Texas idiot judge: Don't swat your kids on the behind!

I think it's very effective when used correctly.

You don't EVER use a spanking to try to hurt your kid. It's a way to get their attention. A couple years ago my oldest ran away from me in the parking lot while I was buckling my other kid into his car seat.

After a light swat and sternly telling him never ever to do that again and what could happen if he was hit by a car or taken away, he's never done it again. He's even explained to his brother why you can't ever do that and thankfully my youngest has never done it either...

 

I think in Texas the parents can spank, but what's really cool is when the first cousin comes over to make it feel better.

Seriously, we tend to smack the hand before the bottom, and usually a bottom spanking comes with a lot of warning so behavior can be improved. The hand smack is one smack and a spanking is 2-3 swats with the palm of my hand.

I would say in three years I have smacked or spanked my daughter 6-8 times.

 

The mother I encountered the other day while having work done on my car would disagree about her little angel.

I'm in the waiting room, along with other customers, working on my computer to kill the time. The mom and her angel are behind me. The kid is, every minute or two, beating the crap out of some of the toys in the play area. (Toys and play area provided by the dealership).

With each "crash" I'm figuring something just broke and I'm getting a bit testy because of the noise.

Does the mother order her little angel to stop the behavior? Does she spank her to send a message that her behavior is not appropriate?

Of course not. In a sweet, soothing tone she reminds her that is her choice whether she wants to continue banging the shit around. She adds: "You might break it."

Her choice? No, it's your responsibility to make sure your angel conducts herself appropriately in public.

Oh how I wanted to get out of the chair to first spank the little girl and then smack the mom.

 

That's about how I see it. I didn't do it, but my parents would smack my son on the hand when he first started to walk and get into things that might be dangerous.

Once they are old enough to understand the concept of "in trouble," physical pain shouldn't really be necessary, but I'm not going to make a federal case out of it if someone wants to spank a kid once in awhile.

 

I have no problem at all with that mother not spanking her child.

I would have a big problem with her not disciplining the child at all. A threat of punishment (loss of priviledges or toys at home) in a tone that shows she means business would have been plenty.

That "your choice" garbage? Fuck that. Deal with your kid.

 

I was in the grocery store years ago (before I had kids) and I watched a mother backhand a kid that had to be about 3 (Kid was sitting in the front part of the grocery cart) and screamed "Stop crying!"

I looked at the mom and said, "That's a good way to make her stop crying."

The mom looked like I had scared the shit out of her.

There is a difference between spanking and hitting.

My next door neighbor growing up, if he fucked up, his dad would make him go to his father's room and pick out the belt he would use for his whupping. His dad always told him, "If you pick the wrong one, I'll go pick it out and you don't want me to pick it out."

I'm completely against ever using an object at any time.

 

The "your choice" thing can be effective if there are consequences for the wrong choice and that is explained to the child.

 

The Daily Mail fails to mention she pleaded guilty to a "felony charge of injury to a child."

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/state&id=8195860

 

I have a relative whose preferred method of "discipline" is to say "You're making Mommy sad." Don't pick up your toys after being asked 5 times? "You're making Mommy sad." Push your toddler sister down 3 steps? "You're making Mommy sad." The kid doesn't care if Mommy is sad. He does whatever she wants (she's 7) and suffers no consequences. Mom wonders why her kids don't listen to her. When they go someplace like a store or the mall, the mom tells her kids to stay close to her "or a stranger will steal them." Then she wonders why the kids are afraid to go shopping with her.

 

I've never spanked my kids, and I never would, and not just because my oldest is almost taller than I am now. To me, spanking is lazy parenting. What the hell is a 2-year-old going to learn from being beaten? Nothing. A 2-year-old is a 2-year-old, and you can't reason with a 2-year-old, or expect that they're going to draw some lesson from being beaten at a young age. Yes, maybe they'll fear you, but it's not exactly the building blocks of a long-term, healthy parent-child relationship. I don't recall as a child not doing something because I feared getting spanked, and my stubborn brother, who got the belt with some frequency, sure as hell never did.

There's this false equivalency of "spare the rod, spoil the child," as if you can only instill discipline through force. To me, I've found the best parents to be consistent. They consistently set expectations, and they expect their child to meet them. However, they ALSO do so at age-appropriate times, and sometimes that means not expecting a child to act 100% wonderful at certain ages. When we had a child between the ages of 1 1-2 and 3, we rarely traveled or went out to dinner, because we knew a 2-year-old didn't have the patience and understanding to handle it.

I'm not going to post a million links here, but there is plenty of research you can find on the effects of spanking -- and they're nearly all negative in aggregate. Granted, there are other non-spanking forms of discipline that can be way too harsh. But I don't get the spanking-uber-alles mentality. That's not about disciplining your kids. That's about controlling them. And there's a difference.

 

Sure, but that doesn't sound like it was the case here. At the very least, that strategy needs to include well-timed reminders of the consequences.

 

See, this is the kind of response that drives me nuts. You don't want to spank your child? I respect that. You know best for YOUR kid.

You don't know what is best for everybody else's kid. If you want to argue the research, that is fine, but to call it lazy parenting? Well, I find that to be lazy posting at best, flat-out ignorant at worst.