My first niece came home one day from grade school, shaken and upset that a teacher had laid forceful hands on a boy, who was disrupting the class, refused to listen to instructions and had to be physically sat down in his seat and told to stay there. Apparently the teacher was not too gentle about it.
I cheered the teacher when I heard the story and was met with reproachful looks from my niece and her parents who were all concerned about the teacher laying hands on the kid and I sneered at them. The no spanking era has produced such a mess in disciplining kids and such screwed up laws that 60% of all poled parents have gone back to spankings. Physical discipline properly administered has been shown to control and teach kids to better blend into society than any time outs, encounter lectures or calm, collected discussions ever have, (NOTE PLEASE: These methods when used with physical discipline create an excellent learning experience for kids. They just pretty well flop when used alone.)
According to my nieces parents, the teachers of the school have no right to lay hands on any unruly kid for any reason. I sneered at them again. I told them to grow up and to stop bitching about the poor quality of education if they were going to tie the hands of the people they entrust for 6 or 7 hours a day to try to teach their little animals the tools they would need for living in society.
Rysdad
Funny. My brother is a black belt, plus a weight lifter and has never found need to deck anyone. In my day, had you decked a teacher who was justifiably disciplining you, your folks would be called, you would be expelled, jailed and sued and not in that order. Chances are, the cops would haul your ass out kicking and screaming and your folks would see you at the jail. We had thugs in school the size of Mack trucks who figured they could take on the coaches and they wound up in jail after an attempt. They initially tried to take on this one coach, who was not built like a plow, and then found out to their dismay that he had been a SEAL in the marines.
He usually managed not to break bones and no parental suite brought against him was ever successful and the school backed him up 100%. It seemed that those who had to challenge him were usually from the football, basketball or wrestling teams in school though one guy was a rawboned thug from auto mechanics class. You know, slicked back hair, muscles all over the place, 19 years old with 17 year old classmates, zippo lighter filled with gasoline, known to sport a switchblade, tight jeans, T-shirt, biker boots, smoked unfiltered Camels, loved to fight and drove a hot Chevy to school that was 50% body putty and 50% stolen parts. He did not last long in his encounter.
My Pop, BTW, was an ex-boxer. He could have hurt us kids terribly had he wanted to, but he pulled his punches and spanked us only when he had to. Once my older brother decided to ‘take on the old man,’ being cocky and Dad accidentally tapped him too hard and knocked him cold. Mom was pissed over that, but my older brother was a whole lot less cocky afterwards and never tried to ‘take on the old man’ again. My folks never left bruises on us, though we were spanked, slapped and paddled. My Dad had one main philosophy; he would listen to us explain things and spank us as a last resort, but we were never to raise a hand against our mother under any circumstances. If we did, then he would stop being nice and handle it swiftly. None of us ever did get to see that side of him because none of us ever raised a hand against our mother.
There were 4 kids in my family. Three boys and a girl and you know that us boys just had to get into trouble and when talking did not stop us, we got whipped and that taught us lessons.
I’ve been in grocery stores watching mothers with several noisy, rotten, squabbling, undisciplined kids wreaking havoc as they moved down the aisles. My urge was to take a bat to the kids to put them in line. My Mom had a philosophy about that. She would not whip us in public, but if we acted up in the stores and did not listen to her, when we got home we got it good. Hand to ass! Then when Daddy came home, he got told and while we did not get another whipping from him, he would let us know that he was pissed and that we had better not do it again.
We only had to learn that lesson once.
I’ve come across mothers talking to their kids to stop doing things and using the approved psychological approach and watched while the kids ignored them. They talk to them like they were little adults, threaten time outs and everything else and the kids just laugh and go on being pain in the asses. A whack on the butt would put a real quick stop to that. I cheer parents who do that, now that they are no longer afraid of someone calling the cops on them for disciplining their kids in public.
You know, that happened a few times. Some Mom, fed up with her annoying brat, swatted his ass and some fool called the cops, reported her for child abuse and she got arrested! Then CPS got involved along with CFS! They screwed everything up and the kid learned real quick that he could do as he wanted without getting smacked and he could get Mom and Dad in trouble by lying and saying they had hit him.
I could tell you some stories … but I will not.
My kid coming home with bruises?
That I might have a problem with, but if he gets spanked at school and deserved it, then he gets into hot water at home and the school has my permission to spank my kid if he needs it. Hell, I survived it. I was not bruised and bloody afterwards.
I just keep thinking of the warped view of the world my niece now has because she figures that no adult in school may lay hands on her no matter what she does. Her parents also believe in spankings, and talkings, but again seem to feel that no teacher should ever lay hands on their little darling.
I told them to home school her then and let the schools do their jobs or better, become teachers and see what fun it was to teach 30 students all day long, every day who have been disciplined differently and taught different levels of adult respect.
BTW – Thanks for the information on the amount of schools accepting physical discipline. My info was dated.
It only took me getting one paddling in school and few whuppin’s at home to teach me one of life’s most valuable lessons: There are consequences for our actions. Parents who do not properly discipline their children and teach them this valuable lesson from the start when they are young–You can’t wait to start disciplining kids when they’re teenagers. That’s too late–do their children and society and disservice. Children, I don’t care how cute they are, will push you as far as you let them. Don’t let them! A parent’s philosophy should be something along the immortal lines of Bill Cosby on “The Cosby Show.” In a scene where he’s scolding his son, Theo, he says: “I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out.” I’m not a parent, but I believe that if children do something to merit an ass-whuppin’, then parents ought to oblige them accordingly. And if I ever have any children, you better believe that I’m going to teach them that they are accountable for their actions.