Three Law Compliance

[nmg]

The garklet is generally a good lad, but he often gets a little excited or frustrated, and when he does he has a regrettable tendency to hit people. We've just been moving some of his toys back into the living room, into the wheeled boxes that I'd built with a little bit of IKEA bricolage, and he ended up running around with one of his old toy boxes on his head while shouting "robot!"

And then he hit me. Not a hard blow, and not one borne of malice, but the sort of roughhousing that we're trying to get him to tone down a bit.

And that at moment, inspiration hit.

"garklet, are you being a robot?"

"Yes, my am robot. Urrrr!"

"Well, there are some important rules that good little robots have to follow. The first rule is 'don't hit anyone', the second rule is 'always do what grown-ups tell you to do', and the third rule is 'be careful'. Okay?"

"Okay daddy."

Comments

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

Asimov just happened to be part of the inspiration too ? I shall remember that.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Asimov was the whole of the inspiration.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

Well, you should take some credit for thinking of ways to adapt it so quickly.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Now I'm feeling bad about reading Kurtzhau his first Conan story...

[phobiandarkmoon.livejournal.com]

That is the best parenting advice ever

[andrewducker]

That is so cute!

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Fantastic. Very impressed on multiple levels.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

David Cameron goes on about finding solutions for "broken Britain". I would suggest that encouraging Geek Parenting should be a manifesto commitment.

Foam swords

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Nice piece of spin!

I've approached this in two ways, based partly on the way Kurtzhau has seen me fight my friends with swords in the back green.

Long ago, we purchased compressed foam swords so we can give a positive injunction - it's OK to hit people with FOAM swords. Later we followed this up with judo lessons.

At the same time, I've tended to respond to out of scope violence with, "If you hit/bite/kick, then we can't rough and tumble because you're big enough to really hurt me." And of course the foam swords have similar rules, esp no head hits, no hard back hits, no hard hits, no whinging when hit...

It helps, though, that I do a martial art. So, quite often I can see attacks coming and throw in a gentle block or take down.

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

Opal's mother similarly found that the computer security rule about preferring whitelists to blacklists applies:

• Spoons are for eating, eat with the spoon or put it down

vs

• Don't bang the spoon on your plate
• Don't bang the spoon on the table
• Don't bang the spoon on your glass
• Just don't bang the spoon
• Don't drag your spoon over the table

[cdave]

Brilliant.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

20:11 <@LionsPhil> nmg has apparently told his son "always do what grown-ups 
                   tell you to do".
20:11 <@LionsPhil> Um.
20:12 <@Mair> oh good, let's all go and tell garklet interesting things to do
20:12 <@Mair> "throw a custard pie at daddy!"

[kaveypie.livejournal.com]

Ha haaaa, that's less of a stretch than the Will Smith robot film, what was it called, you know, the one that seemed to miss the point of Asimov's laws quite a bit?

[clarehooper.livejournal.com]

Awesome :) Nicely done.