thesnadger:

Stanchez Headcanon #9302: I’ve mentioned before how Rick’s treatment of Morty bothers me and how I think Stan would be a positive influence in teaching him to treat his grandson decently.

I think

in particular

Stan steps in whenever Rick undermines Summer or Morty’s self-worth, or insults Morty’s intelligence. His typical reaction is to just smack Rick on the head with a newspaper or whatever other object he has handy. 

The first couple of times this happened Rick was surprised and pissed off, asking Stan indignantly what that was for, and Stan replied “gee, I dunno Rick. I mean, who knows why dumb people like me do anything, am I right?” with a little wink at Morty. 

Rick got the message, since it wasn’t exactly subtle. But it still took a lot of newspaper-based operant conditioning to break him of the habit.