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

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.