I challenge you to find a place in my post that endorses corporal punishment of children. There are a lot of things that a parent might do to punish tantrums in public other than spanking. I don’t think I gave any ideas about what sort of punishments I thought were appropriate.
Jump to conclusions much?
Riiiight. It’s absolutely TERRIFYING for a kid to walk around knowing that Mom’s going to punish them for something they did wrong.
People seem to assume that I endorse corporal punishment of children. I think it’s simply unnecessary in most situations. There are plenty of other punishments out there. Nor do I remember saying that the punishment given out should be so out of proportion to the crime that the kid would be struck dumb with terror.
For example, I can remember missing at least one classmate’s birthday party as a punishment for something or other. You’d better believe that I learned fast not to push that particular button of Mom’s ever again–because that punishment royally sucked. But it wasn’t exactly terror-inducing.
As far as “not remembering why they’re being punished”–give me a break. By the time a kid is clever enough to throw a tantrum calculated to get Mom to give in to one of his whims, he’s old enough to remember that he’s getting punished for something he did wrong. Do you remember ever being confused as to why your Mom or Dad doled out a punishment? I doubt it.
We can go round and round about this as much as you like, but the bottom line is that parents have a responsibility to control their children’s behavior in public. It can be done. If you don’t like my ideas, come up with your own–mine certainly aren’t the only possibilites. But what I’m hearing here boil down to a lot of downright unimpressive excuses for why parents don’t live up to their responsibility.
But actually, you really shouldn’t punish a child for a tantrum, because a tantrum is an attention-getting tactic. My mom or dad would just plop me down in the other room, leave, and let me scream to my heart’s content.
We (me and my two younger brothers) were actually surprisingly well behaved when we were kids, because when we acted up in a disruptive fashion anywhere in public mum would threaten to yell at us.
That threat almost always shut me up because I could not think of anything more embarrasing. Also mums car always had books in it, which meant that when she went grocery shopping or something boring like that, I could stay in the car and read.
And TeaElle I can handle tired and grizzly kids that want to be home, and their parents tend to take a sympathetic ‘long day?’ comment well. The younger the kid, the more people are willing to put up with, I think.
[slight hijack- not real rant]
Except for screaming babies. I know that there’s no way to reason with a baby but, oh when they scream! It goes right through my head and I totally lose track of what I’m doing, to the extent that I stare blankly at customers with their change in my hand untill they prompt me.
If they scream loud enough they make my eyes water in sympathy - I get some odd looks
[/slight hijack- back to previously scheduled venting]
Remember the ropes? That the kids should not touch or play on? Today these parents came in with their daughter aged, I’m guessing, anround three.
She tries swinging on the ropes. They collapse, as they should, like the sign says. She howls.
So her parents weigh down the metal stands by standing on them and then let their child use it like a swing, to the envy of every other kid in the store who howl twice as loud when their parents wont let them convert the shop into their own personal fucking playground.
Grrr.
Her father did look appropriatly embarrassed when he looked up to see all three of us on the tills giving his the Pissed Off Part-Timer Glare Of Death. heh.
Decked the manager? Decked as in “hit the decks”? Ducked out?
Semantics is the key word in all this. I think your method is similar to what Q.N. Jones mentioned. While Q.N.'s wording may have implied a physical threat, nowhere in that post does it say that. Q.N.'s mother was offering a consequence to bad behavior. And don’t you think that your kids fear a negative consequence? If not, why would they see it as a consequence.
I’m not suggesting that your kids are quaking with fear of a beating, but they would fear the loss of privileges.
My daughter is offered “choices.” She can choose to behave in an appropriate manner, or she can choose to continue misbehaving and miss out on her favorite activity/treat or something planned for later (she will do anything to be able to go to Grandma’s every week). So am I threatening her? You bet. I am threatening her with the loss of something she values.
And I have spanked on occasion (a single swat on the behind, not at all hard), but I make it clear that I don’t want to do it, I don’t like to do it, and I hope I never have to do it again.