quote:In my opinion though if that possibility is always looming, the child will be more apt to listen to you.
I don't think that it's possible for me to disagree more. The word "looming" is what's setting me off; I really don't like the image it sets up.
Forcing a child to live in fear is monstrous; forcing obedience through fear is equally monstrous. While I understand (dad of five preteens, am I) that *sometimes* fear and unpleasantness are necessary teaching tools, I'd hate to have my kids' lasting impressions of me tied to those emotions. I hope my kids are more apt to listen to me-- and more importantly TALK to me-- because they respect and love me.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Perhaps "looming" was the wrong word to use Scott. I agree that I would rather have a child love me than fear me. I could have phrased it better.
I'm talking about young children, maybe between the age of 2-3 years old. They don't understand when you sit down and talk to them sometimes. A small swat on the rump lets them know that what they did is wrong, and they are able to understand that a consequence comes with that action. I would still talk to the child afterwords and let them know that this is the consequence that comes with the action, so they understand. I wouldn't just spank them and not tell them what they did wrong.
When they turn 5 just take the Wii away from them, they will shape up quickly. No New Super Mario Brothers for a week? I'd rather take a spanking. Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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I'd be curious to know a few instances where people think spanking is appropriate. Even in the few cases where I did spank my kids on reflection I don't think that it was necessarily the best choice.
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quote:They don't understand when you sit down and talk to them sometimes. A small swat on the rump lets them know that what they did is wrong, and they are able to understand that a consequence comes with that action.
It's been my experience with my kids-- and I think this is backed up pretty well by research-- that spanking a 2-3 year old doesn't convey "consequence" either.
I don't know what a swat could accomplish that a sharp tone of voice and direct, and serious dad/mom glare couldn't.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: ... I mean, I don't spank my children, but you've got me rolling my eyes here at the remarkable hyperbole some of y'all are using.
Serious eye-rolling from the "can relate to the Russell Peters POV" person over here too.
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quote:I'd be curious to know a few instances where people think spanking is appropriate. Even in the few cases where I did spank my kids on reflection I don't think that it was necessarily the best choice.
As a non-parent I don't think I'm necessarily qualified to make a statement here, but I would say that AFTER you've tried every other punishment you can think of, if a behavior is persisting and it's either a danger to your kid or someone else's, or if it is driving you so crazy that prolonged exposure to it is straining your ability to effectively parent, then spanking is pretty justified.
Spanking isn't the only way you can abuse a child, and refraining from doing so isn't helping anyone if their behavior is stressing you out so much that you're resorting to other unhealthy behaviors.
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quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: Sam, do you happen to know if any studies have been done on matching discipline techniques to a child's personality? Cause there's a lot of punishments out there, and they may or may not work for any given child.
Oh, plenty. It's not even so much about individual studies at this point as the fact that most pediatric specialists will stress the fact that parenting is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. All parenting is, to some degree, adaptive. What the specialists want you to avoid are strategies that are maladaptive and have very superior alternatives. In the case of spanking, there are pretty much always superior alternatives. nearly all people who insist that it was preferable or necessary in the case of their child are flat-out wrong. Still, you will always hear "spanking was NECESSARY for my child" or "spanking was NECESSARY for me" with a healthy side of "and I turned out fine."
quote:I've got a friend who'll tell you he liked being sent to his room. If his mom wanted to get his attention about a behavior, she had to get the belt out or he didn't listen. So was he aggressive as a teenager because he was spanked, or did she have to spank him because he had an aggressive personality and only responded to aggression?
Well, I can't conclude either way based on a paragraph describing them. I can already see two points which tip me off towards likely issues, though:
1. Was the mother limited to sending him to his room OR spanking? No. It is not difficult to find a punishment that a child will dislike. She didn't have to default to spanking, but felt she did. Not an uncommon scenario.
2. If you have reached the point where you have to get a belt out in order to get your child's attention about a behavior, then, well, you're doing it wrong. Sorry. You are already in a situation you shouldn't be in.
3. Because of no. 2, chicken-and-egg questions are not very relevant, since either way, bad news. However, the relevant knowledge imparted to us from the american association of pediatrics is that we KNOW that spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression. it also makes parents increasingly reliant upon it because it lessens the effectiveness of other methods. Either of these situations could seem to readily apply to where this parent and son ended up.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: or if it is driving you so crazy that prolonged exposure to it is straining your ability to effectively parent, then spanking is pretty justified. ...
Spanking isn't the only way you can abuse a child, and refraining from doing so isn't helping anyone if their behavior is stressing you out so much that you're resorting to other unhealthy behaviors.
Ummm, I'm not really behind the idea that you can excuse spanking a kid based on this. It's a pretty straightforward maladaptive process.
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I'd like to clarify that I do not mean you should spank your child because you are stressed out - that's a bad reason and probably where a lot of spanking goes wrong. You should either be giving them enough warning that the spanking comes before you are crazily stressed out, or calming yourself down as much as possible beforehand so that it doesn't turn into a way for you to simply vent your frustration.
I'd also remind you that regardless, it should still be a last resort after you've tried various other punishments.
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But you're still using spanking as a threat in order to 'defend' them from a highly emotionally charged event. A punishment should be used because it is appropriate entirely towards what the child has done that warranted punishment, and it really should not AT ALL be based on a parent feeling in any situation that they HAVE to do it to keep THEMSELVES from doing something worse afterward.
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quote:As a non-parent I don't think I'm necessarily qualified to make a statement here, but I would say that AFTER you've tried every other punishment you can think of, if a behavior is persisting and it's either a danger to your kid or someone else's, or if it is driving you so crazy that prolonged exposure to it is straining your ability to effectively parent, then spanking is pretty justified.
While I appreciate the response, this is a criteria, not an example. People have so far been fairly vague about when spanking is appropriate other than to say that in some cases it is the right choice. I'd like to know what a few of those cases are.
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quote:If you have reached the point where you have to get a belt out in order to get your child's attention about a behavior, then, well, you're doing it wrong. Sorry. You are already in a situation you shouldn't be in.
In general I agree with you on this point. But parents are not perfect, and it's not always possible to find the right thing to do at the right time and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that some portion of parents will find, at some point or other, that they'd tried everything they can reasonably think of and that spanking is the only way to get their kid's attention.
I might agree that because the majority of spankings are unnecessary, the most effective way to weed out bad parenting is to simply say that spanking is bad, period, the end, since that's a much easier sound byte to propagate throughout society.
But I think if parents ARE doing it right 99% of the time, then the issues that people have with spanking (that it creates at atmosphere of fear and threat and fosters violent tendencies) will likely drop off significantly. I might be wrong, but I can't see there being that strong a correlation when spanking is used only a couple of times in the child's life, total.
There was a question I asked earlier that hasn't been answered to my satisfaction: is there are study that distinguished between last-resort-carefully-controlled-spanking-by-otherwise-model parents and lazy parents who find a reason to yell "I'm gonna go get my belt!" every other week? I really don't think the two approaches are comparable, and so far the negative consequences that have been cited seem to reflect the latter approach.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: I'm talking about young children, maybe between the age of 2-3 years old. They don't understand when you sit down and talk to them sometimes. A small swat on the rump lets them know that what they did is wrong, and they are able to understand that a consequence comes with that action. I would still talk to the child afterwords and let them know that this is the consequence that comes with the action, so they understand. I wouldn't just spank them and not tell them what they did wrong.
Here you seem to be comparing the results of spanking with the results of trying to reason with a 2-year-old. I don't find the comparison to be valid. No one is suggesting that the alternative to spanking is not to offer consequences. It is important that consequences be clear and consistent, but there is no reason in the world that striking a child needs to be a consequence. It's not spanking or nothing!
Some consequences I use:
Time out (with a brief, age-appropriate explanation of the reason for the punishment both before and after the time out)
Loss of toys
Loss of TV time
Going to bed early (I believe the reason for the misbehavior is simple tiredness.)
Natural consequences -- such as last night when my son threw a fit in the car and took off his shoes. I made him walk around shoeless in the grocery store. Anytime you can simply let a child reap the natural consequences of their action, the lesson is more poignant.
Logical consequences -- similar to natural consequences but a bit more engineered. If you don't eat your dinner, you don't get dessert. That sort of thing.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: But I think if parents ARE doing it right 99% of the time, then the issues that people have with spanking (that it creates at atmosphere of fear and threat and fosters violent tendencies) will likely drop off significantly. I might be wrong, but I can't see there being that strong a correlation when spanking is used only a couple of times in the child's life, total.
Sure, and you're not likely to see a lot of correlations with lung cancer among people who only smoked two cigarettes, but in either case it's not necessarily a defense of the action so long as it is minimal.
In the case of spanking, we know enough to suggest that it is best to never resort to it at all. The reason behind this is because of the rather profound impact (another unintended pun) that even a single act of spanking can have on a child. A single event wherein a trusted adult models the infliction of pain as a means of asserting control / resolving conflict.
Here's the best way I can explain — Let's model an incident wherein a mother is walking down the street with her child. A homeless person is standing by a rail stop and looks at the mother and goes "got any change?" The mother is very distrustful of homeless people but as of this point the child has not had any of this distrust modeled onto him/her. The mother is startled, and in response to this, she gasps and instinctively grabs her child and clutches him/her VERY close with a very tight grip. It's a momentary response that transpires over just a few seconds. The mother stammers out a 'sorry, no' and walks away, still a bit agitated. She's probably holding the child's hand a bit tighter, or keeping them a bit closer, etc. The mother could say nothing more about this extremely momentary event, but kids pick up a lot from things like this. Something like this, like, this singular incident, could model distrust or even mild phobia of drifters and street people in an adult who had this experience as a kid. Even if the mom carefully explained later that homeless people are not scary, I was just startled, etc. The same sort of modeling is even stronger in some areas, like the ability for one event to create lifelong distaste/fear of things like spiders or snakes, just because of the way we are wired.
So it's for the reasons provided by this kind of stuff that it's not at all nonsensical to be worried about the impact of spanking even just once, which has problematic future implications in two areas.
One: even one event can be a profound modeling experience. mom just hit me.
Two: parents who resort to spanking even once are very likely to start making a habit of it. The barriers and conditions for application are most likely going to begin lowering immediately.
The studies about all this including comparisons between minimal spanking and regular/habitual spanking do exist and I've trawled through a lot of them, and could probably be unearthed again by trawling through ebsco, but I'm at a loss to provide any citations at this time.
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Fair enough. This is not a position I am particularly invested in or have spent much analyzing. All I know that my own experience was not something I'd consider unhealthy and that the examples people have given of unhealthy situations were not very similar to mine at all.
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Some of the anti-spankers might want to further analyze their personal feelings a out spankings, because I'm reading a lot of irrational, unrepresentative, extreme views of spanking that frankly have very little in common with real-life. It reminds me of people who insist that violent movies and video games make people violent, ignoring all data to the contrary.
Look around you. A large portion of the population of adults were spanked as children. Do you not recognize that we aren't violent, traumatized, angry adults as a result?
Your personal emotions are blinding you to common sense.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Some of the anti-spankers might want to further analyze their personal feelings a out spankings, because I'm reading a lot of irrational, unrepresentative, extreme views of spanking that frankly have very little in common with real-life. It reminds me of people who insist that violent movies and video games make people violent, ignoring all data to the contrary.
Look around you. A large portion of the population of adults were spanked as children. Do you not recognize that we aren't violent, traumatized, angry adults as a result?
Your personal emotions are blinding you to common sense.
I disagree. And obviously, spanking doesn't cause across-the-board problems, it just increase the likelihood of certain problems. I breastfed for much the same reasons. I didn't guarantee that my children won't get juvenile diabetes nor that I won't get breast cancer, but I bettered our odds.
I have seen spanking in action. Often. And not in abusive ways to where I would get involved or say anything to the parent who did the spanking. Typically, I have seen spanking used after several warnings, using a hand (not an implement), and often after other punishments have been doled out. And I STILL don't think it is a good thing.
Going back to something I brought up earlier, we had a house guest stay for 2 days, spank his daughter around my kids, and my son started hittg his sister more often.
The children I know who are spanked, even within reason, are more prone to hitting and other kinds of violent behavior. They are also no better behaved than my own kids and in most cases, less.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: It reminds me of people who insist that violent movies and video games make people violent, ignoring all data to the contrary.
Well, they did find out that violent video games do make people more aggressive and have higher incidences of anger management issues ..
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Even if I accept the premise that in some instances spanking is ok for kids, I don't think I would spank. It is far too easy to do spanking because you need a release from the frustration of parenting and not because your child actually did something egregious. Its seems like one of those things that once you start it is easy to start expanding the situations it is used in.
Posts: 416 | Registered: May 2005
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Christine- my brother spanks his kids (with all those lovely caveats) and frankly my daughter is much better behaved and I think it is because of the spanking issue. Also, the bigger issue I see is the difference in internal control. If I turn my back on my daughter, I can trust her to behave in pretty much the same way she does if my back isn't turned (which is usually pretty good- worst issue is the constant coloring of the walls). If you turn your back on my nephew, he hits his brother, throws and breaks toys and is otherwise a devil child. His behavior is very clearly tied to the constant threat of spanking. As far as natural temperament, up until 18 months, everyone thought I had the bad kid in the family. Not actual proof and all anecdote, but visiting them does make me so much more confident in my parenting choices.
As a parent, I also am a big proponent of the whole raise your daughters to be rude idea. I don't want a child who is always obedient. That kind of programming makes girls targets. Of course, finding the balance is hard, because as a child she needs to trust I have reasons behind my rules as well and sometimes she does just need to obey (like when running into the streets and I say NO). I think that spanking would undermine both sides (mom hits, can she be trusted?)
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quote:I hate to use this example, but when you are potty training a puppy, one (rather effective) method is to rub the dog's nose in the business if they go on the floor. The dog learns very quickly not to do that anymore.
No, that's a TERRIBLE method. No reputable dog trainer will tell you to do this. What's the puppy supposed to learn from that? Eliminating is bad?
The thing to do is WATCH the puppy until it starts to pee, then shout NO and flip it over on its back. It will stop peeing because puppies hate to pee on themselves. Then immediately take the puppy outside to a place where it can do its business. When it does so, praise it highly.
This is how you house train a Lab puppy in a week.
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quote:The thing to do is WATCH the puppy until it starts to pee, then shout NO and flip it over on its back. It will stop peeing because puppies hate to pee on themselves.
This works with children, too.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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What I've never understood is, how are you supposed to catch the dog while it's still peeing? I'm sure it works wonders if you can do it, but we've caught our dogs in the act maybe twice. Unless you can afford to stare at your dog all day for a week I don't understand how you do it.
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quote:The thing to do is WATCH the puppy until it starts to pee, then shout NO and flip it over on its back. It will stop peeing because puppies hate to pee on themselves.
This works with children, too.
Hmmm....I can see how this would be effective but I'm not sure how to catch my child in the act of peeing. I guess I could make him run around butt naked, but even then it would be hard to do unless I were hovering right on top of him all day.
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My neighbors had their daughter wear a dress with no diaper, which seemed to have a similar effect.
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quote:As a non-parent I don't think I'm necessarily qualified to make a statement here, but I would say that AFTER you've tried every other punishment you can think of, if a behavior is persisting and it's either a danger to your kid or someone else's, or if it is driving you so crazy that prolonged exposure to it is straining your ability to effectively parent, then spanking is pretty justified.
While I appreciate the response, this is a criteria, not an example. People have so far been fairly vague about when spanking is appropriate other than to say that in some cases it is the right choice. I'd like to know what a few of those cases are.
And you think this has thus far been the sort of thread that would encourage someone to feel safe sharing something like that?
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quote:I hate to use this example, but when you are potty training a puppy, one (rather effective) method is to rub the dog's nose in the business if they go on the floor. The dog learns very quickly not to do that anymore.
No, that's a TERRIBLE method. No reputable dog trainer will tell you to do this. What's the puppy supposed to learn from that? Eliminating is bad?
yeah, it doesn't work because the dog can't connect the punishment to the act itself. it's got to be an immediate response to when they're actually doing it.
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When I was little my Dad would yell at me until I felt worthless when I made mistakes that put me in trouble (I always tried to be well behaved). I remember wishing he would just hit me and get it over with, then leave me alone. He never did. I guess looking back on it, it was probably a good thing. I'm against spanking, but I really have no experience at all with it.
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:That is why adults do it. They don't want to see the consequences of their physical intimidation of a child...
I think you seriously undercut your message by sounding this hysterical about it. I mean, I don't spank my children, but you've got me rolling my eyes here at the remarkable hyperbole some of y'all are using.
Adults who spank do not choose to spank "because it doesn't leave a mark." They spank because a smack on the buttocks hurts a great deal less and is far less likely to do any lasting physical damage than, say, a punch to the head or stomach.
I think, too, there's a useful distinction to be made between a sustained campaign of physical intimidation and the occasional spank. That some people here aren't making that distinction, to be honest, strongly suggests to me that they aren't parents.
Indeed. I think the fact that it isn't hitting in the face or anywhere else makes it easier on the parents. What I was trying to say was that because the hitting is occurring in areas that are not as exposed as the face or belly, it makes it easier psychologically to justify the hitting. The quality of the hitting seems to be different. I don't think it is *actually* so different.
Just because I'm not a parent doesn't mean I'm not qualified to speak about this. I resent the implication that I am not. I am a human being, and I am a person who has experienced the kind of spanking (or hitting) that parents routinely justify as necessary.
I can tell you it wasn't a good thing for me. I can tell you I believe it has had a lasting and profound impact on my relationship with my parents, as well as my relationships with other people, especially physically. An impact that has haunted me through my adult life. And I was not regularly or even often spanked. It was enough to be lashed once across the stomach and chest with a piece of rubber tubing when my father was angry, I think, to change a lot about the way I was able to comfortably relate to other people, let alone him. The worst part is seeing my childhood and adolescence sprawl ahead of the person I was then, and wonder how I might have been had these things never happened to me. And as much as I don't consciously call them forward in my every day life, I know at least something about what they've done to me.
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Orincoro, spanking on the butt is definitely less likely to be harmful than punching or slapping other parts of the body. Lasting pain or debilitation from an injury is worse than temporary pain, no?
This might make it easier to justify, but that doesn't mean that "easier to justify" is the actual reason.
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Consider that the person inflicting that punishment on another person recognizes its potential for harming them, and tempers that by choosing a less dangerous area. I think the fact that we instinctively understand hitting on the face and stomach as "abuse" ought to tell us something important about striking in other places as well. Namely that we are dealing with a child, somebody who depends on us quite literally for their physical security.
That said, I really, really shouldn't go on. I'm not liking the conversation.
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quote:The quality of the hitting seems to be different. I don't think it is *actually* so different.
Uh, the quality of the hitting is actually very much different.
Quality in the psychological sense, is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to argue that the basis of the hitting- the act of hitting, is not changed significantly by where the person is hit. The part about *being* hit, being the most important factor for the child.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Consider that the person inflicting that punishment on another person recognizes its potential for harming them, and tempers that by choosing a less dangerous area. I think the fact that we instinctively understand hitting on the face and stomach as "abuse" ought to tell us something important about striking in other places as well. Namely that we are dealing with a child, somebody who depends on us quite literally for their physical security.
That said, I really, really shouldn't go on. I'm not liking the conversation.
Yeah, I know how this goes. I hate being told that because I'm not a parent yet, that I wouldn't understand but I was a kid and I know what it's like to have someone towering over you hitting you and not being able to do much about it. I wouldn't want a kid of mine to feel like that and to have that fear and my mother was afraid that I hated her. I did feel a bit of frustration towards her getting older, but mostly it was fear. There's just too many risks to even "gentle" spanking, I think. You don't know how it will affect the child. If there are better, less harsh ways, I'd rather use those. Not because I'm being unrealistic or something, but I've got to not just think about me and what's best for me, I've got to think about that child, how that child feels. I'd want to find a way to discipline that child so they can still trust me. And I will discipline. i don't want to be the sort of parent with a child running around destroying a supermarket, but I don't want my child living in fear and worse of all, thinking it's OK to do this when they are a parent.
I kind of need specifics. What instances are OK to use the tool of spanking?
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:The quality of the hitting seems to be different. I don't think it is *actually* so different.
Uh, the quality of the hitting is actually very much different.
Quality in the psychological sense, is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to argue that the basis of the hitting- the act of hitting, is not changed significantly by where the person is hit. The part about *being* hit, being the most important factor for the child.
I see what you mean, Orincoro.
I still disagree (and it's OK with me if you don't want to respond to this - I'm not challenging you to respond). Spanking isn't as likely to invoke the kind of adrenaline, terror and post traumatic effects that you'd see with more physically impactful abuse.
quote:It was enough to be lashed once across the stomach and chest with a piece of rubber tubing when my father was angry, I think, to change a lot about the way I was able to comfortably relate to other people...
I believe you and I think you're right that just one experience like this can be harmful and can pretty much not be justified, period. But that is not what I would call "spanking." That's physical abuse.
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First of all, I feel like I have to respond because essentially Raymond has been defending my parenting.
A couple of points:
Of the people that I know personally who I have watched raising their children, there are three that I know of that said that under no circumstances would they ever strike a child. I watched two of them slap their children across the face, in anger, because they were beyond frustration and they lost control. In both cases, the looks on the childrens' faces were ones of victory. They had succeeded in pushing their parents' buttons. And I know they hit their kids at other times as well, I just happened to be there for those events. So just 'cause you say it don't make it so.
The third told me that he never spanked his first daughter, and had criticized other parents who couldn't keep their children in control... until his second daughter came along, and all bets were off. He doesn't criticize people's parenting anymore. Some kids are easy, and others are difficult. You can't always blame the parent, and some kids just keep testing the limits.
This argument seems very similar to me as the police argument over choke-holds. There was a time when the news seemed full of people who died in police custody because an illegal choke hold was administered. Turns out that because the hold was illegal, they didn't train the officers to administer it correctly, the result being that in an extreme situation, the officer found themselves wrestling with someone and without being able to think of an alternative, they administered a choke-hold that they hadn't been trained to control, maybe even without realizing they were doing it, and the person died. I'm pretty sure that nowadays most police officers are trained in the choke hold, even though it is still illegal to use.
So for people who say they will never spank their children: OK, maybe. But you should still have a plan in mind for that moment when you reach your limit and your hand starts moving.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: It reminds me of people who insist that violent movies and video games make people violent, ignoring all data to the contrary.
Well, they did find out that violent video games do make people more aggressive and have higher incidences of anger management issues ..
The study I remember reading showed a correlation between playing violent video games and being aggressive, but not a causation. If you have a study that shows that playing a video game makes someone more violent, I'd like to see it, and I'd wager that it's no more than any active activity increases a person's aggression.
Christine: Your kids saw another kid being spanked, and they were more aggressive. How can you know that it wasn't a result of having other kids over, and being more rambunctious as a result of the new activity, or that you only perceived them to be hitting more, because you were looking for it?
Again, it's obvious that you have a strong personal bias against spanking, and I don't think it permits you to be very objective.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I am 71, and spanking was not questioned when I was a child. and it seems to me I was spanked a lot.I was spanked for my misdeeds and for letting my my sisters get into trouble. Not that they needed any help. When I was 7 or 8, remembered that I was crying and saying I wont do that again and thinking I wont get caught doing that again. So I guess spanking made me a deceltiful child.
Posts: 28 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Christine: Your kids saw another kid being spanked, and they were more aggressive. How can you know that it wasn't a result of having other kids over, and being more rambunctious as a result of the new activity, or that you only perceived them to be hitting more, because you were looking for it?
I can't be 100% sure that the modeling was the problem...I think I said that. But my son goes to pre-school 4 days a week so it's not like he's never around rambunctious kids. The little girls was actually very mild-tempered (I'm not even clear why she was being punished when she was spanked). And I definitely was NOT looking for him to hit more often. It surprised the heck out of me. It was only a week later, trying to figure out why I had to correct him for the nth time, that I thought about the spanking and that it had all started around then. Hitting is not permitted in my house under any circumstances and any incidence gets an immediate consequence (loss of poker chip, time out, loss of trains for a day...in that order). I hadn't had to take away my son's trains in months but I had to do it twice over the next couple of weeks. It's not like I don't pay attention.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: It reminds me of people who insist that violent movies and video games make people violent, ignoring all data to the contrary.
Well, they did find out that violent video games do make people more aggressive and have higher incidences of anger management issues ..
The study I remember reading showed a correlation between playing violent video games and being aggressive, but not a causation. If you have a study that shows that playing a video game makes someone more violent, I'd like to see it, and I'd wager that it's no more than any active activity increases a person's aggression.
No, it's not like that. You could compare it against watching TV an equal number of hours a day.
The APA has a pretty straightforward declaration on the matter, if only I could find it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Just because I'm not a parent doesn't mean I'm not qualified to speak about this.
Certainly. But I'm likely to give greater weight to parents who weigh in on the issue because they've theoretically seen both sides of the issue while you've seen only one.
Depending on what the parent says, I mean.
You've seem to have been traumatized by your childhood experiences, Orincoro. While I agree somewhat with your point, the tone in which you present it, and the absolutist fury which you attack this subject makes it difficult to take your point of view seriously.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:I was a kid and I know what it's like to have someone towering over you hitting you and not being able to do much about it.
My mother was an alcoholic who beat me -- not spanked, mind you; beat me -- nearly every day for four years, until I broke her wrist in three places in order to remove a baseball bat from her grip. To this day, our relationship is fairly strained.
So I do understand the extremes waiting in the wings of this conversation. But, that said, this line from Orincoro --
quote:Consider that the person inflicting that punishment on another person recognizes its potential for harming them, and tempers that by choosing a less dangerous area.
-- to me, see, this is parenting. Parenting is all about recognizing that every single thing you do to your child for his or her own good could also potentially harm them, so you make choices to minimize that harm. Saying this is evil is, in a nutshell, saying that parenting itself is a bad idea.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I was a kid and I know what it's like to have someone towering over you hitting you and not being able to do much about it.
My mother was an alcoholic who beat me -- not spanked, mind you; beat me -- nearly every day for four years, until I broke her wrist in three places in order to remove a baseball bat from her grip. To this day, our relationship is fairly strained.
So I do understand the extremes waiting in the wings of this conversation. But, that said, this line from Orincoro --
quote:Consider that the person inflicting that punishment on another person recognizes its potential for harming them, and tempers that by choosing a less dangerous area.
-- to me, see, this is parenting. Parenting is all about recognizing that every single thing you do to your child for his or her own good could also potentially harm them, so you make choices to minimize that harm. Saying this is evil is, in a nutshell, saying that parenting itself is a bad idea.
I can't really totally agree when it comes to hitting. Because I can't feel like even a slap on the butt is really for someone's own good when there's other ways. Ways that might even be more affective in terms of the child's age and personality. I'll just have to work harder NOT to have that particular tool in my tool box no matter what, because it's just too easy to cross that line.
Plus I read Dobson's book for example and thought, is it really necessary to spank for this? Especially that whole child challenging the parent's authority thing. What does that mean? It's a tiny child. The parent always has the authority by virtue of being the parent and can lead by example without inflicting pain. Because I just don't think it's right. Of course to most I sound like an innocent idealist. So I am. But I don't understand how being compassionate and gentle towards kids by not wanting to spank them suddenly became... a bad thing. Like you want to let kids do whatever they want to do without saying anything about it.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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