Everyone has something they can’t stop themselves from nerding out over - but often it’s hard to find people to talk to about it. So go ahead, share your interests, and tell us about them!
Everyone has something they can’t stop themselves from nerding out over - but often it’s hard to find people to talk to about it. So go ahead, share your interests, and tell us about them!
I told a guy I worked with about how when I was a kid I’d have to stand in my dad’s office and, as a 6 year old, explain to him with reason and logic why I did a thing he thought was dumb. “I don’t know” was not an acceptable answer and I had to just stand there until I could come up with something that was acceptable while he asked questions to press. I didn’t yet have the mental ability to understand that as a 6 year old I didn’t really know anything, so the "dumb "thing I did was testing out a hypothesis to learn something and be slightly less dumb than I was before. That’s all any of it was; I wasn’t a trouble maker. I don’t even know if that answer would have been accept, if it was, I’d image I could only use it once.
The guy I told responded that he was glad his dad just hit him and sent him on his way. I sometimes wonder how I would have turned out if my dad would have just gave me the occasional slap upside the head instead instead of fucking with me mentally.
I don’t know if anyone makes it out of childhood unscathed.
There’s more than two choices here for you and your father that don’t boil down to logic puzzles or child abuse.
It sounds like his heart was in the right place, but without understanding your mental capabilities.
At that ages, punishments need to be clearly established and actionable. The child is behaving badly, the parent demonstrates "if you keep doing that, you’ll lose out on (Xbox, free time, family game night etc etc), then following through. If that fails, then removing the child to isolate for a while. Once they’ve calmed down, then following through with the aforementioned punishment.
Your father’s punishments would probably start working around 9-10 years old according to research.
Finally, the “I got hit and I turned out okay” is terrible logic. That justifies any behaviour that someone can survive through. Just glance at the research to see why smacking is a wholly negative ordeal with no upsides for the child.
I never said that guy turned out ok, just that he didn’t like the sound of how my dad dealt with things and he would have rather been hit. I’m sure in a perfect world neither would happen. He has his issues as well, which is why I said no one comes out of childhood unscathed. Everyone has some shit from their childhood, it’s just a question of how much it impacts them in adulthood.