Israfel–what do you suppose the effect would have been if you had JUST the talk, with no spanking? Do you think you would have been rejoicing the second he left the room, jumping around and saying “Cool, I got away with it! Beautiful. I’m sure doing THAT again. That was NO punishment! Yippee!” etc?
If you’re anything like me, or anything like my kids, you would be on the verge of tears just from the knowledge that you had disappointed someone whom you love very much. How can you even compare a little nerve-ending pain to that?
Hard to define it, but I am not opposed to open hand on a clothed or unclothes ass, wooden spoons, etc. I think belts are starting to overstep bounds considerably. I’m a (-4, -4) BTW.
I was spanked probably three times in my life growing up. I feel that was quite reasonable. I was not punished often, and when I was spanking was no guarantee. Usually I had to write out long sentences hundreds of times. One time I got both.
Oh, also like to clarify. I ticked disagree expressly because of the wording “have to” and “to teach right from wrong”.
I would have ticked agree if it had just been, “Good parents can sometimes spank their children”.
I do believe good parents can spank their kids, and that plenty of kids are spanked with no detriment . Maybe even to their good in terms of changing behavior.
Seem counterproductive to attempt to teach someone right and wrong through pain (and you can call it discipline but it comes down to pain, mild or not), since, to me, kids learning to be empathic and not cause others pain is THE basic underpining for being able to judge whether or not something is right or wrong.
Note, I don’t have kids, but plan/hope to before too long, as the wife and I aren’t getting any younger.
I would probably limit the spankings to situations of danger, e.g., the kid runs out into traffic. As those above have noted, it’s better to get a swat on the behind than be squashed by a car. I know from direct observation that horrified looks and screams of disapproval are simply not enough sometimes to impress upon the child the gravity of the situation (I’m thinking from about age 4-5 and younger); they may find parental hystrionics funny, even, as I have also observed. However, I have yet to see a kid get the giggles after a spank. So, kid wants to stick a fork in the toaster, he/she’s gonna get thwapped. Otherwise, I can’t think of a situation where I should strike my child. I’m sure I’ll plenty want to wring the little demon’s bloody neck on occasion (I’ve heard many a parent confess their kids can drive them into fantasies of swift and severe corporeal retribution), but I don’t think I’ll act on these urges in any way, so help me.
Loopydude, I am, personally, in agreement with you on when physical punishment is a “good idea.” As I mentioned in my post, I think pain is a great teacher, but there are situations where it would teach if only it didn’t kill, maim, or cause incredible and/or long suffering. In these cases, an immediate spanking seems, to me, to be the right thing to do. Fork in the toaster, boiling water on the stove, running out into the street without looking… these kinds of situations are incredibly dangerous and come with rather physical consequences (just like a spanking, except in degree). Personally, this is when I’ve felt spanking is the way to go.
It’s been awhile, but I think it was -5.3, -5.
And I don’t have kids.
Strongly Disagree
Good parents have to discipline their kids, sometimes (unless you’re name is Mary and you’ve got some kind of weird angel story going on.) But there are many forms that the discipline can take, and spanking is not a necessity for raising a child.
Punishment is only effective if it is both unpleasant and connected in the recipient’s mind with the behavior you are trying to extinguish. One battle of the wits starts with making sure the child knows what you are forbidding. Loren has been capable of misdirection and deception since she was 5 months old. She doesn’t always let us know what she understands or what she is capable of doing. It would not be useful to punish her without her knowing why, so she could use this to get away with something that she knows she should not do. At the same time, her skills are still quite limited, being 13 months old presently, so when she gives us the “What did I do?” look it is not always easy to tell if she is being honest or not.
My daughter amazes me everyday by her high tolerance to pain. She is growing quickly and is now taller than the dining room table top. She runs into it and bumps her head several times a day, sometimes hard enough to leave bruises, but doesn’t fuss much. The worst blows she receives are followed by about a minute of crying at most. Although she has learned in most cases to be more aware of things that get her hurt, and much better at knowing how close she can get to the edge of beds and such without falling off, the pain has not dampened her enthusiasm for exploration. She never seems to learn that she is taller than the table. She will try to walk under it, “bonk, bonk, bonk!” and I would think that would hurt, she still does it. There have been times when she ran into one of us hard enough to fall down. That hardly registers with her. KellyM’s knee is still purple with a bruise from one such encounter. I have never wanted to hit Loren and I don’t think I will. I don’t think it would be safe or right to hit or spank her hard enough to get her attention. Besides, we are quite physical with her, roughhousing, tossing her in the air, etc. I don’t want her to ever have the idea that we are going to touch her for no other purpose than to cause her pain.
She hates having her freedom impeded in any way. Taking her temperature, under the arm with a digital thermometer that reads in a minute or so, is a struggle. She howls with outrage. For her at least, there are much more effective methods of discipline. We do time outs, and such. It works. She was keen on playing with the toilet, but that interest faded as she got her hands throughly washed each time, all the while Daddy lectured her that if she played with the toilet, since the toilet was dirty, she had to have her hands washed. There are many a times that she feigns sudden disinterest in what ever she was about to do when one of us says, “Loren, if you (do whatever she is about to do) you will get a time out.” She is fully capable of hopping off the chair we usually use for time outs, but she doesn’t until we come an get her.
Economic Left/Right: -6.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97
Strongly disagree
Parent. Never been spanked.
Why? Several reasons:
I don’t want to teach my children that violence is a good way to handle conflicts. (I’m not trying to make them completely non-violent. Sometimes kids fight, that’s OK. But I want them to know that if you have a choice between a violent and a non-violent solution to a problem, the non-violent one’s best. I can’t preach that if I don’t live it.)
I don’t want to teach my children that it’s OK for a big, strong person to hit a smaller, weaker person.
I know that I’m more likely to speak harshly to my kids and be impatient with them when I’m tired. If I spanked them, I’m sure I’d be more likely to that when I’m tired, too. An undeserved scolding isn’t good, but an undeserved spanking would be a lot worse.
Besides, it’s illegal here, but there’s no way I would spank them even if it was legal.
Sure, there are times when spanking might solve a problem. There are times when I really need a threat I could carry out immediately, and there’s nothing I can think of that’s likely to have an effect that I’m willing to carry out. For a while, our youngest refused to put on outdoor clothes. Stuffing an actively resisting four-year-old into clothing for a Norwegian winter is more than enough to drive me to tears, swearing, or both. Saying “Put on that jacket or I’ll slap you!” might have worked. But that’s not a good enough reason for me to do it. Hitting people is wrong. Sometimes it might be useful, or really, really tempting, but that doesn’t make it less wrong.
I have been spanked as a child on quite a few occasions where it was warranted, always two to several hard hits with an open hand upon my clothed ass. There is a line which, when crossed by a child, warrants a response of moderate physical pain from a parent to get a point across; spanking serves that role perfectly.
I don’t remember what I checked for this one, but I’d probably say “agree” with the caveat that it is limitted to small children only. Once a child is able to communicate and reason to an extent, other forms of punishment are probably more effective and less likely to teach them the lesson that “if someone doesn’t listen to you, you hit them”.
OK, hold on, I seem to observe a pattern of people interpreting the statement as that for ALL good parents WILL come some some time they have to spank the child or ELSE the child will not learn right from wrong. I read it rather in the subjunctive mood, that there MAY come SOME times when SOME good parent may find it’s the more circumstantially effective means to that end.