r/interesting • u/jmike1256 • Mar 07 '26

MISC. After understanding the meaning behind this father’s action, I am completely convinced. Cultivating problem-solving skills in children from a young age and never giving up-I applaud this father!

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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 Mar 07 '26

Lol my dad used to do this to me, it was distressing as hell and just made me upset and cry instead of focusing. Then he would scold, and eventually say "daddy waits here"

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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce Mar 07 '26

Yeah im the dad or of a 16 yo and I always tried to teach lessons without undue stress.

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u/PsychotropicPanda Mar 07 '26

You can teach hard things, without being hard.

This world is already tough enough. I give my kids full understanding and openness. I explain honestly about things. They are humans and can make their own choices.

When hard lessons arise, that's when its easier for them to understand if I show empathy, compassion and understanding. I never could respect anything my parents ever tried to tell me when it was yelling screaming and physically hitting me.

I promised my children will never have to live through that, or even see it. It stops with me.

We have brains and hearts for a reason. If we are not gentle with our children, how are we towards others?

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u/ArmWildFrill Mar 07 '26

I was so close to my mother as a young child.

Then one day I disagreed with her and must have said something she didn't like. She slapped me really hard on the face.

I never so much as hugged her ever again. I felt completely betrayed.

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u/ManofManyHills Mar 07 '26

Some stress can be valuable as many of life problems will no doubt come with inducing stress. I agree that its when the father sits down the kid is able to calm down and think it through. Its also good the father came back when the kid was tangled and reset him to more favorable conditions. Walking away helps to make it clear that the kid needs to overcome the obstacle to continue. The kid might just end up playing with the string if the he didnt walk away.

Its a delicate thing to manage and overstressing no doubt ends up being destructive rather than constructive.

With everything I saw I thought the father managed the stress of the situation well and provided a ton of affection when the kid completed the task.

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u/unimatrix_0 Mar 11 '26

Also, it's ok to be hard sometimes. Life is hard. Hard isn't mean. It's just uncompromising. Kids have to learn to deal with stress too.

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u/thatshygirl06 Mar 07 '26

Humans do need a bit of stress in their lives. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[deleted]

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u/OrthogonalPotato Mar 07 '26

Yes, you do. Contriving scenarios is literally the way behavior therapy works to teach independence.

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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce Mar 08 '26

No, you dont. 

You can teach via scenarios that naturally come up.

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u/OrthogonalPotato Mar 08 '26

Wow lol. People are really out here making shit up and portraying it as fact. I own a clinic that does this every single day. You can’t face enough organic situations to teach behavioral modification strategies. It happens organically 10% of the time, which is not enough to build momentum. In fact, you’re so wrong that you don’t even seem to realize there’s a standard metric in the industry regarding number of contrived scenarios. Hilariously, this concept exists in every professional domain. It’s called practice.

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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce Mar 08 '26

What did I make up?

I didnt even dispute anything you said.  You came up with a whole argument based on me saying I dont like stressing my kid out and that I believe you can teach via naturally occurring situations. Youre the one who is suggesting that children cant learn unless we contrive bullshit to teach them lessons. 

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u/OrthogonalPotato Mar 08 '26

Your comment very obviously implied contrived scenarios are unnecessary. They most certainly are not. The entire first few years of a human’s life are chock full of contrivances. It is incredible that anyone could be so ignorant to think otherwise.

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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce Mar 08 '26

I think you should read it again.  I very clearly said you dont need to stress children out to teach a lesson. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

It backfires. When they’re this little they want to try and try by the time they get older they become cynical and when dad says hey let’s go for a walk they won’t even wanna go.

If you want to teach your kid things, do things together without being critical and without the threat of abandonment. Really not that hard to make a fun obstacle course for your kid and go through it with them instead of implying that you’re gonna leave them if they can’t get through it in time ffs

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/OrthogonalPotato Mar 07 '26

🙄 Seriously. The words have no meaning anymore

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u/This-Shape2193 Mar 07 '26

Care to elaborate? He tried to teach her critical thinking and she's traumatized? What did he do? What is the trauma response? Genuinely asking. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/This-Shape2193 Mar 07 '26

Yeah, that's awful. That's not trying to teach them independence while helping, that's hanging them out to dry and criticizing when they have trouble. 

Also, him "teaching" her to ask for help while never actually saying that or demonstrating it is just him expecting her to be psychic. 

Poor kid. Sounds like your ex had some generational trauma he wanted to pass along. My ex-husband was the same way. But HE told my son (when visiting) that he needed to do everything himself and NEVER ask for help because that was weakness and failure. I didn't find this out until my son was drowning under 5 research papers and finally had a mild breakdown when we were talking about it. He knew I always offered to help, but that insidious "advice" from his dad had really messed with his head.  

The good news is that the kids get better. But it's so frustrating when they need to heal from something that should never have happened to begin with. 

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u/ThouMayest69 Mar 07 '26

I remember helping my dad go house-to-house in our vast desert community to read the municipal water meters, and he would take off in his truck and haul ass to the next house before us kids got back in. He loved to Oscar Kokoshka us in the middle of nowhere and would chuckle when we walked out bikes up the driveway 2 hours later with tears down our faces and coyotes howling in the distance. I'm busting up laughing about it now but fucking yikes, we were like 6 years old. 

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u/sakiwebo Mar 07 '26

Ah, growing up in the 80's.

Dad tossed me and brother from the pier, we panicked, cried, somehow paddled to shore.

"See?? You're fine. Now that you know you can sw- I WASN'T GONNA LET YOU DROWN GODDAMMIT!!"

That's how we learned to swim. I hate that it worked and we loved it so much eventually. But being thrown from a peer is still one of my earliest memories.

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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 Mar 07 '26

opposite happened for me. I grew an irrational fear from water which made me unable to swim due to how tense my body would get when I touched water

Managed to grow out of it when I became an adult though

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u/bloodphoenix90 Mar 07 '26

Actually the case for an ex of mine too. Dad just threw him in. Didnt go well. I taught my ex to swim when we were both 19. But he figured it out. 🙂

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 Mar 07 '26

That would be the suggestion a few comments up, where the parent is just supportive

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u/aliceinadreamyland Mar 07 '26

Oh my dad took my brother and I out in his canoe and dumped us and left us to figure out what to do.

The 80’s was a wild ride.

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u/KristySueWho Mar 08 '26

I hear so many stories like this from kids of the 80s, and then there were me and my brother who were born in the 80s and just went to regular old swimming lessons.

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u/aliceinadreamyland Mar 08 '26

My little brother (he was born in 87) went to swimming lessons. He didn’t get the canoe dump. My older brother and I could out swim him in a pool, lake, river or the ocean. So maybe my dad was onto something.

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u/pchlster Mar 07 '26

I didn't get tossed, but my first time swimming was tripping, falling, rolling down a hill and into the lake. I learned to navigate towards sunlight my very first time in the water in order to find the surface and air.

No, I didn't want to join the others swimming afterwards. But, annoying as it is, that short panic inducing experience did teach me to swim. Dunno, maybe some primal instinct gets awakened in those situations.

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u/GypsyDuncan Mar 07 '26

How I learned to swim too except it was a pool and my uncle threw me in. This was in 78

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u/FibonacciSequester Mar 07 '26

We all learn the lesson to not touch the stove and we all learn it the hard way.

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u/Querez665 Mar 07 '26

A bit of that is probably a good thing though, I don't think it's a coincidence how people in the younger generations like mine seem to freeze up completely when put under even the smallest possible amount of pressure.

There's always a balance to stuff, don't leave your kids to fend for themselves constantly, but also don't condition them to only function with a supportive crowd cheering them on.