I don’t know. I have used physical discipline with animals but I was taught that to strike an animal in anger shows a lack of character. I have literally seen red at times due to my old cat… He would wake me up crying, every 3-4 hours, for about the 4 months prior to the bar exam. I had not had an uninterrupted night’s sleep in all that time - not one day.
Hell yes I wanted to give that cat a swift kick and vent my stress, my frustrations, and my exhaustion on him. But I didn’t. I went away and calmed down, because it isn’t appropriate and it doesn’t help the behavior, and it definitely doesn’t make you feel better. I am not a parent but I have a hard time believing children should be given less consideration than I’d give a dog.
I think what Dinsdale is saying is that nobody’s perfect. Fer instance, if you did happen to shove your cat once in a sleep-deprived state, I wouldn’t castigate you for one mistake. If you did it every day it would be different.
I doubt they believe this. Your violence toward them is minimal, but your attitude is exactly like my parents’. You hit the people you claim to love most in the world. Yet my guess is that you don’t hit your wife or anyone else. From the perspective of a kid, the action of hitting speaks louder than the verbal claims of love. Even as a small child, I felt that my parents were lying when they said they loved me, because they treated me worse than any other person on earth.
I agree. One instance does not mean you are a complete failure as a persoon. But it isn’t “ok.” It’s a mistake and one you should make an effort to learn from.
I suppose my position, ultimately, would be that abuse sucks. It sucks so hardcore, and can screw a child up so badly, that parents as a general rule should do whatever the hell they can to be as un-violent as possible in the presence of their children. It’s true that different personalities perceive things in different ways, but why even risk traumatizing your child? An unexpected blow from time to time might not be a big deal to you, but it could be an enormous deal to your child.
I have known a lot of people who were subjected to physical beatings as children; my Mom married a guy once who used to routinely beat his son with a belt and physical abuse is pretty common in my family. In my experience, children who grow up in these households are at risk for repeating the tradition. Oftentimes they excuse and minimize their parents’ behavior, insist as an adult that every wayward child just needs a good ass-whuppin’ like they got, and treat their own children like property. They fail to see how their upbringing molded them into people who become aggressive at the slightest provocation and treat the powerless around them like shit. They say nothing is wrong with how they were raised, but their behavior says otherwise.
I am lucky I had a caring adult whose opinion I respected willing to say to me, ‘‘This is not how responsible people deal with anger.’’ It helped me to break the cycle of violence in my own family.
I made no accusations whatsoever. I stated an opinion based on my experience.
It is simply incredible to me that people who claim to love their children more than anything will at the same time see their children as the only people in the world that they can and even should hit. No one would expect someone to love a spouse that hit them. Why do we assume that children will still love parents who hit them? It’s nonsensical, from my point of view.
It doesn’t surprise me that you won’t even try to confront this illogic.
Heck, no argument here. I suspect that if any of us were to claim we had no character defects, that that claim itself would reflect some kind of a character defect!
As frustrating as my pets have been, my experience has been that they are not capable of being as frustrating as kids, whom you would hope have some greater sense and rartional ability than most dogs or cats. Add in sickness or life stress as you describe, and when your kid acts up… Even if you avoid doing or saying something you will later regret, I’d be surprised if there were many parents who did not at least get some glimpse of understanding how parents in extremely stressful situations - poor, health issues, lack of support, unemployed, emtional imairments, etc. - could end up abusing their kids.
It’s not illogical. I’m an authority figure responsible for their proper upbringing. If, when they are small, out of control, not listening, and are unable to respond to reason, I see no problems using a measured and reasonable amount of corporal punishment to make them aware that they don’t run the show, and that ultimately I am the one who calls the shots.
They are 11 and 12 now and I can’t remember the last time I had to resort to any of that, except for once last week when my son purposely, and deliberately screamed and then slammed the door to his bedroom so hard that it shook the house. He got a cuff to the head and a reminder that his behaviour was selfish and inappropriate.
I’m not judging you, but you seriously think the best response to his violent behavior is violent behavior in return? It seems like that wouldn’t teach him that acting out aggressively is wrong… it would teach him that it’s only okay to act out aggressively when you want to control the behavior of people who have less power than you do. Why is his behavior inappropriate and yours okay?
It’s easy to be all Dr. Phil when you’re not a parent, isn’t it?
ETA: Sorry. That’s sounds way more snarky than I’d like, and I apologize. Real time parenting isn’t as easy as message board parenting. Your words make perfect sense, but life is more complicated than posting here.
And I find hitting your child when he didn’t hurt anyone (or even your property) to be selfish and inappropriate. You don’t want to control your anger, and you don’t want to find non-abusive ways of disciplining your son.
I’m not a parent, but that isn’t the point. I’m trying to explain things from a child’s point of view. And I’m saying that you shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t believe you when you say you love them. I got hit for slamming a door as a child. The message I took away was that Mom cared more about the possibility of a ding in a door than she did about my feelings or physical well-being. It was proof positive that she did not love me, in my mind.
But of course to your mind, it is only the parents’ feelings and reasons that matter. Because “you’re the boss!” Never mind that the happiest and most well-behaved children I know are disciplined without physical violence.
It is pointless to debate this because it is clear that neither of us will be swayed by the other.
People who claim to love their children more than anything often believe that, in the child’s best interests (and not simply those of the parent), the parent has a positive duty to discipline the child.
For myself, I do not believe that physical punishment is a necessary or proper aspect of discipline. My only child is now four and a half, and the "time-out’ technique seems to work well with him - so far.
However, my experience as a parent has all taught me that judging other peoples’ methods of parenting is unwise - assuming of course that the other people are people of goodwill.
Thus, to my mind, other parents using physical punishment as a method of discipline, where those parents are genuinely and with goodwill attempting to discipline the child and not merely abusing the child or lashing out in anger, get a pass from me (naturally assuming that the physical discipline is proportional!).
I say this even though I myself do not use such methods and do not think they are the best - for me or my kid.
I totally agree. I have actually been told I am too strict of a disciplinarian toward the children of my cousins and friends. But discipline doesn’t necessarily require hitting.
My parents never spanked me. If I threw a tantrum, they poured a glass of water on my head. There’s not a more efficient, non-violent tactic to calm a child down.
There certainly are two sides to the issue. All I know is that kids of my generation respected authority figures and wouldn’t dare talk back to teachers or parents because they knew the potential repercussions of their actions.
Yes, of course discipline doesn’t necessarily require hitting. I myself don’t use hitting as discipline, as I’m reasonably sure I pointed out.
My point is about judgment of other folk’s methods. Reasonable people can disagree about the effectiveness of disciplinary methods; moreover, not all children are the same. Mine responds well to ‘time outs’. Not all do. Thus, while I do not use physical punishment, I will not reflexively condemn those who do (with all of the assumptions & caveats as above).
