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The idea isn't to control your kids. If you feel your kids need to be controlled, please give them up for adoption because you know nothing about love. Control isn't the reason you punish your kids. No one, in any slice of human history, liked to be controlled. That we feel the need to control must be a cultural thing, not a childhood thing. Do aborigines hit their kids? Do eskimos? Did Native Americans? I don't think hitting was used in any of these cultures. Why must we in ours?
While most here seem to feel that it should not be illegal, most also comment that it should not ever cross the line into abuse. Um, how do you tell when it's abuse? If you were hit with a belt every Saturday and thought it did you well, then you might feel the same way in raising your kids. In my opinion, that is destructive abuse. How do we expect individual uneducated parents ('cause that's what we are when none of us are taught a thing about raising children) to discern between mere correction and abuse?
Again, it takes me back to the issue of control. No matter how you spin it, if you're making up rules for your kids in order to control them, you are doing them no favor whatsoever. You don't teach them self-control, you teach them that others can order them around on a whim. Unless you also completely let them know WHY the rules exist and offer a give-and-take with them, you are abusing them just to control them perhaps because that's all you think needs to be done.
When I think of the sick psychological damage done to me and countless others by parents who repeated only what they themselves experienced as children, it makes my blood boil. I cannot sanction spanking and its myriad equivalents just to 'control' children who might 'get out of hand'. I don't see LOVE written anywhere on this process. And if these methods did anybody any good, I certainly am not seeing any great improvement in our society. Same old, same old, abusive cycles and ignorant parents.
People forget that kids have feelings just the same as adults do. It's much better to try to instill a sense of mutual cooperation, than doing things because someone said to do it.
Yes, indeed it is, and the thing that scares me is...this is one woman making a big stink about it...says she was a victim of corporeal punishment as a child...well, I'm wondering to what degree, cuz my sister got a spanking by my dad once in her life, and she deserved it royally, and to boot, she turned out fine, but more then anything else, it embarrassed her b/c we were all there, and yanno why she got it...cuz she back mouthed my mom, big time....I mean big time...and my dad went for her and spanked her...and now we all laugh about it, and my sister always says, she deserved that spanking...
Bottom line is...it took only one women who complained about prayer in shool...and look what happened with that?
These people to me, really need counseling...cuz it's all about control...and they take something to the complete opposite end of the spectrum....and yet, say not one work about child molesters....or other crimes in the U.S. and now, they THINK, they've done they're good deem to society?
1) Why is it assumed that discipline always involves physical punishment. There are other ways to discipline. A great way is the rules of natural and logical consequences. You don't wear your coat in the snow, then you will be cold.
2) Just cause someone "turned out fine" didn't mean they really did. A lot of people are walking mental health issues, and "turned out just fine". They verbally abuse their spouses, or have rage issues. All sorts of problems. And they're just fine.
I can't imagine any truly "positive" outcome unless positive tactics and a positive environment is employed. Negative in, negative out. Positive in, positive out. It really is that simple.
spanking your kids do you mean a pop on the butt with a open hand and not hard enough to leave a mark? If so, then I have no problem with spanking. if you mean hitting with a belt or hitting in the face or any where on the body other than on the butt then, no I do not agree with that and think it should be out lawed.
I judge anyone who thinks this is an acceptable thing to do to defenseless children. Studies have proven that the less educated are more apt to spank their kids. Some even spank one-year olds, how sick is that? It is the easiest thing to do for a parent who's stressed and impatient. If a child deserves a spanking (for something other than to remove them from immediate danger), then the parents have already failed them. Those kids running around pounding on the side of the house are already clearly a sign of parental failure. Using physical punishment to correct the mistake made by the parents is tantamount to abuse and is unjustifiable.
However well-intentioned your parents and grandparents may have been, the use of spanking is not a sign of love. It represents nothing but control. One might think they are a better person for having suffered through it, but what kind of person could they have been if they never had to endure externally applied physical force in the first place? And just because one doesn't see the damage it caused, doesn't mean there wasn't any. I consider the continued acceptance of this "uneducated" form of discipline to be one sign of such damage and that's why I mentioned cyclical abuse. That's what this is, plain and simple.
So conformity makes for better people? See, the idea is still to control them.
Your view is way too simplistic to me. Humans are much more complex. My 4 year old nephew is the most complex person I know and it's a joy to be around him. He never needs to be spanked because his entire family has paid attention to him from day one. Sorry, we will never agree. I don't choose the easiest route just because everybody else does.
Spanking = LAZY parenting.
My kid is 2.5 and I never hear people stop telling me how well behaved and mature she is, especially in places like RESTAURANTS, the places that people like these crotchety forum participants like to complain about.
It is truly sad the way children have been abused in all sorts of heinous ways. Victims of abuse are scattered throughout our country and have reached the halls of power. Unfortunately, just as rape victims sometimes cannot differentiate intimacy from abuse or may suffer horrible flashbacks by a simple touch, many child abuse victims cannot tell the difference between beating and spanking.
Discipline is the key to stable and well-balanced psychological development and sometimes a smack on the bottom clears up everything and the world makes sense.
It is a family matter that certainly shouldn't be meddled with. Worst of all, if these so called modern child development "experts" are wrong, as I believe they are, the implications could be so far reaching as to destroy the fabric of our civilization.
As I said, there is absolutely no proof that a "swat on the butt" is an effective punishment either.
So now you have discipline that doesn't work, and you teach your child to fear you, and you show by example, behaviors you don't want them to do when they are adults.
As I said, there is absolutely no proof that a "swat on the butt" is an effective punishment either.
So now you have discipline that doesn't work, and you teach your child to fear you, and you show by example, behaviors you don't want them to do when they are adults.
Speaking only for myself: My kids did not, and do not "fear me". Inasmuch as they are now adults (40/38) and with their own families, they are outstanding men who grew up to respect others and to help others.
Speaking only for myself: My kids did not, and do not "fear me". Inasmuch as they are now adults (40/38) and with their own families, they are outstanding men who grew up to respect others and to help others.
Their children are following the same paths
With all due respect, I have had enough interactions with you to feel that perhaps there are some issues there that don't come from the acts of kindness and generosity of spirit. I don't want my kid to grow up being anything but that, and the 'old school' parenting routine sabatages those goals and makes the types of human beings that I don't want her emulating.
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Child Abuse has Created a Knee-jerk Sentiment
