h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

..even if I am biased myself.
You should submit this and get other people's opinions/insights. It strikes me that smaller families and more travel mean that this sort of knowledge might be increasingly difficult to come across.

I would add: Read with children - especially anything by Dr. Seuss, and don't rely on the state education system for family planning / diet / finance / alcohol education.

One I have seen far too much of recently....

NEVER strike your child in public. It sends a bad message about yourself, and your shild, and it destroys self-esteem. Very nasty business!

- X

BTW: Brilliant idea!!

How about refraining from striking your child, period......there are other effective methods of discipline.

Also, when your child gets to, say, their upper teens, put some trust in them. If you have done a good job raising them, you should have no reason not to trust them.

..upper teens?
I think I was trusted with the house at that age .

I wasn't even trusted to choose my own friends....I worked with people more than twice my age, and therefore became good friends with a 4-year-old man. My dad flipped out and thought we were having an affair. The curse of the paranoid father....

I had a good relationship with mine until they were 14. They then became aliens and I thought I was going crazy. But if you've done a good job when they are young they come back to you as human beings when they are about 20. It's really weird when you hear your own words coming from them. Like "Look at those girls going to school with such tight skirts!" or " You'll let me know if you're going to be late?"

Some horrible discoveries:
Despite all your best efforts, you *will* become your parents. I was a child of the sixties, so who was it that used *my* voice to *my* daughters and said "you're not going out in that!"? Who is it that looks at their boyfriends' cars and thinks "Hmmmm, not very practical, with that lowering it'll never get over the humps in xxxxx
Road"? I'll tell you, it's me. I've said all that. Shame.
The important thing is: Get them right by age 14yrs, because after that, I'm sorry, but you've already lost them. The upside? The love you gave unconditionally in years 1-infinity will be repaid X 10 when the real world catches up with your children. The time at which this "catch-up" happens varies between 15-65 years of age, but it *will* happen, and if you have to wait a year or more, it just makes it all the more special.

I'm going to agree vehemently with the "no striking, period" assertion above. I've never been hit, slapped, or spanked in any way by my parents, and I've grown up more respectful than most of my friends that were and certainly less apt to use violence to settle any dispute. Not that all children who were never hit end up like me, there's my brother, but he's at least respectful more often than most of his friends.
I'm nearly 19, and I want you all to understand that you don't loose us when we turn 18. We need money to get through college. Eating money, tuition money, rooms, etc. Some of my friends had to earn their way themselves, but that's mostly because their parents could not afford it. I live in the same town as my grandmother now, so she sees me bi-weekly and I get to do my laundry for free. And as long as you're controling our money, we'll listen to your input on how it should be spent. Or we will if you've raised us right

~Irving

I wish I could honestly say that I never hit mine. My parents never hit me and I think I'd have preferred the occasional slap to the icy withdrawal of approval. But IMNSHO I now have two of the best men friends anyone could hope to have and the older one is now subbing me occasionally. (the younger one's still paying off horrendous student debts) and they both still seem to value my input, as I certainly never did my parents once I was their age .

A good friend of mine emailed me this, and though its meant to be funny, it has more than a grain or two of truth in it as well. Enjoy-
Ten Rules to Date Daddy’s LittleGirl
RuleOne:
If you pull into my driveway and honk, you’d better be delivering a package, because you’re sure not picking up anything.
RuleTwo
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter’s body, I will remove them for you.
RuleThree
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don’t take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: you may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers to your waist.
RuleFour
I’m sure that you’ve been told that in today’s world, sex without utilizing a “Barrier Method” of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.
Rule Five
It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back to my house, and the only word I need to hear from you on this subject is “early”.
Rule Six
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is fine with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is through with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.
RuleSeven
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour has gone by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of standing there, why don’t you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?
Rule eight
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter:
Places where there are beds, sofas or anything softer than a wooden stool.
Places where there is darkness.
Places where there is dancing, holding hands or happiness.
Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts or anything other than overalls, a sweater and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat.
Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which feature chainsaws are okay.
Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.
RuleNine
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dim-witted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless God of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.
RuleTen
Be afraid, be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. When Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway, you should exit the car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early. Then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face in the window is mine.

hee. Amusing
BCNU - Crescent

Well, yes,because that's supposed to be what fathers think. Good job you can't print what mothers think about their son's girlfriends. personally, I prefer to trust them. That way you may add to your circle of friends. One of my son's former girlfriends and a girlfriend of hers have just spent a couple of weeks with me at the start of their travel round SE Asia and a good time was had by all,I think.(Apart from the fact that I'm very jealous of their opportunities)

Yes - but did they send me their address? No they did not.
I think on the subject of grilfriends and boyfriends, parents are there to offer advice, not make rules...because the latter leads to conflict and rules are nearly always broken .

Lucky for me my ability to find a date diminished dramatically after earning my driver's licence (not 'til my senior year), and so I never had to deal with shotgun weilding fathers -- besides, if I believed my mother, the girls I dated were much worse influences on me than I could ever be on them. Not that that stopped the fathers from giving me the icy stare of doom whenever I saw them. I also noticed that when calling, if I got her mom on the phone, the message would get to her as soon as she got home. If I got her dad or her brother? It was all over. Doesn't matter if she was home or not, he'd say she wasn't and never ask my name, or whether I wanted to leave a message. When will they realize that I'm the guy they WANT their daughters (or sisters) to be dating? I'm the one with GOOD intentions!

~Irving

I'd be inclined to say never strike your child above age three... sometimes if they're about to do something dangerous, like run into the road, a small amount of pain now can save a life in the long run.
The other thing I'd say is be consistent...or they start playing mum off against dad..

Yeah, this is a good idea, strike your kids when they are under the age of three.
The advantages are:

- child does not know why
- child does not know the difference between his deeds and itself
- child gets the message: I am bad
- child gets the double-bind-message: I love you but I hurt you

An other advantage is, that you can also hold the standpoint that not only 3 years old, but all persons that are, as a result of their developing-stage, not able to understand spoken words, should be stroken.
So whenever you are in bad mood, go to a, say Parkinson-Patient and strike him, whenever he wants to cross the street. And remember: a small amount of pain can save lifes !

(I wonder whether this entry and the one above do pass the rules of h2g2)

You just have to understand that it doesn't matter what you think of your intentions, fathers usually think ill of any boy who wants to be around their daughter. I feel like I can say this with a fair amount of certainty, I have two,one who's only seven (so I don't have too much to worry about, yet) and another who just turned 14 - which makes me worry alot.

Alright now, I agree that negative physical reinforcement is never the answer, but niether is sarcasm. When you get sarcastic about something someone says they tend to get defensive, and you won't persuade them, just make them more vehement in their disagreement with you. I've been on both sides of sarcasm, so I know

That, and the past tense of the verb "to strike" is "struck" or "stricken" but not "stroken".

I was never struck, but I still haven't been hit by a car. My father (whose parents did hit him on occasion) was hit by cars at least once, and I think twice. Again, it may be me vs my father and nothing to do with hitting, but certainly you cannot say that hitting will always prevent something that couldn't be prevented another way. One thing that adabsurdum DID his on was the use of words. Children solve problems with their fists on schoolgrounds. Adults... or at least mature adults, should be able to solve problems using their words. To me this extends to ALL forms of violence, but I won't get into my metaphore of Waring Nations as Giant School Children here. Of course, I really don't know what I'm talking about, as I've never been in a schoolyard fight.

The Ten Rules for Dating Daddies Little Girl were absoluteley brilliant. Been there - done that - loved it.

To start with, I would *never* advocate striking a child in anger, just because you were in a bad mood. But I think its dangerous to forbid parents to strike their children completely... Unfortunately I'm currently having difficulties in articulating why. I don't think that anyone should have their child in fear of corporal punishment, its wrong, but I also don't think that a parent should always be expected to give their children a reason... 'no' should mean 'no', end of story. Although there always should actually be a reason.
Joanna
But then again, having been struck to prevent me doing stupid things when I was too young to understand reasoning, I probably have lots of emotional scars and you should probably not listen to a word I say.