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Ball And Chain To Force Children To Study
You haven't tried everything to get your kids to study until you've tried the Study Ball. The Study Ball is a 21-pound prison-style device that locks onto your child's leg and only unlocks after a predetermined amount of study time has passed. The homework manacles can't be locked for more than four hours, and come with a safety key. The product website states, "Quite often, students who are having problems concentrating tend to get up every ten minutes to watch TV, talk on the phone, take something out of the fridge, and a long list of other distractions. Were they to dedicate all this wasted time to studying, they would optimise their performance and have more free time available. Study Ball helps you study more and more efficiently." Stop Teasing Your Brother Pepper Spray coming soon.
This should work exactly as well as physically abusing your child when he or she does something wrong. That way when they are faced with conflict later in life, they follow in your steps and resort to violence.
Oh, by the way, 9.5 kg (21 pounds)!? What kid is that going to inhibit? I was walking up and down fields picking up rocks heavier than that by the time I was in grade school! If that stops your kid from moving, you've got other parenting problems to worry about
Were they to dedicate all this wasted time to studying, they would optimise their performance and have more free time available.
Not always true. Read this article.
My work here is dung.
And it is quite apparent by the nature of the device, that it was either designed to - or would strongly appeal to be used in such cases.
Surely making the subject fun, interesting would be a better way of encouraging students? I guess if you're a parent who can't be bothered and a teacher that can't teach then, sure, get the stocks out... but really. This must be a joke.
Good thing we don't have housefires anymore. One of those things would be really problematic if the kid needed to get out of the house in a hurry.
Shoot, I'll pick up a couple just for weekend fun in my dungeon.
Most parenting techniques these days are stupid. It's about spineless parents who can't say no to a child.
My Dad used to spank me with a belt if I acted up too much. But situations like studying, I'd just start losing all privileges until I was bored out of my mind. Give that a few months and you'll study just to be entertained.
When he did spank us, he'd send us to our rooms until he could calm down and think about it. Usually 1/2 hourish later he'd have us come in and talk about what we'd done. Then he'd have us pick a belt. His belts were arranged by thickness and hardness. If you picked too pansy of a belt then he'd make you get this thick huge rhine-stone covered cowboy belt that hurt like crazy. If you picked a heavier belt, you'd usually get off with less punishment.
Man, I didn't realize my dad was doing psychological warfare until I was twenty.
Oddly enough, I think he did the best he could, and the fact that he's never hit us while angry or unfairly made me really respect that form of punishment.
It wouldn't work for every kid, and I hope I'll never need any kind of punishment for my future kids like that, but for me it was probably the only punishment they could do. (ADD incarnate)
Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV? Sitting down with your children? And hitting them?
No. Nope. Why, yes!
1 hours later...
Fireman: WTF do you mean your child was wearing clothing?!
Retarded Parent: It was to help them keep warm, and it was easily heavy enough for them to lift.
Fireman: But it got caught under the table because of the panic and now your child is a crispy critter.
Policeman: Sir, please put your hands behind your back.
You can contrive a situation to prove any point. Bullshit that never happened doesn't make your argument valid.
Locks on the outside of bedrooms are warranted sometimes.
If it's absoloutely essential to lock someone in for thier own or other peoples safety I'd preffer a simple bolt that can be undone without looking for a key. Or better still an electromagnet that automatically releases when the fire alarm goes off (and can also be manually released in a fail-safe manner)
My parents locked my sister in at night when she was little since she would get up in the middle of the night and bake.
A lockout on the cooker would seem a much safer way of getting arround that problem.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You raise the critical point there: "spanking" vs. "beating." As I've written on these very pages before, a spanking--which is what I occasionally got--is primarily a correction ritual. The pain is instantaneous and fades in a few minutes. It lets you know Mom and Dad are serious about this one.
The effectiveness is completely destroyed if it's employed all the time. It becomes normal, and fosters resentment of the parents. And I'm not even going to comment on actual beatings, which I remember friends in grade school talking about--things that leave marks, slaps on the face or head, hitting with implements... Sorry, that is child abuse, and yes, those kids all grew up to be fucked up.
It's all about the kind of world model you give your kids. Being rational and consistent with the discipline of your kids, leaving some kind of physical punishment only for the worst or most dangerous infractions, sets up a world model that is very close to that of the adult world--there are a lot of negative consequences that you don't want for behaving incorrectly, and if you behave really incorrectly, you will really, really regret it.
The world model set up by parents who fly off the handle and beat children, out of anger, and as a normal course of events is this: You are at the mercy of capricious and unjust forces who will smite you whenever they feel like it. This either makes kids pull into themselves and try to avoid doing anything that might result in a beating, or it makes them say "fuck it" and do whatever occurs to them because it won't alter the consequences one bit. The latter is especially difficult when they get into the real world where punishments are ramped. Getting a drunk driving ticket sucks, yeah, but it's better than getting beaten, and who cares anyway. The lower-level punishments, which seem really bad and dire to someone who has a correct world model in their head, mean nothing to someone who is used to being hit all the time.
This is, I think, the problem with any of these discussions. What is the operational definition of corporal punishment? Just like the parent, I barely even remember being spanked, but things my parents have said have had a much, much worse impact on me that the silly little spankings ever did.