posted October 11, 2012 04:01 PM            

You're fooling yourselves if you think spanking isn't hitting.

Spanking, the kind that those of you condoning it, are talking about, has to be hard enough to hurt and scare for it to have the effect you all think is so desirable. That is hitting. That is abuse. Hitting is wrong. It's unacceptable, antisocial, cruel behaviour. If we don't accept kids hitting each other, or adults hitting each other, why do we accept adults hitting kids? I don't accept it, I think it's criminal and disgusting and I don't wish to extend the courtesy of politeness to people that think hitting kids teaches them anything but to be violent.

If you saw a husband slap his wife on the ass with a paddle in public in anger because he didn't like her behaviour, would you think that's ok? Probably not, it's a misuse of power and degrading. If your boss, your superior, thought you weren't conducting yourself properly and smacked your head, would that be ok? No? But it's okay for him to do it to his kid, someone one-eighth his size, defenseless and not yet capable of controlling all their urges or emotion? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Does fear make you a good person? Does it really? Think about that. Do you function at your best when you fear physical threat and humiliation? Well, anyone who has any authority on psychology of children can tell you, it does nothing but harm.

I'm so repulsed by people defending spanking on here and talking about children like worthless little nuisances, that I will close this window in my browser now and never return. I don't want to discuss any topic with people who think it's a good thing to hit children.

posted October 11, 2012 04:15 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by redshift:
I don't think people advocating hitting children, (no matter how lightly) are entitled to respectfully have their opinion.

You're fooling yourselves if you think spanking isn't hitting.

Spanking, the kind that those of you condoning it, are talking about, has to be hard enough to hurt and scare for it to have the effect you all think is so desirable. That is hitting. That is abuse. Hitting is wrong. It's unacceptable, antisocial, cruel behaviour. If we don't accept kids hitting each other, or adults hitting each other, why do we accept adults hitting kids? I don't accept it, I think it's criminal and disgusting and I don't wish to extend the courtesy of politeness to people that think hitting kids teaches them anything but to be violent.

If you saw a husband slap his wife on the ass with a paddle in public in anger because he didn't like her behaviour, would you think that's ok? Probably not, it's a misuse of power and degrading. If your boss, your superior, thought you weren't conducting yourself properly and smacked your head, would that be ok? No? But it's okay for him to do it to his kid, someone one-eighth his size, defenseless and not yet capable of controlling all their urges or emotion? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Does fear make you a good person? Does it really? Think about that. Do you function at your best when you fear physical threat and humiliation? Well, anyone who has any authority on psychology of children can tell you, it does nothing but harm.

I'm so repulsed by people defending spanking on here and talking about children like worthless little nuisances, that I will close this window in my
browser now and never return. I don't
want to discuss any topic with people
who think it's a good thing to hit childre

Enjoy congratulating yourselves on carrying on a primitive and cruel tradition of power through
aggression.

---

posted October 11, 2012 04:40 PM            

I have yet to see a well behaved child by the no-no method. Rather the child with boundries, which may include spanking, are the better behaved children.

Treat children as adults and you will have very confused children.

posted October 11, 2012 04:43 PM            

We talk about spanking as abuse?

posted October 11, 2012 04:49 PM            

Look at your kid the wrong way these days and you will get hauled off to jail for child abuse~

posted October 11, 2012 04:53 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by hippichick:
Look at your kid the wrong way these days and you will get hauled off to jail for child abuse~

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posted October 11, 2012 04:58 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by YoursTrulyAlways:

And then you'll have to deal with the civil suit filed by your child and the ACLU, the media and opportunistic politicians on your doorstep.

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Very true.

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted October 11, 2012 05:28 PM            

My eldest - Taurus Sun, Gemini Moon, Leo Asc, Aries Merc - has very definitely needed a few spankings. She's just so willful and sure she's right - even when she was 3 and her "being right" constituted attempting to dash across a parking lot after several verbal warnings.

My middle child - Taurus Sun, Pisces Moon, Saggi Asc, Taurus Merc - on the other hand...a simple, quiet verbal reprimand usually has her in tears. When it doesn't, no amount of spanking would make a difference to her bully-self, anyway. She once sat under a pine tree for 5 hours because I said, "You must either help to pick up pinecones or you will sit here until everyone else is done with all of their yard work."
5 hours.

My youngest...I may yet be proven wrong, but I don't think she'll need (or be able to take) much more than gentle reprimand - Cancer Sun, Pisces Moon, Virgo Asc...though her Leo Merc may prove interesting.

posted October 11, 2012 05:55 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by juniperb:
Spanking may be "old school" but it is an effective parenting tool when used wisely.. Most often (like aquaguy said) the notion of a spanking works miracles.

I think the mistake parents make is spanking when they are angry. A parents anger must be separated from childs behavior. Then it becomes a valid punishment rather than a venting for parents. Children know the difference!!

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This. And a huge difference it is. Parents with poor impulse control are likely to produce kids with the same lack of impulse control, whatever "punishments" (more accurately called "temper tantrums") are used. Of course if it's so bad that s/he needs medical attention after (such as one kid paddled so that he bled internally) then it's not only doing it wrong, it should be considered child abuse.

And a very important part is when a parent spanks out of anger & frustration then the child rightfully fears him/her and the whimsy of an adult with immature impulse control, but when it's only (and consistently) for specific consequences (and not in a "do as I say, not as a I do" way) then the fear is of misbehaving, not the parent.

posted October 11, 2012 06:13 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by redshift:
I don't think people advocating hitting children, (no matter how lightly) are entitled to respectfully have their opinion.

You're fooling yourselves if you think spanking isn't hitting.

Spanking, the kind that those of you condoning it, are talking about, has to be hard enough to hurt and scare for it to have the effect you all think is so desirable. That is hitting. That is abuse. Hitting is wrong. It's unacceptable, antisocial, cruel behaviour. If we don't accept kids hitting each other, or adults hitting each other, why do we accept adults hitting kids? I don't accept it, I think it's criminal and disgusting and I don't wish to extend the courtesy of politeness to people that think hitting kids teaches them anything but to be violent.

If you saw a husband slap his wife on the ass with a paddle in public in anger because he didn't like her behaviour, would you think that's ok? Probably not, it's a misuse of power and degrading. If your boss, your superior, thought you weren't conducting yourself properly and smacked your head, would that be ok? No? But it's okay for him to do it to his kid, someone one-eighth his size, defenseless and not yet capable of controlling all their urges or emotion? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Does fear make you a good person? Does it really? Think about that. Do you function at your best when you fear physical threat and humiliation? Well, anyone who has any authority on psychology of children can tell you, it does nothing but harm.

I'm so repulsed by people defending spanking on here and talking about children like worthless little nuisances, that I will close this window in my browser now and never return. I don't want to discuss any topic with people who think it's a good thing to hit children.

Enjoy congratulating yourselves on carrying on a primitive and cruel tradition of power through aggression.

---

Of course it's hitting. What it's not is a wild, out of control beating that fractures bones breaks noses, busts teeth, and otherwise. Physically speaking, at least within reason, it's simply a method of gaining complete attention without any real harm being done. And the reason it's ok to do this with some children (though as a last resort in my book) and not adults is because children make it necessary by having a lack of understanding of other consequences. For example, a small child who doesn't understand that a pot of boiling water can permanently disfigure & disable him for life WILL understand that if he grabs for it he will be spanked.

An adult is expected to understand life to no longer be treated as a child. And as someone who allowed myself to be spanked as a child I can tell you that while I hold no grudge for it (at least not those I considered "just") if those same people were to try to spank me TODAY then I'd make damn sure it hurt them worse than it hurt me.

And btw, I don't doubt my cousin is the same way...and when he was a child he BRAGGED about the spankings, whippings, and paddlings he got as he thought it proved his toughness and indomitable spirit (he once told a teacher paddling him to make sure he "felt it this time" and after being paddled the teacher asked, "Did you feel that?" and he answered, "Feel what?" ).

And all punishments (corporal or otherwise) have elements of fear & humiliation in them. And sometimes they're necessary...or those kids will find life handing them even worse punishments & humiliations (and/or inflicting punishment and humiliation on other kids) instead.

posted October 11, 2012 06:45 PM            

And as for the ACLU...name one case of them stepping in because of parental discipline.

The government is sure wonky so it's something of a crap shoot. Parents on welfare are the most likely to be examined, however, and even they don't get looked at too much (as far as I know). Taking a kid to the doctor for stepping on a nail can get a doctor to report it (especially if the parents are black) as suspicion of stepping on a syringe.

But most kids are ignored (or worse, not, and they sometimes then find their sitch, even when being removed from actual dysfunction & abuse, has gone from bad to worse). A parent can turn away a child case worker by saying the child is a runaway. It often takes MONTHS to follow up on a report of suspected abuse (unless the agency really needs to prove their need for funding right then or use up some of their budget fast or lose that budget money for next year in which case they'll come down on the first unfortunate like a ton of bricks). And someone I knew tried everything she could to investigate the disappearance of a father she knew to be abusive and it still took 6 weeks just to send a deputy out. And the father simply stated she was at a special school without proof and the deputy left (turned out to be true, and that place was run by a cult that brainwashed her, but as far as anyone knew she was dead & buried and no one bothered to check). But then teen gulags run in the USA as they're legal, and Hephzibah House is just one of all too many examples (I link to the news as it explains just how "effective" child abuse laws are in cases like this):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QB9ZWM-iq0

Where's the ACLU there?

For that matter there are plenty of fundies who adopt kids from other countries and use them as slave labor and abuse them horribly as "Biblical discipline" (though some tortures don't seem Biblical at all, and remember I'm one of those who considers the Bible to be barbaric) which sometimes kills the kids, but they (and those who defend them) try to pass it off as spanking, and then when such monsters are prosecuted for having beaten or tortured a child to death they bear false witness and say it was just a harmless spanking that they got sent to prison for. (Btw, my "favorite" was a little adopted girl who died from the abuse for having lied and her mom called 911 and LIED about the child having abused herself to death, though forensics was no match for her own lies and prayers that she wouldn't face justice.)

And there are teen gulags far worse than that which use bindings, speakers, shock therapy, powerful medications, forced marches similar to death marches forced on captured soldiers and native populations, starvation, and more. Sometimes when the abuse gets so much that the authorities can't overlook it anymore then the center relocates outside the USA where parents can still legally send their kids (one escaped back to America on a raft and the courts sent him back, too).

And I'm more likely to step in to punish them or save the kids than anyone in the government (or ACLU).

Adults have it rough and they have a lot of responsibility and risk, but kids have it rougher in many ways and they get even more of my sympathy. And I say that helping to raise 2 kids now (and having worked with kids off and on my entire adult life).

More:
http://reason.com/archives/2002/02/01/teen-demon-tracts

quote:

---

Kids these days. We all know the basic jeremiad: They're media-addled, affectless, nihilist, subliterate, a Clockwork Orange-style army of "superpredators," teen gunmen, and garden-variety sociopaths waiting to happen. Advertising has hypnotized them. Video games have conditioned them to kill without feeling. And pop culture has hammered every conceivable kind of coarseness -- from anonymous sex to Satanism, from glorified violence to Internet passivity -- into their poignantly echoing little craniums. Is it any wonder that most of them are but a bully's slight or a chatroom flame away from raining hot-lead vengeance on schoolrooms or playgrounds?

Well, yes, actually. It is, indeed, a considerable wonder that any part of this hysterical caricature should command serious discussion in the first place. As almost no media outlet is going to tell you, kids these days are astonishingly well-adjusted, nonviolent, educated, and polite. Nearly all the leading indicators of social ills among American adolescents -- drug use, violent assault, teen pregnancy, drop-out rates, you name it -- have been declining for at least 10 years now. More teens are graduating high school and attending college than ever before. A record number of American teens volunteer their time to charitable causes -- twice as many as their counterparts of 20 years past. Math SATs are at a 30-year high. Hell, even teen literacy is increasing: A recent survey conducted by the National Education Association found that 41 percent of teen respondents said they read 15 books or more a year. How many adults can claim a comparable intake?

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posted October 12, 2012 12:30 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by redshift:
Spanking is the same thing as abuse, it's just a milder form of it. If someone didn't like how you were behaving and slapped you today, that would be assault, but it's okay to whack a young child on the ass because he's misbehaving? I have never seen a well behaved child that was spanked except for the ones who live in fear and that is not successful parenting, that's just soul destroying.

Learning to fear your parents is different from learning to respect your parents. You can discipline without resorting to physical violence. I don't care how "light" the "tap" is, it's a physical way to impose dominance and fear and humiliation to solve a problem and all that teaches is for children to grow up and handle situations the same way ie: Your parents spanked you and you turned out fine? Well, if you think it's okay to spank kids, you didn't turn out fine.

I've seen children spanked in public. I've seen the humiliation on their faces. Often they are being spanked for something they didn't understand was wrong or being spanked for their parent's failure to keep an eye on them and be in charge, preemptively keeping them out of trouble. Good parenting does take patience, attention and vigilance. Bad parenting is smacking a kid because you didn't teach them well in the first place and you're too tired, stupid or angry to control the situation without lashing out. People who spank children should be ashamed themselves.

ETA I have a child. He's very well-behaved and happy and secure and he never hits anyone when he doesn't get what he wants, because it's never been done to him and I make it very clear it's not acceptable. Children who are spanked, always lash out physically at other kids and their parents when they are mad because that's what they've learned and that's a pity.

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posted October 12, 2012 01:31 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mercuranian:
spanking is a boundary violation. wow, i can't believe people still condone this. how very sad.

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posted October 12, 2012 03:21 AM            

Personally I know plenty of kids who are and aren't spanked. Among both kids I know plenty who are well-behaved and those who aren't so I don't really attribute spanking (or lack thereof) to behavior problems, though I have met a few kids with whom I think nothing else would work (but even more to whom it was never necessary). Generally speaking--though I have observed exceptions both ways--the kids are much like the parents (and vice versa). If the adults curse, lie, show disrespect, lash out violently, or conversely are respectful, considerate, honest, and the like then so are their kids regardless of the discipline used.

posted October 12, 2012 04:03 AM            

I was babysitting 2 children and a girl had a new puppy that the boy hated because he didn't have a puppy of his own and attacked the puppy whenever he could. The first time I stopped him I tried to inspire empathy in him and explained that if he wanted to get a puppy of his own he had to show he was mature enough (and tormenting a puppy in ways that could cripple or kill was NOT mature), and also how I upset I and the puppy were, not just his sister.

I think it was less than 5 minutes when I heard the puppy yipping again and that time I was more stern and told him to go to his room. He wouldn't. I dragged him and told him to stay, again he wouldn't. So I told him since he had such little self-control he could stay on the couch until I was done in the kitchen and his mother was going to hear of it if he acted out one more time.

I was thinking he'd finally calmed down when he did it AGAIN. THAT time I grabbed his wrist, dragged him into the kitchen, forcibly told (and made) him to stand in the corner and not make noise (which he wasn't perfectly being quiet) and called his mom and explained what was going on and said that she had 2 choices: either come home from her date and deal with him, or give me permission to put him over my knee if he acted out again, including in not being quiet if he didn't quiet down (this was when he got quiet).

She gave me permission.

But as he'd straightened up instantly while I made it very clear what my intentions were to his mom on the phone, I gave him one more chance (though I watched him like a hawk for the rest of the time and later told his sister not to leave her puppy alone with her brother anymore) and he didn't test me anymore. For that reason he got out of it (but had he been my boy I wouldn't have needed permission so he wouldn't have). He was one of those rare boys (sociopaths?) who showed they respected nothing but brute force, used it himself and only respected those who also used physical force.

posted October 12, 2012 04:21 AM            

Honestly, my life started only when i went university and lived away from home. That was pure happiness.

Parents and I never communicate much emotionally but more on grades, grades grades and now work work work. lol. It's their idea of showing their love I guess.

posted October 12, 2012 08:34 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by lilithpluto:
Parents and I never communicate much emotionally but more on grades, grades grades and now work work work. lol. It's their idea of showing their love I guess.

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Don't know how similar it is but this reminded me of a vid that haunts me...the father turned old man tearing at the tree bark at the end just sticks with me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B32yjbCSVpU

Thing was the song was originally written by a woman who was inspired by her husband's relationship with his politician father, and it scared her husband because he realized he was doing the same thing to his own son...one can only hope it made a difference.

posted October 12, 2012 04:25 PM            

My SAT scores were 40 points away from full score. My dad gave me grief on that too. My brother got full marks on both Math and English, and I keep joking about how that could have been possible since we engage each other in ghetto speak.

I had pretty much As in graduate school as well. But each semester, my transcripts were sent to my father even though I was paying for school myself. He would frame my transcripts and hang them on his study wall so that he could show them off. That is how important grades were. It is a twisted extension of one's self esteem. And those are grades for Masters degrees. Think of grades for 6th Grade or 9th Grade.

posted October 12, 2012 04:54 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by YoursTrulyAlways:
I had good grades and was spanked anyway. A 98 on a Math test is 2 points away from 100. The "A" is not enough. I am being serious. It's not good enough to be 3rd in class, or 3rd in school. 2nd place is the top position for losers. I'm not kidding.

My SAT scores were 40 points away from full score. My dad gave me grief on that too. My brother got full marks on both Math and English, and I keep joking about how that could have been possible since we engage each other in ghetto speak.

I had pretty much As in graduate school as well. But each semester, my transcripts were sent to my father even though I was paying for school myself. He would frame my transcripts and hang them on his study wall so that he could show them off. That is how important grades were. It is a twisted extension of one's self esteem. And those are grades for Masters degrees. Think of grades for 6th Grade or 9th Grade.

And my worst subject was Chinese. I hated Chinese because no matter how hard I tried, I could never get a "good" grade. And I was constantly chewed out. The irony? My dad himself was Chinese illiterate. Spoke not a single word of Chinese (Mandarin), never mind read or write.

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Your parents put Jewish parents to shame

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted October 12, 2012 05:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ami Anne:

Your parents put Jewish parents to shame

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My big M's nemesis is also his best friend. J has been M's direct competitor and adversary since 2nd grade, and the only reason why it hasn't been since kindergarten is because we moved homes and M started school in town in the 2nd grade.

J's parents are quintessentially Jewish (just a coincidence on the initials.. they are the real first names). J plays the same instruments as M and they take almost all of the same classes. J's mom makes her son directly compete for little nonsense such as orchestra sitting. If one plays at Lincoln Center, then the other has to play at Carnegie Hall, and then the mothers taunt each other about which boy is better. Both have the same private music teachers. The only difference is in sports, where J plays soccer and track, and M rides equestrian.

I swear J's mom operates like the KGB. She always has access to M's grades, and dittos vice versa for Mrs. YTA. Both women dress their sons to outcompete each other. Both women egg each other on in terms of which girls each boy gets to date, etc. When M went out with a wealthy Jewish girl, imagine the consternation!