spanking is a viable disciplinary strategy when employed 1) as allowed by law 2) consistently and responsibly (with adequate processing before and after, ensuring that the child understand the logicality of the spanking -good luck with that one) 3) not out of anger, or desire for revenge, but in the spirit of discipline and for the good of the child (also, good luck with that one)
BUT
This is only relevant as the world is now. Our society remains dangerous and we still need to control our children absolutely lest they be harmed, although I think people being controled absolutely is part of the problem and what makes our as dangerous a place as it is.
Spanking hurts, no getting around that. If you feel you need to hurt your child in order to teach him/her self control, go for it (as described above). But I feel really sad for anyone who is that powerless as a parent and, well frankly, ignorant. Keep in mind that we as a society need you to have your child under control and if you have to spank him to do it, again, go for it.
But please be there at every waking moment of the child’s life to apply a spanking, because that’s how spanking works, it’s based on the disciplinarian and not the child. Go with your child to school (or at very least talk to the teacher daily to see if a whoopin’ is in order) Check in with every authority figure that your child interacts with frequently so that you can follow up with the some discipline. Remember, the most important thing is consistency if you want to use spanking as a viable parenting strategy.
A lot more work if you ask me, but ignorance usually is.
in short, spanking is kind of like fossil fuels; we use it knowing that it isn’t the way we should be, we know that eventually it will go away, but it’s so darned convenient that we just can’t stop.
A study from the University of California at Berkley (not known for it’s conservative slant) concludes "“When parents are loving and firm and communicate well with the child… the children are exceptionally competent and well adjusted, whether or not their parents spanked them as preschoolers.”
“She said that, in the absence of compelling evidence of harm, parental autonomy and family privacy should be protected.”
She found “correlations just as high, and sometimes higher, for total verbal punishment and harm to the child, as for total physical punishment and harm.”
That’s a ‘DUH’ to me. No one has argued that physical punnishment can’t be abusive. The reseach also talks about parents who don’t spank who still enter the ‘red zone.’
"Her study of spanking in middle-class, white families was undertaken in response to anti-spanking advocates who have claimed that physical punishment, by itself, has harmful psychological effects on children and hurts society as a whole.
These claims, Baumrind said, have not distinguished the effects of occasional mild-to-moderate spanking from more severe punishment, or taken into account such confounding factors as earlier child misbehavior and the effects of total child rearing patterns - from rejection, on one hand, to warmth and explanation, on the other"
There are abusive and non abusive ways to discipline children. This is regardless of whether you choose to spank or not. You can abusively spank. You can abusively use “verbal punnishment.” The problem is abuse, not the punnishment method.
You would think not, but in the link that Joe Cool provided at the beginning of the thread, there was this little ditty about the importance of “leaving stripes” when using the belt and how it is advocated in the bible. Can anyone please get the Proverbs 20:30 passage that the article referenced? I really have to know what exactly the bible says about beating a child until there are welts :mad: I really didn’t want to read the article but felt compelled, I’m really regreting it now.
I’m sure that most people who believe that spanking is an appropriate method of discipline have particular definitions of what a spanking is, which offenses merit a spanking, the age range in which spanking is appropriate and so on. But those definitions go all the way from one or two spankings for particularly dangerous things, like lowering your brother out a window, or a swat for a toddler running out into the street to spanking as the only punishment used for even the most minor offenses to spanking a child who’s not meeting the parent’s unrealistic expectation. like a 15 month old being spanked for wetting himself, to beating a child badly enough to require hospitalization. All of those parents will call what they do spanking, and in some cases the problem is as much the offense that’s being punished as the form of punishment. But somehow, I never hear of a 15 month old being given a time-out for wetting his pants, or see three year olds being given time-outs for getting a bit wild while waiting in a government office with nothing to do. I’ve heard of parents grounding kids for an excessively long time in a fit of anger, but that can be modified when the parent calms down.The parent who unintentionally crosses the line from spanking into beating in a fit of anger can’t modify it after calming down.It seems to me that spanking more easily becomes abusive than other forms of punishment. It may have more to do with which parents choose to spank than with spanking itself.
The conclusion I draw is that it’s possible to raise an “exceptionally competent and well-adjusted” child without the physical punishments, so surely that would be a more desirable method.
Yes Vanilla, you are right. That is all that matters to me. You are one smart cookie.
Although, I am not conceited, just secure.
Actually, the only thing that really mattered to me in that last post was the fact that my family and I are healthy. The other stuff can fade without a second thought. Everything else is just an added bonus.
Anyway, nope, not overly defensive at all. Not even a little defensive. Just trying to explain.
Also, child services will not be ringing my door bell. I kinda wish someone would so I can make them feel stupid.
I cannot argue with people who over exaggerate hysterically.
Well, I suspect that would work against you. The child can’t misbehave when he’s dead, but he can’t behave appropriately either.
My question is, where do you draw the line between discipline and cruelty?
Am I correct in assuming that the reason a belt or switch is preferable to an open hand is that it’s more painful? (If not, then what is the reason?)
If so, how do you know how much pain is too much? For example, you can buy remote-control shock collars for training dogs, which produce intense discomfort with no physical damage. How do you decide whether those are appropriate for disciplining children?
Thanks for noticing; I just had my talents re-honed last week. Incidentally, this reminds me of a joke:
Him: “Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”
Her: “A million? Yeah, I guess so.”
Him: “Here’s $20, want to go back to my place?”
Her: “Absolutely not! What kind of woman do you think I am?”
Him: “We’ve already established that, now we’re just haggling over the price.”
You have already established that you’re willing to inflict physical pain on someone you love in order to alter their behavior. I’m genuinely curious as to where you draw the line. Is there a level of physical pain which you would never inflict, even if it would produce no long-term damage?
You could say the same thing about non-physical punnishment.
Where do you draw the line on time-outs?
How do you decide how long is appropriate?
I’ve heard about people leaving their children locked in the closet for hours. How can you say this is not appropriate when you’ve said you’re willing to leave your child alone in their room for a few minutes?
Again, there is a HUGE difference between appropriate punnishment to instill discipline (be it time-out, removing priveledges, spankings) and ABUSE (beatings, locking the child up, etc)
Just for someone’s info, I have 3 small children. They are VERY rarely spanked. Much more often I use other methods.
The same thing was true with my parents. A few years ago, I told my dad that he was a horrible disciplinarian & he was shocked because we did turn out pretty ok. (I still doubt he understands what was wrong) but, as far as I’m concerned, the problem was not that we were spanked. Nor was it overwhelming fear (that some of the posters have mentioned). Nor was it not knowing what we did wrong. I knew what the rules were. I knew what the appropriate behavior was. I knew when I’d messed up. But I never had the slightest clue of what the punishment was going to be - it could be anywhere from not even mentioning it to a spanking with a belt, regardless of the nature or severity of the crime.
(Quite frankly, the punishments I still resent weren’t the spankings.) It is possible to discipline a child consistently and appropriately with and without spankings.
Indeed. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, in the hopes of actually receiving an answer to my questions.
Well, one must consider the child’s attention span.
If you banish him to his room for 5 minutes, he’s likely to spend most of that time thinking about what he did and about how much being on time-out sucks. If you banish him to his room for an hour, he’ll get distracted; then when you go to let him out, you’ll find him playing with his G.I. Joes and he won’t want to come out.
Another consideration is what you’re interrupting with the time-out. If he misbehaves while he’s watching his favorite TV show or playing with his friends, a 5 minute time-out will have much more of an impact than if he’s cleaning his room or doing homework.
However, the world of non-physical punishment is much broader than the world of physical punishment. When you’re inflicting physical pain, your only choices are “how hard?” and “how many?”, but there are all kinds of privileges you can revoke and restrictions you can lay down.
Locking a child in the closet for hours is a risk: kids need to eat and use the bathroom. Kids also get pissed off and you may not want to leave them unsupervised in that state; I know I put a few holes in the wall when I was banished to my room as a kid.
Even if it weren’t a risk to leave the kid unsupervised for that long, I can say there’s a length of time-out I would not use, because I feel it would stop being effective (see above). But I don’t believe there’s a law of diminishing returns for physical pain, and of course, there’s the argument “nature gave us a wide range of paid sensations; why make use of a small part and ignore the rest?”
Now it’s your turn. Assuming that no long-term harm would result, is there a level of physical pain which you would not inflict in order to change your child’s behavior?
No, you weren’t, because the (one) time I screwed up bad enough to warrant the use of Dad’s work belt, I was sore for about 30 minutes, but that was it. And yes, my father spanked me with a stiff leather work belt 5 or 6 times, and I seem to have avoided permanent psychological harm.
And jar, I’ve looked at that quote with the smiley several times, and I’m just not seeing what you are getting so distraught over. Maybe your life experiences give you a different viewpoint on it, but I don’t see where you get “regular beatings to instill fear and submission” from the use of “regular dietary supplement” to describe the occasional use of a belt to reinforce the severity of the punishment.
And just for the record, I asked my mother, who raised two well-adjusted children and was actually opposed to the use of a belt on me, and she even thought that a very firm spanking was justified in situations where the child was acting dangerously (getting into a gun cabinet unsupervised, for example).
My parents never left a mark on me.