The Hand Licking Incident - <AUTHOR> https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-licking-incident.html <comment><USER3> This is a great anecdote to describe a formal approach which is called _positive discipline_.

We assume as adults that children who do things that are not what we want or against our instructions need "discipline" in order to learn they should have made a better choice.

This fails on the most basic point. Young children are, in most cases, not making a conscious choice at all in these cases. They are not thinking in their brains, the same way we adults imagine a conscious decision making process occurs, weighing the concequences and choosing a certain path. They are not deciding to be bad because it is easier/more fun/worth it at that age.

Positive discipline is not actually discipline at all. It is fundamentally a realization that children make "mistakes" because they weren't actually _capable_ of doing what was asked of them.

The essence of positive discipline is the search for the underlying reason a child is not capable of following your direction at that point in time / for the task at hand.

Barring an exceptional case, (younger in particular) children are straight up desperate for attention and affection of their parents.

Sometimes this is the hardest thing in the world, as a fully functioning adult, when your child is doing something [annoying/destructive/insulting/dangerous/disgusting] after the n-th time you've told them not to. Adults respond to punishment / negative reinforcement very differently than [young] children.

In particular keep in mind this is primarily a _learning_ experience for a child to develop coping skills and the ability to regulate their emotions. The skills don't develop very well from a basis of fear of reprisal in my opinion.

I'm not always able to practice positive discipline with my kids, but I can't count the number of occasions where I've pulled out that tool in response to some stressful situation and watched the sheer relief/release on my kid's face when they manage to actually communicate outloud to someone that will listen that thing that had them so upset or feeling sad/mad/lousy.

<comment><USER4> You're right that you can punish a child (or an adult) into understanding something they can't yet understand, but you can punish a child (or an adult) into refraining from a behavior, unless the person is incapable of understanding cause and effect. Billions of people (and animals) have learned to restrain their impulses out of fear of punishment. It's fundamental to how mammal brains work.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that teaching people to restrain their impulses using a fear of punishment is totally different from getting them to change their behavior because they understand why the behavior is bad. When you simply punish someone without teaching them to understand you create a system of unwritten rules where the person is unsure whether any particular action will result in a punishment or not.

But if you can create an understanding of why the action was bad then you can give the person a toolset to understand whether their future actions will be bad. And hopefully you can create a society of people whose behavior is determined by their understanding of right and wrong and not by whether or not they think they will be punished for something.

I think you're grossly oversimplifying the way people work if you don't see the difference here.

<comment><USER6> This. If parents expect their kids to obey for fear of punishment, they're teaching the lesson that you obey people who are stronger than you.

Out in the real world, when someone tells you to obey because they are stronger, you tell them to stuff it. It is widely agreed that in society, people need better reasons to be obeyed than that (even if the strong do tend to get their way more often...).

I think what you said about understanding future actions and disconnecting them from punishment is spot on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this story.

Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad.

Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in.

We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem.

Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy.

After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us there was a "BIG FROG" (said with wide eyes, mouth turned down) in his room.

Turns out that over the traffic noise he could hear a frog croaking outside his window. It was a noise we'd all just dismissed.

Opened and closed the window to show him it was outside.

Asked him how big he thought the frog was. Held his arms out as far as they would go. I showed him a video of a tiny croaking frog on my phone. Not the same as the outside frog, but close.

He was ok after we showed him the window was locked, and the frog wouldn't be able to get in.

<comment><USER8> >Little kid logic

My favourite is when you ask a crying child where they hurt them selves, and they point to the table they just walked into.

Edit: Or have a paddy because they can't join the banana they've just cut in half, back together again.

<comment><USER9> The first one's just ambiguity isn't it? "Where did you hurt yourself? At Timmy's place"

<comment><USER8> Yes, but its an example of how small children think

<comment><USER10> Sometimes adults also think like this, in slightly less obvious ways.

<comment><USER11> Right, there's that old joke about the radio show that separately asked the husband and wife of a couple "where they had sex" and the second one interprets it as "which orifice" rather than "where were the two of you located when it happened".

<comment><USER4> Mallrats:

"He wants to have sex in a really uncomfortable place"

"Like in the back of a Volkswagon?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't get why people find it so hard to empathise with a child. I've solved a bunch of my youngish children's problems by taking the time to try to figure out their reasoning and talk to them about it. I've had a huge chip on my shoulder about parenting for years. I'm a single parent of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and it's been this way since the youngest was a baby. I've had so many bad experiences, especially when my boy was a baby, where people have treated me poorly because I was a dad with his kids. I've put in so much effort towards parenting because I want to prove the world wrong. I very rarely get angry about anything with them because I realise a lot of their bad behaviours are simply what children do. I correct what they've done wrong but I don't need to be angry about it.

The best analogy I've got is "if there is a dog that's a known chewer and I leave my shoes outside with it and my shoes end up chewed, who is it fault?". I'm the responsible adult with functioning cognitive skills, the dog simply is acting on instinct. Little children don't have developed cognitive skills, and their behaviour reflects what their environment has allowed. If you want to change behaviour you need to consider why it is occurring and work on countering the root cause.

<comment><USER13> >people have treated me poorly because I was a dad with his kids.

That's interesting. Honestly, I've found that I get passes for many mistakes, because the bar to being a good dad is set so low in most peoples' minds. If I'm not hitting them and basically know their initials, I seem to be a success.

What has your experience been? If you don't mind me asking.

<comment><USER12> I'll give some examples, keep in mind that individually these aren't too bad but they add up over time and wear you down.

* Being asked by a doctor "where's the mum?" as the first question when I've taken to the children to the doctor.

* Getting a lot of offers for help because of an assumption of my incompetence. i.e. during kindergarten induction for my daughter, I was asked if I needed help with some of the jobs like covering books. I was the only man in the room.

* Getting glared at while playing with my kids at the playground. If you're actually playing with your kids and not sitting on your phone then suddenly you'll find ALL the little kids near you wanting to play. Mums don't like adult men playing near their kids, even if it's with their own kids.

* While Christmas shopping with two kids in tow I've received comments like "giving mum a day off huh?".

I feel I'm doing an amazing job as a parent so the constant assumptions just do my head in.

<comment><USER14> Sounds annoying. However I feel this is a universal problem for anyone who is an anomaly. We all use generalization heuristics, and overall it severs us very well. The "price" is wrong judgement for the rare cases. However it's still a better algorithm than discarding generalizations (if that was even possible) because most things are normal, by definition.

What I learn from your comments is that in your area mums usually take their kids to the doctors, single dads are viewed as more incompetent, mostly women play with kids at the playground, and men Christmas shopping with two kids are more likely to be married than single.

You are the anomaly and therefore are being wrongly categorized. This is not a personal thing at all! Quite the opposite, it's a manifestation of how your peer group is perceived by the general public. I bet that people that get to know you change this perception and adapt it to you, personally.

<comment><USER15> > We all use generalization heuristics, and overall it severs us very well. > The "price" is wrong judgement for the rare cases. However it's still a > better algorithm than discarding generalizations (if that was even possible) > because most things are normal, by definition. [...] You are the anomaly and > therefore are being wrongly categorized. This is not a personal thing at > all!

Perhaps it might be interesting to picture instead a female engineer, repeatedly being dismissed as a receptionist. Or a black male engineer, repeatedly assumed a janitor or intruder and getting grief. And then see if you're still happy with those comments?

<comment><USER12> Not the person you replied to but the one above him. Interestingly enough my experience with this type of judgement has made me much more aware of the challenges of other people in minority situations. I am a white male but in the world of being a primary parent to babies I'm a minority. I understand how minorities in a professional setting might feel the need to be beyond reproach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tend to think that almost every time someone is doing something you don't understand or don't like, you're better off understanding the reason for the behaviour than trying to quash it. Even if you desperately want it to stop, they're clearly doing the thing as a means to address something so if you want to stop them using the current solution you should have a better solution to hand or the problem will once again be unaddressed and the behaviour will resume. You can't offer an alternative unless you know the cause in the first place. This approach makes sense for children (presumably above a certain age) and adults alike.

<comment><USER17> Seems like a manifestation of Chesterton's Fence! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

<comment><USER18> This is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor- happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down, gleefully assuming that it's useless.

<comment><USER19> This reminds me of the infamous comment block:

// // Dear maintainer: //

// Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,

// and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,

// please increment the following counter as a warning

// to the next guy

// total_hours_wasted_here = 42

Edit: to improve legibility

<comment><USER20> Indent 4 spaces to format as a code block instead of flowing together or separating with blank lines as paragraphs:

        // // Dear maintainer: //
        // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,
        // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
        // please increment the following counter as a warning
        // to the next guy
        // total_hours_wasted_here = 42

Note that on narrow windows or mobile screens this doesn't wrap and needs to scroll sideways for long lines (though these are wrapped to 60 characters), which is annoying

<comment><USER21> If a viewport cannot handle gracefully lines of 80 characters, it is not the fault of the person writing the 80-character lines. If a code block is the right answer, I would hope that people use it, rather than attempt a workaround just to avoid a flood of gripes from people on mobile who don't want to scroll right. Fix your scrolling issue by fixing your scrolling issue, not by trying to retrain everyone that posts on HN to cater to mobile viewers, in lieu of just marking the text that requires differentiation of newlines from other whitespace.

Also, you only need to indent 2 spaces:

      Everyone- use code blocks whenever you need them.
      Mobile users- don't complain about code blocks.

<comment><USER22> The viewport can handle lines of 80 characters. The problem is that HN indents so far and even truncates on the right so you're working with like 40 chars visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought this was going to turn into an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder story. I use to wash my hands when I was younger .. a lot. I couldn't give an explanation because there wouldn't have been a rational one to give.

Instead I was just put on a bunch of drugs, all of which didn't make the compulsion go away, but did make me not want to wash my hands. Since I felt like I couldn't do certain things without washing my hands, I pretty much just watched more TV and became more lazy and useless.

I still have OCD, I just hide it a lot better these days.

<comment><USER24> I have no medical qualifications, so take this for what it's worth, but I was told by a psychiatrist specialising in child development disorders that excessive hand-washing is one symptom of Asperger's syndrome.

<comment><USER25> It is one of the factors that they check for as part of an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis, yes. But if it is severe they will strap on the OCD diagnosis as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else.

Young children will not figure these things out by themselves. Parents need to "debug" these problems. Doctors may not be able to help until you have some idea.

It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for.

<comment><USER27> > "It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors > with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for."

I couldn't disagree more. This seems like a step in the wrong direction. The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we already do into the bucket of "strange." Actually, even saying that parents need to "debug" these problems may be going too far. Humans are much more complicated than a machine that must work "just so."

<comment><USER28> > The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we > already do into the bucket of "strange."

I couldn't disagree more. Having had a proper manual for my human body would have been amazing.

I had a less intense but somewhat similar issue to OP's child. I was licking my lips and therefor got bullied for using "lipstick". Both stopped only after on one of those occasions a kid in their mentioned licking can cause it, while i pretended to ignore them. I'm quite thankful to him and wish i could help others just like that.

Another is being lactose-intolerant. No idea when I became that, must have happened quite late. But it took me embarrassingly long (mid twenties) to figure out, change my diet and thus get rid of those messy bowel movements.

I see little value in not having those kind of knowledge available and instead having to find out yourself. And parenting would hardly be possible without understanding your child's behavior. If you have a problem with calling it "strange" or "debug", I'm fine with calling it something else. But i doub't many here care about (those) labels.

<comment><USER29> I don't believe you replied to the spirit of the parent comment, since having red lips, and having messy bowel movements are not human behaviors, but are symptoms.

I bet what the parent has in mind is, for example, behaviors such as stimming.

<comment><USER30> Stimming = self-stimulating.

I didn't know that word (but knew the sorts of [repititive] behaviours -- like rocking, hand waving -- as an indicator for ASD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One thing this reminds me of is how much of a game-changer language development is when you're trying to help your distraught child. There are few things more frustrating than a screaming/crying child that is too young to communicate why they are upset... You feel bad for them and want to help them so much... And once they're able to communicate, 9 times out of 10 it is relatively easy to address (although sometimes the underlying problem might be they're very tired, etc).

Of course, when a child is very upset, they're also often unintelligible, so one of the most important things is to (at very least) remain calm so they have the chance calm down enough to communicate with you.

(One of my children has a speech impediment... it's not easy for everyone, but it is sooo helpful when communication can happen.)

</comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of something that happened with our child. She started pulling her hair out at night as she fell asleep. Large clumps were pulled out over a month or two and every night there would be small amounts of hair removed. There was a lot of pressure to go to a psychologist from her GP and medication was suggested too. We were talking about it a lot and her hair was getting thin. One night we gave her a new stuff toy, and suggested to her that if she needed to pull hair or was thinking about it, put the dolls hair. It was a toy penguin. Plucking penguin has many bald patches now and the hair pulling stopped that night.

<comment><USER17> You might enjoy this similar anecdote from an SSC post.

> The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I've seen in the > mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get > along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but > people were at each other's throats about the Hair Dryer Incident.

> Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every > morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn > down her house. So she'd drive back home to check that the hair dryer was > off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn't really > checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

> It's a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was > really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think > a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving > back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she > thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn't able to go > out with friends, she wasn't even able to go to restaurants because she > would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush > back. She'd seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, > she'd done all sorts of therapy, she'd taken every medication in the book, > and none of them had helped.

> So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her > "Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?"

> And it worked.

> She would be driving to work in the morning, and she'd start worrying she'd > left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she'd > look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right > there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So > she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

It's a great essay overall. Link: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the- categories-were-ma...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories- were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)

<comment><USER33> This is a great solution! Now I just have to figure out how to disconnect my gas range and put it in my car every day :)

<comment><USER34> Point an IR-sensitive webcam at the range.

Now I just have to figure out how to remember that I locked the front door when I forget to do the verbal "door locked, check" drill

<comment><USER35> Do something new each day. A song, a gesture, a phrase. That makes then memory unique.

Or just get a lock that closes itself...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Parenting is like that. As much as some people don't want to admit it, operant conditioning is a thing. Humans are still mammals. Parenting gets simple when you can detach and not be caught up with your own ego. Barring abnormal psychology, kids are pretty fun to teach and watch grow. My one key lesson is, especially with younger kids, they aren't doing whatever they are doing to cause me distress. Most of parenting is that simple. Of course when kids get older they may purposefully push buttons, but taking a step back, it still has those same motivations they had when they were younger. Adults behave in a more sophisticated manner, but some times, often even, there is that inner mammal obviously driving behavior and it all it takes to see it is the ability to detach.

<comment><USER37> Right, your job is to help the child grow and learn. Whether it looks - <USER2> other parents, teachers, etc. - like you are a good parent is very much beside the point, and usually a conflicting goal you need to detach yourself from. In fact, paying attention to that is narcissism. See Preacher's kid syndrome. Similarly, whether their behavior is impeccable today isn't the point, whether they're learning skills for tomorrow is the point.

<comment><USER36> We are big on Montessori at my house. The philosophy there is basically what you said: kids are adults in the making and parents are just their guides. Ego leads people to think they own their kids and such, but we are just stewards of our kids for small but key part of their life. Many parents struggle with this idea that kids are their own agents and you are just there to help them grow. It seems obvious, but when you really embrace this philosophy it seems to have a huge impact for most people.

<comment><USER38> This is interesting because it helps explain the American interest in Montessori. But in other parts of the world these ideas are the mainstream consensus view rather than a fringe ideology. Quoting the United Nations website[1]:

"The Convention [on the Rights of the Child] provides a universal set of standards to be adhered to by all countries. It reflects a new vision of the child. Children are neither the property of their parents nor are they helpless objects of charity. They are human beings and are the subject of their own rights. The Convention offers a vision of the child as an individual and a member of a family and a community, with rights and responsibilities appropriate to his or her age and stage of development. Recognizing children's rights in this way firmly sets a focus on the whole child. Previously seen as negotiable, the child's needs have become legally binding rights. No longer the passive recipient of benefits, the child has become the subject or holder of rights."

[1] [https://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30225.html](https://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30225.html)

<comment><USER36> I would not call Montessori a fringe ideology, but I would also say it is not very mainstream. A lot of non-Montessori parents reach the same conclusions, Montessori just has it baked into the learning system. As a parent you are kind of all in. We have public (charter) Montessori schools here in CO that are top notch. Anyhow, you are right, and, I would guess, this is new for a lot of American parents. Also, just cause UN says, doesn't mean other first world nations all buy into it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I was almost 11, I started sucking on my knuckles because they were dry and cracking. My mother immediately knew what the problem was and showed me the hand cream. She didn't need to scold me or make a big fuss.

Honestly, this article really isn't about "the hand licking incident." It's about all the drama in the mother's life at the time; the drama in the mother's life was unrelated to the hand licking. In all honesty, this article would be much better if the author got to the point about the dry skin very close to the beginning, and then described why the drama in her family distracted her from understanding her son's problem.

(To re-iterate, the article isn't about hand-licking, it's about the mother's drama.)

As a relatively inexperienced parent of 2, the hardest lesson for me to learn is that it's not about me, it's about them. The second hardest lesson to learn is how to get my kids to explain their various aches and pains.

<comment><USER40> Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of discovery as the author. That path of discovery is one of the main points of the essay, as the author clearly generalizes that experience to broader situations. It's easier for a reader to see more applications if they _felt_ that discovery instead of just being told about it. Guiding readers along a discovery path is an effective rhetorical technique.

(It is also the structure of a lot of comedy and mysteries. Which should indicate that we tend to like the technique in what we read, watch and hear.)

<comment><USER39> > Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of > discovery as the author.

I almost stopped reading. To put it quite bluntly, if she had put "the point" one line further, I was going to close the browser. The drama in the author's life was so unrelated to the problem that it really distracted from the point.

Without the preemie and the move, it could have easily been, "the school year ended, my son went to camp, we went on vacation, and sometime during the summer I noticed that my son stopped licking his hands." Or, it could have been, "my son spent the summer in the hospital and stopped licking his hands while he was in treatment."

My point is that the whole incident with the move and the premie is so fundamentally unrelated to the point, that it detracts from the strength of the article itself. Her son didn't stop licking his hands because of the stress of the situation, he stopped licking his hands because it was summer and the heat wasn't running.

<comment><USER41> > I almost stopped reading.

It seems the article wasn't for you.

> fundamentally unrelated to the point

The point (I got) was that life became overwhelmingly busy in other ways, freeing the author from obsessing over the hand-licking behavior, which sometime during this period went away on its own, almost unnoticed.

Generally, when an author includes a ton of irrelevant details, it's possible that they need advice on writing well, and it's possible that the details are actually relevant to a point which you may have overlooked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This article is about parenting, but I think it also applies to management. How often have you been dealing with a crisis at work when management is pressuring people to put in a solution, any solution and it ends up just making things worse or causing bigger issues down the line?

<comment><USER43> What's helped me cope with pressure from bosses was the realization that when they're shitting on someone, it's usually because their own boss is shitting on them (and on upwards). Then it's less personal, less an issue of someone in authority judging your performance, and becomes more of a team effort/problem: I will try to fix the issues, so that my boss's issue goes away, so his boss's issue goes away, and then we'll all be happy.

<comment><USER44> But a good manager is a shit umbrella, keeping the shit off you. I'm supportive of providing solutions so that everyone's lives improve, but one must be careful not to give the impression that the way to make the underlings perform is to let the shit roll downhill.

<comment><USER43> True, but I'm not saying it's a going thing to roll shit down... I'm saying that it would behoove people to realize that when their manager is angry, it's probably because their manager is angry at them. One can do with that insight what they will. Personally, it helps me cope with stressful situations, to realize I'm not the odd man out, and that everyone struggles to get it right.

<comment><USER44> I'm afraid you've misunderstood. I'm saying that when you see shit happening and do these things to make improvements, you [unwittingly] train the management stack that this is how they get improvements: by sending the shit downhill.

<comment><USER45> What's your proposal on how to handle the situation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The parent may have misdiagnosed their child here. This could be Transient Tic Disorder. It's super common. Kids get random physical/vocal tics, including licking fingers/hands. Usually they just go away with time. Not much you can do and definitely stressing out your child won't help. There's no "reason" for them.

As for why the child said it was because his hands were dry: I hate to say it but maybe the poor kid just wanted to stop their maybe-a-bit-intense parent from "grilling" them about it again.

</comment><comment><USER47> Sounds like a case of criticism vs feedback. From:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age- ent...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age- entitlement/201212/one-thing-will-ruin-perfectly-good-relationship)

> Criticism focuses on what's wrong. Feedback focuses on how to improve.

> Criticism implies the worst about the other's personality. Feedback is about > behavior, not personality.

> Criticism devalues. Feedback encourages.

> Criticism implies blame. Feedback focuses on the future.

> Criticism attempts to control. Feedback respects autonomy.

> Criticism is coercive. Feedback is not at all coercive.

</comment><comment><USER48> I dunno about this story. When I saw my son lick his hands the very first time, this was the convo:

\- Are your hands tasty? No \- Are your hands dirty? No \- Are your hands dry? Yes!

Problem solved. Plus a quick visual inspection will usually confirm dry hands. It's not like an insidious disease with no visible symptoms.

<comment><USER49> For me it wasn't easy. When I was about 30 I noticed my hand itch like hell.

Visual inspection revealed a lot of small wounds that were cause of the itching.

I tried washing them thoroughly and drying (no effect beyond temporary pleasure of hot water similar to scratching).

I put on them some cream with steroids that supposedly helps with wound healing. This helped for few days. Then the problem reoccured. I applied the cream again. This happened few times.

In about a year the problem came back. I didn't want to abuse steroids so I thought if I just wash hands and seal the wounds with any hand cream they will heal quicker. Worked just as good as steroids stuff. Only then I realized that my skin is probably just cracking because it's dry from vold weather and dry air.

At no point before my skin looked or felt dry. I never had this problem before in my 30 years of life. It was a new problem for me and lacking knowledge it was very hard for me to debug. The fact that I hate to have anything oily on my hands didn't help. Even now I put cream only on the side of hands that crack and only after they crack first time this season.

I would very much like to have a troubleshooting guide for the human body, right from the start.

I got something like that but limited in scope to pains caused by damaged muscles. The book is organized so that you can go from knowing where it hurts to knowing which muscle is damaged and what movement you need to do to gently excercise and stretch this muscle. Both things were surprisingly counterintuitive when my pain was caused by small muscles around the spine.

<comment><USER50> go to the doctor. Could be athletes hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wen I was in Kindergarten, my teacher called in my parents to tell them that I had learning difficulties. My mother asked why the teacher felt that way, her answer: 'He won't sit on the mat with the other children for story time'. My mother asked the teacher, 'Have you asked him why he won't sit on the mat? he usually loves stories at home.' She called me over in front of my teacher. 'Why won't you sit on the mat with the other children for story time?' 'I don't know how to cross my legs' I replied.

Children are people too, sometimes it's okay to talk to them.

<comment><USER52> When I was about 5 I was in a gym class and the teacher told us all to "sit on our backsides". I and half the class didn't know the word "backside". I think I ended up assuming my "backside" was the side of my back and lying on the floor on my side. Some of my classmates ended up in similar positions, much to the bafflement of the teacher!

<comment><USER53> At around the same age, also in a gym class, I had a teacher who would pronounce "sit" as "set". I had no idea what to do when he told us all to "set".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > He felt we were interfering with his solution to his problem, not helping > him. He was too young to understand the cause and effect relationship, and > the way the adults around him had handled it just ensured that he would > never come to us to ask for help with his real problem.

This passage really resonated with me. I fall into the same cognitive trap as that kid on a fairly regular basis. It happened between me and my parents until well after I left home, and it still happens between me and my wife and close friends. I've been aware of it for a while but have never seen it so clearly articulated. This has motivated me to redouble my efforts to take a more mature approach internally.

<comment><USER55> I feel like the same phenomenon sometimes happens with adults at the scale of civil society. People start doing strange things like believing silly "alternative" conspiracy theories, withdrawing from society into online alternate realties, etc., and instead of trying to communicate and figure out why we just insult them and call them stupid and crazy.

Humans are not perfectly rational and they are not always able to even understand let alone communicate their problems or motives. This is especially true if they're under stress or suffering from mental illness, addiction, or abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> A great story which really resonated with me from the operations / reliability engineering perspective. It is very common for junior engineers to jump into an action in case of a big outage before really trying to understand the problem.

One example I've seen multiple times was to deal with a repeatedly crashing process by restarting yet another process. In some cases, this may help, but in others it can make the situation much much worse. Instead, the advice I took to heart is to delay action until you have a mental model of the problem, and how the planned action would resolve it (and if possible, sense check it with another engineer).

In the best case scenario, you would have a trusted (well-tested) mitigation procedure that would provide you with enough time to recreate the issue and test the proposed solution in a staging environment.

<comment><USER29> I think when something is very uncertain (because it's hard and/or the engineer is inexperienced), it's not possible to develop a mental model that lets you plan a course of action. However, taking a slightly directed, non- destructive action can sometimes reveal more information to you.

The idealization of this is coming up with some hypothesis, and testing it, which I think is covered by your approach. But what if you don't know enough to even know the right questions to ask. You may be dead in the water if you don't allow an unplanned action.

<comment><USER56> Agreed, there definitely no magic bullet hate. At the end of the day it's all about being pragmatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > The hand licking incident strongly reinforced my commitment to just stop and > not do things that I knew didn't work. It made me more committed to not "put > out the fire with gasoline," even in the face of social pressure to the > contrary.

To this effect only, I have started a journal to keep my behavior in check while dealing with kids. Needless to say it has helped me a lot and often times I have caught myself in the act instead of taking things personally just because it's socially unacceptable. Earlier my default mode if thinking was to treat a kid as an adamant adult ready to shoot you down is just a not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER58> Am I the only one who thinks the parent is to blame for this because she didn't have the common sense to give gloves to her kid in the cold weather... To me that's unacceptable.

<comment><USER59> I just want to comment in a constructive way on this.

Do you have kids? If so, have you thought about, sorted out and covered all the things that would be unacceptable? What about what other people might think unacceptable, but you don't? If you however don't have kids, imho you are hardly entitled to criticise.

There are many legit reasons that could cause the mother to not necessarily provide gloves. Then again yes, maybe she wasn't paying attention. Who knows. That's not even the point.

It's very easy for us here to voice our opinion and openly criticise. But it would be sad if that's what someone gets for being open about mistakes they made and how they finally worked it out.

<comment><USER58> > Do you have kids? If so, have you thought about, sorted out and covered all > the things that would be unacceptable? What about what other people might > think unacceptable, but you don't? If you however don't have kids, imho you > are hardly entitled to criticise.

You are overcomplicating things, while I keep them concrete: gloves in cold weather is common sense. I do not have kids (so points for you I guess), but it's a strawman argument: are you saying people cannot comment on situations that are not directly applicable to them? This is too weak. A more robust/practical approach is that I act the way I speak: when I have kids, I will make 100% sure they always wear gloves in cold weather :)

> There are many legit reasons that could cause the mother to not necessarily > provide gloves.

There are exactly 0 reasons, especially since she later was telling the kid to wear them. Children need to wear gloves in cold weather otherwise they are cold. It's also recommended for adults.

> Then again yes, maybe she wasn't paying attention.

That's my point.

> That's not even the point.

Agreed: her point is completely different, and <unpopular opinion> to me the gloves are the signal in the story, the rest is noise</unpopular opinion>

> It's very easy for us here to voice our opinion and openly criticise

It is. If you put out your opinion in the public domain, you should expect support and/or criticism. People will attack your ideas, even if they are good. You are criticising me, yet I am not feeling sad at all.

<comment><USER59> Hey, thanks for the constructive reply. Reading everything a day later I do feel like my comment was maybe a bit too intense in tone, although I still stand a couple points:

> A more robust/practical approach is that I act the way I speak: when I have > kids, I will make 100% sure they always wear gloves in cold weather :)

Which is very commendable, but bear in mind you might be forgetting things, or deciding different on things that are obvious for other people and not for you.

> If you put out your opinion in the public domain, you should expect support > and/or criticism. People will attack your ideas, even if they are good. You > are criticising me, yet I am not feeling sad at all.

Totally agreed. I just think that the tone and the intention behind the criticism is quite important.

Anyway, I understand your point better know, and realise that maybe I did to you exactly the same thing I'm (constructively I hope) criticising you for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Hate to break it to you, but nobody was saying you should pour the alcohol on the fire. They said to put the fire out and you happened to be holding alcohol so you decided to throw alcohol on it.

Nobody said that the hand licking was "Bad Behavior [and] Absolutely Must Stop At Any Cost". They looked at you like you didnt know how to teach your child how to be polite in public, and you chose that you must do whatever it takes to stop yourself appearing that way.

The fact that you were trying to solve a problem without knowing the cause was silly, and I'm genuinely happy for you that you've learned from that experience, but the worst part is that you attribute the blame to outside forces.

Sentences like "They made me make the problem worse by telling me to fix it" and "It's their fault I failed because I didn't know how to solve the problem and guessed" come to mind.

"It might result in worse things happening to my relationship to my child than him being mad at me about this one thing. So I tried to comply with this expectation that my child needed to stop and I needed to be the one to make that happen."

There is more shifting blame in this paragraph. Somewhere you missed the part where "to comply" is to achieve the outcome of your child no longer licking his hands, not to assault him.

Society views parents who hit their kids worse than parents whose kids lick their hands, so I have no idea where you got the idea of compliance being to hit your child.

It's nice that you learned one lesson, maybe you could learn something from how you wrote the article, and if you can remember, how you felt when you wrote it.

</comment><comment><USER61> My favorite is when non-parents tell parents, "why don't you tell your child to stop doing that?"

If only it were that simple.

Or "explain that it's for their own good". Sure, logic should work.

</comment><comment><USER62> This reminded me of a book[1] I discovered via a tweet from @codinghorror, and his follow-up article[2] about it.

[1]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769016.How_to_Talk_So_Ki...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769016.How_to_Talk_So_Kids_Will_Listen_Listen_So_Kids_Will_Talk) [2]: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human- beings/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human-beings/)

</comment><comment><USER63> My take on this is that sometimes problems are really hard to solve on your own or at all at the time. It seems like if there was money then the behavior was so persistent that it actually warranted outside help from some type of specialist. So instead of just continually putting pressure the husband should have acknowledged that it was not a normal parenting issue and looked for a psychiatrist or something.

The other part of this is that it seemed like the real solution only came when the child was able to communicate better. So this reminds me of many technical problems I have had in a way. Most technical problems cannot talk of course. But they were similar in that the solution only came when the true cause of the problem came to light. Anyway maybe there is some commonality between a pre-speech child with a behavior problem and a thorny technical issue.

I guess I am lucky in a way that I only need to deal with technical issues because systems usually operate on a totally logical basis and it seems much less stressful than dealing with children.

<comment><USER64> The thing that jumps out at me is that it took months and months to ask the simple question, "why are you doing that?"

Also, in this case the undesirable behaviour had a perfectly benign and easily fixable root cause, but that's not always (or even mostly?) true. In many cases my kids will be misbehaving because they're not getting what they want, eg. icecream for dinner or to not go to bed on time. In cases like these, it's the parents' job to say no. Of course it's very important to understand the child's real motivations but often it's going to come down them just wanting something they can't have.

<comment><USER65> Small children often can't articulate the reasons why they do something. If pressed they'll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense (but isn't true nonetheless). If you suggest a reason to them they'll immediately say yes. If you offer a list of reasons they'll immediately claim it's the first or last choice offered.

I have no doubt that she asked him repeatedly why he was doing it but either he couldn't answer or by that point the shame and pressure from himself teacher created a mental block that prevented him from answering.

Taking the pressure off is absolutely the right thing to do.

<comment><USER15> > Small children often can't articulate the reasons why they do something. If > pressed they'll fabricate an answer that may or may not be nonsense

This reminded me of a UI Design principle, that users themselves often don't understand why they dislike a user interface, so their complaints and requests need to be explored, rather than taken at face value. Otherwise, when the first request is implemented, it may then replaced by another, and again, until the root cause is uncovered and addressed.

A very fuzzily remembered example was something like puzzling requests for data-entry form tooling, and the root cause turned out to be a multiple-page form lacking a "I can see it all, and see that it's right" confidence property, which was resolved not with tooling, but by simply making the form a single page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Like many of you, I wish that more of my peculiar behavior as a kid had been tolerated. I think this is getting better over time. My grandfather got beaten for being left-handed, my dad failed 4th grade for poor penmanship, I got briefly put on ADHD medication for being unable to sit still -- but this trendline is encouraging.

Cnservatives (e.g. Kevin Williamson) sometimes say: "Don't just do something, stand there!" The lesson is that not all problems can be solved quickly or well or through active attention. In general this is an underrated response, IMO.

(Bumi in Avatar season 2 makes the same point: "I'm going to do...nothing!"Neutral jing FTW.)

</comment><comment><USER67> The headline made me think of this: [https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2012/04/13](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/04/13)

</comment><comment><USER68> Seems like something simple that one could have asked a doctor.. "My kid keeps licking their hands.. any ideas?"

Also even though the article the mother seems to think that they have gotten to root cause.. there may be more of a cause.

Dry hands is often because of the compulsive action of washing ones hands too much. So now there are 2 compulsions washing hands and licking hands to keep them dry.. By replacing licking hands with moisturizer you will still have 2 compulsions.. cleaning hands and moisturizing too much..

A 2 second google search will also bring up thousands of pages about kids licking hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> _A 2 second google search will also bring up thousands of pages about kids licking hands._

Google did not exist 24 years ago when my now 31 year old son was 7 years old. The company was founded Sep 04, 1998, just over 20 years ago.

Note to self: Work on more clearly signalling context and time frame to my readers.

 _Also even though the article the mother seems to think that they have gotten to root cause.. there may be more of a cause._

The article mentions in brief that he has health issues. He got a proper diagnosis a few years later when he was fourteen. That helped enormously with a long list of complicated issues.

So his hand licking was likely rooted at least in part in the fact that he has a condition that significantly impacts his epithelial tissues, which includes but is not limited to skin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> So the teacher, grandparent, and father never bothered asking why he's licking his hands, and his mother only after a lot of drama, including spanking(!!)

I get that being a parent is hard and try to hold off my judgements on stuff like this over the internet, but ... I am not wildly impressed by this teacher or their parenting.

I'm glad that at least the mother came to her senses later on and decided to treat her child like a human being.

<comment><USER70> > _So the teacher, grandparent, and father never bothered asking why he 's > licking his hands, and his mother only after a lot of drama, including > spanking(!!)_

No, the mother did ask:

 _" I tried grilling him about why he was doing this so I could find some solution."_

The article doesn't imply that she asked him only _after_ spanking him, and it seems unlikely that she did.

 _Edit: fixed the quote from the article._

<comment><USER69> Looks like something went wrong with your copy/paste there, since you copied the same twice. But I assume you meant:

 _" I tried grilling him about why he was doing this so I could find some solution. He couldn't explain it and the terror in his eyes was disturbing."_

That doesn't really sound like asking to me, but more like telling him off while also asking a question somewhere in between.

<comment><USER70> > _Looks like something went wrong with your copy /paste there_

Oops, you're right, thanks! Fixed.

> _That doesn 't really sound like asking to me, but more like telling him off > while also asking a question somewhere in between._

After re-reading that part, I'm willing to concede that your interpretation is probably closer to the mark than mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is really interesting and insightful thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Eh, this article was a bit "Reader's Digest". Parent tries to solve problem, gives up and lets fate have its way, problem goes away when parent wasn't looking, parent-child have a moment of trust which reveals that the problem was something simple all along. Life lesson learned.

How about when it's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but weird in middle school and socially+career-limiting in an adult. Or an aggression issue. Or one of the many spectrum issues, which won't go away by moving to a warmer climate.

I agree with the article on not getting angry, but I'm not going to get a new life lesson from "if your kid trusts you they will open up."

<comment><AUTHOR> _How about when it 's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but weird in middle school and socially+career-limiting in an adult. Or an aggression issue. Or one of the many spectrum issues, which won't go away by moving to a warmer climate._

Author here.

I had all of those issues. Both my sons are Twice Exceptional. One has a bad temper and is prone to violence. They both likely qualify as ASD. One had a serious speech impediment. He still has a speech impediment, but most people don't realize it.

All of those were easier to deal with because my kids trusted me. Trust was absolutely critical for resolving the hardest problems.

It's one post, so it's not going to answer everything. Hopefully, things will get fleshed out over time in a useful way for parents with such concerns, assuming I can get engagement and also find time to do this kind of writing instead of freelance writing to keep the lights on and food on the table.

<comment><USER72> > Both my sons are Twice Exceptional

I've never heard of this before -- what does it mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> Gifted plus special needs. Often described as "gifted and learning disabled," but it's really a gifted child with any disability.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional)

<comment><USER72> Thank you! It says that it came around in the mid 90s, which would have been when I was in elementary school, but I've never heard of the term despite fitting in the group. I wonder if it was related to a certain set of schools/philosophies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I learned the term because I was homeschooling and active in the oldest online gifted community. I kind of was rubbing elbows with some of the luminaries in gifted education circles. So I was kind of in on the ground floor.

I believe public schools were much slower to adopt such concepts.

<comment><USER72> That makes a lot of sense! Thank you. Do you know if it is (yet/still?) in use in public school systems in the US?

<comment><AUTHOR> No clue. My youngest is 29 and I have no grandchildren, so I have no current involvement with the school system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This made me stop and think about how I've raised my children. I'm glad this was posted.

</comment><comment><USER74> Reminds me of "active listening" in _the 7 habits of highly successful people._

</comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic but would throwing an alcoholic drink on a fire make it worse?

90% of drinks aren't going to be strong enough anyway, but what about neat spirit (<50% alcohol)? My hypothesis is that the alcohol might cause a brief fireball, but the water has a higher boiling point so would smother/absorb most of the energy?

Obviously don't try on electrical fires.

Edit: Clarity

<comment><USER75> Strong liquor is used to flambe food, so strong drink is definitely flammable in some circumstances. Beer and wine probably aren't.

<comment><USER8> You need to heat it first though, it isn't exactly easy to ignite, and it doesn't set fire to the food either.

Edit: Spelling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> >> The more he licked his hands, the more he needed to lick his hands.

A perfect example for thrashing.

</comment><comment><USER77> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence "fixes" a behaviour, rather than simply causing the issue to be hidden and breaking down trust and then later having it resurface many times worse.

<comment><USER78> Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I think she made the right choice the times she did.

To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of poking around outlets again. No, it did not make me resentful, and more dedicated to wirepokery than before; my parents were consistently trustworthy, so I took their fear reaction as something I should genuinely respect. And that very small amount of added fear in my life quite possibly saved it. If I got spanked for every little thing, I could easily see that shifting to resentment. But appropriately, rarely applied, I can say with certainty it worked for me.

<comment><USER79> There are plug covers you can buy for < $0.10 each that solve that problem.

Hell, my parents also told me when I was ~4 not to stick anything in the electrical outlets. No spankings were involved. I listened because why wouldn't I?

(Well, at least until senior year in college, when I was like "What happens if I strip an Ethernet cord and stick it in an electrical outlet?" I'd missed the exploding-wires demonstration in my physics course, y'see. Did not get electrocuted, though I did get a spectacular pyrotechnics show.)

<comment><USER78> Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard.

Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW.

[https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children- fro...](https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-from- electric-shock-554)

(These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.)

>I listened because why wouldn't I?

So did I, about a vast majority of things, until I didn't, because I thought electromagnets were cooler than verbal warnings were deterring. I think you will be hard-pressed to find a child anywhere in the world that doesn't push boundaries.

<comment><USER80> You are arguing that the spanking AFTER you tampered with a wire saved you.

First, you could have died before the spanking. Punishment after the fact never rights a done wrong.

Second, at the age of 4, if your parents had just sat down with you and told you that you can die from electric shock, don't you think that would have made a lasting impression either?

<comment><USER81> I wouldn't trust a four year old to understand what death means.

<comment><USER82> My kids are six and four, and explaining to them that something could seriously injure or kill them is definitely enough to prevent them from ever doing it. I can't imagine spanking them to try to make a point, but if anything I expect that would influence them to trust my warnings of potential injury less.

<comment><USER83> As a complete anecdote - I remember when my parents told me when I was very little that eating rotten/mouldy food could get you seriously ill, I think I even asked if you could die from it - to which they said that yes, you could.

And after that, I had a complete phobia of everything that seemed even slightly off. I became incredibly picky, because that one spot on the slice of cheese _could_ be mould or because the ham smelled not how my 8 year old brain thought it should smell like.

No spanking involved, but the psychological damage was much greater I think.

<comment><USER82> Yeah, that's true, you definitely do have to be careful with that kind of thing. Kids really can take things to heart and believe them so strongly that it's difficult, even when they know you're the one who originally gave them the information, to moderate it. I usually try not to speak in terms of absolutes, but let them know what _can_ be dangerous, especially for kids who don't yet have enough experience to know which situations are dangerous and which aren't—so if they want to use/touch/whatever it, please ask an adult first. So it's not the thing itself that's inherently dangerous, but rather using it before you have enough experience. (Still do have to emphasize the potential danger though, lest they one day decide they do in fact have enough experience now.) This seems to work well for my kids, but of course ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Sorry, but I'm not buying the "oh, it was just dry hands all along". Hand licking is a very common symptom for children with OCD and/or autism. She should have taken him to a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER85> I don't understand why this example of abusive and poor parenting has got so many upvotes.

<comment><USER8> Is it abusive and poor?

No ones perfect, and parenting is the ultimate 'make it up as you go'. Could they have done better? Probably. Did they learn from their mistakes? Yes.

<comment><USER86> I realize the author learned from the situation and I hope they're a better person now, but I would certainly consider their behavior abusive.

It's fortunate the kid was just dealing with dry skin. Imagine if it was something like OCD where they were dealing with an irresistible compulsion and had no way to express what they were experiencing. Is spanking an acceptable response? How about one or both parents telling them to just stop? Rubbing spices all over their hands so an already terrible experience becomes worse?

Perhaps I'm too invested in this because I grew up with an undiagnosed neurological disorder and was punished similarly. The punishment and derision from my parents took a serious mental toll on me that I'm still unpacking.

<comment><USER8> Isn't the line for abuse subjective? Doesn't it partially rely on the motivations of the 'abuser'? If you circumcise your male child for religious reasons, is that abuse? What about forcing them to eat their vegetables?

Maybe we're just arguing semantics here? For me abuse is a strong word and something that social services should be getting involved with.

<comment><USER85> Physical violence towards a child is always unambiguously abusive.

The only exception is if that child is eg running at you with a knife seeking to harm you.

In this country I would have made a referral about the school's poor response, and I know that would have been investigated. And I would have made a referral about the response of both parents and I know that would have been investigated.

<comment><USER8> Which part would you say is physical violence? One of my examples or the original post?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> > Meanwhile, our relationship grew more acrimonious. He clearly no longer > trusted me and this was beginning to poison all our interactions.

> Finally, I had this moment where I felt that my efforts to ramp up the > pressure to force him to stop had crossed some line. I felt I was turning > into an abusive parent.

#$@#%?!??!

What the hell is wrong with this person? It's hand-licking. The child isn't sticking forks in outlets or punching teachers. Laugh at it if you can't figure it out and get on with your lives.

> I was a young homemaker, financially dependent on my husband, and I was > feeling enormously pressured by both of these people. I also felt they both > had real careers and didn't genuinely respect me. They both felt it was my > job and mine alone to somehow make my son stop licking his hands entirely.

This also sits really weirdly with me. Doesn't matter who's working and who isn't: The child has two parents. Parenting is a collaboration. (If you feel disrespected as the non-working parent, that's something to be worked out between you and your partner, not your child.)

<comment><USER88> You've obviously not been in a position like this before, so let me share a thought. It was really difficult for the author to admit these things. She didn't paint herself in a positive light. You were treated to raw honesty in a way that is ever more rare in a society where our words can haunt us for decades. And you react, not by appreciating this gesture, but by judging it, and from a wildly underinformed perspective.

It's ok not to have empathy for situations you haven't been in, but I recommend you handle it by asking and seeking to learn. Not to say you don't have some valid thoughts in there, but man, you are missing out on a ton of unspoken context.

<comment><USER87> Okay, but she did write it up and it wound up on Hacker News, so I do feel it reasonable to comment on. Don't assume I didn't think about the piece. And I cringed hard specifically _because_ of my empathy for the child in that situation, having his relationship with his mom harmed for reasons he didn't understand.

I did apologize for the tone in a direct reply to the author -- that's fair.

Also: Maybe don't assume what positions I have or have not been in as a parent.

<comment><USER88> You're right to have comments, and my only gripe was with the tone. Having been on both sides of it now, parenting is just really hard. And there really is a ton of social pressure to get it right, like no other pressure you've had. Get your job wrong, the worst case is you get fired (for most people without life or death jobs). Get parenting wrong and they literally take away your child forever.

I'm sorry for making assumptions. It seemed pretty clear to me that you haven't been on the other side of this, and there would be nothing wrong with that anyway. Different phase of life and all that. And in sorry for what you've been through. Being abused by a parent, who should be your source of all things good and loving, is a terrible thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> You struck your child because he was licking his hands.

Sometimes things are so hard and so overwhelming that you become a slave to your overwhelming misery and do things that you would never do with a sound mind. That does not mean that those actions are exempt from criticism. Most of the people on death row were likely of unsound mind when they did whatever landed them in that pointless punitive boondoggle.

If you can stomach abusing a child physically with intent then you and your spouse will likely continue to abuse him in one way or another when things get a little too stressful. As a former abused child I can assure you that he will forget. Then, when he is able to see children from an adult's perspective, he will remember. He may bury his contempt and convince himself that you were right and that he should hit his own kids. Or he may lose respect for you. The latter would be the healthier response.</comment>


Who's sharing my data, and who the hell is Dave M. Rogenmoser? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/whos-sharing-my-data-and-who-the-hell-is-dave-m-rogenmoser/ <comment><USER2> Dave Rogenmoser is the founder and CEO of Proof (YC W18).

Proof is an embedded script for displaying public conversion data (i.e. John from SF just subscribed).

Martech companies like these guys are infamous for injecting their own Facebook pixels for personal use. My guess is that at some point you visited a site with Proof embedded and for whatever reason it fired a tracking pixel assigned to Proof (and not the site you were on). Alternatively, and less ethically, he uploaded a list of customers scraped from Proof to build his own audience. Proof garners data about purchases, so it's possible Dave determined you were an advantageous lead and added you to his list.

<comment><USER3> Dave also has recorded countless fake video testimonials pushing other people's products. He's everywhere and uses different names. It seems likely that at one point he was selling fake testimonials on something like fiverr

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok there is a misconception in here: legitimate basis is a broader term which is defined in recital 47. E.g. "The processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest." \- Sentence 7 of recital 47.

However ever data processing based on legitimate basis is to be checked against the expectations of the data subject and its rights. This rational has to be explained to the data subject in plain words and the data subject has the right to object.

Also I am wondering, why are the recitals quoted and not the articles. The recitals are in fact part of the GDPR with the same value as the articles, but this is well, unusual.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also I am wondering, why are the recitals quoted and not the articles. The > recitals are in fact part of the GDPR with the same value as the articles, > but this is well, unusual.

Author here. I'm not a lawyer and my knowledge about GDPR is somewhat limited. Admittedly just grabbed the first thing that I found without getting too deep into it. Happy to update with more accurate references if it makes the point clearer.

> Ok there is a misconception in here: legitimate basis is a broader term > which is defined in recital 47. E.g. "The processing of personal data for > direct marketing purposes may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate > interest." \- Sentence 7 of recital 47.

> However ever data processing based on legitimate basis is to be checked > against the expectations of the data subject and its rights. This rational > has to be explained to the data subject in plain words and the data subject > has the right to object.

I wasn't aware of it. That's interesting... do you have more info about the "has to explain ... right to object" part in particular? this sounds a bit like seeking explicit and informed consent though, right?

<comment><USER4> Before the data is processed the data subject is to be informed in a manner (explicit and in plain words) described in Articel 13 of the GDPR, which in (1) lit. d sates:

"where the processing is based on point (f) of Article 6(1), the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party;"

The rational behind this:

"The controller should provide the data subject with any further information necessary to ensure fair and transparent processing taking into account the specific circumstances and context in which the personal data are processed." (Recital 60, Sentence 2)

The right to object is Articel 21 of the GDPR. I am not citing the whole Articel here but it is worth reading however Sentence 2 of Recital 69 sates: "It should be for the controller to demonstrate that its compelling legitimate interest overrides the interests or the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned the same lesson one day, what struck me was how many car lots had uploaded my data. Literally hundreds of ford lots, from all over the US had my info and had uploaded it. What use a guy from 3000 miles away, was to a car lot, I have no idea.

Delete the list in Facebook and watch how fast it comes back.

I now have no Facebook account because if all this.

<comment><USER6> Do you think facebook is the only place that is getting your data?

<comment><USER5> absolutely not, but this article was about facebook. i know there are many other companies doing questionable things with data about me.</comment></comment></comment>


Analysis of Googles Farmer Update - <AUTHOR> http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html

<comment><USER2> Really interested WHY eHow wasn't hit harder, especially compared to Wisegeek. Maybe eHow tends to rank for more obscure, less competitive stuff than Wisegeek... So the more search volume for a keyword, the more the algo punishes a content farm? Or maybe the more ad real estate, the more careful the algo is to let you in (wisegeek ads are beyond aggressive)? If anything, this should be a major vote of confidence for DMD.</comment>


How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48885846 <comment><USER2> I've read about this place on several different occasions. It fits with my world view of what criminal justice reform should look like.

Sadly, in the US (where I live) this would never fly. We are a people of violence and revenge and want those who've done us wrong to suffer. It doesn't matter that it perpetuates a cycle. Even if a miracle happened and a place like this was brought into existence, some politician would start using it to score cheap shots. "Look what $party_name is doing! Sending rapists and murderers to a health spa!! I'm TOUGH on crime! I'll end this!!"

I suppose I would have a hard time swallowing someone who killed a love one of mine getting to do yoga in the woods too. Dunno.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Norway also has the world's lowest recidivism rate at 20 percent, while America sees 75 percent of its prisoners re-offend within five years of release._ [0]

It's interesting that in the U.S. many people champion the power of incentives to produce goods and services efficiently yet are blind to the perverse incentives of having privately-run prisons. Of course a corporation whose profit comes from running prisons does not want to reduce the recidivism rate.

[0] [https://www.encartele.net/2018/04/what-can-us- correctional-f...](https://www.encartele.net/2018/04/what-can-us-correctional- facilities-learn-from-scandinavian-jails/)

<comment><USER4> 20% is still higher than I expected for Norway's system, but I suppose there's tons of factors contributing to recidivism.

There's so many possible avenues a person could take to commit crimes that send them to jail. I think it's worth using prison as a way to psychologically investigate what lead people to crime or recidivism, and try to understand crime from micro and macro levels more. Like some kind of criminal science retrospective that goes beyond solving a crime, and also provides a meta post- crime analysis. Of course, this isn't perfect either and probably will receive privacy and medical qualms, but I also don't know of a definitive answer about what a realistic hope is to reach for concerning criminal justice. As far as human history goes back, there has always been crime and it has always sucked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried to find the recidivism rate of criminals who serve time in US Federal prison camps (lowest security federal prisons). Does anyone know how to find it?

</comment><comment><USER6> Bit of an unpopular opinion here: either you have a criminal correction system or a justice system or a hybrid of the two. My unpopular opinion is that if justice is to be administered in any shape or form it supersedes the need to correct a criminal.

I am sure many here will agree with "Ends don't justify means". That goes both ways,the end goal of rehabilitating a criminal does not justify the means.

To me justice means to correct a wrong done. Someone did some wrong therefore a fairly measured punishment is given so that the wrong doer suffers and/or makes up for their wrong actions. It is this idea that when someone commits a wrong they are indebted for that wrong. It does not have to be a criminal situation, when you see someone suffer and offer help, you saw wrong and attempted to correct it,you attempted to administer justice even though there was no criminal.

Now, a debt can be forgiven but it must be explicit. I understand and can accept mercy being shown to anyone. The core of my disagreement here is portrayal of justice to mean correction and rehabilitation of the wrongdoer. In the eyes of justice, the debt being paid is all that counts. If rehabilitation is a priority to a society, mercy needs to be explicitly shown,it should not be done in a way that waters down justice to where we say "you owe this much but due to the end result we will only accept so much repayment of wrongs from you",you're saying the unpaid debt is ignored,not forgiven. if there is a victim,the victim should also have a say.

I hope I wasn't all over the place with my comment. All in all, I am mostly displeased with the end result being the focus here. I do need good neighbors but not at the cost of graying-down justice.

<comment><USER7> That's just selfish thinking. Your type of thinking breaks down as soon as someone innocent is punished. At that point it's just about having an axe to grind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ugly truth is a lot of 'benefits' of the scandanavian approach come from a highly (for now) homogenous society and an extreme reluctance to imprison or even pursue certain crimes that would be unacceptable anywhere else. Combined with being caught hiding data such as demographic information I'd take any fellation of scandanavian policy with a grain of salt. I assume the community here considers themselves logically minded so just ask yourself this. If this approach is as miraculous as its put forth to be why hasn't it ever reached as widespread implementation not just in evil America but anywhere in the world? The concept of rehabilitative imprisonment is almost as old as imprisonment itself.

<comment><USER9> Yet when similar approaches have been trialled in the UK, they worked just as well. When you consider the cost per year of imprisonment recidivism and rehabilitation should the main priority. Homogeneity is not required.

The whole "tough on crime" headlines and media campaigns in certain sections of the media, and certain shades of politics are the _cause_ of much of our problem with overcrowded and brutal prisons. Tough sentencing _does not work._ It's been demonstrated decade after decade. It flies well for voters seeking vengeance. The same voters who'd probably bring back hanging tomorrow if there were a referendum. That's _not_ justice.

<comment><USER8> Okay why hasn't this revolutionized the entire UK prison system and why haven't they bought yachts and luxurious hunting cabins for all their murderers and rapists if this is both drastically cheaper and more effective? Why hasn't this been adapted in the same way as fully anywhere in the world except Scandinavia? I mean officials do what they want when deciding not to execute or give elective surgery to felons or needles to druggies despite what the public thinks but this is a line they won't cross despite the supposed mountain of evidence? And its not like rehabilitation, even fairly generous rehabilitation isn't a concept thats been tried for centuries.

<comment><USER10> > Okay why hasn't this revolutionized the entire UK prison system

But it is quietly revolutionising the UK prison system. We've had Conservative politicians saying that prisons don't work and that we need a different approach.

As with everything that got shelved because Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "In Norway, the punishment is just to take away someone's liberty. The other > rights stay. Prisoners can vote, they can have access to school, to health > care; they have the same rights as any Norwegian citizen. Because inmates > are human beings. They have done wrong, they must be punished, but they are > still human beings." > "In Norway, all will be released - there are no life > sentences," he reminds me.

Really? Even with this low recidivism rate, I find this hard to accept somehow.

I don't even think deranged people like serial killers and pedophile rapists can change.

Even if they could theoretically change, why would we accept them back in society and spend any resources on them after they did that?

That doesn't make us more human. We are redefining 'humanity' to match our politics. But we have evolved over millions of years. Those two things can't coexist.

(edit: removed a paragraph, it was kinda OT)

<comment><USER12> There are no life sentences; this does not mean that individuals can't be detained indefinitely. If a prisoner is not judged fit for release, their sentence can be extended by up to I think four or five years at a time. The Norwegian prison system isn't releasing flocks of "serial killers and paedophile rapists" as a result of not imposing life sentences at conviction.

<comment><USER13> Also, i don't know if norway has the same kind of system (i assume it does. Most western european nations have this). but "terbeschikkingstelling"(TBS) is usually a punishment for people with severe issues like serial killers.

see: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terbeschikkingstelling_(Nederl...](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terbeschikkingstelling_\(Nederlands_strafrecht\))

<comment><USER14> Link for English speakers: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Janet – A dynamic language and bytecode VM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/janet-lang/janet <comment><USER2> I like it, because I like Lisps, and it seems portable enough. I was looking into Fennel, Urn, and Lumen, which are Lua-related Lisps, but given the small size of Lua, put them in the same size bracket or lower as Janet.

On another note, I was excited to see 42 comments on this, but then realized over half of them were on a thread of gender and PL names. Fair discussion I guess, but I was hoping to geek out on the Lisp of it all!

</comment><comment><USER3> _" The entire language (core library, interpreter, compiler, assembler) is about 200-300 kB"_

That's impressive. [Edit: It's not 200-300kB, closer to twice that in total. I pulled it down and neither source nor build is that small]

Also, minor typo on the page: _" The language also bridging bridging"_

<comment><USER4> Author here

Yes, on most linux systems its closer to about 375 kB right now with the default build. For some reason it is much smaller on macOS, and can be smaller when built with -Os, and even smaller when built without the assembler, peg, or in-binary documentation. You are right, it used to smaller but grew as I added more features.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Not knocking it, was just curious. It's certainly still small for what's delivered.

Probably smaller than the typical blog post on medium.

<comment><USER5> Obligatory link to Maciej Cegłowski's _The Website Obesity Crisis_ [0]

> _These Apple sites exemplify what I call Chickenshit Minimalism. It 's the > prevailing design aesthetic of today's web. I wrote an essay about this on > Medium[1]. Since this is a fifty minute talk, please indulge me while I read > it to you in its entirety:_

> _" Chickenshit Minimalism: the illusion of simplicity backed by megabytes of > cruft."_

I just opened up that one-sentence, image-free blog-post, with uBlock, uMatrix disabled. Without cache it pulled in 790 KiB - with cache it's still 108 KiB.

And it used to be worse:

> _I already talked about how bloated Medium articles are. That one-sentence > essay is easily over a megabyte. It 's not just because of (pointless) > javascript. There's also this big image in the page footer[2]. Because my > article is so short, it's literally impossible to scroll down to see it, but > with developer tools I can kind of make out what it is: some sort of > spacesuit people with tablets and mobile phones._

> _It 's 900 kilobytes in size._

I hate Medium and their ilk with a passion.

[0] [https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)

[1] [https://medium.com/@mceglowski/chickenshit- minimalism-846fc1...](https://medium.com/@mceglowski/chickenshit- minimalism-846fc1412524)

[2] [https://static.pinboard.in/ob/ob.082.jpg](https://static.pinboard.in/ob/ob.082.jpg) (Cegłowski's archived copy of that once-mandatory 900 KiB footer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Link to the actual site:

[https://janet-lang.org/](https://janet-lang.org/)

Looks like a neat project for sure.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, in short, it's a Lisp, apparently CL-leaning. On top of expected features, it has fibers (aka coroutines, generators), parser generators that supersede regular expressions, and destructuring on access.

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks like it uses setjmp/longjmp for error handling. Is there a way to ensure Janet never calls setjmp/longjmp? If not, it won't be embeddable in Rust (and maybe C++?) due to RAII.

<comment><USER9> I ran into this earlier with Lua for different reason, and recently discovered PHP does this too. Maybe we just need to find a way around it? I was thinking of trying to bridge jumps with the Rust panic mechanism. (Basically try-catch at each boundary.)

<comment><USER10> I'm on my phone so I can't get into it, but there were bugs around this with lua and rust that got resolved, so there is _some_ way of dealing with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fascinating project. Not many remember this, but one of the most successful embedded commercial Lisps was AutoLisp [1], which was the "scripting language" for AutoCAD.

My uncles who were engineers/draftsmen used to boast about the stuff they could accomplish with AutoLisp. I didn't understand the power of Lisp until I came across another embedded Lisp -- Emacs Lisp.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP)

<comment><USER12> I believe AutoLISP was derived from XLISP, a publicly available LISP written by David Betz. I had a lot of fun with XLISP, and respected the quality of the work done by Mr. Betz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A struct based lisp is something I've been wanting for a long time. This I am extremely interested in this project

</comment><comment><USER14> This mildly reminds me of Pico [1], which is essentially Scheme semantics with tables instead of lists, plus infix operators, and a few other bits of syntactic sugar.

[1] [http://pico.vub.ac.be/](http://pico.vub.ac.be/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like it, waiting for the C API documentation. Congrats to the author, Calvin Rose. [1]

[1] [https://bakpakin.com](https://bakpakin.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> Not a single example program on the GitHub page or in the documentation.

<comment><USER17> I found several. See [https://github.com/janet- lang/janet/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/janet- lang/janet/tree/master/examples) for some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dammit, Janet!

</comment><comment><USER19> Why Janet?

Why not Karen?

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karen](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karen)</comment>


Adam D'Angelo, former Facebook CTO starts new company: Alma Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.alma-networks.com/jobs/

<comment><USER2> _We're working on building a community-generated database of the trusted information that interests people most._

Well that narrows it down...

</comment><comment><USER3> The other engineer, CCheever has been with Facebook since near the beginning. His blog is pretty interesting too:

<http://www.ccheever.com/blog/>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link. His blog documents the facebook platform better than facebook wiki!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Familiarity with functional or declarative programming languages (OCaml, > Erlang) a plus

Now _that_ seems interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> This guy silver medaled the USACO (CS olympiad for HS students) when I was in high school. He is a smart dude and I readily join his company if I had the prerequisite tech skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who won gold, and where is that person now?

<comment><USER7> <http://www.uwp.edu/sws/usaco/2002/usaco2002.htm>

Gold: Tiankai Liu

<http://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=6446>

[http://www.exeter.edu/news_and_events/publications/winter_04...](http://www.exeter.edu/news_and_events/publications/winter_04/table_talk.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


The Life of a Bad Security Fix - <AUTHOR> https://grsecurity.net/the_life_of_a_bad_security_fix <comment><USER2> If this bug is still in the Linux kernel today, why hasn't someone fixed it?</comment>