Lives in the Balance: Changing the Conversation on behaviorally challenging kids

[xcriteria]

http://www.livesinthebalance.org/

"Ready to help caregivers move beyond time-outs, stickers, detentions, suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishment? Ready to be one of the "voices" advocating for non-punitive, non-adversarial, collaborative, proactive, skill-building, relationship-enhancing interventions? Good, because we're going to need your help!"

[James Comey]

Seems like a great website.

There was a time when "discipline" didn't mean corporal punishment, but that seems to be the way things are going nowadays. A lot of it has to do with this "Generation X" crap hypothesis that supposedly you need to treat the youth like criminals and delinquents.

I know this is anecdotal, but I've seen my brother yell at my nephew for some little things and see how it upsets him, and I know (even my father knows) that's not the way to do things. On the other hand, at times he has cried and I've actually reasoned with him, and he actually calms down, and doesn't cry.

You can't expect people to treat you with respect if you make it conditional.

[Rule_BreakerXVIII]

Thing is, definition of respect varies according to the person in question. For me, it has to do with little things- like asking for my permission before taking my stuff. For some old people it's maintaining an outward mask of deference- like touching their feet, or referring to them in the formal version of 'you'. For some assholes it's complete obedience and submission. Each person defines respect according to their own needs, which is why you'll see the coolest, most well-adjusted and often the most successful people are also the most humble- they'll offer you the chair even if it's the only one in the room. Their egos are completely fulfilled; they don't need any outside show of "respect" to supplement them.

On the other hand...people who had their sense of self taken away demand the most under the guise of 'respect'. They demand that you touch their feet; that you supplement their impoverished selves at the expense of your own self. They'll use any excuse to get "respect", not knowing that the real value of that sort of respect is little more than null.

I'm not trying to justify the behavoiur of the second type, rather I'm trying to explain why they act that way.

Also, maybe I'm trying not to turn into the second type...