dear penthouse
I’m confused, I thought you (Qin) were a college student living at home. Are you looking to be punished for things you did years ago? Why would it matter now?
If you want to be punished, I’d look at whether you have some self hate issues, and work on self forgiveness first.
He’s 15.
Fourteen,
Adolescent paleoconservatism and self-loathing exacerbated by an anachronistic Victorian sense of sexual shame.
guilt is a punishment. also, maggie, some korean families hold the sons up on a pedestal and don’t discipline them at all. in fact, quite the opposite. a lot of korean males i know are as spoiled as any JAP (jewish american princess).
You know, while I think Qin is way off base with his ideas about sexual morality, he might not be off base on the rest. I had parents who were too lax, and I often asked my mother to be stricter, but she wasn’t able. I think it hurt me in two ways.
Firstly, telling Qin that if he can recognize his bad behavior he can change it isn’t necessarily true. Behaviors are habits, and can be very difficult to change through a simple act of will, as anyone who’s tried to lose weight or quit biting their nails can attest. Behaviors change best through classical conditioning, and most of the tools adults use to make lasting changes in their own habits are, in fact, ways of conditioning themselves by setting up their own punishments and rewards. But conditioning works best when the punishments and rewards come from the outside, and we typically agree that providing them is part of what parents are expected to do. I developed a lot of bad habits that I still struggle with because my parents never did this, and as a teenager I lacked the either will-power or the control over my environment that would allow me to discipline myself effectively. (To give a simplistic example, if my parents wanted to buy me ice cream when I failed to finish a school report, I couldn’t necessarily say no, and if they didn’t want to take me to get ice cream when I finished my report, I couldn’t use ice cream to reward myself either.)
Secondly, punishment serves to communicate a parent’s values and concerns and the fact that the parent cares about the child. I was deeply hurt by the fact that my mother was unwilling to punish me, even when I was clear-minded enough to ask for it explicitly. I would therefore challenge her and act out in a sometimes deliberate and sometimes subconscious effort to force her to show her concern for me. I grew up feeling like nothing I did really mattered and that I ultimately had little control over my life or my actions (because if I did have the ability to control my actions, my parents would surely have expected more from me). Again, these are things that still affect me as an adult in my thirties. I can (and have) learned to deal with these emotional issues as an adult, but it was a lot harder as a teenager.
I can easily imagine that a lot of Qin’s issues with sexual and religious morality and his desire for strong moral absolutes in religion and politics are a way for him to deal with a lack of moral guidelines enforced by his parents. If his parents cared enough to punish him for hitting, but didn’t punish him for looking at girls, that would give him clear signals about what kind of values they want him to have. If they don’t punish him for anything, he has to look elsewhere for signals that delineate right from wrong, and as a teenager, he’ll naturally be drawn to simple, absolute rules that can be easily internalized: typically either extreme rigidity or extreme libertinism.
Flagellate yourself in the nude.
Perhaps, but I didn’t think he was saying that his parents don’t punish him at all. Just that he thinks he does a lot of things that deserve punishment, but he doesn’t get it.
I agree with Dio, actually. His parents are reluctant to punish him for things they think he can’t help. I think they are showing their values: only deliberate wrongs need to be punished.
I know that, when I was around his age, I thought my parents were handling things 100% incorrectly. I even stumbled upon my mom’s old stash of parenting books, and would count the ways mom deviated from them. I knew everything, my parents nothing. And books were always worth more than experience. (I still find that last one hard to fight sometimes.)
“It’s hip to miserable when you’re young and intellectual…”
…sorry, I just can’t help hearing this song as the score to this thread.
Then they are wrong. Qin obviously feels like he has some control over his actions. When he talks about hitting and cursing at people, he isn’t talking about muscle spasms or tics from Tourette’s syndrome. He’s talking about behaviors he started because he didn’t understand they were wrong and that he apparently has trouble stopping. That’s just the sort of thing conditioning works wonderfully on, if it is applied properly.
I’m no expert on autism or Asperger’s, but it seems to me that giving him the message that these are just things he can’t help and shouldn’t be expected to control is exactly the wrong thing to do. That doesn’t mean he should be made to feel guilty for having inappropriate urges or for not controlling himself perfectly. Punishment doesn’t have to be accompanied by anger or shame, either. Particularly with someone like Qin who wants to change his behavior and has the maturity to recognize that he needs discipline, it could be done cooperatively and supportively, by reminding him to take a time out, for example, when he acts out. But the parents should be willing to enforce appropriate and agreed-upon punishment even when it isn’t wanted in the moment. That’s the whole point of having parents, not just friends who raised you.
Please refrain from ethnic-oriented epithets. I realize that this is something of a borderline case, because it isn’t purely about an ethnic or religious group as such, but rather about a particular cultural subset of that group. Still, it can be inflammatory and is rather gratuitous, so please keep that in mind.
No warning issued.
Beat me to it. If you believe your behavior warrants punishment, then stop behaving that way. You can (and should) moderate yourself.
Like quitting smoking, many people can’t just up and change their own behavior - not without superhuman willpower that leaves them in no shape for anything else. Qin is at least self-aware enough to correctly note some things that he can improve about himself - which is pretty mature for a 14-year-old and above the ability of many adults.
I would suggest directly talking to your parents - “I have decided that I need to change my behavior X, and I would like you to help me hold myself accountable to improving.” That should get their attention - and if they used to be reluctant to punish behavior they saw as outside your own control, the framing that you’re asking for feedback from them as a favor could make punishment more palatable to them. (Also, you may get surprising feedback about what behaviors you consider problematic that they consider normal, or vice versa.)
If that fails, you’ll need to set up some system to self-reinforce, but that’s a much harder challenge than having someone else to hold you accountable - the temptation to cheat is much higher. But I’d go ahead and talk to your parents directly first. If you drop indirect hints, they’re much less likely to understand the place you’re coming from.
Your last two paragraphs contradict this. Of course he’s capable of changing his own behavior, as the two methods you suggested are systems for doing that. I never said he had to choose any particular method over another, but that he’s capable of making the changes necessary to improve his behavior. In fact, he’s the only one who can change his behavior. If that means asking for help, creating an external structure, or what-have-you, who cares – he’s still accountable for changing his own behavior, and it won’t happen if he doesn’t do something about it himself.
All the punishment in the world won’t do a thing for someone who’s unwilling take responsibility for his own behavior and change. Conversely, if he is willing, there’s a whole slew of things he can do about it. Punishment becomes unnecessary.
Unnecessary, perhaps, but not unhelpful, especially for a child, which Qin still is (barely, but a child nonetheless).
Qin, I know you mentioned to Guin that you’ve talked to your parents. How did you frame it? Did you ask to be punished more, or did you mention specific behaviors that you wanted them to react to?
If you haven’t done the latter, you might want to; you could even avoid the word “punish”, if you want; you could simply ask them to call you on the behavior when you perform it. Frame it as being something that you personally want to work on. They might be more amenable to helping if your request doesn’t come across as a criticism of their parenting.
That being said, if you do, and you still don’t, then maybe they don’t perceive the action as being as out of line as you do. From what you described, that seems unlikely, but anything’s possible. If the “handing” is something they do, they might not see it as bad, regardless of what your intent is when you do it. If that’s the case, then it’s up to you to exercise self-discipline and try to change your own behavior. That’s hard at any age, let alone as a teenager, but it might be your only option.
Well it was the latter, I don’t think I’ve ever directly told my parents to punish me more.
What did they say? Do they think you your behaviors don’t deserve punishment, that you can’t control them, that they punish you for them already, or are they unwilling or unable to mete out punishment?
Qin, maybe you’re overthinking and your parents do have a good handle on things. Or at least doing the best they can. I mean, you *do *have a lot going on what with Aspergers, puberty, raging hormones, a fundamentalist Christian upbringing and possibly community, not sure if you’re in a public high school or other education situation, how involved your parents are, etc. Just being 14 is nearly overwhelming for a lot of 14 year olds, and you have more than “just” that on your plate.
One observation is that you are often quite literal. Someone asks a question and you you give a succinct answer but devoid of backfill that might add some context.