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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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I have a vivid memory of a parental figure placing a hand on the back of my neck and like pinching the fingers super hard when I was doing dumb shit. Is that not a thing anymore?
Child abuse? No typically it’s advised against.
Sure, we know what not to do, but do we also know what we should do instead then? Sometimes you need kids to comply within a certain time frame and that's going to require some pressure one way or the other and no, it's not going to scar them for life
It is a parenting issue, not a child issue. You don’t harm a child just because you’re pressed for time. You learn how to communicate the urgency, you learn how to distract, you teach them about action and consequence. This kids parents apparently were not having a good day and to a certain degree I empathize with them, but they shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with if they just worked with their kid.
You talk to them. You tell them what's going down. You give them details. Children are not animals. They can listen, understand, speak, hold a conversation. If you need them to do something specific, in a certain time frame, for a certain reason, you tell them.
I feel like people underestimate the mental faculties of kids all the time. If you treat them with respect and just talk to them, you usually don't have to resort to abuse tactics.
Kids are smart. But they don't always have the same thought process as adults. There have to be consequences for actions. And a stern talking to just isn't going to cut it for a lot of kids.
Punishments like spanking give an immediate reinforcement and I wouldn't consider that abuse.
Different situations require different ways to handle kids. On an airplane where the kid won't sit still, I would certainly consider something immediate that doesn't need a lengthy explanation.
"Just talking to them" doesn't always work (e.g. toddlers, children with pathological demand avoidance, etc), but I agree that abuse is still never the answer.
Sure, no solution is perfect and there's exceptions to every rule.
But the original question is "what options do I have aside from abusing my kid?", and while "just talk to them" is an oversimplified answer, I feel it's an appropriate response to such a thickheaded question.
Usually yes, and I will acknowledge that skipping this step is showing laziness or incompetence, but I don't think children are already reasonable, especially when they're tired (this happened late in the evening) and already committed to throwing a tantrum. And in this case the whole situation might have been already stressful for the parents anyway, which doesn't help. Probably they should have talked about it more way before they entered the plane, and prepared the kid for what was going to happen. And maybe they did. But the situation then being what it is I think options can be very limited, and there probably wasn't much time to try reasoning with the kid