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Ahhhh so you advocate "child neglect", rather than swatting! Interesting! Either helicopter your child to DEATH, by hovering over them constantly, in order to keep them from harm...OR...simply let them experience the "natural consequences" for their actions.
Read the books, seriously. But don't put words in my mouth that I did not say. Your assumptions are not mine.
I never advocated failure to protect your children from physical harm.
Read the books, seriously. But don't put words in my mouth that I did not say. Your assumptions are not mine.
I never advocated failure to protect your children from physical harm.
And "swatting" or any other kind of corporal punishment as a means of protecting children would be the very worst choice a parent could make.
When they are too young to teach and for them to understand, you simply hold their hand at all times and/or otherwise limit their exposure....whatever common sense measure the situation calls for. You don't spank, you restrict their freedom until they can be taught to make sensible choices.
That's a bit extremist--jumping from "swatting" and "glutton for punishment" to "neglect" and "multiple trips to the emergency room." Really, there is a happy medium between those two extremes.
Everyone has opinions on parenting issues because whether or not someone is a parent, they have been parented. Even if those "parents" were foster parents or grandparents or older siblings, everyone has gone through the process of being raised by someone at some point in some way. So in a discussion like this, opinions are generally not just theory-based. We all have first-hand experience on the child's side of child-rearing. Some of us have experience on the parent-side of child-rearing.
Nim, something that you never realize though, until you become older and have been a parent for a while (remember, 3 of mine are in their 20s, one almost 30), is this...children see/saw things from a child's perspective. Some people never, ever cease to see things from an child's point of view. There is a part of their psyche which can not see things as adults. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is with some people. Some people are WIRED that way! It has less to do with how they were raised than how they are WIRED. Some people would rather make excuses for their behavior than accept that their choices got them where they're at, and change THEMSELVES! Own your crap! It is also one of the biggest reasons that so many adults spend their hard-earned money on therapists and "mood-stabelizing" drugs. They're too weak to fix themselves, or too pathetic and self pitying to realize that they CAN!
I refuse to allow myself to live, trapped in a world filled with "what-ifs", and choose instead, to live in a now world. Instead of wishing my parents had been different, I choose to embrace the fact that they were the way they were. If not for working with senior citizens for so very many years, I may never have come to those realizations. I choose to look at my childhood in this way: OMG....I had it good! I had it GREAT! If one can step outside their self-pitying, toilet paper view of the world, and see just how good they had/have it, the world would be a much better place.
So many people are blind. So many people have remained so buried in their pitiful, pitying little black hole, that they project their feelings (past & present) on to other people's lives. They are delusional, seeing abuse and harm where none exists. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's the flat out honest truth! People need to worry about fixing themselves a little bit more and stop trying to fix everyone else. "They're worried about the speck in someone else's eye, yet they don't see the plank in theirs!"
Read the books, seriously. But don't put words in my mouth that I did not say. Your assumptions are not mine.
I never advocated failure to protect your children from physical harm.
No, I've read all the books I need to read on this crap. We can read the same book and we'd STILL walk away with different views.
What kills me about some of the arguments and statements on this thread is this.... DON'T bring up what's going on in other countries, or what country beheads people. Don't bring up how 50-100 years ago, kids were the property of their parents, could be beat. Don't bring up how it WAS okay to enslave people. Get your butts into TODAY!!! The United States of America! Good God, stop living elsewhere and in another time. Focus on what's going on NOW. That's what you need to do and STOP trying to create problems where there are none. YOU are making bigger problems!
Paranoid people are tying up the government resources which are limited at best! Paranoid, busy-bodies keep investigators running around like chickens with their heads cut off, looking into non-existent problems, while true abuse is going uninvestigated and unhampered.
If you equate failure to hit your children with neglect, then you have no earthly idea what other possibilities are out there.
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What kills me about some of the arguments and statements on this thread is this.... DON'T bring up what's going on in other countries, or what country beheads people. Don't bring up how 50-100 years ago, kids were the property of their parents, could be beat. Don't bring up how it WAS okay to enslave people. Get your butts into TODAY!!! The United States of America! Good God, stop living elsewhere and in another time. Focus on what's going on NOW. That's what you need to do and STOP trying to create problems where there are none. YOU are making bigger problems!
I cannot imagine why you reply to my post with this as I have not brought any of this up. I hope that others reading this thread who may be lurking use more reason to come to their conclusions.
Snipping some more completely irrelevant nonsense that has nothing to do with what you are replying to.
People spank today because their parents spanked them and their parents spanked them and so forth and so on.
I won't lie we as humans get the urge to hit others when they do something we don't like or because we think it will stop them.
But people, some people, fight other urges, the only example I have to give is religious fundamentalist, they fight the urge to have sex before marriage, they control their thoughts and feelings, they exert a lot of control over what they think, do and feel.
So why can't we all fight the urge to hit other people when they do wrong?
Spanking is such an old method that people long ago used to use and for some reason it has continued on into today.
All people are equal, no one should be hit, especially not children.
All spanking really does is puts fear into kids, "well if I do this I'm going to get a spanking" so they don't do it or they do it anyways and then lie about it when they get caught out of fear.
Inflicting pain onto another person is stupid.
I got spanked for just about everything I did wrong.
Ok I turned out fine, I'm not a criminal but that doesn't make it right.
My mom would spank my brother for doing things to me but then hearing that child scream while getting a spanking would have me bolting down the stairs screaming for my mom to stop. I didn't want him in pain, I wanted him to change his behavior. The spanking never changed his behavior it just made him resent me for always getting into trouble and vice versa.
I don't know why children can't just be brought up a certain way from the very beginning to where you don't have to spank them ever.
Plus spanking is something you can only really use for short amount time if you do spank. Honestly I think any child under the age of 5 shouldn't be spanked, before that they don't grasp a lot of things, they can't GET the bigger picture, therefore they should be taught and not hit but over 5 to about 8 or so is when they do get things and CAN be reasoned with and explained the bigger picture. After about 8 or so then it really becomes ineffective because by then the child is way to old for a spanking. 9/10 at the oldest, by then most girls have started puberty, not like you can administer a spanking while your 9/10/11 year old is on her period.
Honestly I think from very early on if you are just diligent with your kids, raise them a certain way then they won't ever need to be spanked in the first place because by the time they get to the age where they are pushing your rules and boundaries they are too old to be spanked anyways.
Nim, something that you never realize though, until you become older and have been a parent for a while (remember, 3 of mine are in their 20s, one almost 30), is this...children see/saw things from a child's perspective. Some people never, ever cease to see things from an child's point of view. There is a part of their psyche which can not see things as adults. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is with some people. Some people are WIRED that way! It has less to do with how they were raised than how they are WIRED. Some people would rather make excuses for their behavior than accept that their choices got them where they're at, and change THEMSELVES! Own your crap! It is also one of the biggest reasons that so many adults spend their hard-earned money on therapists and "mood-stabelizing" drugs. They're too weak to fix themselves, or too pathetic and self pitying to realize that they CAN!
Isn't that valuable in this discussion? Shouldn't a parent try to see it from the child's perspective, especially since the child is not always in a place emotionally and cognitively to see it from the parent's?
I don't have children of my own, but I am held responsible for children every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning. Overall they are wonderful children. Sometimes they push my limits. Sometimes they say things that hurt me trying to get a reaction out of me. Do I sometimes get the desire to "set them straight" or whatever? Sure. But you know what we do? We talk about it. We discuss why whatever they said or did was hurtful or inappropriate or dangerous or whatever. And then they realize there's a reason I don't want them doing X or Y and that it's cause I care about them. They see clearly that I love them, and not just in general, but in the moment too, when it feels the most relevant. And while I'm sure that parents that use corporal punishment love their children too, in the moment, when the parent is hitting the child, the child isn't thinking, "gee, Mommy/beachmel/nim loves me so much!" They're thinking "I hate you!" If you let the love and care come through at the same time, that sense that you care and love them is a much more powerful motivator for behaving well. As someone who has broken the chain of abuse and has used words and not just hitting to raise your own children, how can you not see that?
Abuse changes your wiring. A child who is wired one way will end up wired another way if they are exposed to a lot of abuse. That's not about being too weak. Abuse and trauma in general can change the chemical makeup of your brain and nervous system. Therapy and mood-stabilizing drugs are intended to reroute the wiring back to the way it was naturally wired. You can research Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the amygdala, and the sympathetic reaction to learn more about the human physiology behind the fear response.
That said, violence has nothing to do with "owning one's crap." Even an unruly child does not deserve to be physically abused.
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I refuse to allow myself to live, trapped in a world filled with "what-ifs", and choose instead, to live in a now world. Instead of wishing my parents had been different, I choose to embrace the fact that they were the way they were. If not for working with senior citizens for so very many years, I may never have come to those realizations. I choose to look at my childhood in this way: OMG....I had it good! I had it GREAT! If one can step outside their self-pitying, toilet paper view of the world, and see just how good they had/have it, the world would be a much better place.
I don't really know what your point is in relation to hitting children. I am trying to understand correctly--are you trying to say that you were hit as a child but you still had it good in many ways? I don't understand why you are equating people's opinions about hitting children with self-pity and having it great. All of those can coexist. No one is saying one excludes the other. A parent can be very abusive but also have good times with their child. The world is not black and white. Most relationships are complex.
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So many people are blind. So many people have remained so buried in their pitiful, pitying little black hole, that they project their feelings (past & present) on to other people's lives. They are delusional, seeing abuse and harm where none exists. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's the flat out honest truth! People need to worry about fixing themselves a little bit more and stop trying to fix everyone else. "They're worried about the speck in someone else's eye, yet they don't see the plank in theirs!"
This is exactly what I think you are doing, which is why I think you keep bringing topics up that no one was referring to and accusing people of believing or claiming things they never claimed to believe.
That said, how is hitting a child not abusive? If that is not abusive, what is? At what point does regular discipline become abuse? When a man hits his wife, there's no question that's spousal abuse. Even if it's only one hit. Why is it any different when children are involved?
Last edited by nimchimpsky; 09-11-2011 at 03:22 PM..
No, I've read all the books I need to read on this crap. We can read the same book and we'd STILL walk away with different views.
What kills me about some of the arguments and statements on this thread is this.... DON'T bring up what's going on in other countries, or what country beheads people. Don't bring up how 50-100 years ago, kids were the property of their parents, could be beat. Don't bring up how it WAS okay to enslave people. Get your butts into TODAY!!! The United States of America! Good God, stop living elsewhere and in another time. Focus on what's going on NOW. That's what you need to do and STOP trying to create problems where there are none. YOU are making bigger problems!
Paranoid people are tying up the government resources which are limited at best! Paranoid, busy-bodies keep investigators running around like chickens with their heads cut off, looking into non-existent problems, while true abuse is going uninvestigated and unhampered.
Nobody has any idea what you're trying to say here or why. But I will tell you what comes across.
The message you are sending is that there is no rational way to defend hitting children, especially with a weapon like a belt, as a form of discipline.
Nobody has any idea what you're trying to say here or why. But I will tell you what comes across.
The message you are sending is that there is no rational way to defend hitting children, especially with a weapon like a belt, as a form of discipline.
Oh for goodness' sake. I don't believe for a second that beachmel is either defending or advocating hitting children with a weapon - of any kind.
There's a few people here who are so busy being outraged that they have not been listening at all to what she's actually saying.
For someone that doesn't advocate violence, your posts are making you look like quite the bully, ironically.
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And "swatting" or any other kind of corporal punishment as a means of protecting children would be the very worst choice a parent could make.
