The Glade 4.0

All I want to know is won't someone please think of the children?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Oh, hitting has consequences, for sure. But I'm not about to allow the animal attacking my child to determine what they are. Just like I wouldn't allow another adult to determine consequences for my children. I do that, metered out as I see fit, and I spend my child's formative years protecting him/her from bad decisions; which is what **** parents are supposed to do. It's why we have an age of majority, where children aren't afforded full custody to act on their rights, and aren't held legally accountable for those (gulp) bad decisions. If even a 17 year old is afforded this consideration for most offenses short of murder, I cannot fathom the lack of adult understanding necessary to hold a toddler 100% accountable for all consequences of throwing a tantrum.



The kid, likely two or three, was throwing a tantrum. The two or three year old doesn't understand "the body language of a cat", and it's totally unreasonable, from a parental standpoint, to expect him to.



Great. You would beat your toddler to "teach him a lesson," because, "he's a little bastard."

/golfclap

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I could give two **** about your, or anyone elses, children. My concern is for mine.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

You can disagree with my opinions all day long, but these are personal attacks and have no place in the general forum of this board.

Believing you not to have much child raising experience is a personal attack?

Quoting your own post is a personal attack?

When was the definition of personal attack expanded to include "all things, true or otherwise, which make Taamar uncomfortable"?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Then teach your child not to hit an animal that isn't hurting him. Because any child who hits my cat like that if going to get exactly what that brat got. I don't know why people are acting like children can't be taught not to hit animals.

I hadn't said anything about you or your life or your family, and you brought mine into it in a disparaging manner. Yes, personal attack. Up until then it had been about opinions. You made it about ME, specifically, and my parenting.

And the animal would be very quickly destroyed by the local municipality. See, thing is, most people are rational and realize that toddlers are not miniature adults capable of the reason and logic you seem to be attributing to them; and they value the safety of said toddler more than the life of some fungible cat or dog. A person who decided to strike my child because their cat or dog did not attack them would be very quickly neutralized with whatever force I deemed necessary to do the job.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

An attack would have to be something which could objectively be considered a bad thing. Not having experience raising children is not a bad thing. It is nuetral.

An attack against you can also not be something which you just said about yourself. If I quote something you just said about yourself in the prior post, that also isn't an attack.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Any normally intelligent 4 year old is certainly capable of understanding 'you are not permitted to hit the cat, no matter how mad you are'. My 3 year old nephew knows 'Leave kitty alone when his ears are back', and I'm not willing to say that he's particularly advanced in this.




Not when the Glade knows I DO have a child. Then it's an attack on my parenting.

My 2cp:
That's a slightly more violent version of highly typical child/cat interaction. More common examples here:

and here:



As far as I'm concerned, the two should have been separated before the hitting began but based solely on the footage we can see, the kid started it and the cat didn't maul him in return, so I see no reason to cry foul.

Rynar - would you feel any differently if it were another toddler instead of a cat? I'll grant that cat's claws are more dangerous than a toddler's fist or fingernails, but as has been mentioned - it's entirely possible that cat was declawed, which we can't tell from the gif but the parent filming the incident would clearly have known. If one toddler punches another, and gets smacked in return, would you view the event as a learning experience? Does your response to that question change based on whether or not one of the children involved is yours? Does it make a difference whether your child is the one doing the instigating or the retaliating?

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Where was this disparaging manner? Rynar didn't make it about you at all; he pointed out that you may hold this opinion because you lack parenting experience. That's not disparaging; holding an opinion becuase you lack experience is neutral. The simple fact that you have a child does not mean you have a great deal of parenting experience. "Lacking" experience does not mean you have none.

Furthermore, "you are not permitted to hit the cat because you are mad" may or may not be the situation observed in the video. Like most videos that appear around here, this one lacks a lot of information. Why is the kid mad? Did the cat do something to him already? Is he allergic to the cat or afraid of it? Maybe an older sibling knew that, and thought it would be funny to put the cat there to frighten or annoy him and film it, not realizing what would happen. Older siblings do tease, and do not always think through their actions completely. We simply don't know and we cannot simply assume the kid simply hauled off and smacked the cat out of anger. We also cannot go off "only what we see in the video" because obviously the child is upset for some reason.

You see, I do have a great deal of parenting experience, since I have not just one but three children, and have raised one to adulthood. I can tell you, if your first reaction on seeing that video is to smack the kid because they hit the cat, there is something wrong. It's an animal. It is less important than the kid. If the kid smacked it completely unprovoked, then I'd punish the kid, but animals that live in the house must understand they may never reltaliate against a human being under any circumstances whatsoever. Human life and safety is simply more important, so while I would punish a kid for hitting an animal for no reason, I would, at the very least, tell the animal "NO!" firmly as well.

The fact that you can teach a kid not to hit the cat at 4 years old does not make it some unpardonable sin if he does so. 4 years old is still extremely lacking in impulse control, especially when upset, and if the kid has been provoked in some way it's far from entirely his fault.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Knowing they are not permitted is not the same as being able to control their emotions and impulses. This is why we do not judge minors, much less toddlers by the same standards of accountability that we judge adults. Do you also think it would be wise to allow a toddler to play unsupervised in the front yard if you had instructed him before hand not to go into the street or talk to strangers? If not, why?



I've actually never concerned myself with your parenthood until now. Why you think I would have is beyond me. The things you generally post about here are your culinary skills, pants stealing, Shel, and on prior iterations: paganism. That said, having had a single child does not make you an expert on child rearing. It speaks to having some experience, but is not some sort of magic trump card one can play to counter an opinion they might hold which others may note displays a larger lack of experience.

And no, your feelings don't magically form it into an attack.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

If it were another toddler, I would seperate the two, with what the two children could only possibly observe to be my jaw droping level of strength, by picking up my child and summoning the parent(s) of the other. We would discuss what happened with our own children, and supervise their play carefully in an instructive way. Children are not animals, and the two should never be equated.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

None of these excuse hitting a cat who is not in the act of attacking.



I would not punish an animal for defending itself in a brief non-damaging way. Teaching a cat that it may not retaliate is teaching the child that cats can be whacked with impunity as long as no one is watching, and that there are only consequences if you get caught.



Yet you expect that more than that from a cat, which isn't reasonable or rational unless you honestly believe the cat is brighter than the child.

Also, as a parent of 3, doesn't that kids body language looks to you more like 'angry and looking to lash out' than 'fearful' or 'upset'? That's the look I remember my brother having when he took a hammer to the VCR because his mother wouldn't give him another cookie.

Most cats are brighter than children. Hell, they're brighter than some adults.

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Holy shitsnacks!

This is why some children think they are permitted to abuse animals.

Psh, if you put a glass bow full of water over his food mine gets a wet face.

My cat, I mean. Not my kid.

This. Future animal-beater getting the tar kicked out of him. I don't weep for the child.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I'm honestly not sure that anyone who values an animal's saftey as much as their own child's safety should have children. Is this how you feel? I don't want to put words in your mouth.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

You honestly feel that a toddler can and should comprehend this level of logic? I'll pose to you a question I posed to Taamar earlier in the thread:

Additionally, do you think this toddler would be predisposed to being a serial "into the street runner" as they approached adulthood?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'm not "equating" children with animals, I'm just trying to modify the scenario to remove the element of "my child's health & safety are worth more to me than any animal" so that I could get your thoughts on the "learning experience" presented by the "you hit someone, they might hit you back" event.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Seriously, a kid who have not been knocked down by another kid/object/animal/themselves before the age of 5 have not properly lived. My best/worst family stories, comes from my many scars aquired before I could remember.

Kids do stupid things... they won't really learn from said stupid things, because.. well they are kids. There isn't really any 'moral' to the gif, apart from the ones you guys are trying to give it.

That is not how I feel.

My child's safety is very important, but I don't feel that this is a major safety issue and I value my child so much that I'd rather him learn this lesson with my cat than with my neighbors mastiff when I'm not on hand to intervene (when he's older, obviously). I also intended (and managed) to raise a child who respects and values the animal members of the household. If I ever truly believed there was a threat I would absolutely snap a cat's neck on the spot, but I think getting pwned by a cat who then retreats is more a learning experience than a genuine threat.

Actually, I do. Though my personal thought isn't quite as harsh as stated.

But yes, a kid at that age, (which appears to be almost 3 years old, if not 3) definitely grasps a lot more than parents give them credit for. And their life-long personalities are starting to set in stone as well.

How do I know this? Because I remember all the way back to 2 years old, and I especially remember my 3 and 4 year-old years. I remember how I thought, how I rationalized things. And much of that did indeed shape my life for the next two decades. In fact it wasn't until I made a conscious and willing effort to change some of the bad traits in my life that my innate tendencies changed.

Kids understand quite a bit, a hell of a lot more than adults give them credit for. And they know that feigning ignorance/innocence is their one get out of jail free card. Trust me. Not only do I remember my own thoughts and actions, I remember the interactions between me and my friends as well. I was not unique.

Every punishment I received I deserved. The only, *only* one I remember getting spanked for that I didn't understand why was when I accidentally dinged another car by opening our car door too fast. Every other one I fully understood the consequences of my actions. Sure, I protested like crazy through crying but I knew where I was wrong. And, of course, I never admitted it.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!