The children of my friends and cousins don’t do this either, and they have never been physically disciplined.
Malthus, my post responding to you was obviously not really directed at you. 
Not sure what a “cuff to the head” means, but if you mean a smack to the back of the head like Gibbs does on NCIS to his agents, I don’t think that’s so bad. If you punched him, well that is bad. At our house, the punishment for slamming the bedroom door is loss of the bedroom door for a week. It worked really well and we only had to do it once so far.
Agreed.
Leaffan, I’m not trying to pile on here, but the main thing you accomplish by hitting a child like that is creating a desire in him to hit you back. Violence begets violence.
ETA: I really can’t judge since I don’t know how hard you hit him.
I was spanked. My brothers got a belt or a hairbrush on the bare skin and were occasionally hit in the arm or on the head by our father.
I spanked when I was a teenage babysitter but I haven’t done it as an adult.
It’s possible to never have laid a hand on your child but to have emotionally scarred them too. Discipline can be meted out in many ways. Discipline should be measured, appropriate, consistent and reasonable. Including spankings – for the right reasons – up to a certain age is not in any way damaging to a child. Lashing out in anger, or continuing to consistently use physical punishment after the age of, say 6, would be cruel. The occasional smack when the kid is acting like a jerk is acceptable. And yes, I completely see the irony in stating that. Parenting is balancing act and most times you don’t have 20 minutes to sit back, rub your chin and philosophize on the most appropriate thing to do given the circumstances. Things happen in real time and people react.
God, I’m digging myself a bigger hole here. Come over for supper. The kids are good kids, and I’m a good Dad. I promise!
No. An open-handed cuff to the back of the head. About the same force as say, serving an underhand volleyball lob. For Christ’s sake, everyone is piling on like I’m going home and pummeling the kids. Get a grip people.
My response to the OP was “occasionally”.
Occasionally my father would hit me, but I think it was more a fear response that manifested itself in anger. It was a smack or a shove or something like that and never more than one. Often he appeared as surprised by it as I was. When he was finally Dx’d with PAS/GAD, it stopped. Never happened again.
My mom did spank us regularly and most of the time it was controlled and measured, X number of strikes for X offense. Certainly child abuse by today’s standards, but not so much back in the 70’s. For me, though, in addition to traditional spankings should would occasionally slap me or pull my hair.
With my own son, I spanked him once as a punishment and it was so awful I think I cried more than he did. It made me sick. I did give him a light swat on his diapered bottom when he was little to get his attention when nothing else would work, I flicked his mouth when he bit another child. Lately (at almost 12 yo) I have Gibbs-smacked him on the back of the head when he’s been mouthy or disrespectful.
Not piling on, just didn’t know what you meant. Sounds like what we call a “Gibbs-smack” in our house.
Of course. The most scarring things my parents did to me were not related to physical violence, but psychological torture.
I totally disagree, as you know. I think any kind of hitting, in the end, does more to confuse a child than it does to elucidate the parent’s point.
I hope that’s true. It’s hard to judge on a message board, and I’m touchy on this subject, but some of your posts (in this and other threads) have sounded to me like you were a little too proud of your ability/willingness to hit your kids. Like it was a power trip for you. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
The bottom line for me is, in my experience, it is more effective to discipline with the brain than with the hand. All of my friends were both physically disciplined as well as disciplined with non-physical reward/punishment. We all responded much better to the non-physical stuff. And it didn’t give us a confusing message about hitting, or how our parents felt about us.
If I’m strident, it’s because I sincerely hope that no other children get screwed up the way my parents screwed me up.
Proud? Hell no. It’s just another tool in the parental arsenal and can be used effectively along with all the other tools. If you’re consistently hitting your kids, especially after a certain age, that’s just wrong. The question was asked, and I responded that yes I was spanked/hit and yes I used the same techniques as a parent. I even went so far as to say that I haven’t had to hit in a long time, apart from one cuff to the head last week.
Circumstance: I was up in the middle of the night violently ill with what was either a Norwalk virus or salmonella poisoning. I had the dry heaves for 20 minutes and couldn’t drag myself away from the toilet bowl. My son, being awoken by his violently ill father, decided that getting out of bed, screaming “ARGHHHHHH!!!” and slamming his door would be an appropriate response to the suffering that I was obviously going through. This caused the dog to start barking and woke up the other two people in the house. After I got over the dry heaves I walked calmly into his bedroom and smacked him on the back of the head and told him his behaviour was selfish and inappropriate. He didn’t even respond. That’s how much it hurt.
Next time I’m staying out of these threads.
Yeah, me too.
FTR, I don’t think you’re a bad parent, and your response, if I really allow myself to be rational (which is admittedly hard given my upbringing), seems at least understandable given the circumstances.
It’s hard, it’s really hard, when you were raised as piece of property rather than a human being, to distance yourself enough to look at these issues objectively. My parents talked a lot about how they had a ‘‘responsibility’’ to discipline me as if they were doing me some kind of favor by psychologically scarring me. They seriously thought they were superior to other parents. It’s true, I was well-behaved, responsible and treated others with respect, but I used to hate myself so much as a child that whenever something went wrong, I assumed it was my fault, and punished myself by slamming myself repeatedly in the head with my schoolbooks. My parents didn’t just hurt me, they taught me to hurt myself. Undoing what they did has been a lifelong process. And yet my mother sometimes brags about how well-adjusted and successful I am as if I succeeded because of, not in spite of, the way she raised me.
You are correct that I am not a parent, which means my view is only one-sided. I’m genuinely looking forward to it though–can hardly wait. Neither my husband or I are comfortable with hitting - ever - due to our backgrounds, but we agree to consistent and proportional discipline through negative reinforcement (taking away something good vs. adding something bad.) I think there is a balance between ‘‘being a friend’’ and ‘‘being a tyrant’’ and we want to hit that sweet spot in the middle, otherwise known as authoritative parenting.
I think our parents were created in the same evil scientist’s lab.
You spanked someone else’s kid?? :eek:
And it’s wonderful to have that as a goal. Truly, I mean that. But as** Leaffan** says, things happen in real time, when you’re not ready nor are you at your best (that vomiting thing sounds awful,** Leaffan**!)
I grew up with a mother similar to your mother. She, too, thinks she parented ‘well’ because we were so well-behaved. Just last week she said, “Sure, I was strict, but I had to be if you girls were going to turn out right.” Strict? Hitting us with belts and electric cords? Threatening to drive into a wall, or oncoming traffic. Threatening me with a knife? That’s not strict.
Anyhow, my point is, it’s great to go into parenting with solid ideas of how you will parent, but know that your child(ren) will challenge them, and multiple children will challenge them in ways that are different from the ways that their siblings do. And the problem with a zero-tolerance attitude as you’ve stated is that you might slip.
I hit my son once, despite all the times I said I never, ever would. It was awful. I cried and cried and thought I would never get over it. I wanted to cut myself, which I haven’t done in 15 years. I’m even reluctant to post this now, that’s how ashamed I am. All for a relatively minor swat to get his attention and cooperation.
Have your ideals. Do. But know that you won’t always meet them.
While I think that’s a good general point, lorene, I know a shitload of parents who decided not to hit their kids and haven’t, once.
I don’t remember whether or not I was spanked as a kid. It’s not impossible, because I remember it happening to my siblings. But my mum once said something like “But you were different, Rala - I just had to raise my voice and you’d turn into a puddle.”
When we got older, Dad would sometimes pin Brother against a wall while yelling at him.
There was one incident a few months ago that was a bit like what happened in the linked thread. I feel terrible about it, because it was because of me. I (17) had finally finished arranging my bookshelves to my liking, and Brother (15) moved a few of the books as a joke and to see how long it would take me to notice. I lightly smacked the back of his head and said “Don’t touch my stuff.” Dad thought it was funny, and Brother got upset because it wouldn’t have been laughed off if he’d been the one to hit me. Dad said that was because it was never OK to hit a girl, and Brother protested that that wasn’t fair. Then the fight started. It was the worst, loudest, longest one they’d ever had. Dad shoved Brother several times and knocked him to the ground. Brother tried to hit Dad with a weight. (He’d just gotten a body building kit.) Dad told Brother to get out of the house and never come back. He later amended that to “If you ever raise a hand to me again, you’re out the door.” Their relationship hasn’t changed since that night as far as I’ve noticed, but that’s because it was always a pretty crappy relationship.
Thanks for your valuable input, lorene. I don’t expect it’s even possible to be a perfect parent, but as with most things, I’m going to work hard to be good at it. I don’t necessarily think one slip-up is a sign of doom. I know parenting will challenge me in ways I never could imagine. But I also know, from experience, I am in control of and deeply in tune with my self, and I have a long track record of recognizing and modifying my own unhelpful behavior. Even with a kid, I don’t think that’s likely to change. I look forward to the challenge.
Well, OK, I’ll let the parents who are more evolved and in control contribute, then. My point was not that it’s good to go into it with an attitude of “Oh, spanking happens; it’s OK” but that deciding ahead of time that you’re going to be able to parent in a specific fashion 100% of the time can be risky, especially if you’re a person who has a history of setting rigid standards for yourself.
My father in law was an abusive bully who beat up on his wife and children. My wife and I managed to raise our kids without use physical violence as punishment. That being said, the last physical altercation in which I was involved was in a store. There was a guy repeatedly hitting his child, who looked to be about five years old, saying “I’ll give you something to cry about!” I got between them and told the guy that maybe he ought to pick on someone his own size. He decided to hit me. It did not end well for him…
I wasn’t trying to insult you or comment about you at all. It was more a reference to my own history dealing with my own violent impulses.
I have a temper. Early on in my relationship, it got kinda bad. Lots of yelling and then I started slamming doors and once or twice I threw something across the room (a box of OTC meds, IIRC.) What I wanted to do was grab him and start shaking him, slap the shit out of him, or, in lieu of that, destroy the whole goddamn house. When I’m feeling angry like that, it’s like everything inside of me is aching to destroy, destroy, destroy. That’s not pretty is it? It’s not easy for anyone to admit that they have serious rage issues, and it was especially hard for me because of my upbringing and my vow to never be like my mother.
But I had something she didn’t – the ability to recognize dysfunction when I saw it. As soon as I realized how I was behaving, I started changing. It wasn’t always easy, and I still overreact and yell occasionally. But the fact is, for years now, every time I get pissed off I want to break every fucking thing in the house, and I don’t. Even though every fiber of my being is saying, ‘‘pick up that glass and hurl it across the room,’’ I don’t. I don’t because I know from observing my mother that the consequences will not be worth it. And when I do stray further over that line than I’d like to, I say, ‘‘I was wrong and I’m sorry’’ and do what I need to do to prevent it from happening again.
I know that I’m not a dangerous person because those impulses have no mastery over my behavior. I control my behavior, not my feelings. And the longer I demonstrate mastery over my impulses, the less powerful those impulses become. Now violence is little more than a fleeting thought when I’m angry, which is immediately dismissed as unproductive.
In an ideal world, I would never slam another door, never raise my voice. But that’s not the world we live in. Sometimes I get upset over piddly shit and yell. I understand we can’t always live up to our expectations because I deal with that all the time already. But at the same time, I don’t think I’m necessarily setting myself up for failure when I say I’m not going to hit my kids. For all the doors I regret slamming, I never hit my husband, after all.