…decapitation?
Despite the fairly disengenuous nature of the OP - happy to participate.
Infraction: Running out of her room repeatedly when she was supposed to be having her afternoon nap.
Age: Just gone 2
Immediacy: Built up over a number of weeks, during which time I tried waiting outside the room to shoo her back in the second she set foot outside of it, repeated warnings, a nd tying the door shut so she physically couldn’t get out. I was also, at each occasion, simultaneously busy with getting her few-weeks-old sister to sleep - a process which really required at least 20 minutes of calm and peace.
Punishment: Single two-fingered slap to the back of the hand - pretty much the minimum possible.
My emotional state: Well, I was certainly annoyed at her for not listening to me. I wouldn’t exactly say I was in emotional turmoil though.
Why not something else? I’d already run through all the other alternatives. The second-last one, btw (tying the door shut) was horribly traumatic for her and I would never, never use it again. The smack, btw, worked - she had a bit of a cry, I escorted her back into her room, she stayed there and ultimately went to sleep without further intervention.
Lesson learned? Well, she did what I said after that, which is what I needed. And my real focus at this point was in getting a quick solution to the “toddler problem” without spending five, ten, fifteen minutes each day dealing with her while my hungry tired and completely innocent-of-all-wrongdoing baby was wailing for my attention. Or alternatively leaving a two-year-old to wander unsupervised around the house poking into anything she felt like.
Still working on that one.
Folks, you’re using some very weak analogies here (and in pretty darned self-righteous tones, even by my standards). **Tom *and Olives seem to be saying that because verbal abuse can have long-lasting traumatic effects, my passionate preference for verbal rather than physical discipline is all fucked up (to use a technical term from my years of graduate study in child development). Tom, do you really suppose that I would appraise an entire tribe of Indians systematically heaping hours of verbal abuse on a young person in pejorative and destructive language designed to tear down that young person’s selnse of self-esteem as PREFERABLE to a mild physical admonishment? If you do, let me say clearly that I’m quite sure the first one is a horrible and degrading method that speaks poorly for that tribe’s values, IMO, and the second one may have overlooked some small improvements in conveying the parent’s message.
As there is “good touch” and “bad touch,” there is “good talk” and “bad talk.” I’m hoping to recommend good, effective, helpful, constructive verbal ways to resolve conflicts between parent and child where, all too often, a physical solution is the first and only option taken, mainly because of emotional and impulsive responses on the loving parent’s part to behavior by an often frustrating, difficult, willful, pain in the ass child testing the parent’s breaking point. Can I be any clearer than that? If we can find alternative methods, by discussing them in cool retrospect, even if you’re feeling defensive about your past behavior by my overt position on this touchy subject, you have the space (right here) to show me how your choices were sound ones, and where I’m mistaken, and why a physical solution was clearly preferable, in your view. We may disagree, even strongly (which is why I opened this thread in the Pit, to avoid the constraints of passion unsuitable for GD–you’re quite welcome, Tom) but if all you want to take from this is that I’m an intractable asshole and that you’re the bestest parent evah, then I’ll accept both of your judgments, even if you refrain from hijacking this thread witih all sorts of loopy misreadings and misunderstandings of what I’ve written explicitly and (sometimes) clearly. How someone could get that my 18 year old is somehow traumatized by something I plainly described as having no place whatsoever in her memory just seems willfully hostile to me, as do these strawman arguments against “my” statements privileging destructive verbal solutions above mild and well-intended physical ones.
- of which I’ve done none, FTR.
Thanks for your story. This is a point I hadn’t considered, but worth discussing, perhaps. (In a different thread, maybe?) If spanking is fine with you as your preferred method of discipline, is it okay if someone else spanks your child? If so, what limits do you want placed on such spankings, and what notice do you require? If not, what’s your basis for reserving that punishment to yourself (or self and spouse)?
Speaking of which, assuming you share a pro-spanking position with your spouse, what would you do if you felt your spouse had crossed the line well into abusive behavior? Plainly we all have our own personal positions on appropriate physical chastisement, and these (I hope) sometimes change–if you and your spouse agreed 100% on spanking early in your marrage but 12 or 20 years later found that you had moved in diametrically opposed positions, such that one of you was offended by the other’s cruelty, how would you work it out? Is this a dealbreaker in theory?
I think that which is worse is culturally determined, to a large extent. There are some cultures where public humiliation is the preferred and “easy” method - the one you cited, Puritan American and some classic Chinese and Japanese cultures, for example. Go out in public, say some mea culpas, bow and grovel and offer to kill yourself to save your honor, maybe stand in the stocks for an afternoon, and you’re done. In other cultures (and sometimes there’s an overlap, for sure), physical punishment is more acceptable and therefore more normalized, and public disgrace is horribly uncomfortable or even taboo.
We’re at this odd multicultural crossroads in America right now where no one can agree what’s right and therefore what’s least damaging, and so no matter what you choose as a parent, someone’s going to think you’re wrong. Unfortunately, sometimes that someone is your kid. The longer I parent, however, the more forgiving I am of my own parents. They made mistakes, some of them with unforeseen and long range consequences, but I truly believe they did the best they knew how at the time, even if I wouldn’t have made the same choices.
Based on direct observation, I’m prepared to state that it is quite likely you will happily jump from extreme to extreme, with these moments of calm simply a pause before your next foray into hyperbole. It would not surprise me in the least if you embraced the above position (at least, that you’d write that you embrace it - I have no idea of your actual beliefs) or made claims that people who physically punish their children are Nazis or would gladly would torture their children with jumper cables or similar nonsense.
Put simply, you have no business asking “do you really believe I hold [ridiculously extreme stance]”, when ridiculously extreme stances are your casual pattern of behaviour.
Really? I seemed to be saying that? My apologies for communicating so poorly.
Look, I didn’t enjoy being hit or terrorized either, and the underlying implication of physical abuse is plenty damaging on its own. I am very much opposed to physical discipline-though I’d be hard-pressed to call the occasional swat on the butt ‘‘abuse.’’ I just felt the true impact that words can have was being understated.
Why should I justify my parenting decisions to you? You’re just some random guy on a message board. And from the jerkish way you’ve acted in this thread I don’t have any reason to believe that you’re a particularly good judge of what constitutes proper discipline.
That’s certainly fine with me. I’m interested in engaging with people who are willing to defend their child-beating practices. You obviously are not. Threadshit much?
So when does the “cool retrospect” start?
Thanks for the helpful critique of my posting style, personality, and belief system. Next?
You’re ugly, too.
And I don’t know or claim anything about your belief system.
I have struck my children on multiple occasions when they deserved it and when it was appropriate for their education as moral and responsible human beings.
In our household there are two things that will result in a beating: Doing something that is physically dangerous to yourself or others, or willfully disregarding the authority of either parent.
You seen to be very defensive about the choices you’ve made as a parent. Did you perhaps say things that were very cruel and cutting that you now regret in hindsight? Might you not have been a more responsible parent if you had simply struck your children to impose discipline rather than playing psychological games?
Why so interested in my personal history? It’s very boring, at least in regard to this issue: I was treated pretty well, as a child, very rarely swatted (but on rare occasions) by parents who had AFAIK no set policy but just weren’t inclined to hit me or my brother very much. Somewhere along the line, I resolved to treat my children as well as I knew how, and that evolved into a firm stance against hitting, not borne out of any trauma or incident, I married someone who felt the same way, and we raised our daughters, before and after divorcing, without hardly any recourse to physical discipline.
Now, what’s next: “PRR, you’re a fucking liar”? Can we move on from trying to psychoanalyze the reasons behind my position on a social issue, or are you just determined to hijack this thread into a close examination of the deep psychological issues motivating me to ask these questions and present my opinions? (If so, I won’t be very cooperative beyond this point here, btw, but if you want to open up another thread “Please, Please, Please , PRR, Tell us lots of boring shit about your personal life” I’ll be happy to oblige you. Bring a soft cushion–I can go on and on sometimes.)
Also where do you see defensiveness about choices I’ve made as a parent? I’m unaware of making any defensive statements (against what? Has my parenting been attacked?) in this thread, and would be interested in learning what you mean by this phrase: "defensive about the choices you’ve made as a parent. " Show me some examples, please? Thank you.
I’m not sure anyone is. It’s your bipolar posting style (“You people are thugs!” / “Why can’t we discuss this issue rationally?”) that undercuts your arguments, not anything about your personal history.
So instead of making shit up, point out what you find so wildly contradictory for a change, and I’ll try to reconcile the two quotes for you, or admit to a contradiction, or otherwise deal like a normal human being.
Or you can just continue sniping with imaginary fragments of strawman arguments, loosely paraphrased summaries, with a generous helping of personal hostility and claims of total boredom with the personality you persist in focusing on the exclusion of my actual posts. Whatever.
You launched this debate with loaded language intended to bias the argument in your direction.
If you were interested in an actual frank and open discussion about the merits of corporal punishment you could have started a thread titled something like “Is it better or worse to spank your children?” Then you could have let your own parenting decisions stand or fall on their own merits.
Instead you attempted to bully your way to the moral high ground through inflamatory language. If you’re so confident that you made the right choices as a parent, why aren’t you willing to debate them on a level playing field? Why the need to demonize those who hold alternate views?
I see two possibilities here: either you are an unusually persistent and resolute troll, who (in a quest to frustrate and irritate as many people as possible, for your own juvenile satisfaction) has gone “deep cover” into a hostile asshole persona—perhaps so deep you’ve come to believe your own bullshit; or you are actually so dense that you don’t recognize the well-poisoning in your own OP, don’t see how hostile and arrogant your posts appear to others, and are honestly baffled by other posters’ reluctance to participate in your spring-loaded facsimile of a “rational discussion.”
In either case, engaging you in debate is a fool’s errand.
I smacked my toddler son’s bottom (through his diaper) when he ran out in the street after I told him not to. He never did that again, because he got the idea that I really meant it. I didn’t have to use that form of discipline much when he got older though, as he was a pretty well behaved kid most of the time, just because I expected him to behave and he didn’t want to disappoint me.
I was spanked as a child but I don’t remember it as hurting a lot. I was far more hurt by some of the things my mother said, and she wasn’t really trying to hurt me by saying them. I don’t understand why people focus so much on the relatively transitory pain of a spanking.