Just to throw this out there, in some states (LA in this case) teachers, medical personnel, social workers, etc are REQUIRED to report suspected child abuse cases.
As a teacher, if a child told me his parents were hitting him with a belt regularly, repeatedly and with dangerous results, you can be sure I’d investigate it. If the parents were reasonable individuals, I’d first call them in for a conference to give them a chance to explain their rationale for using a belt to hit their child. If I felt the child was in physical danger because of the ‘discipline’ you can be sure I’d report it to the authorities. Yes, according to the law, it’s my business if you beat your children in a way that <i>could be perceived as abuse</i> by the person reporting the abuse.
Now, what happens if I don’t? And the child is later harmed physically? Am I responsible legally? YES, I AM.
From the document listed above:
“The potential repercussions for failing to comply with the statutes are substantial. Under Louisiana Revised Statute 14:403(A)(1), Any person who is required to make a report under Children’s Code Article 609(A), and knowingly and willfully fails to do so, <b>“shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not more than five hundred dollars or imprisoned for not more than six months, or both.” Articles 609(A)(2) and 609(A)(3) provide the same penalty to anyone who knowingly and willfully violates the provisions of Chapter 5 of Title VI of the Children’s Code, knowingly and willfully obstructs the procedures for receiving or investigating reports of child abuse, discloses without authorization confidential information about or contained in a report of child abuse, or knowingly makes a false report of child abuse.”</b>
I’m going to lay down a bit harder on this topic.
The past is the past.
Seriously folks; are you just having a child in order to spank them?
Cause and effect you know?
“Hmmm… there’s an excellent chance that if I have a child, I will spank them at some point. I’m going to go have a child, because I think that child needs to know what a spanking is.”
Seriously, how dumb are you to NOT understand that YOU didn’t have to have that child?
This isn’t meant to condecend, as people aren’t taught very well on this earth in general; intelligence or no, something I ‘blame’ entirely on media and school text.
I have a very compelling theory that if you spank your child, you really don’t have the tools to raise a child without spanking them; and that it’s more about you than them. “If I spank this child and they turn out alright; then I not only redeem my parent but myself in the process”
You don’t need to spank a child to raise a child. I believe our current system is WAY to lenient on parents. If there was a suicide machine on every corner; it would not take long to seperate the wheat from the chaff. If you can’t even raise a child without spanking them, I don’t know how on earth you could ever think to raise them so that they don’t just use a public painless suicide machine on any given day through that entire process. I heard someone talking about how all these children raised without being spanked don’t know how to respect authority because the parents were being too lenient by not spanking them. BS. Those parents don’t have shit for pressure to raise their child with some sense of reality; it’s a wonderland that’s here so you can be logically corrupt and have no clue. You’re ability to raise a child who is a slothen pig is a selective luxury of a complacent society.
You are not required to have a child. You are certainly not required to spank a child; and you’re deluding yourself as to your motive if you think that to be the case.
There is a difference between a light quick spank to tell them what they did was wrong (not that I would condone that either) but I certainly think that anyone who has to hit their child with a belt to make a point is subhuman scum.
Corporal punishment is non-transparent, apparently.
Segueing away from Justhink, though, I was raised with infrequent spankings that were about a hundred times worse in the anticipation than in the actual execution. The only time I can actually remember my father hitting me with more force than was required to make a spanking effective was when I was 14, several years past the last spanking I ever got, and had gotten very smart-mouthed with my mother. I swear I didn’t even see him move before my glasses were across the room. And that was the last time I ever got hit by either of my parents. And lord, did I deserve it! And I think I turned out pretty good.
Can we take this to mean that when you are aged and going senile, and your children pay for your upkeep in a home, help you to use the toilet, prevent you from making a fool of yourself in public and assume legal liablity for you, you will have no objection to them using a belt to discipline you when needed?
Please note that I am not against corporal punishment - in fact I believe that it is an option that should be in the disciplinary arsenal of every parent, but it is the “… as she sees fit” part of your sentance that worries me.
My mother spanked with her bare hand. I will say that the spanking itself was not abusive. My aunt spanked any child in her care with a belt or other objects. I was never afraid to tell my mother if i had broken something, I was never afraid to tell her the truth, even when it made me look bad, because she was somewhat reasonable and the worst that would happen was that I’d be spanked or grounded, or sent to my room. and none of those were that bad. I was not intentionally destructive. In general my mother had little reason to disipline me. She did lose my respect for spanking me when my brother lied to her to get me in trouble. I lost respect for my father for a similar reason, but it was my step mother who lied those times.
My cousins lived in fear. Though she usually left no bruises, or other marks, my aunt was very good at causing pain, lasting pain. If my cousins broke something, they would hide it and lie about it if asked directly. They were also selfish nasty children and to this day all but the youngest ,whom they “spoiled” by not beating so much, have not had lasting relationships. They all still bicker and carp at each other when they are together.
It would seem that the name of this forum has been lost on some of the participants therein. “Great Debates,” with the emphasis on ‘debate,’ are not accomplished by either name-calling or irrelevant analogy.
As my high school debate teacher was fond of reminding us: “A gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied.”
So if I note while glancing in Diogenes the Cynic’s direction that any person who believes that hitting a child with a belt in all cases means the hitter is a subhuman piece of garbage is himself a subhuman piece of garbage, you can see that the purpose of debate is frustrated.
We may also summarily dismiss robertliguori’s seemingly earnest attempt at argument:
Children and parents are not equal. The child does not have the right to decide which mortgage refinancing offer to take either, yet we expect the child to respect the right of the parents to make that decision. The child does not have the right to decide the family must move to Minnesota, but must respect the right of the parents to make that decision.
It is utterly specious to make any sort of argument against corporal punishment by pointing out that the child has no right to inflict corporal punishment on the parent, since it is well-established that parents have many rights and responsibilities with respect to their minor child that are not reciprocal.
With the nonsense out of the way, I cannot help but note there seems to be a wide variety of conflicting study information available – some of which was linked above.
Apart from your personal conviction that spanking a child is either right or wrong, can anyone point to subjective, emperical data that you’re prepared to defend tooth and nail? leander’s offerings, for example, were interesting, but when they are presented with a hands-off sort of, “Make of this what you will,” it doesn’t exactly scream of vigorous advocacy.
Joe_Cool:
Sometimes children can act badly and it has nothign to do with the quality of their parents.
ALl children are different, donn’t say all parents of childrne who act badly are bad parents?
That sounds like where you are going with that.
Its not always the parents fault.
Some children behave great and have had abusive parents.
I have no children but I’m for spanking also, to be done when deemed necessary and in love. Today in some families, where spanking is not believed in you have children who are in control of their parents instead of vice versa. Parents cajoling and sweet talking and begging their kids to do what they want them to do. Throwing tantrums in public to force their parents to give in. I don’t think it’s love not to spank children.
If children are never spanked, punished, or disciplined in any way, they’ll just know they can do whatever they please and nothing will ever happen. That doesn’t prepare them well for the real world, in my humble opinion.
I also reiterate that Joe_Cool said beating was an important dietary supplement, which leads me to believe it would be done on a regular basis and also referred to hitting a child so hard they wouldn’t be able to sit down.
I was raised in a conservative christian household and was spanked exactly twice. Once was for running out in front of a car.
It wasn’t to teach me fear, or my place in the family hierarchy.
H4E seems to believe that the only alternative to spanking is “begging, cajoling, or sweet-talking.” It is sad that H4E and perhaps some other members of the pro-corporal punishment crowd see no way to demonstrate to children that consequences of poor behavior can be enforced without spanking. This is a fallacy of the undivided middle.
Furthermore, her contention that not spanking “does not prepare children for the real world” is illogical. When the threat of corporal punishment is lifted, which it is both in public school and in the real world, how does she think a child (or even an adult) will behave?
Anyone with even elementary knowledge of psychology knows that stimulus-response relationships in classical conditioning do not generalize. If you condition a child and then break the stimulus response relationship by ceasing to spank, there is no reason to assume that you can instantly repair the relationship by substituting a new punishment when spanking is no longer socially appropriate.
I actually agree with Justhink. If you must spank, you probably lack the tools to raise children creatively. In that case, perhaps you have no choice but to use violence. And for those of you who claim you have turned out well, I surmise that you turned out well despite being spanked, not because of it.
Not correct. The fallacy of the undivided middle would be to assume that it is theoretically impossible to have a middle - that the very elimination of one extreme automatically supports the other extreme. In this case, it is merely the observation of many people that the middle happens to be lacking, in many cases.
You appear to be missing the point, unless I am misunderstanding you. The point of spanking is not to prepare the way for other punishments. The point is to eliminate, or at least moderate, certain habits, so that by the time the child is older they will be somewhat used to acting properly and easier to continue to guide in that direction, using such means as are appropriate at that stage.
OK, I’ll grant that there are people out there whose personalities are such that they can accomplish the same ends without spanking. But for the vast majority of people it is useful. By chosing to not spank it does NOT mean that you automatically have “the tools to raise children creatively”. You may be just as lacking as the one who spanks, but chose to harm your child by adhering to your no-spank ideology.
once by my father, with his open palm, after my sister and i sat out on the top of the bow window. he did not out of discipline, but because we needed to know NEVER to do it again.
he then bought us dolls and sweets.
my dad, the sucker.
i was spanked, with a belt, once, on the btm, by my mother after i hit my sister over the head with a poker.
i was about 5, and had ignored the instructions to stop fighting with her.
EVERY SINGLE OTHER TIME THEY USED ANOTHER FORM OF DISCIPLINE.
i was given time-outs and sent to my room.
i was never grounded, or put to bed early, or had pocket money docked.
they thought those punishments were cruel.
for me, i’d have to agree, i’d rather have been spanked than grounded!
I don’t mind spanking/belts in some cases. The main thing is for it to be in the spirit of Pavlov. To teach a child not to play with electric sockets a smack on the hand will associate the socket with pain. To a child who you can’t explain to their understanding the reasons they must behave in a certain way you must make them associate that behaivior with pain to some extent, but more importantly fear. A child should never be struck out of anger. If you are mad, don’t hit the kid. Calm down and make it an example of crime and punishment rather than an expample of ho w to deal with rage.
In KY when I was a kid there was always a belt hanging around the sink. We had 10 or more kids running around between all of the cousins and that many kids can overwhem an adult. One quick grab of the belt sent the kids scattering and shut em up quick. The fear of the thing was used more often then the thing itself. Another form of punishment was getting hit by a “switch”. A switch is a stick. If you did something really bad you had to go outside and pick your own switch to get spanked with. If you picked a stick too small then the parent would go get a bigger one. So here you are outside trying to pick a stick big enough to satisfy the parent but small enough not to kill you. Sucked. Made me not want to do the shit anymore. Or at least not to get caught. . .
Either way I have no scars and I have no problems with discipline. Kids are out of controla and they need to be reigned in. They need to undestand accountability and punishment. Strike them firmly in furtherence of these goals and I don’t have a problem. Strike them out of rage and anger and I cannot support it. At that point it becomes abuse.
Kids can be disciplined physically without being abused. Alot of kids need the threat of pain to maintian respect of authority. I know I did.
That’s both semantic and irrelevant. H4E’s point was clear, was was JerseyDiamond’s. Spank or your child will not be prepared for real life, spank or your child will get his ass kicked at school. Whether they believe that a middle is theoretically impossible or merely does not exist is not germane to their arguments.
I think you are misunderstanding me, so I’ll clarify. A behavior (stimulus) is paired with a spanking (response). Mouthing off gets you a smack, for example. Let’s also assume, for what it’s worth, that this is essentially classical conditioning.
When the threat of punishment is lifted, which it will be either in school or in a stage of life when it is no longer appropriate to spank, you break the conditioning. Substituting another punishment in place of spanking is not so easy. Hence bad behaviors are not so easily moderated or eliminated altogether.
I disagree. In fact, I challenge anyone to imagine a situation in which a spanking solution is superior to a non-spanking solution assuming, for the moment, that both work.
If you can:
[ul]
[li]eliminate or moderate unwanted behavior[/li][li]instill the desired discipline[/li][li]create respect for consequences of undesirable action[/li][/ul]
…using a spanking or non-spanking method, which would you choose?
Personal experience means alot as every child is different. Those who are so against spanking a child that they seem to favor executing the parents would have been welcome to have a try at raising my stepson. 13 years of age and he’d been raised by a widowed mom since 3. Private school all his life and many relatives who loved and cared for him. Not poor or downtrodden in any way , comfortably middle class. When I married her he’d already become a drunkard, a pot-head, a chain-smoker, a pathalogical liar and a felony-burglar. I gave him LOTS of love and patience, prayer and talk. All sneered at and ignored. Finally I came home one day to find out that he’d threatened his much smaller mother and then shoved her into her room and pounded on the door screaming at her ubtil she was afraid of him. I’d like to know at this point what some of you other men would do at this stage. Police? already knew him by name. Juvinile court? nope. No room unless he’d stabbed someone. This was 2 years ago.
Not so. It is germane to whether you can refute them by calling their arguments a logical error, as you did.
Yeah, but the point is that by the time you have reached the age at which spanking is not appropriate, you will also have gotten out of the habit of mouthing off (to some extent or another) as a result of the earlier discipline.
I would also note that whereas punishment at earlier ages is somewhat dependent on simple conditioning, at later stages it is less dependent on conditioning and more dependent on the emerging ability to rationally understand cause and effect, so a conditioning analogy is not apt.
??? Your assumption is the very crux of the issue here.
But I would also point to one advantage of spanking in that it is over sooner than many alternatives, so a loving relationship can resume sooner.
