Discipline.....

[Bubblez]

So, per a debate in the SB today I thought it would be interesting to continue everyone's debate and points view on discipline with children. I hope this will help open some eyes that every child can't have exactly the same method. As each child is different and has extenuating circumstances we all need to keep in mind. I open this to debate. I have heard that we should just whip their butts and then use only time out. I welcome anyone's view and comments...
THANK YOU....

[Xenophile]

I now recall reading a scientific report that child beating will cause long term effects. Childhood trauma's have shown to link with lack of social skills with and lower school grades later in life.

Pretty interesting, no? The well meaning rearing of the stern parents could actually traumatize the children for life.

And another thing; I believe it to be a good thing for spanking to be illegal. If it is, then child abuse can never be defended as "overzealous spanking".

Just my 0.02 credits.

[Avi]

I'm a believer in a mix.  Corporal punishment has its place, such as when a child tries to run out in the street, or tries to touch a strange dog, or some other situation where one slip up could get your child hurt or killed.  You need to teach them to do the right thing, right away, and frankly, a little shock to the system would work best.  Especially when children are younger, you can tap into the pain-pleasure relation so that children will relate the bad behavior with an unpleasant experience and learn not to repeat the behavior.  Do it too much, however, and they'll get used to it and the effect will diminish and you'll find yourself using corporal punishment more and more for the same result.  *That* is when you can run into problems of being too harsh.  Use corporal punishment sparingly, not as your primary method.

Secondly, don't ever do it when you're pissed off, to take out your frustration with your kid.  Emotions cloud judgment, and when you're frustrated, rely on another person to administer the punishment if possible.  Also, as kids get older, corporal punishment decreases in benefit. 

In cases where it's a less-severe lesson to learn, things like privilege deprivation, time-outs, and such can work.  However, there are personality types that just don't jive with non-traditional discipline, so use them with caution.  You don't want the child to feel like they can get away with things in the presence of one parent, but not the other.

[Xenophile]

Yes, I can agree that a small, nearly "symbolic" slap on the hand could work. Reaching for the stove can be a example. It doesn't need to hurt, the point is just that it can be felt.

[Avi]

My parents only spanked me a few times when I was young, never when I was older than 3 or 4.  Frankly, it was when I did something that was really dangerous and I could have gotten myself or others hurt.  It worked, and I believe that it has its place.  I'll never use things like belts, paddles, or switches.  Bare-hand only, so you can gauge the impact, and even then, only a few swats.  None of that 20 minute long nonsense. 

[Darkcide]

I'm all for whupping kids. When I was growing up, I'd get them until about I want to say third grade. I admittedly was a very bad child though. I do not believe you should be choking or punching kids or anything like that. I however used to get the belt, and I do think that I am better off for it. I strongly disagree with the idea that children are traumatized by getting whupped with a belt, seriously. Cases where that happen, I feel that the children are actually being beaten as opposed to discipline. My parents after whupping me would always tell me exactly why they did what they did, and depending on what I had gotten whupped for would hug me afterwards and tell me they loved me. I have no long term effects. I was very popular throughout school, I've maintained a 3.0 since getting to college and I'm well adjusted.

I suppose it is a bit different in the black community, but whuppings generally aren't seen as a big deal. Hell, me and my friends joke about back when we used to get them. I'm in a student organization that is for the most part made up of African American students. We all pull good grades, we are all actors, and we actively give back to the community. Most of us have recieved whuppings as children, and it has had no effect.

I think that at some point those whuppings might have saved me, granted a whupping is not a substitute for parenting but there's nothing wrong with it. You can't be a shitty parent and whup someone, because in the end you'll still be a shitty parent.

[kylie]

          I think it's stretching to assume that when children are being spanked, in their mind it's clearly and mainly some lesson about a hot stove, or whatever prior issue.  Here we have these big, hulking authority figures hitting them very near their sexual organs, and they're expected to gather it's all about the stove?  Some sociologists and psychologists argue there's a risk that children may draw conclusions about sexuality from this situation:

Children may or may not pick up on the potential sexual meanings of corporal punishment, whether or not the perpetrator has any sexual intentions
or is gaining sexual gratification from administering a spanking or beating and regardless of whether or not they are experiencing any sexual feelings.

--- King, Nigel, Trevor Butt and Lorraine Green.
2003. "Spanking and the Corporal Punishment of Children: The Sexual Story."  International Journal of Children's Rights 11: 199-217.

          It isn't a situation in which the kids are going to be consistently able, much less encouraged, to turn around and discuss their perspective with the adults.  There is too much disparity in power and experience.  That is only exacerbated by how adults demand that kids are never associated with speech about sexuality.  But then, they go and smack the same kids in quite sensitive and taboo areas.

          So, this is all up in the air when spanking is involved.  Children may learn that spanking is sexy, or that sexuality must be associated with sensation in the behind/prostate.  They may gather that sexuality is simply painful and is to be grouped together with the idea of punishment by authority figures.

[Xenophile]

It truly is more to spanking then just spanking. When this kind of research comes up, it just makes it more obvious to me that even more research is needed on child psychology and how children are shaped by their experiences.

[Bubblez]

We all have to remember how each child perceives the world. As stated in an earlier discussion, an child with autism will only read into the fact that it is all right to go and hit other children, they don't grasp things the way normal children do. You have to understand the child you are disciplining before you dole out the punishment.

It would be like telling us each one of us on E are identical and should all be treated the same. I don't think that it fits in a general area.

I am not against spankings, I had a few myself as a child and I know that I respect people and things a lot more from them, but I also know I have more respect for the ones who never gave me one. My grandparents were of course old school, but I never received a spanking and I think that even my children react the same to them. This is a deep discussion and I think it is good that we can all voice our thoughts on here.

Thank you for your input so far everyone!

[Serephino]

I think people read way too much into everything.  Ever since the invention of Psychology people are coming up will all kinds of crazy crap.  My dad used to whip me with a dog leash.  I don't carry any emotional scars from that.  I didn't link it to sexuality.  I knew I pissed him off and I was getting my ass beat for it; the end.  The lesson to be learned was don't do it again, or at least try harder to not get caught.

Kids are getting more and more out of control because parents are told it's abuse to spank their kids.  You can't do this... and you can't do that...  It ends up with kids not respecting authority because there isn't much authority figures can do. 

I think there needs to be a balance.  I'm all for grounding and trying other methods, but I realize that may not always work.  I believe in a firm hand and letting the punishment fit the crime.

[kylie]

Kids are getting more and more out of control because parents are told it's abuse to spank their kids.

What sort of evidence or particular argument is there to support this?

The lesson to be learned was don't do it again, or at least try harder to not get caught.

If you're implying that's the lesson you learned, then it seems we could also gather that spanking may increase criminality.  Or at the least, it might lead to increasingly deceptive approaches.

          That's without questioning the premises that you clearly know every corner of what actually influenced your present worldview and how.  Plus, assuming that you are not an exceptional case.

[Darkcide]

On the same hand though, thousands if not millions of kids get whuppings and turn out fine. So it could be said that the children who are affected by the whuppings negatively are exceptional cases as well. Not to mention it isn't going to just be getting whuppings alone that lead to problems later in life. Other things play a factor. Such as a parent not instilling a sense of wrong or right, actually abusing a child if say they are punching or choking the child, or blatant sexual abuse. When these "studies" are conducted do they look at the circumstances? I highly doubt the children with problems down the road turn out that way just because of whuppings, alone.

[kylie]

thousands if not millions of kids get whuppings and turn out fine.

Lots of people drink and drive, but don't get in accidents.  Should we encourage them to take the chance, if there was often some other way to get from point A to point B?
         
          I think the point of the study I cited was more that the data on child responses is so complex, and the tensions surrounding childhood and sexuality so messy, that we can rarely know when a spanking is sexual for a child.  I wouldn't go so far as to assume that means all spankings must turn out badly.  I do think it suggests that we can't generally know for sure when a spanking is bad (or at least confusing in various ways).  Since we don't know though, my inclination is to be cautious and consider other approaches more seriously.

         I googled around earlier and passed a variety of studies.  Sorry I didn't keep all the links on the first pass.  There were studies suggesting that spanking is linked to greater violence and aggression in some children later.  There was at least one suggesting that it might encourage better academic achievement later (Which would totally fail to explain my academic achievement, but anyway.). 

         There is another that notes that those who spank are more often politically conservative, evangelical Christians, sometimes Black, often not so high on the income scale.  There are some values (specifically about sex, discipline, masculinity and violence) prominent among a few of those communities that I generally wouldn't like to line up with.  So I'm even more reluctant to encourage spanking (at least, spanking in the less conversational ways many people use it), if it fits in readily with conveying those particular values.  But, that doesn't amount to a cohesive argument either way in itself.

         Perhaps more interesting, there was one study if I recall, that said spanking was not so much more or less "effective" than other methods.  If so, I would default back to, so why chance it -- unless other methods have just as impressive potential drawbacks.

[Darkcide]

Whuppings=Drunk Driving, really?

Is it a spanking alone that could be viewed sexually by a child? Do the studies take into circumstances? If the parents say anything to the child? Where the child is hit at? What the child is hit with?

As for the aggression aspect, again is that just spankings alone that do that? Find me a controlled study where a child is whupped but has an otherwise perfectly fine parental figure there who is doing right by them aside from disciplining them. Later on down the road, do the children wind up with increased aggression?

My parents are agnostic/atheist, and both liberal or moderate. My mother before she passed made over 80,000 a year and my father retired from the post office. Please enlighten me as to which communities sex, discipline, masculinity and violence are prominent in, please.

Why spank? Why not? There's no guarentee that it will work, or that grounding will work. Or that any other form of discipline will work. So why discipline children at all?

[kylie]

Whuppings=Drunk Driving, really?

It seems a fair enough argument to me that they both have certain risks.  The claim before that, if you noticed, was that some people do fine despite risks.  Surely enough.  Not all of us always wish to take the same chances.

Is it a spanking alone that could be viewed sexually by a child?  Do the studies take into circumstances? If the parents say anything to the child? Where the child is hit at? What the child is hit with?

I do think those could be relevant, myself.  Getting observers into a wide range of American homes to do any "controlled" study sounds like something that would encounter a political taboo, though.

As for the aggression aspect, again is that just spankings alone that do that? Find me a controlled study where a child is whupped but has an otherwise perfectly fine parental figure there who is doing right by them aside from disciplining them. Later on down the road, do the children wind up with increased aggression?

Yeah, I think one issue a couple mentioned was that many studies have to rely on retrospective, self-reported data.  (Come to think of it, that could bias things toward pathology research to begin with.  Not familiar enough to say, but it's possible.)  So, social science isn't perfect in a lot of cases.  I'm not sure that makes it worse than arguments based on little to no science, though.  Not really clear if you're trying to add something particular (except general doubt), though?

My parents are agnostic/atheist, and both liberal or moderate. My mother before she passed made over 80,000 a year and my father retired from the post office. Please enlighten me as to which communities sex, discipline, masculinity and violence are prominent in, please.

I find that situation interesting (and potentially enviable), but again don't really know what to draw from the simple mention of it here.  The "please enlighten me" rather sounds testy to me, but I just can't see wherever it's going...  I could perhaps be more specific and say that I imagine the populations where spanking is most often reported tend to believe more in strict gender binaries, protecting community men from scrutiny to the extent that sometimes their abuses are actively overlooked, often pressure on women regarding occupational, sexual, and reproductive choices, and other relatively conservative politics.  Again, I don't know just what you're trying to add on that particular angle.

[Serephino]

Everything has risks.  As others have said, each child is an individual.  All a parent can do is the best they know how given the situation.  It's a fine line.  Obviously it wouldn't be good to have your child fear you, but I would at least want my child to think twice before he or she did something they knew they'd get in trouble for.

Other methods of punishment didn't work on me.  I found ways around it.  Finding ways around being grounded from something is easy.  It's not much of a punishment when I can still get on the computer when my mom is at work. 

I carry emotional scars from my childhood, but not from being spanked when I did something wrong.  Now when my mom lost her temper and beat me with an ice cube tray... that was overkill. 

Here's a question...  What do you do when your kid has had all privileges taken away and is grounded for a month, and calls you a stupid bitch to your face?  Do you let it go?  Do you just tack on another month of grounding and then they can do it some more?  Or, do you backhand them and tell them straighten up or else?

I don't know where the sexuality issue is coming from because I never once saw it that way.  That's not how a child's mind works.  I used to watch the Smurfs every day and never once thought it odd or interesting that Smurfette was the only girl.  Now my mind is full of sick and twisted thoughts, but then, I was enjoying a cartoon.  People pointed out things in all kinds of kids shows that are thought to be inappropriate, but watching them as a kid none of it ever crossed my mind even once.  And my butt was the thing I sat on and where poop came out. 

[kylie]

I don't know where the sexuality issue is coming from because I never once saw it that way.  That's not how a child's mind works.  I used to watch the Smurfs every day and never once thought it odd or interesting that Smurfette was the only girl.  Now my mind is full of sick and twisted thoughts, but then, I was enjoying a cartoon.

Well if any one of us, based on personal experience, can claim to speak for all children or some "obvious" effects of childhood upon sexuality, then:  I could just as easily tell you they are all at least rehearsing for bondage and discipline by age 5.  Learning plenty about sexuality from Shera and GI Joe, or whoever the cartoon of the day may be.  And inspiring their friends to get their siblings to tie them up.  Then, there's that Smurfette and how many tempting predicaments she wiggled out of, when she should have been punished.  (Although I must grant you that I wouldn't have recommended spanking for her, per se.)   

          Now, I am not saying the above were bad lessons in my case.  (I still approve of my kinks.)  I'm not sure I felt them as "sexual" then -- but consider: How many children are taught to understand sensations of gender, pain, stimulation or power as "sexual"?  The fact that many may not have the concept of "sexuality" in their heads then does not prove that they can't possibly be drawing basic conclusions that are relevant.  When it came to physical punishment, I usually associated that mainly with intimidation and humiliation.  Those were always questionable or illegitimate uses of power in my mind, as far as I can remember.  I highly suspect there was also some edge of associating the humiliation of exposure with the discomfort many people hinted "must" surround any talk of sexuality (at least where children were involved).  But that is one of those things where I'm afraid we can't all access every relevant memory, by the time we've learned/aged/been allowed to speak of it publicly.

[kylie]

What do you do when your kid has had all privileges taken away and is grounded for a month, and calls you a stupid bitch to your face?

Honestly, I'd question whether all the preceding punishments were part of a solution or contributing to the problem.  I know I sometimes found other ways to clear the air for myself when everyday things were called off limits.  It doesn't surprise me if some other kids spring back with something new, as far as that kind of escalation goes.  Even among adults, removing goodies can be perceived as humiliation treatment or simple power tripping and can lead to some creatively desperate people.  Some privilege-deprived adults, too, seem to keep on trying to make room for themselves and keep getting targeted with the same old punishments.  Among other things, the US has built a huge private prison industry around recycling people through repetitive symbolic shaming and deprivation.

          Not presuming to speak to any particular situation, but there are also some good reasons for kids to call adults out at times.  Age is no guarantee of competence or admirable behavior.  Unresolved issues piling up, rules that only exacerbate the situation, terribly contradictory approaches, sometimes even abuse...  If cases of adults getting "dished" in full honestly happen often and to many people, then I can't believe that "spanked or didn't spank" is more than the tip of the iceberg.  Spanking may serve to suppress the symptoms of other issues and make some adults feel in better control...  Lots of reactions can do that.  Not presuming there are no passable applications of spanking as discipline...  Just by and large, it seems to me like taking a hammer to pea-sized problem.  My feeling about it is, even if one could manage to hit the specific problem rolling around down there with that big blunt instrument, good luck stirring up nothing else.

[Scott]

SN - 03x05 PART 1
Ok, this isn't the same show but a perfect example. These kids just need their asses tore up.

[Darkcide]

          It seems a fair enough argument to me that they both have certain risks.  The claim before that, if you noticed, was that some people do fine despite risks.  Surely enough.  Not all of us always wish to take the same chances.
          I do think those could be relevant, myself.  Getting observers into a wide range of American homes to do any "controlled" study sounds like something that would encounter a political taboo, though.
          Yeah, I think one issue a couple mentioned was that many studies have to rely on retrospective, self-reported data.  (Come to think of it, that could bias things toward pathology research to begin with.  Not familiar enough to say, but it's possible.)  So, social science isn't perfect in a lot of cases.  I'm not sure that makes it worse than arguments based on little to no science, though.  Not really clear if you're trying to add something particular (except general doubt), though?
          I find that situation interesting (and potentially enviable), but again don't really know what to draw from the simple mention of it here.  The "please enlighten me" rather sounds testy to me, but I just can't see wherever it's going...  I could perhaps be more specific and say that I imagine the populations where spanking is most often reported tend to believe more in strict gender binaries, protecting community men from scrutiny to the extent that sometimes their abuses are actively overlooked, often pressure on women regarding occupational, sexual, and reproductive choices, and other relatively conservative politics.  Again, I don't know just what you're trying to add on that particular angle.

Whupping is not in the same boat as drunk driving. That is like saying "Telling a child how to behave is the same thing as indentured servitude because you're limiting someone's freedom." No, they're not near the same thing. That is a very, very, very shallow comparison. Whupping holds with it basically the same risks as grounding a child. It all depends on context and how it is done.

Spanking alone doesn't hold any risks and it can't be said to on it's own because we don't know the circumstances surrounding the children who develop issues down the road's lives. How much of the parenting is examined before people jump into conclusions? Does the child have the capacity for mental imbalance beforehand? How does the parent spank the child? Are environmental circumstances taken into account? Until they prove that spanking alone holds risks, the studies don't mean crap.

The point was, these studies should be taken with a grain of salt because there are too many factors they don't take into account.

It is testy, you're making a sweeping generalization. "Politically conservative, evangelical Christians, sometimes Black, often not so high on the income scale." Where is your proof as to this claim, how large was the pool of parents who spank children that the studies drew from, and how many whuppings are actually reported? Can you back up the unfair generalization or are you just assuming? There is no double meaning to anything I've said, the point of that part of the post was to back up your claim because it'd be easy for someone to take offense to that.

[Jude]

Murray Straus, a sociologist, and Mallie Paschall from the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, California, led a research study that shows spanking lowers a child’s IQ.
Corporal Punishment by Parents

Spare the rod and spoil the child is often stated by parents to justify spanking. But, could spanking actually be damaging to a child’s ability to learn? New research says yes, it could.

Spanking that leaves a mark may be considered physical child abuse in many states and could result in a parent losing parental rights and even going to jail. But, spanking may also affect children in their ability to learn in school. Murray Straus, leader of the recent University of New Hampshire in Durham study, says, "The practical side of this is that pediatricians and child psychologists need to start doing what none of them do now, and say, ‘Never spank under any circumstances.’" [1]
Spanked Children Have Less Gray Matter

While several studies in the past have alluded to the fact that spanking may reduce intelligence, this new study proclaims it as fact. Spanking creates stress, anxiety and fear and this can slow a child’s cognitive development. It can actually result in fewer neurons in the brain.

The New Hampshire study examined children over a four-year period and divided them into two age groups: 2 to 4 years old and 5 to 9 years old. This was to measure the damage based on age because some psychologists state that spanking does no damage when children are younger. IQ tests were administered as a pretest.

Read more at Suite101: Spanking Has Negative Effect on Intelligence: Research States Corporal Punishment Stunts I.Q.

That's just a snippet, but should be all the justification you need not to spank your child.

[Trieste]

It's ... a tool, fer chrissake. Every child is different, every child has their own personality, and children change as they age. Saying no children should be spanked for anything is just as ridiculous as saying every child should be spanked for everything. Just like the difference between shouting and a serious talk, or revoking privileges, or rewarding behavior, or... whatever.

It shouldn't be overused, but it also shouldn't be zomg outlawed.

[Darkcide]

That's just a snippet, but should be all the justification you need not to spank your child.

If it doesn't do that for every child's IQ it isn't a fact. Not to mention in what context was the spanking used? Why were the children spanked? What occured from the spanker to the spankee after it happened? What were the children spanked with? The parenting as a whole consisted of? Were the cultures of the family taken into account? The environment? Lastly how many children was this theory tested on?

[Jude]

You don't seem to understand how scientific studies work so I will explain.

They divided children up into 2 groups, a group that is spanked, and a group that is not.  Then they compared the two groups and found that the group that was spanked was intellectually stunted.

No, studies never account for individual people, they study trends in order to determine loose causality because it's impossible to account for the effect in one person, especially when dealing with a sociological principle.

There are also other studies on the matter that suggest equally bad results.

If you decide to spank your child fully knowing that it's been linked to a decrease in intelligence and dangerous sexual behaviors (look at the bottom of the page where it discusses that) then you've got to have a lot of faith in your parenting style in order to overcome an established link.

Is it possible?  I don't know, I would say probably.  The first study hints that you can counteract damage done by adding in cognitive stimulus (though it states that if you did that without the spanking by itself it would probably have a positive effect so they're just cancelling each other out more than likely).  But I don't see why a responsible parent would risk damaging their kid by spanking them.

Showing examples of unruly youth as "evidence" that some kids need corporal punishment is far from valid.  First of all, there's no statistical data to back up that those kids couldn't be cured by counseling and non-violent methods.  You're merely putting forth a point of view in a non-rigorous way based on anecdotal evidence which is completely without any sort of predictive value.  Secondly, if your kid gets to that point to begin with you've probably already made mistakes.  Which, in my cases, is often the use of physical discipline in excess to begin with.

[Trieste]

Enough, boys, or I'll put you both in the corner.