A spate of knife attacks also have occurred in schools, the worst on June 8, 2001 when a man with a history of mental illness burst into elementary school near Osaka killing eight children. He was executed in 2004.

It’s not the severity of the punishment that deters, but the certainty of it. That means immediacy for those that wonder. Where there is life, there is hope. And where there is hope of a stayed execution or complications, then there is no certainty in one’s punishment. And there is also no certainty in punishment for others considering doing the crime.

Hopefully they self-destruct and suicide before they take others with them, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.

Why can’t you beat the hell out of him and immerse him in water until he almost goes unconscious? That kind of discipline works and even if youcan’t maintain it cause you’re not his parent, I promise you that he will certainly remember almost being drown himself.

I certainly do and it taught me many things that have been useful to me and probably will still be useful to me for the rest of my life.

If you can’t control yourself, then all you are is some bag of meat in the water, which is in itself composed of mostly water and plasm. That’s a lesson every boy needs to learn, one way or another.

The vanilla icing, though, is the rewards for self-discipline. You can punish someone all you want because they want to act out and be chaotic, but the lesson will never take unless they themselves realize that it is simply more rewarding and more attention getting to be disciplined. Otherwise, they are just like every other child, and that’s something these kinds of people really dislike being. They wouldn’t act out, after all, if they just wanted to conform.

I also put him on several time-outs, to which he submitted meekly enough, although they didn’t deter him at all from engaging in the next round of bad behavior.

That’s cause being given a time out is a reward for him, since otherwise he might get ignored and be thought of as a clone copy, of no consideration or worth.

Which takes us back to the Albatross award, and Helen’s point.

Sad.

About half a year ago, I did a post about the difficult kids whose parents excuse away all of their bad behavior. Often, physicians oblige by given the kid a diagnosis — usually Asberger’s — but those who see the parents and kids in action see another diagnosis: parents afraid of disciplining their child.

Often, there’s some trauma in the child’s life, such as divorce or a parent’s run-ins with the law, so that the parents are afraid to make the child’s life even more difficult. It doesn’t seem to occur to these parents that it makes matters even worse to add to this chaos a lack of structure and discipline, especially as the child’s worsening behavior eventually turns him into a social outcast. That’s what I suspect I’m seeing with this boy, who manifestly has within him the capacity to be good and kind and responsible — but who doesn’t seem to have too much incentive to break away from the negative, attention-getting behaviors.

I’m amazed the the number of children who aren’t “raised” …they are just provided for as they grow up. Does anybody ever watch “SuperNanny”? We do occasionally…absolutely amazing. I don’t know how people live with some of the children they have on the show. Part of the problem, I think, is that people have small families, young women – and men – have absolutely no experience handling children, and when they have children of their own, they have no idea how to deal with them. Then, if both parents work, it’s almost like having a rent-a-kid…2-3 hours a day…like babysitting and having no basic responsibility. Kids need _parents_!

And if they didn’t offer to bring him over for an in-person apology, it might be worth mentioning at the end of your phone call, something like, “Well, it will be very difficult for me to allow him back into my home or yard unless I get an apology from him and some kind of assurance from him that he won’t behave this way again.”

For one thing, this frees you up to say “no” next time, with absolutely no worries about discomfort or offense. The ball would be in their court.