As a kid, I was always terrified of spankings, but more of the idea than the actuality. My parents spanked us fairly often but never hard enough to leave marks - it was more the humiliation of it all that affected me most.
I do think spanking worked for us, in that we were well-behaved children and grew up to be fairly decent human beings. However I don’t think it’s strictly necessary unless as a last resort, and only for a few years (like between three and eight, maybe). In my experience (as a teacher anyway) most kids over that age can be punished effectively in other ways.
Uh, no. My post is what’s known as a “qualifier” . Most means the majority, which could mean everywhere. I obviously can’t know the laws in every state. Yet your post of:
suggests there actually is a place that outlaws spanking. This outrageous stand demands a cite. Now cite or fade away in honor.
In other words, PRR, you can’t provide a cite bcause you don’t have one. Pkbites used a choice of words that allow you some (imaginary) weasel room and you’re trying to exploit that.
I haven’t acknowledged that spanking is illegal anywhere in the US. I want to see a cite for that claim on your part.
That article says that it’s legal in all US states, but banned in several countries. So yeah, he’s right, if you’re talking worldwide and not just the US.
Why should I be be arsed to look up stuff that **Pkbites **concedes is so?
Yeah, those weasel words–you know, the crap you post here–come in awfully handy sometimes. You folks shoot yourselves in the feet, right and left, and then you want me to patch you up at my own expense? Dream on.
His statements are ambiguous. He didn’t indicate whether he meant in the US or worldwide. Since it is apparently illegal in some places outside the US, it should have been simple for him to provide a cite for at least one of those places. He has, to date, failed to do that. He made the claim, he provides the cite. That’s the way these things work. His weaseling based on how pkbites phrased a response and the ambiguity of his own posts don’t relieve him of the responsibility to back up his own claims.
Please stop repeating yourself. We heard you the first few times. I stand by my statement: Pkbites’s post is my cite. If he wants to retract or rephrase his
claim that spanking is legal in most places, I’ll retract my statement that it is illegal in some.
Nice try, prr. Brillant debate strategy, in fact. But it won’t work this time. You clearly suggested first that spanking was illegal, before **pkbites **mentioned it. In fact, his (her?) post was a response to your post about what would happen to you in court if you hit a kid:
To which **pkbites **very realistically and sensibly replied, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you might actually know what you’re talking about in some obscure US backwater she’s never heard of, or that you might be talking about a legal system other than the one she’s familiar with:
Obviously, warning us of the legal consequences of an act that’s not illegal for many of us, requires some correction. The fact that **pkbites **is aware enough to realize she doesn’t know every statute in every state means she’s being an honest and careful debater, not making any claims she can’t back up.
OK, pseudotriton ruber ruber and everyone fighting with him: knock it off!
This is supposed to be Great Debates not “argue uselessly about other posters’ styles of posting.”
It seems to me that everyone knows (as much as they want) about the legality of spanking in various jurisdictions. Squabbling over who made the more correct post or who was the first poster to submit an error does nothing to further the discussion in the OP.
Knock it off and move on to a separate point (or a new theread or the Pit or wherever).
I promise you if you go into your local police station and say “Officer, I have beaten my child up, and am concerned that I may have violated some law or other,” what I said would happen will happen. There’s a very good chance that the cop will tell you “G’wan get outta here, everybody beats their kids to a pulp every day, you ain’t done nuttin.’ In fact, I’m proud of ya.”
But maybe he’ll have you arrested on a charge of, I don’t know, “domestic violence” maybe? Maybe. Then you’ll go before a judge, who may throw the case out of court, on the same basis. “No harm here. Whaddaya, nuts? I beat my kids up just for practice. You done good.”
But maybe you’ll have to stand trial on the domestic violence rap. You’ll probably get off, because a jury of your 12 child-beatin’ peers would never ever convict you for beating your own flesh and blood, and once you explained that the kid lived, and any broken bones or missing organs that resulted have long since healed over, they’ll probably throw you a party.
But if this results in your doing serious time, I want you to buy me a beer as you go off to prison, okay?
Now, I’m painting a ludicrous picture here, I know, but this one is less ludicrous: try beating your kid in public sometime, the same way you do it behind closed doors. If it’s completely legal, there’s no reason to do it in private, right? You’re not ashamed that you raise your hand to your weak defenseless child, are you? Of course not. You’re proud of it. It means that you’re a responsible parent and a good American.
Now, if you commit this act in public, where all your neighbors can see, none of them will report you to the police, would they? Of course not. But say just one of these liberal bleeding heart Children’s Advocate creeps does report you for some stupid non-existent crime? You’ll beat it, because as I stated above, no cop or judge or jury would ever, ever, ever agree with them, correct? No one has ever gone to prison for beating a child in the history of this country. I think it’s protected by the Constitution, in fact: doesn’t Article Eleventy say “None of the above-named rights shall apply to any child up to the age of 21, and such minor persons may be beaten physically to within an inch of their lives if one or both parents is in a pissy mood.”
Once again, you’re equating a swat on the rump with “beating”. In your own mind you can equate apples with oranges, good with evil, or lead with gold. That doesn’t make it reality.
I’ve dealt with kids who were actually beaten. It involved multiple hits, punches, gouges, lashes with belts/cords/whips, and strikes with hard object, resulting in bleeding, bruising, and broken bones. Your values equate that brutality with one or two swats on the butt with an open hand. The law and the majority of our society doesn’t.
I have spanked my youngest children before, both boys, but not often, and only in cases of extreme disobedience or when they had put themselves in physical danger. They are 3 and 6 now, and we have already started moving away from doing that to removal of toys, privledges, using timeouts, etc. Once they reach a certain age it’s no longer useful, therefore unnacceptable.
I have a teenaged daughter as well, and there’s no way a teenager needs spankings. Taking away their most precious possessions/activities is SO much more effective.
Instilling the fear of harm (whether physical or just something really “bad” happening) to control other people’s bodily functions is what a lot of people object to about religion. Creating an entity that is “Big” and apparently loving that controls one’s actions can be some people’s description of God.
How is your technique psychologically different?
That’s a pretty good example of where spanking shouldn’t be allowed, given a lot of the other responses in this thread.
For example, some people noted that spanking shouldn’t be done in anger, but in that example, not only was it done in anger, it was also an emotionally loaded topic where it’s difficult to untangle the parent’s emotions from the child’s wrongdoing.
Did you really learn that it’s always wrong to lie, even to protect someone that you love? Is that always the right lesson? Did your mom spank you for saying that you didn’t take a cookie from the cookie jar when you did? That’s a far more egregious offense since you’re only protecting yourself and not anyone else.
WhyNot, I’m not meaning to pick on you here. Your responses are just the ones that caught my eye.