Europeans spank their kids less... Good or Bad?

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by leebeemi

and my choice is not to spank, but to discipline my children in other ways. I also have high expectations for behavior, and if someone is misbehaving, they will know it. But never because of a swat on the behind or a slap across the face. i choose another path.

bravo!

[jimrich]

Most of the posts in this thread present only the parent/adult point of view but rarely the child's point of view. It's as though very few of you adults can even recall your own childhood or that you ever were a child so you talk about children as though they come from another planet and have no connection with you personally. Is this why it is so easy to hit a child - because you simply do not related to their feelings and being?
Were you ever a child? Did you just love being hit, slapped, spanked, yelled at, cursed, threatened and DISCIPLINED (abused)??? What do you remember - if anything? My parents sometimes spoke of their childhood compared to us kids and they ALWAYS portrayed them selves as SUPER BEINGS compared to us scum-bags! LOL, I knew, even then that our parents were "full of it" and just out to hurt us once again.
Honestly, do any of you remember anything about your own childhood and does anything you can or will remember give you any clues into the minds and hearts of your own kids? Are you honestly satisfied with how you were treated as a defenseless child and intent on treating your own kids the way you were treated? Do you see your child as a beloved and cherished FRIEND or as a painful burden? Is your child your friend or your enemy? Are you even slightly able to acknowledge any of your own MISTAKES? Is your child the only one there who is wrong and bad while you poor parents have to suffer UNDER them?
My childhood is crystal clear to me and I can honestly say that our parents were both good and bad, smart and stupid, caring and careless, loving and cruel, capable and incapable, and on and an AND SO WERE US KIDS! They had some advantages which helped us kids grow up and learn to live BUT not very well. I deeply regret that our parents did not and would not remember how they were raised and then at least tried to raise us BETTER than they had been raised. I could find dozens of "reasons" and "excuses" for their parenting failures but it's up to us kids to try to do better from now on. If our parents and you parents have anything to offer the next generation, it will be blatant examples of how to be and how NOT TO BE so on with the show............
As for me, I do not ever want to be like my parents were except where they modeled: love, kindness, humor, respect, empathy and SELF LOVE. Their greatest failure was that they did NOT love them selves enough. It's called Toxic Shame!

[Katarina Witt]

No, none of us posting here were ever children. We were dropped down here on earth from outer space when we had our first kids. That's what I used to tell my kids, mostly about teen issues such as cars, guys, etc. Didn't know a thing about them.

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by saibot

Okay, sure. My three-year-old decides to start jumping on the bed. I say "Stop!" and he stops ("brainless obedience"). I then explain how he can get hurt jumping on the bed, and show him a picture of the stitches his cousin got in her tongue after biting it jumping on the bed.* With any luck, a lesson has been learned, and he didn't get hurt, thanks to his "brainless obedience."

Here are a couple of alternatives:

Your three-year-old decides to start jumping on the bed. He falls and bites his tongue, necessitating stitches OR breaks his arm OR bashes his head against the nightstand, again needing stitches. He has learned not to jump on the bed, but you have allowed him to be severely injured in the process. Is that acceptable?

Your three-year-old starts jumping on the bed. You can't say "Stop!" because you don't believe in "brainless obedience." Instead, you catch him and remove him from the bed. You have not allowed him to make a choice or to learn from that choice, have you?

* True story.

I want to speak for the child here.
In our home, my parents would have been more worried about the bed, furniture, walls, floor, etc. than any bodily injury to a kid, so yelling "stop" caused us to freeze because if we disobeyed, a harsh beating might follow. We "performed" out of dreadful fear - not common sense or experience. But when our terrifying parents were not home, we did a lot of violent stuff like jumping on a bed or sofa and, when we fell and hurt ourselves, the "lesson" was clear = do stupid things and you might get hurt! Natural consequences ALWAYS had more meaning and impact for me than fearful, mindless OBEDIENCE to terrifying authority figures. If I stupidly hurt myself while trying something out, I learned a lot, but I never learned much of anything by fearfully OBEYING my parents and other scary adults! I had to learn the "hard way" but I did learn!
I often envied kids who did not fear their parents and were allowed to try things out, make mistakes, get hurt and LEARN from experience while I hid safely in the back ground of life and refused to try anything that might annoy my parents!

[jimrich]

LOL, good point, leebeemi!

Originally Posted by leebeemi

3 yo is jumping on the bed. Parent grabs child mid-jump and spanks him, hurting him enough so he never wants to jump on the bed again for fear of a painful spanking.
In that example, the child has NOT been given the opportunity to learn. Not learning the why may actually mean the child sneaks in to jump when nobody knows where he is and he DOES get hurt.

LOL, that's how I did it! Did any of you do things behind your parent's back to have your fun and AVOID PUNISHMENT????
Yes, many of us got hurt but we also learned from it rather than learning anything from our parent's brutality!

[Katnan]

Originally Posted by jimrich

LOL, good point, leebeemi!

LOL, that's how I did it! Did any of you do things behind your parent's back to have your fun and AVOID PUNISHMENT????
Yes, many of us got hurt but we also learned from it rather than learning anything from our parent's brutality!

For your own mental well-being you should bow out of this thread. You were abused, not swatted on the rear to get your attention.

[jimrich]

When I was 3 and up, jumping on the bed was fun and I never considered it to be a danger to me, the bed, walls or anything plus it gave my brother and I some competitive, sports-like thrills. I might have refrained from jumping on the bed if our parents had BOTHERED to sit us boys down and calmly explain why jumping on the bed could harm us, the bed or other things is the room in a FRIENDLY, COMPASSIONATE, CALM AND POLITE way but our parents just didn't believe in treating kids like human beings so they NEVER spoke to or WITH us as understanding friends or even respectful authorities so we simply did what we wanted BEHIND their backs. If they ever yelled STOP, we instantly obeyed but never truly understood why we needed to STOP other than to avoid a beating!
My grand dad and a few other adults occasionally spoke to and WITH me like I am an intelligent human being and their kindness and respect sticks with me to this day (I'm 79) whereas all I remember about my own parents was contempt, disrespect, threats, animosity, JEALOUSY, ridicule and/or NEGLECT. To be fair, they also occasionally spoke to and WITH me as caring friends BUT ruined it by tossing in a few jags or insults to make sure I wasn't taking them to be my FRIENDS! They had their adult friends and even some kid friends in other families but NEVER friends with their own kids! One could say that we were 3 PRISONERS in their little prison camp!

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by rugrats2001

I was referring to the adult population who, as children, despised something that their parents did and pledged then and there that "I will never make my child go through 'that'". And they have held these feelings so dear that they refuse to consider that, just perhaps, there is another side to the process.

My wife was one of those parents. No, not about corporal punishment, she could whack, slap, scream, and violently grab with the best of them.

Her sticking point was having children help with anything around the house. She HATED helping out when things needed done as a child. Weeding a garden, housework, helping with yard work, even being there to fetch a screwdriver when A parent was fixing something, she felt that was demeaning for the children to have to help. So our children learned NOTHING about household maintenance, auto repair, laundry, yard work, small repairs, or cleaning tips and shortcuts.

None of this mattered to her, as she SWORE as a child she would NEVER make her children do these things. And this became her religion.

See, she never actually was hit as a child, so she hadn't built an aversion to it like she had to helping out.

This post strikes a nerve for me. Us kids were not allowed to do certain things at home and went out into the world ill-equipped to live as well as most others who had been given much better skills and training than us. I have natural talents for machinery and mechanics but my brother does not and yet, our dad was a PROFESSIONAL mechanic! After dad left home, I was helped by my mom's church friend to fix the old worn out car dad left for us so my mechanical skills became well developed DESPITE our dad's neglect. We seriously lacked many skills that our parents somehow FAILED to give us or prevented us from developing!