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For some reason I remember an "official" statement that reframing is not acceptable on Parenting.SE. But using the search function of Meta, or the Help pages that are linked when asking a question do not find the word "reframing" or "reframe" at all.

Am I hallucinating? What's the stance?

To make clear what I mean:

  • OP asks "how do I achieve X with my child"
  • Answer "achieving X is bad, don't do it" instead of "to achieve X, do Y and Z"

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The term that was used was "arguing with the premise of the question", I believe; see this question/answer.

In general, it is discouraged to argue with the premise of a question unless it is a factual disagreement - i.e, if the question is "1 million children die every year because they play video games. How much time should I let my little one play to avoid being another statistic?" it's reasonable to object to that on factual grounds (since that's factually not true).

But if the question is not factually wrong, but you disagree with their opinion - even something close-to-factual, such as "Violent video games are a major cause of kids shooting up schools, so I don't want to let my kid play Fortnite. How can I convince him to leave it alone?" - you shouldn't answer with an argument for letting them play Fortnite. Answer their question as stated (with an answer that helps them help their kid understand why they don't want them to play fortnite) or leave the question alone and don't answer it.

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  • Exactly, that was it, arguing with the premise. Do you think that that linked meta topic equals "reframing" (which is the term used on many other SEs specifically), or would you say that's something else again?
    – AnoE
    Sep 25, 2018 at 19:53
  • I'm not sure? I think that Parenting is a bit different from most SE sites, and that's why we have a different take on this general concept - the idea being that our subject matter is more subjective by its nature, and so we want to be welcoming and help in the spirit asked, basically.
    – Joe
    Sep 25, 2018 at 19:55
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    Compare that to, say, StackOverflow, where basically everything has an objective answer, and it's perfectly reasonable to reframe someone's question in the way that gets to the right answer, when they misunderstand their own question. Here it's not about them misunderstanding their question, but just having a different point of view.
    – Joe
    Sep 25, 2018 at 19:56
  • Yes, that's what I'm shooting at... I am aware of the Parenting culture and prefer the non-reframing stance, I am, now that we found that post Joe linked, just a little confused why the actual word "reframe/reframing" does not occur anywhere here and why the stance is not more predominantly displayed, say on the Help pages.
    – AnoE
    Sep 25, 2018 at 20:03
  • Maybe... maybe this meta question was inspired by a meta post about "frame challenge" on Interpersonal Skills because that site is as subjective as this site...
    – Andrew T.
    Sep 26, 2018 at 2:12
  • @AnoE - we have not had much of a need to display it, as we don't have many people trying to reframe. When they do we just ask them not to. If it was a major challenge for us, we'd probably look at adding a bit of content in the welcome page on this.
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Sep 26, 2018 at 9:36
  • Yes, kind of, @AndrewT. - I am on IPS often, also, and generally try to be very aware of what reframing policy is favoured on which StackExchange - in my mind, IPS and Parenting are quite different in that aspect, as shown as the comments here as well as the linked P-meta question.
    – AnoE
    Sep 26, 2018 at 11:04
  • @RoryAlsop, I think that would be good (adding some content about this to the help page), to get people in the expected mindset.
    – AnoE
    Sep 26, 2018 at 11:05

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