Why I don't spank my kids
After reading this story about a mom who killed her kids while "disciplining" them, I'm reminded why my wife and I do not punish our children by physical means as advocated by the bible. (HT: GIFS)
As much as you love your kids, they are going to piss you off. Most likely it's actually for something they did wrong, sometimes it's because you had a bad day at work. Like any parent when your kids piss you off you go about punishing them.
Now put yourself in that state of mind. You are really, really angry and being a normal human being you want to punish them thoroughly for what they did.
It is precisely at this point where even the most patient and loving parent will over-react. Add to the fact that your form of punishment is physical in nature and naturally you get punishment that borders on abuse.
Now, the parent in the article took it a step further and used PVC pipe and various other methods that most parents wouldn't use. But even with other methods of physical punishment there is the tendency to do too much.
Not to say that you can't overreact with alternative methods of discipline, but at least you don't risk death or bodily injury.
Tags: atheism parenting
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9 comments:
I think the key here is discipline, both for the child and for the parent. You are disciplining your child for wrong behavior, obviously. But the parent exercising the punishment must also be disciplined, as in the parent must exercise self-control. I was spanked as a kid, and it did wonders for straightening up my behavior. But the key was that my parents never spanked me when they themselves were angry. If they were angry, they sent me to my room until they cooled off, then came in, talked to me about what I did and why it was wrong, made sure that I knew why I was getting punished, then spanked. And even then, it was always three swats - no more, no less. I hated getting spanked, but in every case I had earned it, and I do believe that it kept me from getting in even greater trouble as a kid.
FIRST: there's a difference between spanking and child abuse. Unfortunately, this story is a description of the latter. The bible does not condone "child abuse" but it does encourage parents to raise their children on a path they won't waiver from into adulthood. All children are different, so spanking isn't always necessary, but if it is (and I've seen some unruly disrespectful children), then I agree...don't spare the rod.
Ok with that said: I believe in matching the punishment with the crime. Some things require positive reinforcement, while others require negative reinforcement or even spanking. I use all of them as forms of discipline, depending on the unacceptable behavior.
Now that my daughter is a teen, I don't have to spank her anymore. I believe I've laid the foundation well enough in the early years so it isn't necessary now. As with any child, she still tries to test me, but I've found that a stern look or taking her cell phone does the trick everytime. LOL
When I did spank, I never did it while I was angry (and yes I used belts). Making her wait was part of the punishment because it scared her to death. Sometimes I would wait so long, she would ask me to go ahead and get it over with. LOL There were even times when she preferred spanking over punishment. Nothing like looking out the window on a beautiful summer day while all of your friends are playing dodge ball right in front of your house. LOL
I believe spanking is necessary, depending on the child and definitely depending on the crime. However, I do realize that spanking does not work for every child and some may become more aggressive because of it. But the same goes for yelling, which almost ALL parents are guilty of. If I tried to spank my daughter now, she'd probably laugh, but if I yelled at her, it would hurt her feelings and she'd probably cry.
They both have lasting negative effects. IMO, the most important key to discipline is to choose your battles because children will be children.
Two comments from both of my (openly?) theist readers, how I should have known :)
Thanks for the comments, I appreciate hearing from the other side on these matters. You've raised some excellent points about discipline and not spaking when you're angry, but my original point is that we over-react and take things to the extreme.
I do like the idea of a cooling down period before attempting to discipline however, I think that no matter what form of punishment you use, cooling down will make it more effective.
Also, single ma, I realize the bible doesn't condone child abuse, but it does condone as you said not sparing the rod.
Once again, while we may disagree, I do thank you both for the comments, you are always welcome back :)
There are stories of people who have caged their children in kennels for days, weeks, or even months, giving them sometimes barely enough food or water to survive and treating them as animals. Long enough neglect and they will die. I could use that to argue that timeouts are a bad form of discipline because it can be taken to an extreme.
Its a rather poor argument to take the extreme of any situation and use that as an argument for the abolition of the entire situation. The other thing you said was that you punish your children when they make you mad ... "As much as you love your kids, they are going to piss you off. Most likely it's actually for something they did wrong, sometimes it's because you had a bad day at work. Like any parent when your kids piss you off you go about punishing them."
I don't punish my kids because they make me mad. I punish them when they dis-obey the rules or do something that they are clearly aware is wrong. Sometimes they do things that make me mad but I know in their current age that they really hadn't been told not to do it and didn't know any better and it is not justified to punish them for that. In those cases I set them down and explain to them what happened and why they should not do that anymore, and I let them know its serious, but I don't punish them for it in any way even though the result makes me pretty mad.
Punishment is always to be used as correction not as retribution. Spanking is to be used as a means of correction when the offense warrants it or when other forms of correction are not working to correct the behavior.
I understand that some people are opposed to spanking and that is fine. I believe it is a misguided removal of a valid form of correction and that many different forms are helpful in the overall correction process. I do not see as valid the desire to spare your child pain. Pain is the great corrector of behavior and molder of character. Timeouts are a form of pain. Removing a desired toy is a form of pain. Some say but physical pain is unjust. If physical pain is unjust and unfair, would it be good then if we did not sense pain when we put our hand on a hot stove or slammed our finger in the car door.
Pain serves a purpose and it is to correct poor behavior. Limiting that pain only to emotional and mental pain does not seem to be a rational course of action to me. In fact I could make a case that if you focus too much on the emotional and mental pain that it could be much more long term damaging than a few swift swats on the bottom. The posterior is fairly well padded and I have not heard of any permanent damage to that area without using PVC pipe or some other obvious and outrageous form of abuse.
I think the arguments against spanking come from good intentions. However I don't think the logic of it holds up to scrutiny when it comes to application by caring parents who desire to raise kids of good character.
Apex,
What situations is more likely?
1. You had a bad day at work, you come home and your kids act up/disobey you/do something they know is wrong.
1a. You get too mad at them and then go about punishing them by spanking them too hard which results in physical injuries like a limp.
1b. You get too mad at them and then go about punishing them by giving them an extreme timeout, and barely giving them enough food and water until they become malnourished.
In my mind, 1a is more likely. When I give my son a timeout, he goes into a corner. Even when I'm really pissed and yell at him too much, he still only goes in a corner and I can reconcile with him by giving him a hug and apologizing for yelling too much.
I think the arguments against spanking come from good intentions
Indeed, they do.
franky,
Both are unlikely but there are probably more cases of the physical abuse than the caged timeout abuse (although I have heard of multiple cases of caging for discipline that I found shocking). My point was not to argue the equality of frequency but to point out that there can be extremes to anything. By your logic something that is really really really extreme can be ignored but something that is just really really extreme must be used as an argument to abolish anything related to that practice. That doesn't seem very rational.
How about the cases of parents who mentally abuse their children by telling them how worthless they are and how they wish they never had them and whatever else they might say when they are so mad at them and the kid goes off and ruins his life on drugs or commits suicide or spends his whole life in couseling with the belief that no one wants him/her. The point is there are all kinds of bad parents who do all kinds of really terrible things and those using physical abuse certainly have no corner on that market, but you can't use that as an argument to say parents can use negative language towards their children because some parents language is extremely negative.
And while the case you cited was a case of spanking gone completely to the extreme (although the child didn't die from spanking but from being wrapped in a blanket and suffocating so that kind of defeats your argument a bit), often cases of abuse are not about punishment, they are about poor parents who can't control their anger.
But more importantly your short response has extracted one small portion of my comment to try to build an argument that your extreme case is more likely than my extreme case. But it ignored my central point that the extreme example is not a reason to argue against the use in fair practice. There is a saying in the legal profession that hard cases make bad law. Namely when an extreme situation comes along it is a bad idea to base a law on that exception to the general rule. I believe it is appropriate to apply that logic here as well.
SingleMa, with respect, "spanking" generally involves an open hand or other flat object. I think if there's a belt involved it's considered "whipping".
Claire - spanking, whipping...all semantics. Call it what you want. I'm not sure about your intent of pointing that out, but I could name a lot of "other flat objects" (your word) that will cause more damage than a belt. It's all about the force behind it. If the bad behavior deserves physical punishment, then I call it spanking.
I never spanked either of my daughters (ages 17 and 22). Not once. Tolerance had nothing to do with it.
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