Your children are people!

The BBQ Pit
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It’s ironic that the most abusive person in this thread thinks spanking is an atrocity. You would think with that belief would come the understanding that words can be just as damaging as fists, if not more. Throughout this thread, he has brandished insults in a combative, inflammatory verbally violent way. Instead of helping his cause with a peaceful yet persuasive message, he chooses to inflict shame and anger upon those who disagree with him.

Skid Row, if you don’t call abortionists “baby-killers” because doing so hurts your credibility, why wouldn’t you apply the same brilliant logic to your anti-spanking cause? I fail to understand why in one post you pointed out your dislike of political hyperpoble in the pro-life situation. but then continued to spout that spankers are criminal child beaters. What does the word inconsistent mean to you?

If you think it is heinous to equate a leering dirty old man with a back-alley rapist, why do you throw spankers in the same category as cold-hearted child beaters? Again, you’re not showing yourself to be consistent.

If you think even a swat across the ass is morally indefensible and criminal, what do you think of verbal abuse? You seem quite adept at dishing it out. Or are we supposed to assume your venom is only reserved for adults? Why discriminate, if that’s the case?

If you can answer my questions without deliberately fucking up my name or resorting to any other juvenile offenses, then maybe I won’t participate in the pile-on in your Pit thread.

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Skid Row, CHILL.

Lynn
For the Straight Dope

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Skid Row I AM home so bite me!

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It seems to me there are several people against spankings who aren’t parents. When I was younger I used to always say “I will NEVER spank my child”

That changed after I became a parent.

I am lucky to have a daughter who, for 99% of the time, has been a real doll. She is very intelligent, reasons well, is mostly well behaved, and never really had too many problems working out right from wrong. After talking with other parents and seeing their little “bundles of joy”, I feel VERY lucky.

That said, I have spanked my daughter on more then one occasion. I am not a child abuser and for anyone who dare call me that better back the statement up with a visit to my home with Child Protective Services.

I consider myself a fair parent. I will take every measure to give my daughter a chance to right her ways herself. There was a course of about a year when my daughter became rebellious and refused to respond to time outs or other punishments. This is when I had to resort to a few swats on the butt. I think she was about 6 at the time.

In the past, my methods of punishments consisted of the following (in order).

  1. Tell her not to do that and explain why.

  2. Tell her again why what she is doing is wrong.

  3. Tell her “we can do this the easy way or the hard way”. This was the most effective line I have ever learned. This gives her a very good opportunity to fix what she is doing without losing face. It becomes HER choice to decide how to handle the problem.

  4. If the problem continues, she gets a time out or “thinking time” to consider what she’s doing.

  5. Very rarely did the problem continue to this stage, but if it did she might lose TV time or a toy for the day or something like that.

  6. If it still continued, I assure her “the hard way” is no longer a time out but a spanking.

  7. At this point a spanking was in order. A spanking consisted of her going to her room and waiting for me to come in and give her a spanking. I would wait about 10 minutes before I went in just to give her time to think about what brought her to this point. The spanking was always with my hand, on her butt, and not very hard. Because we had gotten to this point she was more afraid of the pain a spanking might bring.

I could have spanked her with a feather and she would have wailed like I smacked her with a 2x4.
The only other physical punishment I’ve ever done was a hard pinch to her arm. This was effective in places like a mall where you really couldn’t give a spanking. The pinch was hard enough to get her attention without causing any real pain and followed with a promise “the next one will be harder and WILL hurt”. I never had to resort to the next one.

All punishment was followed with a short talk on what can be done to improve the situation. I figure what good is a random punishment without the child being asked to realize the situation and come up with a way on how they can improve whatever needs improving.

Someone mentioned a child messing with a cat. My daughter had a brief time in her life where she didn’t realize the cat was anything more then a stuffed animal that managed to walk. In these few weeks I found her pulling the cat by the tail, pulling the cats arms, things like that. I tried to explain the cat is a living animal and feels pain like you or I. This didn’t sink in until the one day I caught her poking the cat with a small stick. I called my daughter over and had her give me the stick. I gave her three or four light pokes with it and asked her how it felt. She cried and said she didn’t like it because it scared her. I said “now you know how the cat feels”. She ran over to the cat and spent the next hour petting and talking to her. I could tell she felt really bad and was doing everything she could to make it up to the cat. She never pestered the cat, or any animal again.

She’s 12 now and we pretty much talk our way though any problem that might happen. When that doesn’t work we suspend phone or computer privileges. A pre-teen without a telephone is a very punished pre-teen. Heh heh. It works like a charm.

My daughter is well adjusted, does well in school, is on the honour role, has very good relationships with her friends. I think she is growing into a very solid, stable young woman. And that is my job as a parent. It is my responsibility to train and teach this child the basis of what is right and wrong. Actually not teach her all that is right and wrong but teach her the ability to reason what is right and wrong because this will mean more in the long run. I think that is a problem most parents in parenting. They give a child a spanking because the kid drew on the walls with crayons. The child was told it was a bad thing to do and was punished for it. The child never has it explained WHY it was wrong. Later, when they kick the fence boards out of the fence they are scolded and punished again. If the child is taught in the first place it is wrong to damage things they might think twice before they use the “good scissors” on the new couch or put drinking glasses in the garbage disposal.

So yes. I’ve spanked on occasion and I feel my daughter has not suffered any ill effects from it because it was controlled, humane and served a purpose. .

For those that beat their children with belts until they bleed, that is child abuse. It goes beyond teaching a child what is right and wrong.

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I really think that it’s the methodology rather than the utensil that makes it abuse.

My mom NEVER just hauled off and hit us. She’d warn, and then we would enter spanking time.

She did use utensils, like wooden spoons, but she always ran through questions about why it had come to this, why it was wrong/dangerous, etc. I don’t think any of the four of us ever resented the way she did it. We never feared her as a person.

My dad, though, sometimes (rarely) just started smacking. This caused fear, even though it was just with a hand. I consider this much more to be abuse.

If not for the fear of spankings, I don’t know what we would have gotten into.