What I’m doing about the above is raising children not to believe that “might makes right”, and to do the right thing simply because it isthe right thing, not because they are afraid of punishment. Which is generally the way we want to raise children
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You’re supposed to raise your children to not believe “might makes right”.
No, its not easier to cross over into abuse; the chance to cross over is just the same. As I said, when you get home after a bad day and you’re extremely aggravated, and your child does something extremely exacerbating like plays ball in the house and breaks the TV…you are NOT likely to ground him/her for a year; when I said “who does that?” I meant just that; I’ve never heard of an angry parent using a ridiculous length of time to ground their children. You’ve lost your composure, you’re an inch from exploding, your kid busts the TV–you’re much more likely to go into a rage and beat the snot out of him/her. You don’t “cross over”; if you’re physically punishing your kid, and you go into abuse, that is YOUR fault, NOT your kid’s, so its your problem, and you need an anger management class.
If your kid starts getting defiant when you ground him/her, and its the end of a bad day where you’ve lost your composure, you’re an inch from exploding, your kid’s busted the TV…you’re more likely to slap him/her down as a reflex, rather than threaten to increase the duration of the grounding. The point is, its just as easy to cross over.
Spanking IS a punishment. Discipline is punishment. I’ve been saying spanking because spanking is a form of physical punishment, as opposed to other forms of punishment such as grounding, loss of priviledges, extra chores, etc. Physical punishments would encompass spanking, a slap across the face, physical restraint, a smack on either side of the hand with a ruler…etc. The other forms of physical punishment can be used, but I’m not saying spanking would be the best. Other forms of general punishment can be used, I’m certainly not saying physical punishment is the best.
True, but that depends on how long the grounding is. If you’re disabling certain priviledges like being able to go a concert, right before he’s about to go out, you can’t take that back unless you find out within the next five minutes. Generally, not being able to go to to something as significant to a kid as that is a lot more damaging than any physical punishment.
I think a lot of people are misinterpreting my view on this. A proper parent should teach their kids, if they misbehave, what they did wrong, why its wrong, what the punishment is if they do it. After they understand, any more misbehaviors of the like will be punished the first few times with lectures, discussions, etc. IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH A FIRM UNDERSTANDING. After that understanding, THEN comes physical punishment, if those lectures and discussions don’t work. I say physical punishment because I believe it to be effective. Grounding, loss of priviledges, extra chores also work, and are also effective. Depends on the situation, depends on the kid. I’d prefer a five minute beat down than a month grounded and unable to go out, watch TV, play video games, etc.
FidgeNugget writes: “You obviously haven’t read the thread at all. Throughout, I’ve referred to ‘some kids’ and ‘those kids’ and etc…”
You didn’t refer to ‘some kids’ here: “In my opinion, America’s kids are being corrupted. Being 14, I can observe a lot of this.
I don’t like kids (the younger ones) in the first place, always running around, yelling, screaming, crying, making noise, getting into trouble, doing things they shouldn’t and getting away with it (they don’t know any better), etc… but really, what the hell is wrong with them these days?”
In that one post, I count at least four times in which you make gross generalizations about a particular class of people, each time failing (despite your claim) to use a qualifying word such as “some” or “those.”
I’m also amused, Mr. Nugget, by your frequent use of the expression “these days.” Just how does someone who was born in 1989 know so much about the past?
Read the whole damn thread, don’t read just one post, read them all, because all of mine contain my opinions, and certainly don’t patronize me with “Mr. Nugget”. I was born in 1988, not 89; how do I know so much about the past? Its called history class, Mr. Earl of Sandwich.
When I refer to kids, you know what I mean. Everyone else knows what I mean. Its understood that I’m not talking about all kids because that would be stereotyping and generalizing, which would be a sign of bigotry, and I don’t like being thought of as a bigot.
What is your opinion on the matter? I don’t think you should criticize other people’s opinions (actually so far you’ve only been concentrating on me even though a few other posters have posted in agreement) without having one of your own to support and be subject to its own criticism.
Read the whole damn thread, don’t read just one post and start counting errors as if you had none of your own, read them all, because all of mine contain my opinions, and certainly don’t patronize me with your amusement of the use of the expression “these days” and calling me “Mr. Nugget”. I was born in 1988, not 89; how do I know so much about the past? Its called my culture, parents, and history class, Mr. Earl of Sandwich.
When I refer to kids, you know what I mean. Everyone else knows what I mean, I assume, otherwise I wouldn’t be argued with, I’d be disregarded as a moron. Its understood that I’m not talking about all kids because that would be stereotyping and generalizing, which would be a sign of bigotry, and I don’t like being thought of as a bigot.
Don’t get technical. I’m not always going to say “some kids” or “those kids”. If I’m going to literally mean all kids, I’ll say “all kids”. The second post in the thread, written by Silentgoldfish, posted a quote from Socrates: “Kids these days”. Was Socrates, one of history’s most reknowned philosophers, referring to all kids? Would the same logic that you’re applying to me, apply to him?
What is your opinion on the matter? I don’t think you should criticize other people’s opinions (actually so far you’ve only been concentrating on me even though a few other posters have posted in agreement; I find it amusing that you’ve begun all but one of your posts with “FudgeNugget writes:”, and the other being directed at me anyway) without having one of your own to support and be subject to its own criticism.
Please note: this is simply in response to the OP. If someone else already said it, my apologies.
I don’t think there’s any one right way to raise children. There are simply too many variables to say “Yup! This always work!” or “Nope! This’ll never work!”. We’d be lucky to talk in terms of “usually” and “seldom”. Children are people, and people are just on this side of crazy sometimes.
I was rarely spanked. When I was, I found it more pathetic than frightening. It was stupid and ineffective on both myself and my brother. No no no… they actually had a far better tactic. There was a chair in the living room within plain sight of everywhere on the first floor. We would be assigned to sit in it for 10 minutes without budging and with the TV turned off. Do you realize how long 10 minutes is to a six year old? Practically eternity. You couldn’t even try to sneak out, because you were smack dab in the center of plain sight, and just trying would land you even more time on ice.
My brother and I, we both learned how to play nice really fast. I’d like to think we grew up into sensible young adults. Now maybe this way wouldn’t work for another child chosen at random, but it did work for us.
To my mind, the key isn’t how rough you are with a child, but rather how firm you are. You make rules, you keep them clear, and you enforce them evenly no matter what. Wavering too often is what gives them the idea your authority can be flouted, not the lack of physical pain in punishing.
As for the decline of this generation’s morals… I’ve yet to see it. Yeah kids talk the talk and walk the walk, but when push comes to shove I’ve seen just as many nice, giving people among my peers as anywhere else. And what happens when push does come to shove is all that matters.
Authority does not always stem purely from force or strength, and who has the ability to apply them. Does the government control the army? Yes, technically. How does it do so? Surely if it wished to, the Armed Forces could ignore the legislature and the President without many direct consequences to speak of. It does not, because of two factors
No desparate motivation to prompt such action
and more importantly
Most of the time, they would never even consider doing so. We are social creatures, and thus conditioned by the society around us. Part of what society teaches us (without a rod, whip, or paddle) is respect for authority.
For a child, there is no greater embodiment of authority than their parents. Most of us at that age would never even consider truly disobeying the edicts laid down. We may steal the cookie, but we never question the punishment when caught. Only as we grow into teenage years, and beyond even the effectiveness of limited pain as a threat, do we start pushing such boundaries.
I think that when I first wrote the OP to this thread, I was thinking about parents that did absolutely nothing to their kids when they misbehaved. Somehow it turned into an argument between spanking vs. grounding, now its about physical punishment vs. others.
Personally, I’d prefer any punishment be imposed than no punishment at all. I think that’s the reason for my observation of the decline of morals.
Fair enough. I probably took you too literally. But I do think you were careless. Not bigoted, just careless. And if it’s any consolation, I regretted calling you Mr. Nugget as soon as I hit “Submit.”
So, what’s my opinion? I think you can make better arguments than the one’s we’ve seen so far.
I was guilty of taking you too literally before, but did you mean what you said last week when you claimed people walk down the halls in your school with cigarettes in their mouths? When my dad went to (Catholic) high school in the mid to late sixties, smoking was allowed, and the seniors even had their own smoking lounge. Nowadays, that would be practically unheard of.
Now, ridding society of cigarettes is a laudable goal: Surgeons General have been warning people about cigarettes since before you and I were born. The fact that senior smoking lounges have gone the way of televised cigarette ads (illegal in this country since 1971) shows us more about changes in society’s attitudes toward smoking than it does about attitudes toward the treatment of youth.
Still, youth often end up bearing more than their fair share of the blame for societey’s ills: cigarette manufacterers can pat themselves on the back for encouraging merchants to display “We Card” signs even as they continue to knowingly manufacture a product that can kill you. A young man on this very board started a thread some time ago about how his high school was requiring everyone attending the prom to take a breathalyzer test before entering. I’m quite frankly embarassed to live in a society that does things like that; I’m as opposed to drunk driving as everyone else, but the idea of requiring everyone to submit to such a test should offend everyone in a democratic society (if only the U.S. Congress required a breathalyzer test before each vote…).
You’re probably right that today’s youth (and, being as I’m 24, that pretty much includes me) feel a greater sense of entitlement than say, the generation that grew up during the Depression. But I’d say that’s true for society at large; we’re simply a more affluent society now than we’ve ever been, so it would stand to reason. To single out teenagers is simply not fair.
There was a good article in Rolling Stone this week by Elizabeth Wurtzel, about pills as cultural icons, as metaphors. She talkis about how, after the advent of Prozac, people suddenly began to realize how depressed they were. After the the first use of Ritalin (which has actually been around for quite a while) for ADD, people suddenly began to see their kids as having an illness. So in both cases, a solution is found, and then a problem emerges.
So you’re right about ADD being over-diagnosed. But a lot of the reason has to be, not lazy parenting, but a desire to be part of something, part of a trend if nothing else. The confessional was replaced by the couch, and now the couch has been replaced by drugs. Some people just have to be part of it, and that may mean seeing behavior that would earned a swat thirty years ago as symptomatic of ADD (or depression or bipolar disorder). I think you’ve been too quick to judge parents who aren’t strict enough as lazy or incompetent.
I suppose I didn’t state things as explicitly as I should’ve. Sorry for the confusion.
To be honest I’ve seen four or five people in my school with cigarettes in plain sight. One time was when I was waiting inside at the entrance of my school (its a large room with a stairway leading up to the second floor, with two entrances on either side of that stairway leading to the first floor), a kid walked out from the first floor with a cigarette in his mouth, and left the building. Another time, a friend told me that she saw someone walking around in the halls with a cigarette. My friend herself had her cigarettes exposed during class while the teacher wasn’t paying attention, in the hallway when a number of people blocked some view, and smoked outside the school right on the street every day in the morning (the security guards knew about her and she always smelled heavily of tobacco when she got back, regardless of how much perfume she used to mask it). Too many times to count, I’ve seen a guy and another girl walking along the sidewalk outside the front entrance to my school about several feet to the other side of the street to sit on some large rocks and smoke, in plain view of the nearby security guards and teachers coming in and out, who just don’t seem to care.
I don’t understand what you mean about cigarette ads showing our attitudes toward treatment of youth.
I believe its better to be safe than sorry, so it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m subject to a breathalyzer test or not at my prom. I’m against drunk driving too, which is why I’d rather stay sober, have fun at the prom and drive safely, rather than drink, have a great time at the prom, and crash on the way home.
Seeing as how the argument in the thread has turned into one about coporal punishment vs. other means of punishment imposed by parents, I believed that would imply parents still have control over their children, so they would be 18 and under, which is why I concentrated on children. In my OP I singled out teenagers simply because teenagers, adolescents, and younger are the only thing I’ve seen so far. I can’t make an effective argument by encompassing others without having any evidence to support it.
True, pills have become widely popular. Regardless of their effectiveness, I believe the placebo effect has a lot to do with it; modern medicine has produced pills that are seen as wonder drugs, and when you take them, part of the success is that you believe the drug worked and your problem is solved.
As for ADD, I also believe there is a trend. http://www.lobotomy.info/icepick.html is a site about the history of lobotomy; in the mid-1900’s, lobotomy was a form of treatment used on mental patients, people with unmanageable personalities, and even problem children, before it went into decline; I believe pills prescribed work as a trend in the same way for anyone who wants a cure for the slightest thing, although certainly not as harmful as a lobotomy.
I watched an episode of the Dilbert TV series a while back. Dilbert’s pet dog had invented a disease called CCS (Chronic Cubicle Sydrome), with one of its main symptoms including depression; the solution was a tonic that was actually an alcoholic beverage. At the end of the episode, Dilbert declared that anybody who works long hours in a box with a dead end job, a boss who doesn’t listen to you, too much work, too much coffee, etc…depression would be normal. Anyone who wasn’t depressed would’ve been insane.
I believe depression works somewhat the same way when diagnosed as a disorder, and I’m not necessarily talking about the spoiled kids who claim to be depressed and suicidal because their parents won’t get them a BMW for their 16th birthday or something like that. When kids are subject to a crappy life involving a broken family, child abuse, illegal activity, etc…depression is a normality, not a disease; what are drugs going to do?
As for parents…there are many factors that go into this. Some aren’t strict enough, some aren’t strict at all, some are lazy, some are incompetent, some are great, some care, some don’t, or a combination of any of those traits. Those traits affect the kid, and generally I see laziness, incompetentence, and/or lack of strictness as characteristics in parents who don’t raise very good children. But I don’t know every parent in the US, not even many of the parents in my neighborhood or school, so I can’t specify who has what problems or if they have problems or all, or categorize.
I hate to nitpick, but at the end of the first page, it was stated that some elementary kids who will be entering the sixth grade soon are no longer virgins. These are 10-11 year old kids. This is mind-boggling and frankly, very sad. Why would they feel the pressure or desire to have sex/oral sex? I didn’t even know what a blowjob WAS until seventh grade, and that was only because a very experienced young lady came to our school that year.
Last year while I was in the 8th grade, there were plenty of 6th and 7th graders talking about stuff they shouldn’t have, and either a 6th or 7th grader brought porn into the locker room during my phys ed period. This year, my friend told me that most of the 6th graders coming in are no longer virgins, and that the boys swap porn on the bus.