On 2006-03-07 15:47:00, Nihilanthic wrote:
"Julie... no offence but Ive yet to see a shred of evidence spanking works. People do it becuase someone else did it before them, and nobodys been able to seperate the sparking effect from the variable of 'growing up because theyre... kids that are growing up!'.
Furthermore, spanking becuase its legal is foolish. Programs are legal too! Doenst make it right, or even effective.
Not trying to jump on some bandwagon here, but... Ive yet to see its efficacy demonstrated, at all, period! Its a fear/humiliation/pain based punishment thats only differentiated from any other sort of coersion when viewed subjectively.
Personally, when I was spanked (very, very hard, with a hand or a belt) it didnt work. I just got humiliated and angry. I now carry a lot of repressed resentment, though that probably has more to do with the social problems I finally grew out of in late highschool/college - but I seriously doubt setting up a loophole of a 'pop on the bottom' that just turns into a subjectively defined, rictualized and legally approved version of influcting pain (aka torture) is going to benefit anyone in the long run.
To put it simply, if spanking works, why do people have to keep spanking the kid until they grow up?"
Spanking the kid until they grow up? Huh?
My parents spanked me less and less, until by the time I was eight or nine I rarely did anything bad enough to get a spanking, and by the time I was ten or eleven, just about never. I also got to where my attention span was long enough that grounding was more effective, so *if* I did something to get in big trouble, I'd get grounded. By high school, mostly I'd just occasionally get grounded from the phone.
I got spanked once for getting on Daddy's desk (where I could have really screwed up the family's bills in pre-internet days when that was a big thing), once for playing in a cow-befouled creek (again) when my mom had told me not to because she was afraid I'd get really sick, once for writing in another kid's schoolbooks, once for hitting Mommy when I was about five or six.
Things like that.
I got far more timeouts than I ever got spankings.
I got far more talking-to's than I ever got spankings.
I got my face slapped innumerable times for sassing or talking back to my mom. I don't approve of that, and I've never slapped my child's face. Honestly, I'm not real sure why Katie doesn't smart-mouth me or her dad. She just doesn't. She has, I guess, when she was little and when she's gone through cantankerous phases, but not so much. She just doesn't do that.
My parents made some spanking mistakes, and they made some other kinds of mistakes. I don't resent the spanking mistakes any more than I resent some of the other mistakes. Mostly, I'm glad they weren't as screwed up as some of my friends' parents. And I have compassion for their eccentricities, even though those caused me some problems, because I know the root causes of those now.
I'm sure if they'd beaten me or spanked me for no reason or trivial reasons I'd feel differently. And I *do* disapprove of face-slapping for verbal snarkiness. My mom learned that from her mom, it was counter-productive, and so I just don't do it with my kid.
My Katie is ten years old. I can't remember the last time she did anything that meritted a spanking, neither can she, neither can James. She's a good kid. I don't think the parents of the neighborhood bully across the street spank. She sure needs one. She hits other kids, first, when she doesn't get her way and expects that she's not going to get hit back. That's not just me thinking my Katie's a little angel---neighborhood parents have compared notes.
If her parents would spank her at home when she hits other kids out in the neighborhood, she'd stop. Just scolding her when they catch her in a lie, and most of the time just believing her without doing any skeptical digging to find out the full picture of what happened, isn't working.
They don't spank, so what she's learned is not that people don't hit or that big people hit littler people. She doesn't just hit littler people---Katie's twice her size and could take her apart, Katie just *knows* she could really injure the other little girl and flat won't--she'll hit her back, but she's not hitting in a way that risks injuring her. This kid hits Katie, first---and I have accounts from disinterested neighbor kids with no reason to lie.
The other little girl has learned that she can hit other people with impunity and nobody can hit her back---or if someone does hit her back, that's the person that gets in trouble, not her.
Her parents not spanking her isn't teaching her non-violence. It's teaching her that its okay for her to dish it out and not okay for anybody to pass it back. That is a kid with one *sad* future, if she doesn't somehow learn better. She's not learning it from her parents. She's got them snowed.
There are more important things about how you raise a kid than whether you spank or not.
If parents do spank, and they're applying it right, kids have generally outgrown real brattiness by eight or nine. Sure, they still get into mischief, but mostly just "house rules" kinds of infractions---not stuff that disrespects other people or harms them or their stuff.
Just about all the families in my subculture spanked their kids, with just about the limits and rarity I've described, and had well-mannered, empathic, non-bratty kids by age eight or nine. Kids that went through varying degrees of typical adolescent turmoil---usually the mild variants---before becoming well-mannered, empathic, non-bratty adults.
Some of the most rotten kids had parents who didn't spank, but that was because when I was growing up a lot of the parents who didn't spank also overindulged their kids and tried to be their kids' friends instead of their kids' parents.
In my generation, I know parents who don't spank who also don't overindulge their kids and are loving parents, but are definitely the parents rather than trying to be their kids' friends. Those parents generally manage to have kids that aren't awful.
There's so much more to being a good parent than whether you never spank versus spanking rarely.
Most of the differences I've seen between good parents and horrible ones has had little to do with that one, small, discipline tactic.
Again, I'm not at all surprised when kids of parents who used spanking *very badly* decide not to use it at all.
My mom was always clear when she spanked that she loved me and because she loved me was not going to let me grow up to be rotten. Or wasn't going to let me do things that were stupidly unsafe. Almost always when I was spanked I really had just done something rotten or really unsafe.
Even the slapping, even though I don't agree with it and don't do it---I have to admit I had a really sharp tongue and could really flay people with nasty, scathing sarcasm. Getting self control over what I said to people sooner rather than later probably made me more pleasant for other people to be around. I still don't approve, but in Mom's defense, she had a point.
My Katie has never really gotten into using words as a weapon like I did.
Anyway, I'm tired so I'm rambling.
Again, Niles, most of the parents I know who spank who are garden variety decent parents *don't* have to keep spanking until their kids are grown. For most of us, the bad behavior that really impinges on others has been trained out in favor of good manners at a fairly young age and spanking becomes basically needless. Grounding, or limited grounding like from phone or TV, or scolding, works fine for stupid shite like breaking curfew too badly or not doing assigned chores.
Mostly, I don't tell Katie to do unreasonable things, and she does what I tell her to. I try to tell her, a lot, how much I appreciate her for being such a good kid. I try to make sure she knows how doing what I ask is something that will inherently benefit her. For example, learning how to do a particular chore helps her learn how to take care of herself so she can be independent. Learning good manners or good social skills helps her learn to behave the way adults expect our adult friends to behave towards us, so that the people she likes will like her back, and so forth.
There are much bigger deals in parenting than spank sometimes or spank never.
Julie
