For all the friends of characters

[*pixie*]

saw this and thought you might enjoy it. Maybe this should be handed out on the bus's, trams and monorails prior to visiting a park.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A627699

[IndyandMarion]

Eh. The only time I'd have my army of squirrels attack a character is if someone that I despise was inside "protraying" the character.

Other than that situation, there's a person inside?

[BirdMom]

That article should be added to "Rules for Guests" in its entirety.

[leftcoaster]

Too bad it can't be put in the back of tickets.

But how about a sign in front of all entrances: "By passing through the entrance gates you agee to the following:"

[BRWombat]

saw this and thought you might enjoy it. Maybe this should be handed out on the bus's, trams and monorails prior to visiting a park.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A627699
Good idea, but it wouldn't work in practice:

(1) The guests receiving the article would have to be able read.

(2) Those that can read, would have to then read it.

(3) Those few remaining souls who actually read it would have to be able to understand it. "Check your brains at the gate" and all that...

Still, a good article.

[felinefan]

As far as the questions go, (would you attack a stranger on the street, etc.), you must remember that this is a British publication, and most of the Brits I've met are very rational people--more so than the average American :o: . The average Brit would stop and think and say no they wouldn't attack a stranger on the street, but quite a few Americans, especially the young ones, would say "Hell, yeah!" because they think it's funny. Never think they'll be recognized and sued, arrested, etc.. Of course when was the last time we all saw a guest who could think, period? If there were any this site wouldn't exist. But let's face it, the last generation or so of Americans hasn't been big on following rules. We used to be so civilized.....

[Zazu]

But let's face it, the last generation or so of Americans hasn't been big on following rules. We used to be so civilized.....We used to be so civilized because we all lived in fear that the nearest adult would smack us if we got out of line. And if our parents heard of it, they'd smack us for doing something that got us smacked! Now we hardly dare reprimand our own kids.

You know, I'm almost glad I'm getting out of the park.

[KieranDotW]

If only this were true :( My sister's going to be a "friend of Mickey's" this summer as an ICP and I cringe at all the horror stories I've heard. She's pretty small and I don't know if she could take all the kids' hits...

[Darksin]

We used to be so civilized because we all lived in fear that the nearest adult would smack us if we got out of line. And if our parents heard of it, they'd smack us for doing something that got us smacked! Now we hardly dare reprimand our own kids.


Oh god.. the hand. It makes me shudder to remember it!
There you are, goofing off and having a good time. Then, all of a sudden.. out of NOWHERE the 'RUBBER ARM OF DEATH' comes around the corner and *SMACK*. You sure as hell didn't screw around in a theme park because when your parents said "Keep it up and we're leaving" them really would. Right after a very public whooping if you really screwed up.

You didn't screw around because that adult would smack you, then call your parents who would whoop your ass. Let's face it, we all still did it but our Ninja skills got very good, very quick! It was a survival instinct in anyone currently over the age of about 28 now.


Kids today, I can't understand it. You can't even punish a kid now, 'Time Out' is probably considered abuse much less anything that would get threw the kids head as 'Don't. Do. It. Again.'. I see so many parents, even outside of the park who just give their kids anything they want to shut them up. It's an entire generation of spoiled entitlement wimps.
Okay not all of them are bad, the problem is the majority you encounter are just little Hellspawn.

-BEST BIRTH CONTROL EVER-

Although I have to say, I'm going to just sit back and HOWL with laughter when these kids hit the real world and realize it just doesn't work like that!

[WEDFan]

We used to be so civilized because we all lived in fear that the nearest adult would smack us if we got out of line. And if our parents heard of it, they'd smack us for doing something that got us smacked! Now we hardly dare reprimand our own kids.

You know, I'm almost glad I'm getting out of the park.Even putting the smacking aside, you see the same thing in schools. It used to be, if you didn't behave in school, you got detention. Then when your parents found out you had gotten detention, you'd get grounded. Now most of the time a school tries to hand out any punishment, the parents show up defending their little darling, who would never really do anything wrong, so the school obviously made some sort of mistake or are out to get their poor child.

[hobie16]

Now most of the time a school tries to hand out any punishment, the parents show up defending their little darling...
Before moving to Maui we lived in a school district where a number of the parents were, how do you say it, loaded. They weren't afraid using their perceived clout to put teachers in their place so the teachers tread very softly whenever there were issues with the little darlings.

I get home from work one day and my wife announces that our oldest kid had forgotten to take a snack to school and had snitched one out of another kid's bag in the coat room. Turned out the other kid was the only one who brought Oreo's, was the biggest kid in the class, and belonged to a minority group that tended to rat pack anyone they didn't like.

I told my kid to open up her piggy bank and pull out $5. We headed to a grocery store where we bought the biggest package of Oreo's available. She spent the ride home counting her change trying to figure out what her actions had cost her.

The next morning I took her to school. We walked into her classroom where organized chaos was in full swing before class started. The teacher was sitting at the front of the room. We walked up and I said, "Hi. I'm Andrea's dad and I understand there was a problem yesterday about some cookies."

The teacher, with a deer in the headlights look replied, "Ummmm errrrrrrr well, there was a misunderstanding about..."

I cut her off and said, "The only misunderstanding was between Andrea's ears. She's decided to atone for her actions by buying the class some cookies. I gotta get to work so I'll leave it up to you on how to hand them out."

I left. As I turned to walk out the door I looked back and saw the teacher still sitting there looking dumbfounded at the cookies. She probably had a good story to tell in the teacher's lounge that day.

[WEDFan]

I cut her off and said, "The only misunderstanding was between Andrea's ears. She's decided to atone for her actions by buying the class some cookies. I gotta get to work so I'll leave it up to you on how to hand them out."Bravo! Well done.

BTW, this is my 100000000th post!

(I think I mentioned before that I'm an old-time computer guy. ;) )

[bookbabe]

I cut her off and said, "The only misunderstanding was between Andrea's ears. She's decided to atone for her actions by buying the class some cookies. I gotta get to work so I'll leave it up to you on how to hand them out."

Can I just say I love you? :D: :hug:

[Shorty82]

http://cl.jroo.me/z3/t/7/w/d/a.aaa-Explain-these-bad-grades.jpg

[hobie16]

Can I just say I love you? :D: :hug:
Gosh, sure. :o:

[Lasolimu]

Although I have to say, I'm going to just sit back and HOWL with laughter when these kids hit the real world and realize it just doesn't work like that!

Hmm, I imagine there will be quite a bit of therapy as they realize that the world doesn't revolve around them. That would probably be a good profession to go into at this point, you'll be rich! :eek:

[DonutGoddess]

Oh god.. the hand. It makes me shudder to remember it!
There you are, goofing off and having a good time. Then, all of a sudden.. out of NOWHERE the 'RUBBER ARM OF DEATH' comes around the corner and *SMACK*. You sure as hell didn't screw around in a theme park because when your parents said "Keep it up and we're leaving" them really would. Right after a very public whooping if you really screwed up.

"Do you want to go sit in the car? We can go sit in the car." My parents did not have A/C in either car and I grew up in S. FL. No way did I want to sit in the car.

Or "We can leave now, do you want to leave?"

Oh and I really grew to loathe those paddle ball paddles which my dad took when the ball broke off. I made the last one last FOREVER!

[felinefan]

Yeah, getting spanked for stuff really made you stop and think before you did something. "Is this something that I could get in trouble for if I do it?" Kids these days think, "What are my chances of getting away with this?"

Dear Abby once printed a list of things that kids could get into trouble for, in the 1950s and a contrasting list for the 1990s, I think. What a difference!

I grew up reading about how kids used to have to stand/sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap; in my day we didn't have the dunce cap, but we still had to stand in the corner facing the wall. When we were in Australia 1965-66, the teacher used to cane kids that didn't behave.

[delsdad]

When we were in Australia 1965-66, the teacher used to cane kids that didn't behave.

Our principal used to do that to those deserving at my school in Northern Ontario in the early 80s !!

[shilohmm]

You sure as hell didn't screw around in a theme park because when your parents said "Keep it up and we're leaving" them really would. Right after a very public whooping if you really screwed up.


I dunno. My dad was a spanker, but he was also prone to the empty threat. I'd act up because I was tired or burned out or otherwise wanted to go home, and he'd do the "Keep it up and we're leaving" routine, but we almost never left when he said it. And spanking never worked on me when I was acting out because I was tired; I'd just get more wound so less obedient. Which is probably partly why my parents to this day say "nothing we tried on you ever worked." :rolleyes: Hubby was a yeller and a spanker who didn't otherwise follow through, like my dad, and the kids ignored him a lot, too.

I, OTOH, quit spanking about the time youngest was born, but I was a firm believer in "consequences." If I said, "Keep it up and we're leaving," and they kept it up, then we left, boy howdy. The kids listen to me, to the point they ignore their dad, I say straighten up, they straighten up. So it's more about setting limits and holding to them than about spanking per se, I think.

Although hubby's a lot more fun than my dad was. I've been about to tell them to cut something out because it's too rowdy for where-ever we are, only to realize their dad is the one leading the parade -- or telling them to "do it again, so I can take a picture of it." :banghead:

[Goofyernmost]

I do not recall my dad ever doing any physical form of discipline. But he used the "voice". It was a manner of speaking that would literally stop your heart.;) It was a combination of volume and tone and it absolutely let you know that you were in deep doo doo and whatever you were doing had better stop this instant. I cannot describe it any clearer than that really.

My mom, on the other hand, possessed a "board of education" and she was not afraid to use it. Thankfully we never felt it's wrath very often.

Apparently, according to my two girls, I came equipped with that same "voice". I do recall that by merely speaking I could stop any situation quickly. Even though I'm sure I occasionally issued an idle threat, they didn't seem to realize it and it wasn't far enough out of the range of possibility to not be taken seriously. If we had been in a theme park such as Disney, they knew, and it was absolutely true that if we had a problem, we would be leaving the park immediately. We would then go back to the hotel and the pool and TV would have been completely forbidden. That was not an idle threat and they knew it. Never had to carry it out.

[felinefan]

I do recall some times Dad would go overboard on the corporal punishment thing. As long as the punishment fit the crime, and most importantly the child's personality, it can be very effective. Different strokes for different folks.

[shilohmm]

Different strokes for different folks.

Yep, which is why I think it's important for parents to understand how to use different forms of discipline. My parents talk about how they "tried everything" to get me to behave, with this whole list of "what we tried," but since my parents believed that discipline equals punishment, not only was their parenting toolbox pretty limited, but they didn't realize that! They thought they had a whole list of techniques, but all they really had was different methods of punishment. :rolleyes:

I think it's parents with a "limited toolbox" like that who end up overusing spanking (or some other obviously ineffective technique) -- even though the definition of insanity is to keep using something you know doesn't work, they don't know what else to do, and they feel that, as caring parents, they gotta do something. :poke:

Fortunately for my parents, parents teach the most through example, and their example was pretty good. :)

[Goofyernmost]

I think it's parents with a "limited toolbox" like that who end up overusing spanking (or some other obviously ineffective technique) -- even though the definition of insanity is to keep using something you know doesn't work, they don't know what else to do, and they feel that, as caring parents, they gotta do something. :poke:

What makes you so all fired sure that it's ineffective? As long as not overused and cruel...it works pretty well.

[shilohmm]

What makes you so all fired sure that it's ineffective? As long as not overused and cruel...it works pretty well.

I'm sure it's ineffective because I've seen it fail. Didn't work on me, to my parent's great annoyance. Worked fine on my two siblings. Didn't work on two of my five kids (for two entirely different reasons). Presumably my parents and I were "doing spanking right," since it worked just fine on some of our kids; so even "doing spanking right" doesn't always work.

I've also known parents who didn't think they overused spanking who discover that, once the kid gets "too big to spank," they have no influence over him. So even when spanking is effective, it seems some parents develop an unhealthy dependence on it, and don't have anything to fall back on but other forms of punishment when spanking quits working. I haven't seen that happen with any parenting method but direct punishment -- probably because you can continue to use all the other methods I know of on your adult children... as well as on your spouse, adult students, etc. ;)

[GaTechGal]

I definitly believe that you have to use different punishments.

We used to negotiate how many veggies the kids had to eat before they would get dessert. My stubborn DS used to go for WEEKS without dessert just to get out of the veggies. So we invented "THE DOCTOR" (ok it was really a suggestion from John Rosemond - parenting guru extrodinaire) who said that if you didn't eat your veggies, then you would be too tired and so you would have to go right to bed after dinner. Only took 3 or 4 early nights and he learned to eat. And we wised up and stopped negotiating and just put the amount on their plates that we required of them to eat. They could get seconds on anything, but only after the first plate was empty.

Another entertaining one (for me that is) was when the rugrats were misbehaving at the grocery store, I used to make them hold hands as we went around the store. That was really embarrassing when they were older, so they learned pretty fast that it was better to wait until they got home and go somewhere Mom didn't have to hear them to fight.

My DH's stories about punishment were that his mom wore a lot of flippy sandals (not the thong kind but nice ones) that she could whip out in a nanosecond and hit you with it from across the room.

[Darksin]

My DH's stories about punishment were that his mom wore a lot of flippy sandals (not the thong kind but nice ones) that she could whip out in a nanosecond and hit you with it from across the room.

Oh heaven, NOT the Flip-flip!
That's almost worse then "Go Go Mother Super Power Stretchy Elastic Arms"!

[shilohmm]

My stubborn DS used to go for WEEKS without dessert just to get out of the veggies. So we invented "THE DOCTOR" (ok it was really a suggestion from John Rosemond - parenting guru extrodinaire) who said that if you didn't eat your veggies, then you would be too tired and so you would have to go right to bed after dinner.


But that's not just changing the punishment; that's changing the whole rationale. Few kids could be stubborner than me if I thought my parents were just trying to get their own way. I considered that bullying, and I do not give in to bullies. But if they convinced me they had a legitimate reason to want me to do something, I was less likely to refuse on general principles, and more likely to consider their perspective.

So I would have viewed, "No dessert unless you eat your vegetables" a power play, and would have refused to play that game. But if my parents convinced me that they believed vegetables were connected to good health, and were just trying to demonstrate the consequences of going without vegetables with the "too weary, have to go to bed" routine, I would have been much more likely to eat them. Not that vegetables were ever an issue; I like more vegetables than my parents do. :p: But the principle holds.

Same with some of my kids. "Do it, or else!" backfires. "Do it, because..." works, even when they don't necessarily agree with my reasons. They're willing to humor me when we're on the same team. ;)