
because they want their children to be their friends, or because they don't
want to suffer the short-term pain of dragging a tantrumming child to his room
in exchange for _maybe eventually_ preventing tantrums in the long run. (I
certainly plead guilty to the second error.) But "be an authority figure" is
not a new concept in the child-rearing literature, and it's not even an old
concept that the Dog Whisperer has rediscovered.

Maybe there are parents whose children are driving them nuts, but who are so
full of themselves that they never even think to crack a book on the subject
of disciplining children, and then they watch this TV show about dog training,
and dawn breaks over Marblehead.

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tptacek
I searched the full text of this story for "Cartman", "South Park", and
"Tsst", and finding none of them, decided not to read it. I'll bet that not
one parent who claims to be "taking mental notes" about Cesar Milan has _not_
seen that show.

~~~
dmix
In the commentary for that episode Matt and Trey explained that they really
believed it would work on children. They had viewers tell them it actually
helped them raise their kids.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5UvsHKtcyY>

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Tichy
“We thought that obedience was the enemy of love. We didn’t want the kids to
be afraid of us, but after a while we found ourselves wondering: do we have to
do what they say the whole time?”

That sounds rather confused - one isn't the opposite of the other. Kids not
having to be afraid does not mean you obey the kids.

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ZeroGravitas
There was a show in the UK where they trained husbands like dogs.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4457416.stm>

Interestingly, much like Super Nanny (and I believe Dog Whisperer, though I've
not seen much of it) they generally showed that "bad" behavior in the Husband
(Child/Dog) was often a direct result of the behavior of the Wife
(Parent/Owner) and much of the changes involved the Wife (Parent/Owner)
changing how they deal with things rather than directly changing the Husband
(Child/Dog).

One example was a husband who never helped with the chores. The cameras
revealed that every time he tried to help his work was immediately criticized
and often redone afterwards by the wife. Confronted with video evidence the
wife realized the counter-productive nature of her actions.

This however didn't stop a reverse-sexism backlash as seen in the link above.

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nazgulnarsil
once you accept that

1) humans are animals

2) before the age of 10 or so children are pre-rational

parenting should make a whole lot more sense. children do not come into this
world ready to accept logical reasoning as justification for behavior
modification. you have to train them that the alternative is unacceptable.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Re #1: meh. I guess you're right, though it's not a terribly useful point in
this discussion.

Re #2: Bullshit. You've clearly never spent any time around kids if you think
that kids younger than ten are "pre-rational". Kids start to reason way before
age 10.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
start being the key word. look into brain development. the field of child
development has known for years many things that parents refuse to apply.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development#Formal_operational_stage)

~~~
swombat
I like the line: It takes 20 years to make a human being, but it only takes 9
months to make a savage.

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Devilboy
South Park did an episode on exactly this - called 'Tsst'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsst>

~~~
nanexcool
Direct link to episode (legal):
<http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103795>

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rykov
What's the protocol on telling your child "I raised and treated you like a
dog"? Do you have to wait until they're 18?

~~~
sethg
You soften them up for the news by telling them "I worked like a dog to
provide for you".

