I'm concerned by the surge of firearms-related questions that appeared the last two days. It nearly dominates the site right now, unfortunately and inadvertedly helped by myself because I added tags to them :-(
Frankly, if I came to the site for the first time today, that would scare me away.
@torbengb Firearms!? That is a concern. Looking at the users making the posts, it's not one person posting exclusively these questions (i.e. not an elaborate troll), so maybe we can just hope they'll get buried by other good questions, and if they're truly irrelevant/not the right kind of question for SE, down-voted.
@CRoss Note that I did say if they're truly irrelevant/not the right kind of question. It's not something I think about or know about, being in a country where gun ownership is uncommon (or illegal? I don't even know), so I'm not going to pass judgment on it. As you say, a bit odd for three to suddenly appear on the first-page, which I guess is what torbengb was getting at.
It didn't seem that bad to me. If children are going to grow up around guns it's a good idea for them to learn how to use them relatively early. I learned at the age of 11. Others I know learned around 8.
That may be. Also, those who have a hunting license may have hunting gear; not just in Switzerland. But there's a big step from having that in your home (Switzerland: in case of a national invasion) and to training the use and care of hand guns with 8-year-olds. That last part is what I'm uncomfortable with.
And I do think there's a world of difference of having military issue gear (properly dismantled and secured; OK to me), and having hand weapons ready for any split-second emergency (not necessary, in my society).
@torbengb I wouldn't be training an 8 year old on a handgun. It's not appropriate. I learned on a single shot shotgun. That's exactly why that should be a real,valid question: there are wrong/more dangerous ways to introduce your children to firearms.
Handgun, shotgun, I can't tell the difference (because I never learned to (because I never needed to)). Why not teach with a toy gun? Or indeed, why not teach that guns are terribly dangerous and should never ever be touched? By the time the child is big enough to join the army, he'll get professional training, and until then I'd stipulate that he doesn't need any training apart from don't touch!!
@torbengb You do teach on toy guns even earlier. Our core difference here seems to be whether anyone outside of government (military, police) should have access to lethal weapons.
Tempting to close the gun questions as "too localised" as in only in the United States and in a few war torn countries is it discussion worthy. they're not really representative of universal parental concerns, so they really, really stand out to this non-American and make the site look, i don't know, "not for me"
@hawbsl I totally agree, I don't even want to think about what firearm I would be best to learn on, let alone my children.
I think because of the way I've learnt about firearms in Australia, even when I move to the US (in about a month), there is no way I would want a firearm in my house or anywhere near me...
@hawbsl It would be interesting to see the geographic distribution of the users. If 97% are US then it's not too localized.... I think I'd lose that comparison.
I suggest this policy:
Safety questions, yes. Even related to weapons; it's simply yet another dangerous object in the home, just like that chainsaw or this detergent. That's good parenting.
Weapons choices, no. That's not a parenting question but rather like sports training. Think of arche...
the problem was having a small "outbreak" of gun questions, which skews the site. my interest is in adoption and that's where all my hard, importatn questions really start from, but i've not asked a bunch of adoption questions because i know it's not representative
@hawbsl similar issue to me, not with adoption, but I have a 5mo and a 2yo so firearms are the last things I'd think of the site for. I'm more interesting in behavioural and sleep questions :D
@hawbsl neat, isn't it? :-) The chat does special things when you paste an URL into a chat message all by itself. Same with putting names like @hawbsl at the beginning of a message.
behavior, sleep, and bilingual are my favorite topics.
@torbengb i'm keen on bilingual too but i got rather burned by one of my answers, someone wrote "you obviously don't speak a foreign language" [not true]
I don't have personal experience of this but I've taken a somewhat professional interest in this over the years. My understanding is that the minority-language parent (in this case that's you) has to work incredibly hard to sustain the project. Any kind of relaxation in your commitment to not-spe...
@torbengb i was coming from the point of view in the UK where the vast majority of the population speaks only one language.i find a lot of English people assume that it's easy to pick up a foreign language as long as you have foreign language parent, it sort of mystically transfers to the child, with no hard work. this then morphs into the idea that that's the only possible way to acquire language, thus excusing their inability/laziness
if that makes sense
so i'm applauding the hard work of the bilingual families
I used to work with someone who was a huge proponent of spanking. His claim was that without spanking, his kids would be out of control, disrespectful, and so forth. Corporal punishment, he claimed, worked.
Among the things that he had to discipline his kids for? Disrespect for authority figures...
2 down and 7 up votes and he's getting bent out of shape on the 2 downs on a controversial subject
This is a really hard site to accept answers on... compared to SO where there is usually a solution that stands out... Its hard to know what to accept without trying things out...
Which in the case of many parenting issues can take a long time.
I suggest this policy:
Safety questions, yes. Even related to weapons; it's simply yet another dangerous object in the home, just like that chainsaw or this detergent. That's good parenting.
Weapons choices, no. That's not a parenting question but rather like sports training. Think of arche...
