Sure, Go Ahead And Smack The Kid: That'll Make Him Behave

The BBQ Pit
41

It was one thing when my parents smacked me, open-handed, once, when I was very young for a minor infraction.

It was another thing entirely when I was ten years old and my mother “gave me a clip on the ear” or slapped my face or beat me with a belt for a minor infraction. I was 10. I was reasonably mature for my age, and corporal punishment did nothing but build resentment, which spilled over into my late teens and early 20s. My mother and I have had to work to be “family” again, because I was so angry for the myriad of things she’d done to me. (But that’s another thread entirely.)

On the few occasions where my mother took away a privilege, or sent me to my room to cool down, I was much more likely to try to see things from her point of view, because I didn’t explode into this volcano of rage because she’d hit me.

My husband had a daughter who didn’t like to share when she was young. He told her that she did not have to share with her playmates, but she should not expect them to share with her if she wasn’t going to reciprocate. She thought about it and decided she would share. She may have been unusual for her age, but it was a better response (IMO) than spanking first and asking questions later.

42

Some great responses to my “analogy” which is really just a question I asked myself upon having my first kid. I was not hit as a kid and had to decide whether I thought hitting my son was OK. I know that most parents that were hit as children carry on the practice although some remember how they felt and give up the practice.

Of the people who had something to say I was amused by:

That must be why in my school days it was OK for teachers to cane me for misbehaving. They don’t do that any more.

So the less mentally able you are the more you deserve physical punishment. I wish I’d known that in my nursing days. I could have improved the behaviour of my intellectually handicapped patients in a flash.

You don’t have to go back all that far to find times where physical chastisement by authority figures was permitted in the workplace, the classroom and the home. Suggesting that someone question whether it would work in a modern workplace may seem like a poor analogy to you but it just seems like common sense to me.

43

If you replace ‘mentally’ with ‘morally’ I would agree.
Toddlers aren’t capable of understanding the real world consequences of their behaviors. I can tell my 2 year-old to stay away from the road because cars come by at high speeds and that the impact would result in severe injury or death and he will giggle at me and continue his march toward the road. Consistant swats on his diapered bottom accompanied by redirection and forceful tones bring about a change in his behavior: He immediately stops and looks at me when I tell him to come back up the yard, he pauses to consider the quick, tried and true consequences of disobedience, and he toddles back to the house. This behavior is greeted with big smiles and praise over his good decision. His 5 year-old brother, who also learned the simple and clear consequences of disobedience during his toddler years, no longer requires this lesson because he can understand some of the inherent dangers in his world. Morally, he is still motivated to choose correct behaviors based on a desire to receive rewards (praise) and avoid punishments (non-physical at this stage) but I now see a development of motivation by desire to please authority and feel like a ‘good boy’. He also has a fundamental understanding that disobedience isn’t tolerated, so even as he progresses toward conventional morality and the desire to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, I can be reasonably sure that our guidelines are followed even if he doesn’t understand the reason for all the guidelines. In other words, he’s safe and reasonably fit to go out in society.

44

How cool is that? Your reading comprehension abilities are so high you actually managed to find more in my post than I actually put into it. I never realised that my post was advocating physical abuse against children. I thought I was pointing out a flaw in a poor analogy. I bow before your godlike intellect.

Wait…that’s not it. What’s the phrase I’m looking for? Got it.

I am struck by your purposeful obtuseness and your intense stupidity.

Normally I try to be a calm and reasonable poster. This board has enough screaming monkeys to fill a million zoos. Your post has rendered me wholly enable of doing so. I mean, how in the holy fuck do you get what you think I said from what I actually said. You have to be some sort of new and rare form of colossal dipshit to think that I was advocating physical abuse in any way, shape, or form by stating that the minds of children and adults are different.

I’d really like an apology on this, but I’m doubting I’ll get it.

45

OK if I’m wrong I’m wrong. What did that post mean?

46

It meant that the way adults process information and the way children process information is different. Thusly, the way an adult is going to respond to getting hit by a boss is different from the way a child is going to respond to getting hit by a parent.

Simple as that and pretty much clear when I posted it the first time.

47

Sorry, I see what you mean now. I know adults and children have different capacities to accept information - I can give another adult a dirty look and communicate more than in a 10 minute talk with a child. It’s all politics really.

It never crossed my mind that the situations are analogous. As I said earlier I actually had the thought after my first son was born and thought about it in those terms.

My sincere apologies for misrepresenting your intentions and if my post is a poor analogy good on you for pointing that out.

48

Apology accepted.

Sorry about my comments. You caught me before my morning tea. There were a few other posters that caught your analogy too. Don’t forget to give them their due props. :smiley:

49

True, as my Chesterton quote implied. But I find it equally weak to discard the way people have always done it because a majority of recent psychologists say so.

Or to put it another way: on the one hand we have the religious and cultural traditions that produced our culture and on the other we have psychology. In just fifty years or so, we as a culture have replaced one with the other and invested psychologists with the authority to interpret the mystery of human nature and guide our lives that people once accorded preists. And so far, I’d have to say the results are mixed; I don’t see any indication people are any happier or psychologically healthier now than they were a century ago.

I wasn’t spanked much, nor do I plan to spank much should I ever find myself a parent. Nonetheless, it won’t be because of currently-popular intellectual trends, and it certainly won’t be because I reasoned that because “I don’t see how” a tradition works I’ll feel free to abandon it-- which was the thinking that I was responding to.

As always, YMMV.

50

First off, to be fair, I interpreted your post the same way don’t ask did, so maybe it was the way you phrased it.

Second, adults and children process information differently, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that they experience being struck in the same way – with pain and humiliation, and some desire to retaliate. If you know differently, please share (I don’t mean that in a snarky way).

Thirdly, if what you say is true – and I believe it is – then all the better reason to try to understand the child’s reasoning processes than resorting to hitting.

I have a good deal to say about this subject, but let me start with one anecdote:

Bobby was a “bad kid.” His parents were overly permissive, to the point of neglect, but when he acted up, they punished him good – often by wrapping their hands around his neck. The kid’s worst crime? He tried strangling his infant brother. Now, many parents would think that the solution is to “smack him until he learns respect.” But it was clear to smarter people that this kid was headed down a worse path. It was clear that he would be dead or in jail by the age of 16.

But Bobby got a lucky break. He was placed in a foster home with a woman who has devoted her life to child psychology. She absolutely does not believe in corporal punishment of any kind. She tries to speak to Bobby on his level, and she respects him not as property, but as a human being. She sets clear boundries, but enforces them only through empathy and verbal means, never physical means. It was, and continues to be, a challenge for her. And all the authorities said that even in the best of circumstances it was only a matter of time before this kid would crash and burn.

That was around Halloween. I met Bobby on Thanksgiving. Already he was a whole new kid. A slight discipline problem, but he’d learned some good social skills. By Easter he was the most well-behaved and delightful 2-year-old you could imagine. OK, chronologically he is 3, but he’s catching up really fast. His foster mom is something of a miracle worker.

51

For simple things, at elast where the consequences are dangerous, the application of unpleasant physical conditions is a good idea.

Believe me, it’s better for young kids to get a smack on the butt than to grab the hot stove. Granted, they’re learning the hard way either way, but one hard way is a lot harder than the other hard way.

52

You make it sound like there are only two alternatives. Why aren’t there more?

53

I have smacked my kids each once–and only once.

Daughter ran away from me in a parking lot-she was 18 months. She got a full swing smack on the backside thru a diaper. She was devastated, because she had never been hit.

#1 son was smacked for something similiar–early Alzheimer’s has set in and cannot remember! But is was safety related.

#2 son, at age 3, was smacked for running out into the street.

The only time that I can sanction physical punishment for children is when there is an imminent danger to their physical safety–and not all times, even then.

I see kids being told in the mall “stop yer cryin’ or I’ll give you summthin’ to cry about”. I see kids crying distress cries and being ignored in grocery stores. I see parents screaming at kids in the parking lots etc.

I don’t get it. Oh, I sympathize with the temptation to shriek and yell and lash out. (I will never understand the cold, calculated child abuse that we hear about, but I completely empathize with the gut rxn, the slap across the face because your button was pushed one too many times).

I don’t do it. I don’t see how Might Makes Right and indeed, have never understood the “because I’m you mother and I say so BS.” That may work if used for specific instances, but as a way of discipline, it sucks.

Our mouths were washed out with soap if we said a dirty word. We were spanked, across a knee–often both “victim” and “perp” were spanked–my parents saw no reason to get to the truth of things (and in their defense, the truth is damn elusive when it comes to kids and broken lamps). There was a paddle that hung on the wall behind the principal’s desk–I doubt now that it was ever used, but served as a deterrent for most. I said that I would not parent that way and I haven’t. Is it harder to sit and talk, to design loss of privilege contracts, to allow older kids a say in their own discipline? Yes, it is, but worth it, to me.

I also don’t understand the “we’ve done this for millenia and it’s worked” argument. That was true of the Earth being flat, too.

54

In any really crucial situation, there are never more than two alternatives. It’s the great fallacy of true believers everywhere.

55

tdn, I posted one sentence that I thought was pretty clear, nothing to do with hitting. If you think it was the way I phrased it, please point out where the error lies. I am really really really puzzled by this interpretation. :confused:

As for the mindset question, I think it really depends on how you view the person. For most children, an adult is a person of authority. Parents are the ultimate authority. Getting hit by a parent is akin to getting godsmacked.

For an adult, most other adults are peers, not authority figures and never as much of one as a parent.

Now most of my reading has been about the adult brain and not the more youthful incarnation. I can’t get in to the mechanics of how the brains are different. Maybe if Hentor the Barbarian gets around to a vanity search he could answer better.

And as far as spanking and the like go, maybe we should all agree that YMMV. Personally, spankings never worked on me. It only made me angry and more likely to redo what had gotten me in trouble in the first place. My daughter, however, has responded differently than me on the few occasions her behind has seen a slap (very lightly and administered by her mom. We’re very careful about this sort of thing). There are simply to many variables to lump this into “All hitting of children of any kind is bad/good.”

56

This may make me sound hysterical, but I tend to see imminent danger to the physical safety of a toddler all over the place.

They have no sense of danger.
They lack the experience to understand real-world consequences.
They can’t make value judgments about the relative importance of misbehaviors.
They are agile and spry and can outrun me in short bursts.
Their world isn’t baby-proofed regardless of how safe I make my own home.

You concede that physical punishment is acceptable in cases of danger, but let’s not pretend that that’s effective teaching. Rather just a chaotic and confusing parental reaction to a situation the child can’t possibly comprehend.

I suggest that punishment (be it physical or otherwise) need only be applied for one thing: Disobedience. Kind of the way “don’t be a jerk” covers the way we conduct ourselves here, I find that “don’t be disobedient” pretty much covers it for young children. And I apply it evenly, regardless of the perceived danger involved in the act.

For example:
I let my 2 year-old know that I expect him not to cross a line in the yard which leads to the road.
I also let him know that I expect him not to eat out of the dog’s dish.

The consequence of disobedience of the first expectation is dire.
Not so much for the second.

But if I expect him to obey me when it counts, I have to expect him to obey me when the only consequence is the consumption of yummy kibble, so the parent-imposed consequence is the same for both. To do otherwise, or to make a heirarchy of expectations…some important and some not, would confuse any young child. How can we ever expect them to take responsibility for their own behavior choices when we set up a system they can’t possibly understand?

57

Then again, how do you know you’re not training them not to understand it later?

58

farmwoman --I dont’ understand your post at all.

I think we see things the same way. No, a toddler has no concept of danger etc. Of course not.

I don’t see why the defensiveness? Are you advocating slapping said toddler for eating out of the dog’s dish? I doubt it.

I believe in talking to kids, to teaching them ( I completely agree that spanking is no way to teach), to actually overseeing them in their activities while they are little and by being one nosey parent to teens. So much potential danger can be averted by the presence of a watchful adult. Accidents do happen and sometimes tragically–I am not talking about that. I am talking about the use of slaps and spanks as knee jerk rxns to “misbehavior”.

Take the kid and the stove example. If kid does (and even kid doesn’t) show an interest in the flames on the stove–time for teaching “hot”–bring their hand near it, stating “hot” over and over again in serious voice etc. It works.
For high places with low railings–that technique is not gonna work–but a “stay with Mommy/Daddy” and hold my hand/holding child up and away from ledge etc will work.

What are you arguing? Are you stating that you support spanking for toddlers for all the reasons you listed re: danger? I cannot believe that.

Color me clueless.

I did post to express my dismay re: the violence I see against kids every day in my daily round. It’s so common, it is seen as business as usual. IMO, it’s indefensible. Kids need clear expectations and limits–it’s a fucking hard job to be a parent, and noone does the job perfectly. To me, with all the help from parents books out there, the TV shows, the programs via churches, synagogues etc–I am puzzled that more parents don’t actually try to learn how to do a better job. I think you and I would agree that “giving you summthin’ to cry about” is lousy parenting.

59

Actually, in your given example, it would be better for them to touch a hot stove (assuming it’s not so hot that it would cause permenant damage) as they will learn to immediately associate burning with the stove, whereas a spanking merely teaches them not to touch the stove when mommie and daddy are paying attention.

That being said, there are clearly some situations (like running out into the street) in which a smack to the bottom is necessary to get the child’s attention to the severity of the matter. But correcting more complex behaviors in children old enough to speak and reason is generally beyond the application of a simple physical stimulus.

Stranger

60

Sorry if I’m not making myself clear, and if you’re reading any defensiveness in my post, there must be a miscommunication. :slight_smile: We certainly agree on more than we disagree, I’m sure, but my post was in response to the sanctioning of physical punishments in situations of danger only. I believe that consitency is the key to effective discipline: Consistency in expectations and consistency in consequences. A young child has no way of distinguishing between the seriousness of ‘don’t eat out of the dog dish’ and ‘don’t go into the road’. While we can say that one deserves a different reaction than the other based on the circumstances, the act of disobedience in each case is the same for the child.

You’re probably not the only adult to raise an eyebrow at this, but it’s my experience that children disciplined this way have no problem understanding the philosophy. When my older child was playing airplane with his fork at the table, he was asked to knock it off. When he disobeyed and spilled his milk, he lost an evening privilege. An observing adult may think it’s kinda harsh to punish a kid for spilling his milk, but when I asked him later why he wasn’t allowed to _______(fill in the blank with lost privilege) he said ‘because I didn’t stop playing with my food when I was told to.’ demonstrating that he has no problem understanding the difference between spilling milk on accident and willfully disobeying a parental command.

So yes, the child who eats the dog food right after being told to get away from the dish is punished in the same way the child who runs into the road after being told to come back. It may not make much sense to us logical adults, but I believe it makes perfect sense to a toddler.

Hope that makes it more clear.