4 ms·

She caused a fire because she got distracted with Social Media. As a parent I would also confiscate electronics and probably consider therapy at that point.

by serpix 7y ago

SiempreViernes 7y ago
She caused a fire cooking, which can happen pretty easily if you aren't careful: obviously it is the cooking instructions that are faulty that haven't conveyed the risks properly. Realistically she could just as well had to go to the toilet and then forget about the stove, and what are you banning then?
- pizza234 7y ago
  The assumption here is that she has an addictive personality (in this case, to social media), and she's impared in (at least) daily responsibilities.
dagw 7y ago
If she got distracted reading a book, would you also consider therapy?
- pizza234 7y ago
  Typically, there's a large difference between the bookworm and the social media addicted personality. Within the limits of very gross generalizations (which is inevitable in this context), the former category is largely healthier than the latter.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    You say that now but there were people complaining about people spending too much time on books back when generally available books were new.
- prepend 7y ago
  Perhaps if she started a fire while reading. I’m a parent and based on that experience I expect the subjects episode was part of a larger pattern.
phaemon 7y ago
> She caused a fire because she got distracted Yes, it happens. I set some bacon on fire because I forgot about it when I got distracted. My wife set a jacket potato on fire because she got distracted. It happens to normal people. > As a parent... probably consider therapy I know who sounds like they should be in therapy, and it's not the kids.
- throwaway100773 7y ago
  Wow. Passive aggressive much? I’m with the GP. People get distracted no doubt. It’s normal. But I think the comment was about what the GP would do if put in a similar situation. If one continues to get distracted while doing something potentially dangerous, for example cooking bacon, and it happens frequently, looking at the root cause of the distraction is probably warranted.
  - phaemon 7y ago
    Apologies for being passive agressive, I meant to be direct. Anyone who thinks children should be taken to therapy because they're easily distracted is an idiot. Is that non-passive enough for you? The root cause is kids get distracted. So do adults. You learn from your mistakes, avoid distractions, and get some smoke alarms. Even then, these things happen. It's life.
  - pizza234 7y ago
    I agree with the parent - there isn't necessarily an aggressive interpretation (although it could have been worded in a more neutral fashion). Based on my personal view, this is a case of addictive personality, caused by parent's poor education. I imagine the parents placing her in front of screens for her entire childhood, in order to babysit her. This is a long shot, but it's an educated guess.
llamathrowaway 7y ago
This is assuming the story is real, not just some marketing campaign: 1. Therapy requires mutual trust to work. Administrating therapy at this point, after turning the child into an adversary by taking away electronics as a form of punishment, would make the child think that the therapy sessions are no more than another form of punishment. Nothing useful can come out of the therapy if the child perceives the therapist as an enemy. 2. It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part of human life into a medical condition, and treat 'therapy' as the deus ex machina that could solve all inconveniences in our social life.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Exactly, which is why I'm a little concerned about the knee jerk reaction to promote mental health as a solution to problems we have in society (mass shootings, CP, suicide, etc). As you said, you need the patient to want to change in order for progress to be made, and mixing punishment and therapy makes that nearly impossible. What we need is a fundamental shift in how we view mental illness and discipline. Instead of just punishing people for doing something wrong, we should be looking at why the mistake was made and try to work with the individual to fix that and use punishment only if more effective methods don't work. Maybe we need psychologists to work with parents/communities so parents know how to approach deviant behavior in a constructive way. I firmly believe that if parenting is done well, people will be better equipped to deal with problems later in life.
- forgottenpass 7y ago
  >It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part of human life into a medical condition In my experience it's correlated with the US West-coast passive aggression. Nothing can just be a difference in opinion and/or personality clash.
hos234 7y ago
My kids have access to the comp in the living room when their devices get confiscated. The punishment being they loose their privacy while still having access.
pizza234 7y ago
I don't think confiscation would be fruitful. Based on the (inevitably) scarce information, my guess is that the parents neglected the subject during the childhood, she grew up used to "passive entertainment", and she developed an addictive personality. If this is the case (see the part where she mentions she's easily bored), removing some means would just transfer the addiction to other ones, potentially (but not necessarily) more dangerous. An approach would be family therapy, as the parents also had a causative role. Of course, all of this is a wild guess.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  Therapy, the universal panacea. What about just talking to each other, like a normal family? I'm happy my parents didn't insist on therapy anytime anything happened.
  - pizza234 7y ago
    This is a flawed argument. Nobody wrote that therapy is a universal panacea (I wrote "approach", which is an entirely different concept). Also, you clearly don't know how therapy works. It's not something can "do" "anytime anything happens", like going to the car mechanic, in particular, because therapy takes a (at least relatively) long time to have effects. The idea to go to therapy in cases like this is actually based on the opposite of what you wrote: 1. that the event is exceptional (it's not "anything") 2. that there is a pathological context (addiction) 3. more subtly, that there is at the very least a communication issue in the family

She caused a fire because she got distracted with Social Media. As a parent I would also confiscate electronics and probably consider therapy at that point.

by serpix 7y ago

She caused a fire because she got distracted with Social Media. As a parent I would also confiscate electronics and probably consider therapy at that point.

SiempreViernes 7y ago

She caused a fire cooking, which can happen pretty easily if you aren't careful: obviously it is the cooking instructions that are faulty that haven't conveyed the risks properly. Realistically she could just as well had to go to the toilet and then forget about the stove, and what are you banning then?

pizza234 7y ago
The assumption here is that she has an addictive personality (in this case, to social media), and she's impared in (at least) daily responsibilities.

dagw 7y ago

If she got distracted reading a book, would you also consider therapy?

pizza234 7y ago
Typically, there's a large difference between the bookworm and the social media addicted personality. Within the limits of very gross generalizations (which is inevitable in this context), the former category is largely healthier than the latter.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  You say that now but there were people complaining about people spending too much time on books back when generally available books were new.
prepend 7y ago
Perhaps if she started a fire while reading. I’m a parent and based on that experience I expect the subjects episode was part of a larger pattern.

phaemon 7y ago

> She caused a fire because she got distracted Yes, it happens. I set some bacon on fire because I forgot about it when I got distracted. My wife set a jacket potato on fire because she got distracted. It happens to normal people. > As a parent... probably consider therapy I know who sounds like they should be in therapy, and it's not the kids.

throwaway100773 7y ago
Wow. Passive aggressive much? I’m with the GP. People get distracted no doubt. It’s normal. But I think the comment was about what the GP would do if put in a similar situation. If one continues to get distracted while doing something potentially dangerous, for example cooking bacon, and it happens frequently, looking at the root cause of the distraction is probably warranted.
- phaemon 7y ago
  Apologies for being passive agressive, I meant to be direct. Anyone who thinks children should be taken to therapy because they're easily distracted is an idiot. Is that non-passive enough for you? The root cause is kids get distracted. So do adults. You learn from your mistakes, avoid distractions, and get some smoke alarms. Even then, these things happen. It's life.
- pizza234 7y ago
  I agree with the parent - there isn't necessarily an aggressive interpretation (although it could have been worded in a more neutral fashion). Based on my personal view, this is a case of addictive personality, caused by parent's poor education. I imagine the parents placing her in front of screens for her entire childhood, in order to babysit her. This is a long shot, but it's an educated guess.

llamathrowaway 7y ago

This is assuming the story is real, not just some marketing campaign: 1. Therapy requires mutual trust to work. Administrating therapy at this point, after turning the child into an adversary by taking away electronics as a form of punishment, would make the child think that the therapy sessions are no more than another form of punishment. Nothing useful can come out of the therapy if the child perceives the therapist as an enemy. 2. It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part of human life into a medical condition, and treat 'therapy' as the deus ex machina that could solve all inconveniences in our social life.

beatgammit 7y ago
Exactly, which is why I'm a little concerned about the knee jerk reaction to promote mental health as a solution to problems we have in society (mass shootings, CP, suicide, etc). As you said, you need the patient to want to change in order for progress to be made, and mixing punishment and therapy makes that nearly impossible. What we need is a fundamental shift in how we view mental illness and discipline. Instead of just punishing people for doing something wrong, we should be looking at why the mistake was made and try to work with the individual to fix that and use punishment only if more effective methods don't work. Maybe we need psychologists to work with parents/communities so parents know how to approach deviant behavior in a constructive way. I firmly believe that if parenting is done well, people will be better equipped to deal with problems later in life.
forgottenpass 7y ago
>It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part of human life into a medical condition In my experience it's correlated with the US West-coast passive aggression. Nothing can just be a difference in opinion and/or personality clash.

hos234 7y ago

My kids have access to the comp in the living room when their devices get confiscated. The punishment being they loose their privacy while still having access.

pizza234 7y ago

I don't think confiscation would be fruitful. Based on the (inevitably) scarce information, my guess is that the parents neglected the subject during the childhood, she grew up used to "passive entertainment", and she developed an addictive personality. If this is the case (see the part where she mentions she's easily bored), removing some means would just transfer the addiction to other ones, potentially (but not necessarily) more dangerous. An approach would be family therapy, as the parents also had a causative role. Of course, all of this is a wild guess.

brokenmachine 7y ago
Therapy, the universal panacea. What about just talking to each other, like a normal family? I'm happy my parents didn't insist on therapy anytime anything happened.
- pizza234 7y ago
  This is a flawed argument. Nobody wrote that therapy is a universal panacea (I wrote "approach", which is an entirely different concept). Also, you clearly don't know how therapy works. It's not something can "do" "anytime anything happens", like going to the car mechanic, in particular, because therapy takes a (at least relatively) long time to have effects. The idea to go to therapy in cases like this is actually based on the opposite of what you wrote: 1. that the event is exceptional (it's not "anything") 2. that there is a pathological context (addiction) 3. more subtly, that there is at the very least a communication issue in the family