For or against?
Sme friends of mine say they will get the switch out and the kids behave. They say they never have to use it anymore.
My other friend says she whacks her son with a belt.
I don’t agree with this.
Does it not teach the kids that violence is okay if someone isn’t doing what they are supposed to be doing?
I have no desire to physically hurt my son.
When I had spanked him in the past, he told me to do it again(he’s weird…)
Any parents out here know if spankign truly works, or is there a better way?
I’m not a parent, but I have spent the last six years in intensive child-care watching my two brothers (ages 6 and 3; I’m 20, and both my parents work full time).
I don’t like spanking per se, since to get one’s point across with it, one hass to hit the child on the bottom with far too much force. In certain circumstances, however, some very light corporal punishment is called for. Last night, for example, on the way back from the store my 3 year old brother ran in to the intersection of a busy Manhattan street. Not just the street, the goddamn intersection. I yanked him back as quickly as I could and gave him a decent open-handed rap on the top of the head. It’s best that he associates unpleasantness with running out in to the street. Now, this is all dependent on the child. With the 6 year old, I may have been able to explain it to him when he was 3. Evan (3) just isn’t as mature at this age.
For lesser (but still considerable) offenses, a very light rap on the head, or quick tug on the hair, or a light pinch can be used to get the kid’s attention. Again, these should all be very light, and should only sting for a split-second, so as to get the child’s attention.
Sure. The two times I had physical punishment done to me as a kid, I can tell you I remembered it and did NOT do what caused the beatings.
You use it as a last resort and it’s okay. You start smacking your kids for things like being five minutes for dinner, then you have problems which can be even worse than a spoiled kid who gets away with murder.
First, the principle I adhere to.
Spanking? No. Hitting, or beating? Never.
If all else failed, why would spanking succeed? Only because it instills fear (it did in me.) I cannot imagine instilling fear in my daughter.
It’s the easy way out. It’s easy to use, and it even seems to work. But it’s unnecessary, and wrong.
One common “argument” often heard is “I am against spanking in principle, but sometimes she just wouldn’t listen, no matter what I do; she just drives me nuts!” Well, guess what, sometimes the adults around us don’t listen, no matter what we do. If I don’t hit the adults who drive me nuts, why do I hit my child?
Now, a counter-argument by example: Once, when I was around seven or eight years old, I took a walk on the outside of our living room window, without any attachment whatsoever that could prevent me from falling. Our appartment was on the 6th floor. It provided great entertainment to all my buddies on the ground; and it still makes my hands sweat every time I remember about it. I survived purely by chance.
My parents never found out. If they had, I wouldn’t hold it against them if they had given me the mother of all spankings.
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Morally speaking sometimes it is ok to use violence if someone is doing something wrong.
Spanking alone will do very little good I think.
Marc
My ex (and one of the many excellent reasons he’s my ex) believed in spankings. I believed in assorted other “consequences” usually related to the offense (for example right now, at 16, he’s broken his “telephone” rule, and now lost telephone priveleges for a while)
so, we’d have the following kind of thing happen: I’d tell him what our son was up to, both good things and naughty things. He’d respond on the naughty things: “well, I’ll have to give him a spanking when I see him next” and sometimes, he’d forget and say, “well, next time then” usually by that time he’d forget but geez.
and, if you asked my son about it, (both at the time and now), he says he hated my punishments more 'cause they lasted longer and he’d have to think about it - the spanking would be over with in a short time, but the “no playing with GI Joes” would last several days. I found it more effective.
besides, when you hear folks say “sometimes the kid just won’t listen and I get so angry” what’s really going on is the parents lack of self control, vs. the desire to get a lesson taught. just MHO, thanks.
The problem with spanking is that the punishment doesn’t generally fit the crime. If you spank your child (or otherwise communicate your displeasure physically), they will generally learn the lesson: don’t do that because it makes (insert adult here) very, very, very angry. Usually when people lose control it’s because the child has endangered him/herself and terrified the adult, who then wants to make the lesson “stick.” And it does stick, but not necessarily the lesson you want to get across ie. that was deathly dangerous. All they understand is you were MAD, not necessarily why.
That’s why it’s important to talk after the episode, whatever it was, even if you do lose your temper and do something physical. Make sure the child understands what happened and why, inasmuch as they are capable.
Never, never, never spank in anger. It is supposed to be ‘dicipline’, so do it in a diciplined manner. Doing it as a snap decision is almost never good.
Be very formal about it, perhaps by making time for it. Make sure it is appropriate to the transgression, and ** make very sure that the child did indeed committed the ttransgression**. Make sure your child knows why you are doing it. Spank the child while suppressing emotion, but if you have to emote, cry.
This is one of those great debates that will never be fully answered. There was a thread sometime back that dealt with this. (I can’t seem to locate it at the moment).
Some were for it for various reasons and others were against it of course.
I personally do believe in it to a certain extent. We did spank my oldest daughter and still do on a very rare occasion. The older she gets (she is 3 1/2 now) the less we need to spank her because the more she understands why she is being punished.
Example: Yesterday she cut her hair, my wife had been watching her and went to check on our baby and when she came back she noticed something was different and realized that she had cut her hair. My wife did not spank her, she put her on scissor restriction (forever, this is the second time she has cut her hair) and no TV for the rest of the day.
When she was younger though, she could not associate no TV with punishment, so a pop on the behind was used.
I was spanked as a child and I never associated violence with the spanking and it caused me to think twice before I did something that my father or mother had told me not to do.
Jeffery
I made my case against spanking as coherently as I could manage the last time the subject came up.
Essentially, my position is that given the absence of any concrete evidence that spanking is an effective means of discipline, I’d prefer to see parents use other strategies that are more likely to result in the desired outcome (i.e., better-behaved children).
We never spanked any of our 3 kids. We found that waving the gun around was much more effective!
Actually we wacked them whenever they needed it! I’ve observed that kids who aren’t spanked are real assholes and grow up to be shitheads (yes, I mean YOUR kid! Your opinion doesn’t count because you can’t be objective about you own kids!) I would pay any price if my dopey boss would beat the hell out of his little pricks just once! He brings them to the office on saturdays and they are the worst behaved, meanes little @#$%^! I’ve ever seen! All he says to them is “no, no, Tylor”, and tries that “time out” nonsense!
Smack 'em!!!
Spanking does not teach violence! It teaches kids that there is always someone bigger and touger than you, so behave! (A good lesson for a kid who hits other kids is for an adult to beat him in front of the other children while they laugh and clap! The pain and embarrassment puts an end to bullying pretty quick!)
Show me a kid who is mean, misbehaving, or just plain rotten, and I’ll show you a kid who never got spanked!
I love my kids more than life itself…
Our almost three year old daughter got a light swat on the behind today after she dropped a book on her baby sister. She had been asked not to take the books off the shelf and was supposed to be putting them away.
She screamed pretty loudly and screamed even louder when she was put on time out. She got timed out because of this and because she refused to put the books away or apologize to her sister.
Once the screaming stopped and her time out ended she helped put the books away. She couldn’t even look at her sister without breaking into tears for quite some time.
Around here children will get a swat if they fail to listen to their parents. I used to take my daughters hand in mine and hit my own hand whenever she got into things she wasn’t supposed to play with. I never hit her hand but the effect on her was the same.
People tell us we have very well behaved children and spankings are really a rare thing around here. My daughter understands that whan I start counting 1 2 3 4 5 she had better listen or it will be the time out chair for her. The boys who are older usually know better than to be asked twice to do something. We use a lot of positive reinforcements for the things they do and this works better than punishment. It is punishment enough to not receive a certain reward.
There are still going to be the occasional swats on the behind…
My mother did not spank us often, but she did spank us. It did not teach us that violence is OK. None of us sibs think that. It taught us that we had crossed a line in our behaviour that was unacceptable.
As a child when I was beaten, and it was often, I would resolve to get my revenge for it.
If I got another beating I would up the stakes.
I was quite prepared to go as far as it took.
I did my absolute best to make the care workers lives in the home a miserable experience and I do not regret it one bit.
Did I learn not to do certain things ? - far from it - it merely provided me with justfication for carrying out my next act of disobedience.
When the assholes that ran the place left me alone their lives got a whole lot easier.
Being hammered for every infraction however slight was acceptable to me, I got so that I did not care but the staff ended up taking plenty of days off sick.
The final straw with one who routinely thought that humiliation and physical abuse were the way to raise kids was when I tried to strangle her.Once I realised that I had her in my power rather than the other way round the magic spell of adult respect based on violence was broken .I made the choice to let her go and she knew it.
She never gave me any crap after that.
This no doubt makes me seem utterly horrible as a child but all I’m trying to do is to show that a child does not always have the logic of cause and effect the adults.What you might see as discipline could be understood by the child rather differantly.
My position was justified, many of the kids in the homes I was in were sexually abused though I did not know that at the time and many of those same kids ended up on life’s scrapheap.
Many parents simply aim to hurt their children rather than try to teach a lesson.
The best way is to build up the childs understanding of action and consequence and that includes the effect on other people, all a child learns when beaten is that it hurts and once that becomes normality then the parent has no effective sanction.
While I don’t really see the harm in a little swat on the butt if necessary, once in awhile, I believe that there are other more positive ways to get the child to behave. With my kids, they were never spanked. Once it awhile they would get a single swat. Most of the time, if they did something “bad”, I would make them stand in the corner with their nose up against the wall for 10 or 15 minutes. Did wonders.
I am definitely against beatings. And I believe that if the swat, or if the prefered term is spanking, is to be done at all, it should never be done with anything other than the open hand. Never a belt or stick or fist. That is not a spanking, it is just plain abuse. IMHO.
My dad used to spank me when I was younger. I think; my memories aren’t clear. What I do remember is what he (once in a great while) did to me later.
Jeez, after that self disclosure I forgot to post my belief. I suppose when the child is too young even to grasp that what they’re doing oughtn’t to be done, a MINOR swat is ok, if they really won’t understand any other means of correction. But for an older child - never. Trust me, that child will remember - to be afraid of his parents, and not much else. And then when you go and tell them you love them after beating them up and humiliating them, they will never believe any such statement from you again.
I and many other dopers were not spanked, and turned out just fine. As a general rule, psychological studies show that spanked children are no better behaving (and are often worse, throughout all their lives) than children who are not spanked.
Or it teaches that if you are the biggest and toughest around, you can physically harm weaker people if they annoy you. After all, if spanking taught you not to hit other people, children who were spanked would never hit their children.
I’m afraid that that theory is not supported by the statistics. In one study, only 5% of juvenile delinquents had moderate to rare physical punishment (none had no physical punishment). The other 95% had severe to extreme physical punishment. Most other studies I have seen bear this out; I would be highly surprised if a significant percentage of violent criminals were never physically punished.
You do not need to spank to discipline your child well. I am concerned that some parents see spanking as an “easy” way to discipline; certainly hitting your child immediately gets their attention. But does it really teach them discipline? It does not seem to have the desired results in discouraging anti-social and aggresive behavior, and many parents seem to spank because they are angry at their child, not as a cool decision of discipline. If spanking does not seem to be the most effective way to raise a child, why on earth would you want to do it? I mean, who would actually want to hit their child?
There will be tons of arguements for and against. Each with their own justification or lack thereof :). These are MY rules after raising 5 kids and now starting on the grands:
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Never strike a child in anger!
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Never strike with your own hand. Use a light plastic flyswatter or plastic paint stirrer (these are my preferenses) or something else that will sting only.
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The child must be made to understand that the punishment is not because he/she is bad but because the actions were bad. And that punishment will eventually follow a bad choice of actions.
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BE CONSISTANT!!! Anything less will only confuse the child and send a mixed message.
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Follow through with threats swiftly and surely (although I will admit that with some [notes the use of SOME] of the anti-abuse whackos, if you do as I suggest in public, you may find yourself in jail and your kid a ward of the state).
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Love the child. Be sure most of all to do this. The discipline is used to prevent the reoccurance of unwanted actions. BIG NOTE: Pay attention to your child. DO NOT let bad actions merely be your childs only means of gaining attention, even angry attention, from you.
Be blessed and use the swatter.
Will an occasional swat on the butt scar a child for life? I think not; kids are more resilient than we give them credit for.
That being said, I do not spank my kids. Spanking is easy. Spanking brings great short-term results. However, my parenthood motto is that it’s really not important how well-behaved my kids are when they’re kids; what matters is what sort of adults they turn out to be. (Jeffrey Dahmer was a good kid- does that matter now?)
For example, the only method of discipline employed in my husband’s family when he was a child was regular beatings for any infraction. In his parents’ presence, he was an ideal child. However, he says that his main concern was not to behave well or to do what was “right”, but to avoid detection. He was basically taught that what was most important was simply not getting caught.
Is he mentally disturbed because of the beatings? No. Could he have been a better, more mature, more moral young man if his parents had used another method of discipline? I think so.
In our house, we feel it’s important to learn to settle disputes without resorting to physical violence. Spanking doesn’t teach problem-solving skills or moral integrity: it teaches children “the bigger, stronger, more aggressive person wins”. I will never forget the time I saw a mother who was having lunch in a restaurant with her little boy (about 3 years old) and her friend. She started beating her child about the head. “You don’t hit people!” she shrieked at him. (WHAP! WHAP!) “Never, ever, hit people!” (WHAP, WHAP!) What the hell is that?!?
Abstaining from spanking should not be interpreted as lack of discipline. Discipline is absolutely necessary. There are many ways to discipline a child, and a caring parent takes the time to select the method that works best for the individual child. My best friend, Jeni, had a foster child for a couple of years. The boy’s mother was a crack whore who beat the little boy mercilessly. Though Jeni has no qualms with spanking, she found that this method was completely ineffective with this child. He’d been beaten so severely that a swat on the butt, or even a full-blown spanking, had no effect on him at all. Jeni discovered that sitting him in the corner with a quarter between his nose and the wall worked every time. Under her loving direction and gentle discipline, he became a well-behaved and affectionate child. (She tried to adopt him, but his mother “reformed” herself and took him back.)
Despite my goal (to mold my children into moral and decent adults, even at the sake of forgoing robotic obedience in the here-and-now) they are well-behaved. Everywhere they go, I am constantly getting praise for how good they are, from my friends and acquaintances to their teachers to the neighbors. It takes more time and effort to not spank, but I think the rewards are well worth it.