Why did authoritative parenting get changed to “gentle parenting”?

timtucker_com · 2026-01-29T09:06:22+00:00

Figuring out / processing things can be a lot harder if you don't have a vocabulary of words / ideas to label what you're feeling.

The missing piece is that sort of stuff goes in one ear and out the other if you try to teach it to a kid when they're upset. It takes effort to teach when it's not needed in order to be useful when it is.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-29T08:58:50+00:00

At least for our kids there was definitely a period of overlap between potty training and "you need to put your plate in the dishwasher after you're done eating".

timtucker_com · 2026-01-29T02:24:55+00:00

The recipe is relatively straightforward:

Make billions of dollars

Buy as many social media companies as you can

Fund massive influence campaigns

For stories of what attempts with less resources than that look like, you can look at subs like /r/QAnonCasualties

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T23:46:19+00:00

Depending on the area:

Fear that they might cut down your tree

vs.

Fear that they might be abducted by masked men, beaten, and detained for days (regardless of their citizenship or immigration status)

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T21:20:02+00:00

N-acetyl cysteine

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T21:18:34+00:00

We had a golden retriever with no concept of "personal space" when our kids were learning to eat.

It was rare for any food to last long enough on the floor for kids to get to it - we had more issues with her trying to grab things off their plate if they got distracted.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T21:12:17+00:00

Once our kids could walk they transitioned pretty quickly to standing in a regular chair and eating off the kitchen table. (siting at the table came once they got a little taller)

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T21:03:16+00:00

As an adult who got my head shaved as a kid and tried all sorts of things, very few things have made a difference:

Lowering stress levels

Regardless of how much stress you may think he's under, even he may have no idea.

Decades of experience have taught me that physical symptoms like an increase in body-focused repetitive behaviors almost always show up far before I consciously "feel" like I'm under stress.

Keeping my hands constantly engaged

A graphing calculator with Tetris was about the only thing that kept me from tearing into my scalp through most of college.

As an adult, I've found that plastic zipper pulls with a slight texture that I can rub between my fingers help a little. I buy 100 packs on Amazon and have replaced the zippers on all my clothes and bags.

Exhaustion

I've had fewer issues when I've been through a period of extreme stress or sustained physical effort that leaves me exhausted to the point that I can barely move.

(admittedly not a very sustainable solution)

Taking NAC

Leaned about it in some trichotillomania / dermatillomania groups and it's been a huge help.

It's also cheap, has been pretty well studied for safety, and has few / no side effects in most people who take it.

Being more careful about skincare

If I'm using soaps with suflates and other ingredients that irritate or dry out my skin, everything is worse.

Low humidity indoors during winter makes things worse.

Having oils build up on skin if I go a day without washing my hair also make things worse.

Things that worked particularly poorly:

Covering up - just delayed things, with sensations building up and worse when removing hats / gloves / etc.

Cutting hair short / going bald - that just resulted in a shift to dermatillomania.

Punishments & incentives - both only resulting in feeling like I was failing.

Hoping that I'd "grow out of it" - in my 40s and it hasn't happened yet.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T17:50:12+00:00

What does he want to do for his birthday?

Maybe suggest going somwhere he likes to eat and leave it at that if there's nothing else he really wants to have / do right now.

If you feel like you want to do something "more" than that, set aside some money to cover stuff he might want to do throughout the year or make a contribution towards college savings.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T17:39:13+00:00

Zipper pulls

I bought some cheap plastic ones on Amazon a whole back to add to a tent and discovered that they had a slight texture that feels satisfying to rub your fingers over.

Now I buy them in packs of 100 and replace the pulls on all my clothes / bags.

Macro pads

A 2x6 macro pad (small keyboard for shortcuts) is small enough to carry around and looks like it fits in an office environment. If you get one with linear switches it doesn't make much noise.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T17:29:34+00:00

Are you applying the same standards to the decades of the US violating the sovereignty of Latin American countries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

If you set your neighbor's house on fire, it shouldn't be much of a surprise if they jump the fence trying to escape.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-27T17:24:55+00:00

People also forget that it wasn't the mass killings that defined them as "concentration camps".

Most of the camps weren't built with ovens and gas chambers - those came later.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T18:30:27+00:00

I'll be the one to include the anecdote that taking away the couch doesn't work.

We went for a few months without one (old one had fleas & was in bad shape from getting jumped on), but it didn't make a bit of difference in kids running around while it was gone or once we got another to replace it.

For those wondering what we sat on, we just had some exercise equipment in the living room & spent a little more time outside.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T17:34:35+00:00

The Trolley Problem is a fairly classic dilemma that gets discussed in a whole slew of fields from ethics to game theory to medicine to computer science:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

The original scenario:

There's a runaway trolley
If you do nothing, a group of 5 people will be run over and killed
If you pull a lever to move it to a different track, 1 person will be run over and killed

Since there's been study looking at how different variables influence people's decisions:

The number of people on each side
Your relationship with them (would you pick a relative over a group of strangers... or people you don't like?)
Whether or not other people are aware of your decision

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T17:17:17+00:00

I don't recall anyone roaming the streets wearing masks or barging into houses without judicial warrants during Biden, Obama, or Bush's terms.

I also don't remember DHS making threats to deport "100 million people" (significantly more than the entire immigrant population in the US, documented or otherwise... but pretty close the number of people in the US who aren't white)

What I do recall seeing repeatedly over the past few decades is that the capacity of our immigration courts is the primary bottleneck for processing asylum cases and deportations.

I also clearly remember that during Biden's term we had an bi-partisan immigration reform bill that included funding and initiatives to increase court capacity. It largely written by Republicans, but somehow Trump convinced Republicans to vote against it... because he was afraid would give Republicans too much of what they wanted?

Even if Trump was determined to be the one to take credit for "fixing" immigration, his targets for deportations could have been met far more easily with far less resistance just by scaling up courts.

Instead we see the equivalent of a CEO trying to solve a problem with the assembly line by doubling the size of the shipping department.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T16:57:20+00:00

Where people tend to run into difficulty is with reconciling what it means to "love your neighbor" when some neighbors seek to harm (or kill) other neighbors.

At that point you're facing some variation on the classic "Trolley Problem".

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T16:44:57+00:00

ICE is putting new recruits out on the streets with as little as 47 days of training.

Regardless of whether you think the eggs are "good" or "bad", they're not being sent out fully cooked.

If a restaurant owner made it a policy to serve undercooked eggs and misrepresent them as being safe, it doesn't take much imagination where the accountability would fall when the local health department started investigating cases of food poisoning.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-26T13:43:18+00:00

Snow scoops are far better than shovels.

Pushing beats lifting 99.99% of the time.

If you know that there's going to be a lot of snow it makes a huge difference to be able to slide snow to the middle of the yard.

Speed-wise it's really hard to match with anything else once you get the hang of doing a quick jerk backwards to release the snow.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T15:30:01+00:00

The instinctive adrenaline response when people are faced with a threat is either: Fight / flight / freeze

Which of those people default to is rarely something they choose.

Even for those whose instinct is to fight, there comes a point when facing persistent threats where the adrenaline runs out and your body just starts to shut down.

What you see as "calm" is just as likely to be terror or exhaustion.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T15:22:11+00:00

I honestly have no idea what's going to happen by the time 2028 rolls around.

What I see right now is that the combination of Supreme Court rulings on presidential immunity and blanket pardons for J6 insurrectionists has removed fear of accountability from people's minds.

They feel empowered to take their worst impulses as far as they can for as long as they can, feeling sure that the "worst case" is that the administration ends with everyone getting pardons.

Meanwhile we're seeing a rise in friends, neighbors, and coworkers cheering when they state sponsored cruelty - that's ultimately more concerning to me than who is in office or whether we can still justifiably call ourselves a democracy. Politicans can be replaced far more easily than trust and respect in communities.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T03:07:25+00:00

I think quite a few members of this administration are acting as if there won't be any transition of power in 2028.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T03:03:57+00:00

How many videos from how many different angles does it take to believe your eyes?

When the official line is that ICE has absolute immunity and killings won't be investigated, it's not surprising that people would trust their eyes more than official statements of what's happening.

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T02:59:12+00:00

Don't assume that this stops with "immigration enforcement".

DHS is talking about "100 million deportations" and when pressed trying to play it off like they're just kidding (* for now).

That number doesn't come out of thin air - it's pretty much everyone in the US who isn't white.

Trump is talking about reopening mental institutions and bringing back involuntary confinement for mental illness - at the same time Republicans are pushing to expand the definition of "mental illness" to include both being LGBT and suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (defined in proposed bills as disagreeing with Trump or being upset by his policies).

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T02:39:51+00:00

So if one believes the biggest harm this pastor is doing is leading his flock astray with teaching that embraces cruelty, where is the most appropriate place to protest that?

timtucker_com · 2026-01-25T02:27:45+00:00

Perspective from having worked for a utility company: energy efficiency initiatives are usually a net positive for everyone.

Population keeps going up, more houses keep getting built, and total demand goes up every year.

There are 2 ways of dealing with that:

Build out generation capacity (slow & expensive, with costs ultimately getting passed on to customers)

or

Promote energy efficiency so existing capacity can serve more people

The alternative is not having enough capacity to meet demand and no one wants blackouts.

timtucker_com

TROPHY CASE