This topic has come up again? Don’t hit your kids, how hard of a concept is that?
Maybe the positive reaction was to you spending time with them and giving them attention. Did you ever try skipping the spanking and just go lie with them and talk about their day?
But they still do those same things again, right? Does it really work?
It does work. Maybe not in one try, but in two or three at most. Most kids don’t like getting spanked, and as long as it’s not abusive or common, they’ll remember it and associate it with that behavior and not do it again. And they know you mean business if that’s one of the very, very few things they’ve ever been spanked for.
Of course, rewards work better in almost every case, but you can’t really work up a reward scheme for “Don’t run out in the street into traffic.” - one fuckup and the kid could die. So better to use the extremely negative approach for those, so that they have that in their minds every time they’re tempted to run into the street, etc…
Also, you can’t spank all the time and expect it to be particularly effective for things like running into the street- it has to be an extraordinary thing and a painful thing.
It’s still a mixed message I don’t want to send my kid out into real life with. The idea that mom & dad got rid of my unwanted behavior by inflicting pain on me and it worked! Yet my classmate is behaving in a way I don’t like yet if I try the inflicting pain method I’ll get in trouble. Because why exactly?
If your adult child or your spouse was looking at their phone and started walking into the street, would a spanking likewise be justified? Or do you only recommend hitting a defenseless child?
Are you in a position of authority over your spouse or adult child? Is it appropriate for you to punish/discipline them? If not, then bringing this up is irrelevant to the issue of whether spanking is an appropriate form of punishment.
Or they’re misbehaving, because they know they’re going to get punished no matter what, so why not give them a reason to do so?
My mother defined “discipline” as “visible injuries”, so I definitely have some opinions about this. My dad would take off his belt and hit the floor with it; she wanted him to beat us with it, but he wouldn’t, and honestly, that got our attention too.
That poster who said they had neighbors who beat the kids for all the things they didn’t get caught doing? Yeah, this, and never when Dad was at home, either, and also make sure the kids are never alone with him so he won’t find out about it. Be extra-nice outside the home, so the kids won’t be believed if they tell anyone, either. :dubious:
I had a FBF for a while who was constantly posting memes that said things like “My mother carried a wooden spoon around with her all the time to ensure that I knew who was boss, and it made me what I am today!” Divorced from 3 abusive husbands? One abusive husband - that was his fault. Three of them? Something’s wrong with you. BTW, I think I got blocked by her after calling her out on this.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Spanking, on the other hand, is something different. I was spanked often when I was a kid - by both parents, my sister (13 years older than I), and once by a teacher at school - and I learned not to repeat whatever it was that I had done wrong. And I have spanked both of my girls when I considered it necessary: Three or four swats with an open hand, delivered to a clothed bottom.
I was spanked as a child by my parents and my teachers because I wasn’t a very good child. I think I deserved them. I spanked both of my children a few times but not nearly as often as I was. Neither of them believes that it is OK to use violence to solve problems. I also sent them to their rooms from time to time. Neither of them believes that kidnapping is OK. As people grow, they learn proportionality.
I really hate this argument of ‘how would YOU like it’ and putting children as unambiguously equal to their parents. Families are packs, tribes, heirarchies - whatever it is that means there is someone in charge. And that someone has more say and more authority and power than the someone with shit in their pants, snot running from their nose, stumbling around in a very present world where everything red’s a fire truck and everything soft’s a cat.
For the entirity of their most accident and death-prone years, kids cannot reason. They do not have the capacity, or the neurological makeup. Consequences mean little unless they’re immediate. An open-handed smack or two on the bottom for their failure to recognise those set-in-stone, just-trying-to-keep-you-alive rules (stay off the road, keep away from the stove, don’t swim with pirahnas) basically just reboots them. They take a breath - not because of the searing and lifelong pain some seem to think is everpresent - but because of the surprise, and the eminating prickling sensation which in quick sucession has moved from their hand or arm (where you’re holding them) to their often nappy-padded bum, and up their back.
Some kids need it as the ultimate boundary marker, some kids don’t. And fuck, so later on in life you realise you copped a few smacks undeservedly. Surprise! Life got a lot more unfair than that. NOT being in charge and NOT having all the respoinsibility of your health and wellbeing is a huge part of that rich tapestry of childhood before the beige curtains of adulthood. The downside to all that wonderful freedom is that you don’t get to decide everything.
Nobody but nobody is talking beatings here, but if a smack is the follow-up to a warning and achieves the permanent result that showing, asking, telling, and pleading couldn’t, I think it’s a highly responsible option to hospitalisation, injury, permanent injury or death.
And just to answer a couple of your questions there Death of Rats, I suspect I’ve never given a boss or a cop reason to WANT to spank me, because I respect the fact that they are in authority whether I like it or not - so generally my best option is to comply; assuming, as I do, that these are reasonable people we’re talking about here. I have the ability to consider the consequences, which I think I learned in part, by the occasional smack as a kid for doing something I knew I shouldn’t.
so you only advocate hitting someone whom you have authority over? Is that because they have no way to escape being hit?
How many things did you get spanked for, if you were spanked “often” and you didn’t repeat whatever you did wrong after getting spanked?
We’ve never spanked our kids (6 and 2). I was spanked occasionally as a kid and wasn’t traumatised by it or anything - what I remember is the sense of ‘Uh-oh, I really crossed the line this time’ rather than pain or trauma. But with our kids we’ve never run into a situation where that felt like a productive thing to do.
I think the six-year-old is past the age where it would ever come in useful. The only time I can picture spanking a kid is if they’ve done something so dangerous that it has to be brought home that this is way beyond the limits, and they’re not old enough to understand that through talking about it or any other method. Running into the road, like someone mentioned upthread, is a good example. If my six-year-old did it, I could explain to her why this is a HUGE HUGE NEVER AGAIN, and she’d get it. The two-year-old, not so much, so she might possibly get a couple of swats to the backside.
I wouldn’t do it for bad behaviour. Hitting your sister or telling a lie is hugely not OK, but it would never get one of them smacked. I’d only (possibly) do it for life-threatening behaviour.
Short version: I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I don’t think it’s the best thing to do (except possibly under life-threatening circumstances) and I’ve got no plans to do it.
(1) We’re not talking about hitting; we’re talking about spanking. (2) I’m not even sure what my own position on spanking as a form of punishment is, but it muddies the waters and doesn’t help me think clearly about it when people bring up scenarios where the issue isn’t spanking vs. other ways of disciplining a child.
Thudlow Boink, I think anyone incapable of differentiating hitting, beating, and belting from spanking or smacking, shouldn’t lay a hand on their kid. Or any living creature.
I don’t really consider smacking a ‘punishment’ per say - more a guaranteed way to focus their attention and have them know that that is absolutely as far as they can go with testing that boundary, or disobeying important instructions. I think it can easily be a ‘useless punishment’ if there’s no appropriate communication afterwards when the crisis has passed, and it’s clear that the subdued child understands how that chain of events occurred, and what it means to them.
If they were pups and you were training them, a smack is the equivalent to the alpha hold, I reckon.
I’ve known a few people who claimed that they couldn’t control their children because they were afraid of CPS; it never seemed to occur to them that in addition to possibly not being able to tell the difference between discipline and abuse, there were other issues going on. The first one who comes to mind mostly associated with ex-convicts, and allowed them to move into her house with her son. :smack:
Spanking which is not excessive is fine. It teaches children that there are painful consequences to crossing certain boundaries. A lesson that’s better learned at home than on the streets via the police or otherwise.
…and that’s from an octopus!
Firstly, IMO spanking vs beating is a distinction without difference, all spanking is beating to me. Sure, it’s a “mild” beating, BFD.
And no, it’s not OK.