First of all I do not have children yet -my wife and I are late bloomers to the having children scene, we’re in our 30’s and are looking forward to having children but as of yet we do not have any.
Watching Good Morning America this morning I see that Massachusetts lawmakers are trying to pass a bill to ban the spanking of children.
Apparently in all 50 states spanking is not a crime. This bill would set the stage to make corporal punishment at home illegal.
Personally, I do not want the gov’t telling me how to raise and discipline my children. In Sweden if you spank your child it could land you in jail.
I also don’t think the old addage of “well I got spanked and I turned out fine” holds up either in this case. The majority of parents I would assume do not intentionally harm their children by beating them. Child abuse does happen and it is a very unfortunate occurance the world over. I don’t believe spanking is abuse, but I do believe there is a fine line in there somewhere…
What’s the question? Do we believe spanking should be illegal, do we spank or what other discipline methods are there?
I don’t believe spanking should be illegal, I don’t use it, though I reserve the right to should it ever be the best choice (and I think that with some kids in some situations it is the best choice), and there are dozens of other methods: shame and guilt have a long, proud history. The most mainstream of the moment seems to be “Time-Outs”, which is very effective for most kids if you do it right, but most people don’t do it right.
I’m particularly fond of and use the techniques in the Parenting With Love and Logic series, which boils down to a few basic ideas:
gradually increase the amount of control your kids have over their own lives
consequences should arise naturally from the actions of the kid
avoid arbitrary and authoritarian punishment
sympathize honestly and with love when your kid does something stupid that comes back to bite him in the ass
5.wait for your child to ask you for help before rushing in to fix things for him.
I very strongly recommend at least the first book to any parent, teacher or person who’s around kids. In fact, I just recommended it in another thread, and I’m starting to wonder if I should be getting paid by the L&L folks for my efforts!
Firstly, you have to define spanking; a swat on the butt to get the kid to stop doing something bad/dangerous immediately is one thing, but a premeditated, ritualistic wailing upon is quite another. Unfortunately, there’s a fair amount of real estate between the two and I’m not at all convinced that any government/law is capable of sorting that out.
Plus kid’s responses to various forms of punishment is as unique to the individual as fingerprints.
For instance, I have employed the “quick swat on the butt” to each of my sons on rare occaision. In the case of my oldest son, it immediately redirects his behavior, as he doesn’t like it (duh). But for my youngest son, he’ll just turn around and say “that didn’t hurt!”. He’s the stubborn one, kind of like his old man. Taking away priveliges is more effective with him; not so much with my oldest.
Have I scared you away from parenthood yet?
ETA: It should only be used for redirection, not punishment, and absolutely not as an angry response (talk about your bad examples!), IMHO.
Nope - but if my kid turned and said “…that didn’t hurt…” after a quikc whack to the butt, I’d be thinking of the Shining or Damien. and might get a little scared.
I have friends who tell me horror stories of waking up to their kids watching them sleep, and getting bitten, kicked, spit at etc…etc… ok maybe that’s an exaggeration but still it must be freaky and yet oddly appealing to see your own child begin to reason and develop their own personality…
It’s a good book. We are introducing our two year old to discipline, though he sometimes makes it hard for us by not misbehaving.
One thing that is definitely true - young children (or at least, my young child) simply does not understand “no!” or other forms of verbal correction, if they are not backed up with consequences. To them, it is all a game, and daddy getting frustrated is just fun. They do understand consequences, though. “If I fling my toy about, or bash something with a toy, and daddy says “No!”, I’ll lose access to my toy if I keep doing it”.
The point we try to emphasize to the extent we can is that the kid is not bad and daddy is not angry, but rather, that improper toy use results in no toy; wheras proper toy use results in a fun time had by all. Personally, so far this appears to be relatively effective.
Another thing we try to do is to get him to help us with household chores. This seems to make him feel useful and responsible (of course as a almost-two-year-old, the actual amount of help he can do is pretty limited). For example, he has a dump-truck full of balls, which frequently go all over the floor. We say “Carl, clean up the balls” and show him; he is then happy to pick up all the balls and put them back in the truck. Thus, we hope to get him to help picking up after himself.
While crying on your kid’s butt may possibly produce the desired result, hiting it will probably get more immediate results. When that happens, I think they use whaling ( short for whaling away, I think) to describe it. Even though no cetaceans are involved.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. No, I don’t think it should be illegal for two reasons: one, because as I said, sometimes it is the best choice for some kids in some situations; An Arky’s oldest being just one example. Part the second, I believe such a law would merely punish those who can “spank” with restraint, not those already prohibited from beating by existing laws.
What the difference between spanking and beating? I’d be willing to entertain other ideas, but for the moment I think a hit that shows no bruising or tissue damage falls to the lee side of beating. Once you’ve got marks (beyond immediate redness), I think you might be overdoing it.
Spanking should not be illegal. Spanking has been with us forever and is a completely natural method of behaviour correction. I’m not, obviously, talking about beating the crap out of your kid, but spanking – on occasion – is perfectly acceptable. Logic and reason do not work with a three year old who’s throwing a tantrum and thinks he’s the one in control. A smack or two on the ass as a swift reminder of who makes the rules and who follows the rules is sometimes the only answer.
Now, this form of punishment should end when the child is able to understand logic and reason. That age is arbitrary, but somewhere around 6 or 7 seems about right to me. My kids are 8 and 10 and I can’t remember the last time I resorted to physical punishment. Grounding and/or taking away privileges is much more effective.
Of course, like abortion, there are going to be two sides to this argument and not a lot of willingness on either side to reach an agreement.
Time outs are also only effective if you have a time out kid. Some kids - when you use time outs right, sit, think about what they have done, finish their time out, and move on - lesson having sunk it (although don’t be surprised when the same lesson needs to be learned tomorrow. Others won’t sit in a timeout chair. They just get up and move. At that point you have to decide whether physically restraining them is productive (I don’t believe it is). If you have a “refuser” time outs may just turn into a power struggle and not be productive.
Consequences are another one that sounds good in theory and works great with some kids - but a lot of consequences are far too far off for little kids to comprehend (or big kids for that matter) - and are dangerous. So rather than applying natural consequences (eat all that candy and you’ll get cavities and fat), you are applying consequences that really aren’t natural (eat candy without permission and candy gets taken from you). It often works, but it doesn’t necessarily help the kid understand why (and explaining why candy is bad to a three year old is a little like explaining to your dog why he can’t eat that entire stick of butter - you are going for the long term of a kid understanding ‘no nutritional value’ sometime before college - which when they are three seems like you are going to be endlessly explaining why a diet of candy is insufficient to sustain them. The dog - you just need to hide the butter from and train him not to counter cruise).
We also just had the redirection conversation. When kids are really little, you ‘just’ keep them busy enough not to get in trouble and learn their signs to redirect them before petting the dog turns into pulling the dogs tail. Or before quiet fingerpaint time turns into redecorating the living room. But that takes a level of vigilence I’d be surprised if most parents can exercise all the time - you’ll slip up and there will be Sharpie marker all over the wall. You know you shouldn’t have left the Sharpie there (and swear you didn’t, must have been your spouse) and you’ll know that you really shouldn’t left the kid there while you ran to the bathroom without taking them with you - but it happened. And you have to teach them writing on the walls is bad - so its a lecture and timeout and help Daddy scrub the wall.
Teenagers should be redirected by being locked in the nearest convent or monestary for six years of quiet contemplation.
To me, the best thing I did and the biggest mistake in not doing it is that you just create HABITS for your kids. When they are little, you help them put away their toys. When they are little you let them mop the floor. You do this every Saturday without fail before the TV goes on or before you have any fun. If they refuse, that’s fine, but make it take much longer to get done and don’t let them do anything except maybe read quietly while they wait for you to finish. If they whine, tell them it would go faster if they helped. Help them learn time management by making lists of what needs to get done. Have a bedtime routine. Teach them to get dressed by laying out clothes the night before. If you don’t want them to eat junk, don’t keep it in the house (how I wish I’d never brough white bread in!) Model behavior like “please” and “thank you.” I didn’t do nearly enough of this when my kids were little.
And those are the things you don’t leave up to them to control. You decide what food to buy and keep in the house, they decide what to eat. If you don’t want them eating candy, then don’t buy it for them, or don’t allow them candy as one of their choices. Choices when you’re three are best limited to choices that are equally acceptable to you: “Would you like the red socks or the blue socks? Do you want yogurt or cheese?” PwL&L is explicitly *against *unlimited choices or complete control given to small children, for reasons articulated in the book. It is NOT permissive parenting, at all. In fact I’m a much stricter parent than most of my colleagues, and stricter now that I use L&L than I was before I read it - but strict in a way my children accept as reasonable, not arbitrary and mean.
Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful! As an alternative, I propose we bring back fostering and apprenticeship. Let’s just trade kids at 13 or so.
Spanking= parent has control of him/herself and is attempting to correct behavior.
Beating= parent does not have control and is just spanking to let off steam.
In this case a spanking may in fact be a bit “harsher” than what I am calling a beating, but to me the fine line lies in the control the parent has over himself. This was often a point of contention between me and my last husband. I didn’t think spanking in and of itself was a terrible thing, but I felt like he used spanking as a way to make himself feel better and bigger and basically be a bully, not to effectively discipline.
His point was that it worked. But I’ll say to you as I said to him:
You can hang a picture on a wall with a sledgehammer and it will work. But you are probably going to destroy both the picture and the wall in the process.
Life is much calmer in my house now that he’s gone.
Spanking can be effective if the parent doesn’t use it simply as an outlet for their frustration. The problem is that a lot of the time you are already seeing red when it comes time for discipline - at least, that’s been my experience in the classroom (in Korea, where corporal punishment is still legal). Maybe it’s different in the home than it is in the classroom, but as a teacher I avoided using the switch because I could never be sure if I was using it for the right reasons.
But if they are only acting on the choices you give them, then there is no need for consequences or discipline. Why would their be any discipline involved in red or blue socks? The biggest consequence is that the socks don’t match the outfit - and not matching is a toddler fashion statement.
Let’s face it, most adults are going to keep things in the house not appropriate for kids. Maybe you keep a little candy in the house, and dole it out - its a valid choice for your child on occation. However, you need to discipline them when they sneak into where you keep the candy and eat it.
Functionally, you need a discipline toolbox. You may choose to put spanking in the toolbox (I think its a valid parental choice - beating the shit out of your kid is not, but swatting them on the backside is). Timeouts might be in there. Consequences may be in there (probably are). Removal of privleges. Just saying NO loudly. Discussions (my father was big on discussions when we were older - you behaved just to avoid the hour long discussion - which may have actually been closer to a lecture). We had some success with the Dilley discipline ladder. The tools will change depending on the age of your kids - you don’t put a fifteen year old in timeout - but you have the fifteen year old equivalent of grounding. However, if you build a good foundation to start with (habits, choices, giving them increasing control, building a values system), you probably won’t need to get out the discipline toolbox too often.
The parents I don’t admire are the ones that don’t bother with the foundation - so they need to pull out their toolbox all the time. And their toolbox only contains two things - hitting their kids and yelling at them.
One effective discpline method for very young children is holding their arms down and forcing them to be still for a moment. Good for when they won’t stop touching the damned lamp, for example. It doesn’t hurt, but it irritates them enough to feel like a real “consequence.”
I think it’s a rotten idea. If spanking is child abuse, it’s already illegal. (Beating a kid is child abuse, but I don’t think a spanking is.) If spanking isn’t child abuse, then it’s stupid to make a law against it.
Really, what are the consequences of such a law going to be? How do you punish a parent who illegally spanks? Do you call in CPS, further clogging an overwhelmed system and guaranteeing that more truly abused children will be ignored and neglected? This is the kind of law that leads directly to contempt for the legal system–no one would pay attention to it, and sure as heck it won’t stop any actual abusive parents.
I could now rant about nanny states taking away our abilities to make responsible adult decisions without government interference, but I’ll try to keep it to: this is the kind of proposal that makes it absolutely clear that certain politicians and activists think of people as stupid and incapable, unable to raise their own children. The trouble is, the more the state interferes in non-emergency situations, the less capable people become to act on their own.
Anyway. I have, in the past, occasionally used swats for discipline; mostly for running out into the street. I’ve never spanked in anger, and I can’t actually remember when I did it last; my kids are too big for that now. I, too, love the Love and Logic books (especially the “no problem!” part, heh).
Oh, I see what you’re saying. Right you are. Consequences are present in similar choices, however, like “Are you putting on your coat before we leave the house?” Instead of a struggle, you let the kid walk out into 26 degree weather without a coat and he freezes his little ass off. You then say, “Oh, you’re cold? Yes, sometimes when I decide not to bring a coat, I’m cold, too. That really sucks. What do you think you’ll do next time?” and 99% of the time, he’ll say, “I guess I’ll wear a coat.” or “I’ll carry my coat with me to wear if I get cold.” or “I’ll ask you if it’s cold enough to need a coat.” or “Can you show me how to look up a weather report online?” - all of which are valid ways of dealing with the problem, even if they’re not the way I might do it.
But the trick is to do this when it’s not life-threatening. The kid won’t die from not wearing a coat from here to the car. If he figures out this lesson merely by being uncomfortable for a few minutes, then you won’t have to fight him into wearing his coat when you’re going to be standing outside for two hours at a parade.
Perhaps 1% of the time you’ll have a kid recalcitrant enough to say, “I don’t care if I’m cold, I’m not wearing a coat!” and then you’ll have to try something else, sure. I don’t think any technique works 100% of the time for 100% of people. This one just works more often for more of them than any other codified system I’ve read about or tried.
I’d probably instead choose, “Well, you chose to eat candy for dinner, so you won’t be having pizza with us. Get yourself a glass of water and join us at the table, please.” And yes, I’d choose the kid’s very favorite meal for him to sit there and not eat. I’m mean like that.
Absolutely. The idea is to let them mess up little things while they’re little, so they know how to make wiser decisions and not mess up big things while they’re big. Or at least, to have a good toolbox of their own by that point to figure out how to get out of trouble they get into. And “Mom, I really messed up bad, can you help me out with ideas for how to fix this?” is always allowable. Grown-ups bail each other out all the time. The teenager isn’t on his own, but he does need to take responsibility for getting help.
On another tack: I’ve recently started anthropomorphizing things and giving them time-outs for being naughty. It’s simply a metaphoric tool for helping my daughter control her things. She responds very well to “if that ball goes over the fence one more time, it’s getting a time-out!” and she even puts her OWN toys in time out when they disappoint her. It gives her the time she needs to redirect herself and get over her own temper. I think it helps her more than, “if you can’t keep that ball under control, I’m taking it away!” because she thought when I took something away, it was gone forever and that was crushing. Now she understands that she just needs to cool it, and that any consequence will be in proportion to the “crime”.
I may be totally off base here, but I’m reminded of how I felt when I was pregnant with my kids. I would think about what it would be like having another person - a stranger! - in the house all the time and worry about what I would do if I didn’t really like the kid. Turns out that when you have the baby, you get to help develop that personality (and they undoubtedly shape yours as well), so you have the chance to grow into the relationship together. And, best of all, you get to be the boss! Once Mr. Legend and I got over the feeling that we were obliged to set up some sort of democracy, we settled nicely into a benign joint dictatorship, and it’s worked pretty smoothly these past 18 years or so.
I’d be against making spanking illegal. In general, parents need to assert more control over their children, not less, and the way to help them do that is to let them choose their methods of childrearing. I spanked very, very rarely, and I think it’s not typically a very effective discipline method, but it works for some families. Children can’t be brought up according to a codified set of rules; parents have to make it up as they go along. I don’t think government should interfere unless the parents are abusive or neglectful, and spanking doesn’t constitute abuse.
The most mainstream of the moment seems to be “Time-Outs”, which is very effective for most kids if you do it right, but most people don’t do it right.
