Adolus Huxley was right

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A man and a wife goes to his wife's parent's house. This man's wife has 3 brothers one who has oppositional defiant disorder. This one brother snatches a plate from his father because he didn't want to do something. The man forgets what it was. The brother was angry and I mean angry. He had an angry look that could kill. If you have seen the look on cho seung-hui it was that same exact look. The man was able to sense the hatred and anger from this little boy. It bordered on contempt. The parents make the brother apologize with a certain tone that they wanted. They wanted him to get rid of this anger face.

The man who observes all of this is confused. The man is confused as well. This was all at the dinner table.

How does making this little boy have a fake smile solve anything? The man does not understand. He could tell somehow the little boy was still full of rage and contempt. The man does not understand how changing the muscles by his lips is supposed to change the inside of this little boy's inner essence. It's a extremley minor version of the ludovico technique in the book a clockwork orange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange


In American society, you can't even be negative at all. You cannot have any anger, saddness or anything that is a negative emotion at all. Why is that? What if America is becoming more and more like Adolus Huxley's Brave New world. Huxley was right. Another brother in this family may have aspergers and may be asking the same questions. Maybe this is why this brother is defending his other brother no matter what wrong he does. I have never understood this.

Aldous*

Anyways, I'm not quite catching the logic behind the comparison of Brave New World and the dinner table scenario.

It is being analogous to that anger and s**t should never be even remotely visible. It is basically a social thing that the NT just force on everyone, the whole you have to be smiling like a f*****g loon 24/7. I call it stepford smiler syndrome though >_>

I don't think the NT world advocates that. It advocates appropriate time and place for letting off steam, and non-abusive methods. Someone who wants to go off in their own room and yell at the world for any number of hours should be allowed to do so (parents who ease drop or otherwise censor lone musings are generally considered to be going over board).

The problem is that there is a whole lot of misunderstanding about "appropriate" venting looks like.

i would say i am guilty of making my children "apologize with a certain tone". or rather, without certain tones. an apology squeezed out in a contemptuous tone is not an apology at all.

i guess i am confused myself by the whole thread. you cant judge a family's parenting methods by one experience of how they deal with a defiant child diagnosed with odd. how many times do we parents complain about people judging our parenting by one exchange they witness in the grocery store or something similar?

I'm not judging anyone. I'm just trying to understand what took place and why? How does this method change what the child feels inside? I just want to understand. I'm am missing data here.

How does this change your child's contemptous feelings from the inside? The child more than likely still feels the contempt. How does forcing a smile or a tone change accomplish anything? I'm just trying to understand. It seems artifical to me, hence my confusion.



First, I'm not judging anyone's methods. I'm just trying to understand the parenting methods. The parenting methods could be correct. I do not know. I'm just trying to understand the NT parent's logic system behind this. If I come across as offending I apologize, once again I'm just trying to understand.

i understand what you're saying. my brother in law strongly believes in the fake tone. I am personnaly very very VERY creeped out by a child who comes and apologises to you in a rehearsed way, with obviously fake remorse.
Faking remorse , if you try to imagine what goes on in the child's head, is scary. it's teaching a child to manipulate others ....
to lie and smile to the face of someone they can only hate because they're being forced into being nice to them by their parents.
my nephew is scared of his ( verbally abusive) father. his behaviour is perfect. my sister is so proud of him. he scares me because he is fake 85 % of the time. i know i should feel sorry for him because none of this is his fault, it's an education problem, but he comes off as very sociopathic. he's only 5....poor kid. can't make myself like him though.

I think you would have gotten more varied opinions in the General Discussion forum - here you're bound to make people defensive.

as parents, one of our jobs is to teach our children how and when to apologize. the tone is just as important as the words. would you consider an apology sincere or acceptable if it was laced with "f--- you" or other profanities? more certainly not. tone matters just as much as it conveys the underlying message, and a contemptuous tone says "f--- you", not "im sorry".

we also have to teach them that an apology is not just for THEM, it is for the recipient. it may make the giver feel better, and thats often something a parent will teach as a way to get a more willing apology, but the overall purpose is to make the recipient feel better. its not just a last chance to get a dig in by being mean or another way to piss off your parents by doing it rudely.



i dont think one exchange is enough for you to understand much. you dont know the history of the relationship or the childs behavior. you dont know whether this one action that required an apology is something that the family struggles with every day, or something the child has been warned about 5 times already on this one day. you dont know whether its the usual first step in an escalation that leads to a much more extreme or dangerous event.

if you had been in my house this morning, you would have seen me tell my oldest very sternly that he couldnt wear his bathrobe to school for "wacky day". i gave him no quarter, refused to even consider it, and made him go change. by that exchange, i looked like a pretty harsh and inflexible parent.

what you didnt see was our conversation the day before yesterday, after he posted on his facebook page that he was going to participate in a student planned "pj day", one they had already been warned against by the school and threatened with suspension if they participated in it. you didnt see our discussion of the school dress code, what we expect him to uphold as his parents, or the consequences of getting suspended from his very good school. you arent there every single day to see the fight just to get him to wear proper attire for the weather, or to simply get up and get dressed in the morning.

one event is not enough for anyone to judge OR understand. if you truly want understanding, you wont get it by bringing your personal perceptions to an outside group, but by talking with the family involved and getting to know them. thats the only way to learn anything, whether its that your perceptions were wrong or that their parenting sucks.

Let me get this straight. It's not about the offender(child) feeling remorse or guilt about what he or she did but it is about making the offended party feel better no matter if the offender feels bad about it or not? Please correct me if I'm wrong? I'm just trying to establish some facts here.





You're right. I agree. That's why I came here looking for clarification. I could be wrong and misperceiving things. I'm just trying to get to what the truth is. I may be missing information.



I see.



I would've did it differently if I was a parent. I would've used abuse it lose it and logical consequences. http://www.keirsey.com/abuseit_looseit.aspx

I would've let him participate in pj day. I would've let him get suspended. While being suspended he would be made to make up his work. He would not be allowed to go outside to be with his friends and he is not at school to be with his friends as well. He lost the privlege of going to school. He would have to make up the work by a certain day. He would be working from sun up to sundown. I would make him work his butt off on his school work therefore showing the logical consequences of what happens if you do certain things that are detrimental to yourself and to others. More than likely he would probably not ever do something like this ever again because he would realize the consequences of his actions therefore changing from the inside out.



AGain, that is why I am asking for information.

an apology is generally an admission of wrongdoing and usually conveys remorse. you cannot force anyone to feel remorse or guilt, tho. with a child, you can usually help them through the reasoning process to get to the point of remorse (for instance a series of questions such as "what did you do to X?", "how would you feel if X did that to you?", "do you think X felt that way when you did it to him?", "would you want him to say he was sorry if he did it to you?") but there is no guarantee they will feel it. i use this with my asd child quite frequently because he often doesnt realize the consequences of his actions or how they affect other people.

for me, its also important that i teach my kids that we apologize sometimes not because we are sorry for what we did/said, but because its the right thing to do or because we are sorry our actions/words had unintended consequences. for instance, the difference between saying "i am sorry i said _____ to you" and "i am sorry you felt hurt when i said _____". both can be valid apologies, in the first you feel remorse for saying the words, in the second you feel remorse someone was hurt by the words but you dont necessarily regret the words.



well first of all, you make the assumption that the child is sorry he got suspended and considers school a privilege. probably not true for a lot of autistic children. my oldest is not dx asd, but he is a highly melodramatic 14 yr old boy with social difficulties and no real friends who would LOVE to be suspended from school. besides, consequences have never been a deterrent for him.

second of all, while experience is a great learning tool, i dont tend to intentionally let him do things that i know will get him in trouble and potentially end up in his permanent school records. just like i wouldnt let him invite 20 friends over, give him a keg, and then call the police to teach him a lesson. as a parent, i try to help him avoid mistakes. he will make plenty on his own when i am not there to help steer him down a different path, i dont need to idly sit by and watch him make more. my son, like many dx asd children, like his little asd brother, is easily influenced by his peers and would follow his more worldly classmates into the pits of hell if he thought it would earn him camaraderie.

I can tell you even from a NT perspective that it doesn't make sense why we are always supposed to 'be happy' 'be positive' 'look on the bright side' 'always smile'. Sometimes I don't want to be bright, cheery and smile. Sometimes I am angry. People really tick me off a lot. No matter what you are going through, even a death, divorce, or sickness, people say you should look on the bright side, it will get better, smile, etc...there is nothing wrong with having negative emotions.

azurecrayon, these are the things that you are saying am I correct.

1. For the child to be accepted, the child must conform.

2. Nobody is thinking about what the child feels.

3. The apology is expected because if your child does not then you look like a bad parent.

4. It isn't about the child feeling remorse or not but mending the feelings of the party who was offended by your child?

Is this all correct?





I will accept this. Let's look at your logic here. By doing what you're doing isn't that a form of a consequence for his behavior. If this is true then brings up this question. How does doing what you're doing deter him? HOw does doing what you're doing change him one single bit into a better person or is this not goal.



What are the consequences if it did end up on his permanent school record. Again your child has to learn there are consequences to his actions. How does he learn through your methods? I do not understand.



I can see what you're saying on this. I would simulate this though. IF your child was out of control I would arrange something with the police department. This would not be a real bust. WE could have people to pretend they are police or have the real police simulate what happens when a crime is committed and take them through all of the booking procedures. We could have them wait in a jail cell. Basically, we are simulating a hell hole for the child to be in. MOre than likely they wouldn't want to do something like that again. ARe you getting my point? I don't see how forcing a smile or forcing an apology teaches the child anything. If the child apologizes I want it to have substance and to be a true apology. This would be one of my methods to teach the child about logical consequences. There are parents who use this approach. The consequant has to have relation to the behavior. In my opinion it can't be disconnected.

I have the feeling though that you're intending more than just changing the child's behavior and making them feel remorse by the questions I asked. Am I correct?

absolutely not, and im not exactly sure how you got some of that out of what ive said. this has nothing to do with conformity or acceptance, nothing to do with how you appear as a parent. a parent MUST teach their child consideration of others, this is especially important for children who due to autism or anything else have a natural lack of that consideration. an apology is generally meant as a tool to repair relationships between people and is usually extended by the individual who caused the damage to the relationship. its not about creating remorse in that person, generally the remorse is naturally occurring, but sometimes children arent matured enough for the consideration of others to cause the expected remorse. and like i described previously, a series of questions can often help the child process through to the point where they can see things from the other perspective and that can help naturally generate remorse.



we dont always let children experience consequences for them to learn. a lot of consequences are learned by explanation rather than experience. "if you do X, Y will happen." its like laws, you learn what they are so you can avoid the consequences. we dont just hand car keys to teenagers and turn them loose on the road, we teach them what the laws are for everyone's safety and so they can avoid getting in legal trouble.

my son learned several things from our conversations this week. he learned what the specific rules are at his school. he learned his parents and school officials expect him to follow the rules. he learned what the consequences are both at home and at school if he breaks those rules. in the end he could have still chosen to break the rules, but he didnt. so lesson learned, and no one got suspended in the process.

parenting must be tailored to the individual child. you cannot apply the same methods to all children, not all nt children will respond the same nor would all asd children. you can easily say "this is what i would do", but if you try to apply the same thing to all children, you will fail miserably. each child must be parented individually.

i think its important to realize also that your original post was about a child diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder. logic and reasoning often does NOT work with defiant children, and many typical discipline/parenting methods are ineffective. a defiant child often requires completely different parenting that to someone who has never raised such a child would look very strange. much like parenting an autistic child requires different methods that parents of only nt children dont understand.

I tend to agree that forcing a child to apologize in a 'nice' tone is more for the benefit of the victim than the child. The child making the apology won't feel any less contemptuous but at least the victim will be soothed by what sounds like a genuine apology and it will stop the situation from escalating further. Then it's expected that the child making the apology will cool off in his own time and get over his contempt, and he and the victim can go back to being pals.