Another reason not to spank children

Outing alert: BYH is Smasher's hooker.

Anyhoo, we can't very well preach that violence is acceptable only to protect yourself, by the police to stop criminals in certain situations, by the military in just wars, or in certain sporting events...and then in practice make it clear that it's acceptable for something as trivial as not putting your toys away.

 

my approach was and is to always calmly talk first to my kid(s) before i choose or don't choose to hand out punishment of any kind. maybe i sound like a flaming liberal, but it works for me. but then again, i have girls, not boys.

i've found that if i ask the heartbreakers to explain why they chose their actions, they'll take ownership of their actions ... and "i dunno" doesn't work in the petty home.

 

Eddie Cicotte was never spanked, I'll bet.[/oop]

 

If you really think spanking a child as a form of discipline is the same thing as violent crime, you are just proving you have no idea what you are talking about on this subject. None.

There is a very large difference between lashing out at another human being in anger and a controlled response meant to modify a child's behavior.

And dooley, I'm not talking about parents who spank their child every single time they have to punish the child. I don't care for judging anybody's parenting, but that would leave me very concerned.

But of course, you'd rather resort to ridiculous hyperbole than have a real discussion.

 

And I pledged not to do this, but here goes:

The wife and I went into parenthood in firm agreement that we would never spank our child. That lasted until the kid learned to run away really fast with little warning.

We changed our policy to a quick pop in the butt when she wouldn't listen to us about things that scared the hell out of us: go outside without asking, trying to run away in the parking lot, trying to hide from us in a store, trying to stick something in the electrical socket, etc.

Try reasoning with an 18-month old. It doesn't work. Neither did timeout after timeout ad nauseum. This did. She now knows we're serious about this stuff, if she didn't before. She is an angel out in public and always asks me before she opens the door. It's a non-issue now.

We have since expanded it a bit to times when she tests her punishment (getting out of timeout or refusing to go to timeout) and that has worked OK. The bottom line is it's very few and far between now. I don't anticipate having to do it at all when she's a bit older.

We have never swatted her for hitting - we always felt that to be hypocritical. It's not something we do out of anger: I hate doing it, to the point I'm sure my swat is softer than my wife's.

Luckily, now that she is older and can reason I can just look at her and she'll figure out she should stop doing whatever she's doing. We can even talk about it.

To say she is frightened of me, is to not know the relationship between my daughter and I. She knows the rules and we're comfortable inside those rules.

To say I'm lazy would be correct sometimes, because the great majority of the time my daughter gets in trouble is when we turn our back on her without giving her something to do. That is our fault. And we don't spank her for that.

And, finally, I've never hit a woman or girl out of anger since I slugged a girl in the arm when was in 8th grade - and I still regret that moment.

If I had to justify this, I would say spanking - a quick swat to the butt - is not violence. Most of the time we spanked, my daughter still had a diaper on. Even now, it doesn't seem to hurt her as much as just the fact we did it. It's more of a tool or a deterrent, kind of like a traffic ticket. There's just enough of a sting to make you think twice about doing it again.

 

Um...care to clarify which side of the discussion is a bunch of hogwash?

 

Dad?

 

My dad hit me out of frustration, not for modification purposes.

I don't plan on hitting or spanking my children because of the way it made me feel when I was on the other end of it. Not because of any societal or moral issue. I don't believe I needed to be hit in order to "learn the right way." I'll talk to my kids and use any somewhat-abusive, physical contact as an absolute last resort. That's all if I have children, of course.

 

OK, so it's OK to teach that violence is functional and can be done casually, to the most helpless of humans...the very young. Gotcha. And no, I have no intention of having a discussion. My views, take em or leave em.

(Oh, and I've had two kids. So I officially can't be dismissed, I guess).

 

We had to do something with our daughter because the timeouts weren't working. It got to the point where she would do something wrong on purpose and then go to timeout without having to be told. If you tried to talk to her about what she did, she would say, "I go to timeout now."

We had to do something and it worked.

As for me, I was spanked very hard one time by a very big paddle. All my dad had to do after that was threaten to get the paddle out and I was good ...

 

Mikey, shit like this is why you are SJ's new MVP.