First, if you don’t believe me (or my sister) when we say that her students are hit by their parents, and that she therefore has a hard time disciplining them without corporal punishment, I can’t really respond to you, since that was the only point I made.
Second, you say that “good parenting” will solve the problems my sister is having in the classroom. That may be true, (though it also may be hard to come by given the population my sister teaches). Would good parenting involve corporal punishment?
I’m going to try to get my sister to come here to respond more fully, since she obviously knows a lot more about what’s going on in her classroom than I do.
Just so you know, teachers are mandated by law to report suspected child abuse. It’s not about being nosy, it’s about doing their job. I spent two years working with inner-city kids in a variety of settings, both in school and out of it, and let me tell you, if I saw kids with marks on them I didn’t have the slightest qualm about making it my business. The abuse of a child is a crime and it’s EVERYBODY’S God damn business.
And if I had heard a parent like Joe Cool joking about beating his children until they couldn’t sit down, I would have had CPS at his house THAT DAY. :mad:
I am absolutely convinced that the spankings I got as a child - which were infrequent, but which did, on several notable occasions, involve a belt - were ultimately beneficial to my upbringing.**
Yes, but exactly what did it teach you? That if you did something against the rules you would be physically punished for it? Exactly how was it beneficial to your upbringing? Can you give us insights of that child of many years ago rather than reflections of an adult many years past the event?
Just wanted to say that it is possible to effectively punish a child without laying a finger on them.
My mom told me, several times, the story about her father, his mother and The Football.
This would have been sometime in the 1910s. Grandpa (Alexander), who was ~12, and his brother (Caspar), who was ~10, had saved up to buy a football. The day they purchased it, they went out to get a game together. “Be back by supper,” said Great-Grandma (Katrin). “I mean it.”
Well, suppertime came. And went. Katrin and Great-Grandpa (?) had their supper. I don’t know what Katrin’s mood was like during the meal, but when Alexander and Caspar returned, Katrin held her hand out and Alexander sheepishly handed over The Football (probably thinking it was only going to be taken away temporarily).
My mom says Katrin “cut up” The Football, but I have this great image of the point of a butcher knife piercing it just once, with a dramatic pshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. At any rate, The Football was no more, and Alexander and Caspar were never again late for dinner, nor generally disobedient (much).
A paddling might have had some effect, but then they still would have had The Football. Losing The Football, however, hit them where they lived.
Rilchiam, are you arguing that you think it’s always possible to raise kids without spanking them?
Let’s be clear: Spanking is the nuclear option of parenting – it should be a possible repercussion of not listening, but it should never be employed lightly.
Foreclosing this option is raising a generation of undisciplined, obese, and rude kids. How many pit threads do we have about unimaginably rude kids? Or totally self-absorbed parents?
How many about parents who, rather than own up to their mistakes, threaten to sue or punch you – the person aggrieved? Don’t we think that’s – hmmm — a tiny bit related?
It’s also no wonder public school teachers take years to learn how to control their classroom… My mother teaches over at John Jay, so if you want stories, I got em…
Read the last line in my post again, Ace. I didn’t say “always”; I just recounted one incident where a non-spanking punishment brought positive consequences.
The non-spanking solution to that situation is to restrain the child. Toddlers hate to be restrained. You scoop the child up in your arms and pin her against your body while telling her NO. Then release her and try to distract her. If she heads back for the outlet, restrain her again. She’ll struggle to show she doesn’t like it. Make sure it’s unpleasant for her before you let her go.
You can make consequences for misbehavior unpleasant without hitting. Even some pro-spanking “experts” say that no one should hit a child under 2.
I think about what happens to me when I get hurt. My first reaction is anger. I can’t imagine my child would fel any different. I don’t want anger and fear to be my teaching tools. This is mighty difficult for me right now, as I have a toddler and he tests me daily. I have spanked him. I didn’t like the way it made me feel or howit made him react.
That said, I know that at this point in our knowledge about child development and discipline, this is a decision that many people believe should be left to individual families. I can live with that. However, it makes me uncomfortable to hear someone advocating hitting a baby to teach it something, and many of you agreeing that it’s okay.
Remember also that the “I turned out okay” argument isn’t very scientific. Not only is it anecdotal, but as far as I can tell, people mean “I am not an axe murderer.” Who is to say that spanking didn’t contribute to other problems you have? The fact that you’re not in jail for mass murder isn’t a compelling enough argument for some of us.
See, that was a big problem with my parents. They were not consistent. I never really knew what would get me punished and what wouldn’t. They set very few rules; they just expected me to know the right thing to do without being told, even if that knowing would have required a higher level of reasoning than most kids have at whatever age I was.
And their reactions weren’t consistent either. My mom actually admitted that she would refrain from punishing me for doing something wrong because she was in a “good mood”, or that the reason she’d blown a gasket over a minor transgression was that she’d been in a “bad mood”. So it wasn’t about doing the right thing; it was about keeping mommy happy. Which was impossible.
She also had this charming habit of letting things pile up and then going off on me for all of them at once. It wasn’t a problem on Wednesday when I ate the last peach; it wasn’t a problem on Thursday when I left a light on when I went to bed. But on Saturday, when I spilled orange juice, I had to hear about that, and the peach, and the light, all at once. My third strike, except she hadn’t made it clear that I’d used up strikes one and two.
OK, I know that some people think the lack of spanking can lead to undisciplined and rude kids – and that argument has been going on here. Fine. But obese? I’d love to see your rationale for that one…
Certainly I can tell you what I now remember thinking then, if that makes any sense.
I learned that there were some few issues of such critical importance that they motivated my dad to get the belt. As an example, one was my effort to lower my brother, tied around the waist with a sheet, from our second-story window. It wasn’t so much “The Rules,” as there really was no rule, as such, in our household concerning the lowering of family members via sheet from upper-story windows. But it was, obviously, a foolhardy and danerous thing to do.
I can easily remember several future instances in which a nascent plan to do something interesting that might also have put my brother at risk were cancelled at the conceptual stage, because I was afraid of getting the belt again. Oddly, the idea that these should be cancelled because I was risking my brother’s safety was an idea that didn’t really click until later - and in fairness, I wasn’t doing anything to him that I wasn’t also willing to do myself. (We had regularly dragged mattresses outside so we could jump from the roof of the porch to the ground in (relative) safety).
Hmmm. Well, Bricker Jr loves to be picked up and held tightly - he giggles, closes his eyes, and rubs his head aginst my chest when I do that… I’m afraid that even if most toddlers hate to be restrained, my son is an exception
Well, I agree that it’s anecdotal.
But I’m not sure what problems I have, nor how I might realistically attribute to spanking. I have a good job, paid-every-month credit cards, a nice home in the DC suburbs, and a happy marriage with a lovely and loving wife. Never so much as a misdemeanor criminal conviction in either the juvenile or adult system. Admittedly, I root for the Redskins, but it’s hard to see how spanking can be blamed for that. I’m plumper now than I was in high school, but I ran track and played football in high school, and I don’t do anything like that now, which is my theory as to how this middle-aged spread got to spreading. Again, I doubt spanking is a realistic demon to blame.
JerseyD: “My finace is handsome and I am attractive.”
Well, I guess thats all that matters to you.
Conceited?
Or just overly defensive?
If someone ever reports you for child abuse, will you tell them to get out and stop playing the parent?
Vanilla, does the thread say “diagnose whether my child is abused through the internet?” Any chance we can discuss the topic?
DavidB: Simple! One of the functions of overeating in youth is poor discipline, which you agree that bad parents fail to instill.
Rilchiam: That’s a good point – I agree with you about the need for consistent, immediate and commensurate punishment; people are imperfect, one of the reasons two-parent households do better and later-born children do better.
It would be nice if people had to be qualified before they could have kids, but that’s mostly a flight of fancy.
But does he like to have his arms pinned to his sides? I’m not talking about an affectionate hug; I mean a controlling hold where his freedom is taken away briefly.
For the record, this was a method taught to us when I was a teacher’s aide at a special education school where my mother teaches. It works very well for young, autistic children, to just hold them, arms crossed in front of them, pinned to their sides. It’s not done in a cuddly manner at all. In fact, we didn’t talk to them or try to ‘hug against them’ at all until they had calmed down.