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I find that most people that got spanked as children end up turning out to be better adults. Why? Because they are given rules of life and they understand the consequences of you act up.
I doubt if either of us question people we know whether or not they were spanked as children so I am dubious about your claim.
I used to work in a juvenile detention center working with the families.
"I beat him and beat him and he still gets in fights."
I can't count how many times I heard this.
Parents need to develop better child management strategies, ones that work when they are more than an arm's length away.
I remember watching a news clip, out of Louisiana, of a mother who claimed she beat her sons for stealing because she didn't want them to go to jail. She beat them with an electric cord, as well as a belt. I'm willing to bet that she had beaten her kids before. And if those kids were beating on in the past, then obviously it wasn't effective because it didn't stop them from stealing.
In another post I said I wouldn't mention race in that particular post. I will mention it in this post. Black American youths receive more corporal punishment than any other ethnic group. In the prisons, Black men are the majority. Stuff such as Black on Black violence, relatively high dropout rates, relatively high imprisonment rates, death rates. This is one reason I question the effectiveness of it.
Last edited by green_mariner; 12-10-2018 at 03:18 PM..
If the behavior of the child is such that it would warrant punishment in public, the only "hit" would be a result of me telling the child we are now leaving whatever public place where the behavior is happening, the child refusing, and me picking the child up and carrying them away from the public place.
No spanking required, and the followup to the event would be a moratorium on that child being in public with me for a very long time. I know I would do things this way because I have done things this way. I have no trouble, as in none whatsoever, with forcibly removing an unruly child from a public place. I will and have walked out on dinners, movies, day at amusement park, etc...all in an effort to make sure my threats are never idle and always carried out. Most kids get the message after 2-3 such events and the subsequent loss of fun at home for a week or so, and they really get the message after a few "leaving you here with sitter because you act rotten in public" events specifically engineered to make them spend some time pondering why exactly they got left out.
Spanking is largely unnecessary for virtually any situation, and is typically a last resort of people who issue idle threats and never back up all the prior "or else" promises.
Spot on. I have an 11yo, and I'm sure if you asked him, he'd much rather get a whack on the ass than have to listen to me. He's never been hit, and likely never will be, but we always follow through with our threats, and never make a threat that we're not prepared to back up. So there's no threats of burning toys, or throwing things out or other stupidity, it's about tangible risk/reward. And always, always a discussion on appropriate behavior and expectations. He's been carried out of one restaurant as a toddler, and we've walked out of other places, and he knows the expectations, they've never changed his whole life, and he gets rewarded well for compliance, and knows what happens when he doesn't.
Anyway, I don't think spanking should be used as punishment, and especially not in public.
I got my corporal punishment a few times, grounded a few times - never worked on me. All it did was make me fear my parents.
And then there was the letter. It was summer time, and I was allowed to go to my friend's house to stay the night. I was to be back the next morning before my dad left for work. Well, I blew that off. When I got home, I went up to my room and found a letter on my desk. It was from my dad. His letter told me how much I had disappointed him. I let him down. He had trusted me, and I did not follow through. He laid it on thick. I never felt so guilty over anything as much as I did that day by not coming home when I said I would. That worked. The point is, you don't have to resort to hitting your kid to teach them that what they did was wrong, and why it was wrong.
I think spanking is a sign that the parent is out of control - which is not a good teaching moment for the kid. What the child sees is an angry adult using violence on them - they are hitting the child while angry. Fear is not respect. Doing it in public is just public humiliation which is also not a good teaching moment. The only time anything should be done in public is if the kid is causing such a disruption that the parent has to take the kid out of the area.
I agree with green mariner: I don't think spanking works like so many say it does. If it did, we would have a very well behaved society because a lot of people still get smacked around in this day and age, and yet we still have unruly kids. On the flip side, acting like a spineless jelly and never following through, or not being consistent is also just as bad. Begging your kid, asking your kid not to do something again is stupid. You don't ask them, you tell them. If they can't be bothered to listen, find what they like, take it from them. It could be anything...doesn't even have to be an object, could be something they wanted to do. Take it from them and make them earn it back.
If the behavior of the child is such that it would warrant punishment in public, the only "hit" would be a result of me telling the child we are now leaving whatever public place where the behavior is happening, the child refusing, and me picking the child up and carrying them away from the public place.
No spanking required, and the followup to the event would be a moratorium on that child being in public with me for a very long time. I know I would do things this way because I have done things this way. I have no trouble, as in none whatsoever, with forcibly removing an unruly child from a public place. I will and have walked out on dinners, movies, day at amusement park, etc...all in an effort to make sure my threats are never idle and always carried out. Most kids get the message after 2-3 such events and the subsequent loss of fun at home for a week or so, and they really get the message after a few "leaving you here with sitter because you act rotten in public" events specifically engineered to make them spend some time pondering why exactly they got left out.
Spanking is largely unnecessary for virtually any situation, and is typically a last resort of people who issue idle threats and never back up all the prior "or else" promises.
Exactly! That's the way my son deals with his 6 year old and that's how I raised my kids. It just requires the parent to be willing to follow through and not just make idle threats.
I think people confuse non-violent parenting with not being tough, or with letting your kids run the show. There are ways to make rules, establish consequences, and follow through with it, all without laying a finger on them.
I remember someone talking about this, and they said something like "If a kid is too young to understand reason, they're too young to understand why they were hit. If they can understand reason, you don't need to hit them to teach them lessons and correct their behavior."
It has been outlawed, in schools since the early 80's here and parents told they could not beat their kids anymore soon after. About the same time all the psychotropic drugs for the newly discovered ADHD & ADD, came to the market.
We didn't have 10 mass shootings a year. Last one in my time, was the UT Tower sniper.
On the contrary, I’d say that kids with ADHD were more like to be physically disciplined because they are very... extra.
Anyway, I don't think spanking should be used as punishment, and especially not in public.
I got my corporal punishment a few times, grounded a few times - never worked on me. All it did was make me fear my parents.
And then there was the letter. It was summer time, and I was allowed to go to my friend's house to stay the night. I was to be back the next morning before my dad left for work. Well, I blew that off. When I got home, I went up to my room and found a letter on my desk. It was from my dad. His letter told me how much I had disappointed him. I let him down. He had trusted me, and I did not follow through. He laid it on thick. I never felt so guilty over anything as much as I did that day by not coming home when I said I would. That worked. The point is, you don't have to resort to hitting your kid to teach them that what they did was wrong, and why it was wrong.
I think spanking is a sign that the parent is out of control - which is not a good teaching moment for the kid. What the child sees is an angry adult using violence on them - they are hitting the child while angry. Fear is not respect. Doing it in public is just public humiliation which is also not a good teaching moment. The only time anything should be done in public is if the kid is causing such a disruption that the parent has to take the kid out of the area.
I agree with green mariner: I don't think spanking works like so many say it does. If it did, we would have a very well behaved society because a lot of people still get smacked around in this day and age, and yet we still have unruly kids. On the flip side, acting like a spineless jelly and never following through, or not being consistent is also just as bad. Begging your kid, asking your kid not to do something again is stupid. You don't ask them, you tell them. If they can't be bothered to listen, find what they like, take it from them. It could be anything...doesn't even have to be an object, could be something they wanted to do. Take it from them and make them earn it back.
Guilt seems to be the biggest reminder, more than corporal punishment or getting grounded. If I truly felt bad about doing something or knew that I disappointed someone, that would make me not want to do what I did ever again. Spanking never really made me feel guilty about what I did. The fear of it might have prevented me from doing some very serious offenses. However, it didn't stop everything.
I have to wonder how many people who got spanked as kids actually feared getting spanked. I think about those persons who would spank in public. It isn't so much embarrassing the kids that I'm thinking of. It is more or less the parent. I wonder if the parent is embarrassed to be doing that in public. The kid is obviously embarrassed, but is the parent?
Another thing I think about is how many persons brag about when they were kids and got whipped. Some of those persons have the idea of "I'm tougher than you are. I got beatings as a kid".
I agree with you when you said that being spineless and being a push over does not help when it comes to raising children. Discipline is definitely important in raising children. I also want to elaborate on that point in which you said that spanking doesn't always work as well as many people say it does. That I also agree with. I think about what you said when you mention "If it did, we would have a very well behaved society because a lot of people still get smacked around in this day and age, and yet we still have unruly kids". Corporal punishment has not gone away. A few weeks ago I discovered a video about a mother in the slums of Jamaica. She was beating her child with a machete. For what, I don't know. This is what I know about Jamaica. This country has restricted access to guns. This country has ALOT of corporal punishment. Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere. Jamaica also has a high out of wedlock birth rate. Jamaica has alot of gang problems. I see something similar here in the USA. The ethnic group most represented in corporal punishment happens to have the highest murder rate, and is filling up the prisons in high numbers. It leaves these questions. Does corporal punishment work as well as many say it does? Why the high rate of violent crime and imprisonment if corporal punishment is used more frequently than other groups?
Spanking in public doesn't seem any more effective than spanking at home. There are still states that allow spanking in classrooms. It isn't banned in most of the southern states. Mississippi uses it alot more than much of the USA. It depends on school district though. Mississippi ranks near the bottom in terms of education. I'm not saying "don't spank". I'm saying that in many cases, it isn't nearly as effective as many people would claim.
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