When did I say that, Guin? Do you have any kids? If not then STFU.
I’m sorry, Guin that was too harsh.
No, I’m not saying every instance of slapping a hand or a butt is abusive. I’m saying it’s not necessary and that it can have negative consequences. I do think that hitting with a belt or any object which can leave a mark is abusive.
Oh for fucks sake. Smacking a child leads to changes in brain chemistry? :rolleyes:
Then we’re probably all fucked if we’ve been smacked more than once. Or are you talking about continuous belting there Diogenes?
Simply smacking a child does NOT equal ‘beating’ a child. Smacking a child continuously DOES raise the issue of whether the child is being abused. Can’t you see the distinction?
Repeated smacking, not occasional.
Still even in a best case scenario the smacking simply does no damage. There is no evidence at all that spanking is superior to non-violent forms of discipline, and it’s frequently inferior.
Spanking only works if the offense itself is extremely dangerous and memorable. I was spanked once after running into the street, and I learned not to run into the street.
But in any other situation, it is wrong. If the child doesn’t remember their offense, ALL they know is that you decided to beat them up. They’ll be scared, and they’ll hide anything from you that they think you might get mad about.
I remember countless times when I would try to block the door of my room against my dad, but he would overpower me. I would run and try to hide behind the bed, but I couldn’t quite fit. Then I would get hit extremely hard with a belt, over and over again. I have no idea what the offense was. Did I not clean my room? Not finish my dinner? I don’t remember. All I remember is getting hit, and hurting, and being scared.
Don’t make your kids feel like that.
Skid Row, you are a big fucking moron. How is it that someone can be so abyssmally stupid and truculent and remain alive? I tell you, people like you cause me to lose all faith in causality. I really hope you haven’t managed to reproduce; not because I think you are or would be a bad parent, but because the idea of your genes replicating themselves in the population at large reduces me to abject terror.
Moving on…once again, for all the hard-of-reading in this thread: (and I’ll use caps just so’s you know I’m serious) NO ONE IS ADVOCATING BEATING THEIR KIDS. ANY RATIONAL HUMAN KNOWS THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OCCASIONAL SMACK ON THE ASS AND CONSTANTLY HITTING YOUR CHILD.
What is so fucking hard about this concept? Damn.
Spanking your child causes them fear? You’re goddamned right it does. That’s the whole point- if a child can’t or won’t respond to reason, logic, or threats, then fear will have to do. Fear of running into traffic. Fear of grabbing burning objects. Fear of falling out a window.
Hamadryad is right. Getting air-conditioning or a new screen or a lock will not solve the problem. The kid has to learn to stay the hell off the roof. The world is full of windows. Can you stand guard by all of them until the kid learns not climb out?
The world is a harsh place, and if you don’t teach your children, then the world will. And it has no pity. Whose lessons do you want them to learn? We teach our children good values and moral responsibility because the world is by and large not a place where these things are easily learned. In fact, quite the opposite. And we teach our children that the ground is far away from the third story, that cars are heavy and move fast, and that all fires are hot. Do you want these lessons taught to them by a world that does not give repeated warnings or second chances? That will most certainly not hug them and give them a fresh juice-box to ease the sting of a slapped hand? The nature of the universe and society is such that we are punished for our mistakes. We learn fast that mistakes hurt. And the quick little pain of a smacked bottom is far preferrable to the other kind of mistake, which hurts much worse, and for much longer. (But if it’s a big enough mistake, the pain only lasts for a second.)
Spanking should not be the first recourse. But if all else fails, and you absolutely must stop that child from doing whatever it is they’re doing RIGHT NOW, where will you turn?
And Diogenes, you’ve (once again) badly embarassed yourself by blustering into a thread and spouting off ridiculous statements and poorly-researched “facts”. In future, please to try to have at least some idea of what the hell you’re talking about before you go shooting your mouth off. It’s just a lot less awkward for everyone involved.
Ratty, it is nice that you only physically hurt your children when they are in great danger. I can understand that.
But that is not the position being taken by the majority of people on your side of this argument.
Ratty, it is nice that you only physically hurt your children when they are in great danger. I can understand that.
But that is not the position being taken by the majority of people on your side of this argument.
Bravo, ratty, bravo.
Oh dear. :rolleyes:
Sorry…I really should have expanded upon that, because sometimes I have smacked my children when they were not in any danger, but just being annoying little shits.
About 15 years ago, we had a cat. A very sweet cat who loved children to the point of allowing them to hurt her. When kid # 3 got to toddling age, he thought it was great sport to pull Africa’s tail. Africa would just curl into a tighter ball wishing he would go away, but would never give him a quick whack with her paw. So that became my job…and whack him on the bum I did, and on the hand a second time until he got it through his head that hurting the cat is not ok. It’s not necessarily dangerous (although had Africa ever decided to retaliate, he might have been bitten and scratched), but there are other reasons why hurting animals is not cool. He was too young to understand an ethics lecture, so a smack sufficed until he was old enough to comprehend the issues involved.
Yes, the smack hurt. Yes, he did stop harrassing the cat. Am I a child-abuser? Heh.
I’m sorry, kambuckta, but if you prefer swatting your child over teaching him to respect animals then there’s really no hope.
It’s been said before, it’s a patience issue. If you had enough patience, you’d teach your child that pulling on the cat hurts it. It’s not an “ethics issue”, it’s as simple as telling the child that it hurts the cat. I remember learning that lesson when I was a toddler and we had a dog- and you know what, I never got spanked! Amazing!
Then again, if your child is AIMING to hurt the cat, that’s a whole different issue…
“Oh dear” indeed. Yes, it may be hard for you to believe, but some people smack their kids up even when they were not in great danger (i.e., the “running into the road” example that is given so often".
You and Ratty apparently do not do this, but you have to be blind not to see that many people not only do, but are defending this practice.
Oh! Okay. So at least Ratty doesn’t smack her kids when they aren’t in danger, but I can add you to the list of people who do.
Smacking a kid instead of teaching him/her that they are hurting the cat is just off the scale stupidity. Now you have a kid who doesn’t know why pulling on the cat is wrong, but who is full of resentment over the cat being the cause of the kid getting hurt. That cat better watch out when you aren’t around.
kambuckta, you did exactly what any reasonable human being would have done, and I’d be proud to call you “mom”. (Or “dad”, I don’t know your gender.) Good on ya.
Apparently this makes you a criminal. :rolleyes" But let’s be perfectly clear about this. What exactly did you do? Did you:
-
Keep on hitting the kid, possibly with the aid of some object?
-
Quickly and lightly slap your child after repeated warnings?
-
Keep explaining, lecturing, and “re-directing the behavior” of your child until the kid finally got bored and stopped or the cat lost all patience and savaged the child?
I’ve never met you, and for all I know you could be an axe-murderer, but I bet you a dollar I can guess which one you did.
What toddler on earth will understand a very stern lecture about animal rights and why we must all be kind to our fellow creatures? None. So you give the kid a little slap on the hand. And what does the kid learn? That mommy is an evil abusive woman and it’s okay to hit anyone we like? No. The kid learns that harassing the cat = pain. Since pain hurts, it’s probably a good idea to stop harassing the cat.
Of course, you should never hit your children in anger. It’s harder to control the situation, and your emotional state is not exactly conducive to learning. From everything I’ve done, seen, and read, it’s best to remain neutral in this situation. Don’t let the kid associate physical punishment with your anger. Just let him/her think that this is what happens to little children who bother kitties.
Now I know this is really going to endear me to the “children are tiny adults who just happen to lack reliable bladder control” crowd, but dealing with little kids amounts to quite a lot of calmly forcing your will on another living thing. If it were up to them, most toddlers would run around naked all day screaming and trying to eat every small object they happen across. It is up to you as a parent to teach them not to do this. How many times do you have to say “No” to a kid wearing a diaper on his head and trying to drink the Windex? How many times do you dial a wrong number before you try a different one? Sometimes the only thing that will get the message across in an effective manner is a swat on the butt.
Like CrazyCatLady, I was a little bastard child who thought “no” meant “keep on doing it, really, I secretly enjoy it”. A lecture? I would nod complacently, paying no attention whatsoever, my little mind concentrating instead on just how I could get into the cabinets under the sink. You know, the ones with all those neat bottles with the pretty colored fluid inside?Yelling didn’t work, because it was just loud noise. Grounding? Time-out? Please. But a smack on the hand or the butt stopped me cold. Threatening worked, because I knew that if I pushed it, that threat would be followed through. A stinging bottom does wonders for the old impulse-control. And did I fear my parents? No! I loved my parents! They were the source of all good things, like hugs and bedtime stories. But I sure feared doing things that would get me slapped. So I learned not to do them.
(At least, not when my parents were around to catch me at it, but this is really Advanced Level Parenting, and we’ll stick with the basics for now, okay?)
And I have to add this, because it got me thinking: what the fuck fucked-up irresponsible bastard of a parent does not discipline their kid for bothering animals? Because not only is it wrong, it’s fucking dangerous!
I was taught to always, always stay away from strange dogs running loose, and always, always ask the owner before I petted. To this day I remember my father’s words: “You go pettin’ strange dogs and one day you’ll pull back a bloody stump.” If an animal had ever bitten me (and none did, because in this case I followed the rules) my parents would have patched me up and calmed me down, and then said “See what happens when you don’t listen?”
(Incidentally to this debate, my parents were big believers in Teaching Through Horrifyingly Graphic Worst-Case Scenarios. It was educational and fun, and gave me a vocabulary the envy of most third-year medical students.)
Wow Nightime, it’s amazing what passes for reading comprehension on these boards sometimes. Tell me, did you not read “He was too young to understand an ethics lecture” or did you just ignore it?
ratty, what planet do you come from where you think that toddlers don’t understand what it means to hurt other things?
Are we reading the same thread? Once again, it is very nice that you never physically hurt your kids unless they are in danger, and even then it is only a quick and light slap. And I can understand why you would assume everyone else agrees with you on this.
But they clearly don’t. Do you leave marks on your kids when you “lightly slap” them?
And I am seeing repeated assertions that kids are extremely stupid, even dumber than dogs. This is blatantly untrue. Kids are very intelligent. They can and will learn through other methods than smacking them, if you are just willing to use a little effort instead of falling back on the “I’ll just hit them, that’ll teach 'em” method.
Becoming physically violent with your helpless children in non-dangerous situations is a sign of a lack of patience, creativity, and all around good parenting.