this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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If my neighbor did ANYTHING to my pets, they'd be lucky to only get sprayed with water.
Yeah but with a ten year old, talk to their parents first. You want to drench a child without their consent? Okay but they had better be in an environment that can explain to them that this is a tit for tat type thing. A ten year old doesn't understand a lot of things and it's not up to the child to perform what we expect them to. Do they need to be corrected, yes. Does doing it so callously benefit anyone? Only a bully. There's a huge difference between constructive discipline and just straight up punishment. It takes an adult to know the difference.
Ten-year-olds understand quite a lot of things. They don't always think before they act, but they would absolutely understand this object lesson.
It's water. It's not harmful. Getting splashed with water is most ten-year-olds' idea of a good time in most scenarios.
Is this the most constructive way to go about teaching a kid how to behave properly? No.
Is this going to scar the average kid for life? Also no.
At age ten I was coding in Assembly on my C64 and build radio controlled model airplanes without assistance from an adult... so I guess in this case the ten year old should have a pretty clear understanding of his action and the consequences. And to be honest: What did happen? He got wet. Booo-hoo what a tragedy! Would he have gotten a good spanking (would perhaps have happened when I was this age in the 80s), then perhaps I could slightly understand the outrage from his dad.
This is key. It's one thing to stop a child from harassing your pet. If you "teach them a lesson" after the fact without the parents' permission, there are now two wrongs that need to be dealt with.
Good job making assumptions for your own argument.