With Adrien Peterson’s story all over the news I thought I would start a discussion about discipline v abuse.
I am 50ish. I got switched by my gramma (go cut a switch and if it’s too short I’ll cut one myself). My mom used a wooden spoon. My dad used his belt. And school teachers used an assortment of paddles on me.
I don’t think any of this was productive and have never given any of my kids more than a smack on the butt.
I also knew a girl who had to kneel on rice which sounds more like torture.
I would like to discuss pro’s and con’s of the effectiveness of beating a kid and what other punishments you have suffered or heard of.
Okay, I’ll bite although I have told the story before on these boards. My second child had a tendency to be a bit wild and I was spanking him regularly, to little effect. He was probably 3 when my wife and I decided this wasn’t working. So we stopped cold turkey. And his behavior improved suddenly and dramatically. Our third child was never spanked. Our first was kind of placid and, while we spanked her once or twice, it never got to be a habit. Our spankings were rather mild. A whack of the palm through pants. I believe that none of our six grandchildren has ever been spanked. Which is not to say they don’t get disciplined. And they are all delightful.
I think spanking (most punishments, really) are not very effective at changing kids’ behaviour because they don’t change much about the situation. Whatever caused the kid to misbehave in the first place is still there and they haven’t learned anything new to make them behave differently. Kids hurt themselves all the time and if pain was a big disincentive, they probably never would have learned to walk.
We were spanked by belt or switch for a predetermined number of strokes. It wasn’t done at the second the disobedience happened, but would be in private a few minutes later. My dad always had a temper and never wanted to discipline us while angry.
I spanked my son a few times(hand on butt either clothed or not a few smacks) when he was a young toddler to prevent potentially fatal situations. It worked, I don’t bother anymore or for anything else but at the time he had no sense and he didn’t care about anything else, time outs were useless because we would have to physically restrain him the whole time while he shrieked. He didn’t care if we were upset, yadda yadda.
But it did stop him from trying to dash into a busy street, or quickly push up furniture and jump out the window with a 60 foot drop(our house is so not child safe, the damn windows which are non standard are only 3 feet off the floor because my wife’s mom liked sun, and there are ten of them!).
To this day he ALWAYS takes my hand to cross any street or parking lot.
So I do think hand on butt spankings can work with pre-verbal young children, I think it is pointless with older children.
I am 62 with 3 grown children. Never spanked them and especially never hit them. How the hell can you justify hitting someone smaller and weaker than yourself? Have you no imagination at all? Don’t hit children.
To stop them from killing them self?
I do think some kids are just ADHD or hyper and spanking them is counter productive. However it should never be ruled out.
Its better to set clear expectations with rules and consequences.
I think a problem a lot of parents fall into is they want a certain reaction from the child from the physical discipline, and when they don’t get it or the child refuses to change their behaviour they get angry and escalate until they are locked into a cycle of ever escalating violence until they are beating their kid with a belt.
I mean if something doesn’t work you need to pull back and try something else, and also keep your cool and not allow yourself to be enraged by a child.
I wonder about discipline in families with 6 -12 children all in a row. Being from good Catholic stock, I know many such. I am 71 now and from the time I could remember to the gran babies & great grand babies of many still large families both as relatives and others I just know, they all have used some corporal punishment along the way. Out of the hundreds I know personally, there is only one bad adult or kid in the bunch.
When the no touch crowd starts telling them how much the harmed the kids,the laughter from all ages is thunderous.
Can no touch child raising work, sure, but it does not work all the time. IMO, and from what I have seen, no it doesn’t.
The apparent reality that every single parent on the SDMB who did not ever touch their child in a disciplinary way got / have 100% perfect well balanced, thriving, successful children and young adults that also never have a problem with the gran kids.
I call BS. Even for the few that are on the SDMB compared to any 100 random parents with the same number of kids, same economic background and belief system, etc., are in the minority of the results of the average of the 100 control subjects.Has anyone on the SDMB ever have the ‘no physical discipline’ fail to work 100% of the time? Is there even one poster that will admit that it took more for their child?
There are times when what a child does is caused by another child / adult and does not need any time out or anything but comfort.
Knowing what needs done & when is key. To just say ‘never’ this of that is the poster child for foolish. Just because some say that they they never, well, I believe them at about the same ratio that the people here believe what I post on the SDMB. Bawahahahaha
I would love to sit down and visit with some of these children who are now over 18. Would be very interesting.
It’s my experience that people who hit their kids are lazy disciplinarians. Instead of nipping bad behaviors in the bud when they start, they let things slide until they get out of hand and their only recourse is spanking. Yeah, not spanking is harder. You have to pay closer attention to the kids and intervene sooner. But as with most things in life, the extra effort pays off in the long run with better disciplined kids.
I’d suggest that you’ve already managed to poison the well before any discussion could take place.
You say you’ve given your kids no more “than a smack on the butt” but some people would consider that “beating” and say you’re a terrible parent since you had to resort to such barbarism.
Can we at least wait until somebody actually say that?
Like somebody else said in another thread (I am paraphrasing): “I was spanked as a child and turned out alright, except for the lasting psychological trauma.”
That’s pretty much our rule too; it’s the nuclear option that we resort to when the stakes are too high for the lather-rinse-repeat nature of trying to discipline 2 and 3 year olds.
Even then, it’s not “beating” in the commonly accepted sense; it’s 2-3 open hand slaps on the butt, not a dozen delivered with malice using a belt.
I remember being forced to get the switch for my grandmother a few times. It was scarier than it was painful because it was never used on bare skin. It was just the thought of having to go out and get your own punishment tool that made it so terrifying. It only happened a handful of times for me. I was a well-behaved child, but it certainly wasn’t because of the fear of that switch. Most of the punishment wasn’t for me being a bad child, but for wandering too far off and scaring her. It never stopped me from wandering.
Depends on whether it’s cooked or not.
If you’ve got a 4YO who is intensely curious and wants to touch a hot stove burner, and nothing you say to him will convince him it’s a bad idea, what do you do?
So in order to teach them that they shouldn’t do something that will cause them pain, you instead cause them pain yourself? How does that work, exactly?
If they’re just going to do something that just hurts, then fine, let them learn a painful (but otherwise harmless) lesson. “Don’t play with bees, kiddo. Oh, you got stung? Well, now you know why you shouldn’t play with bees.” Big deal.
But if they’re going to do something that can permanently destroy a part of their body, and nothing you say deters them from their goal, then can you suggest a strong disincentive other than a little short-term physical pain deliberately adminstered by a parent in a controlled manner?
Since you are bigger, you can pick them up, pull them away, turn on the computer, and show them what happens when you get burned.
Well, I have 2 kids, and they’ve accidently touched a hot stove burner, and they weren’t permanently disfigured. They simply learned that it is hot, and they should be more careful. Surprisingly, that didn’t take a spanking to get the point across.