Do you hit people?

I hit dudes at the bar if they don’t listen to the word “no” the first time.

No…. Curious about the people that do, though.

@seek…. The one good reason!

After rolling my eyes at the snark behind the question…

An adult knows what “no” means, and will generally listen. If they don’t, then yeah, they are at risk of being hit. Though, not for the same reasons as you might spank a child. It would probably be a much harder hit in the adult’s case as well.

No, and I have never hit, swatted, spanked, beaten my children. The last time I hit someone I was a frustrated 13 year old and couldn’t express myself.

Just my sparring partner.

I have swatted a butt or two in my life. I have also had it done to me (to clarify, that was many, many, many years ago).
I have hit during fights but I can count on one hand the number of fights I have had in my life and I never threw the first punch no matter how much I might have wanted to.

The only time I whap someone (on their arm) is when there’s a fully stopped car in front of us and they’re not braking because their eyes aren’t on the road. That’s a rare occurrence, thank goodness.

Other than that, the only hitting I do is when I’m at a batting cage, bowling alley and the like. I might throw a playful arm punch every now and then, but don’t hit my kids. Oh, except with pillows when a feather-fight ensues.

On a more serious note, after years of abuse, I have NO tolerance for any infliction of pain, including the NSFW kind.

@Seek_Kolinahr: “I hit dudes at the bar if they don’t listen to the word “no” the first time.”

Not exactly what I was looking for, but good point. Rather, I was interested in interactions with adults in your life that you love or care for. For example, if your husband didn’t clean the garage on Monday when you asked him to. Or if he didn’t make dinner on Thursday.

@livelaughlove21: “An adult knows what “no” means, and will generally listen. If they don’t, then yeah, they are at risk of being hit.”

So, it’s really just a matter of compliance? Adults generally do what they’re supposed to do, so they do not get hit as much?

@livelaughlove21: “Though, not for the same reasons as you might spank a child.”

That’s more of what I’m interested in. What are the reasons people give for hitting an adult vs. hitting a younger person.

@tom_g You hit an adult to protect yourself, or to intentionally inflict pain on them out of anger and hostility. I don’t bend my husband over my knee and pop him on the butt when he does something he shouldn’t do. I may, however, deck a creeper that grabs my ass at a bar.

You spank (not beat) a child as a tool for compliance. It should only be used when nothing else does, in order to get their attention and show particularly young kids that doing certain things they shouldn’t do may result in something negative. This is an attempt to teach them not to do this thing in the future. There’s no hostility – it’s instrumental. The parent’s main goal isn’t “hurt the child,” it’s “teach the child.” Are there other ways to do this? Sure. But who is anyone to say which is the right way to raise a child? Kids are individuals, and there’s no golden standard of discipline that is effective on all of them.

I should also point out, in case it matters – I don’t have kids, I’ve never spanked a kid, and I was never spanked. However, my older sister was, as she was a more stubborn child. She was not abused. My husband was abused by his step-father for a short time, but was spanked by his mom throughout childhood, as were his 4 siblings. He knows the difference between the two and sees nothing wrong with spanking. Granted, he seems more lenient on corporal punishment than I, but neither of us will be mistreating our kids. I grew up in Chicago and my husband grew up in the South, where nearly all parents I’ve come into contact with spank their kids. Do we think all parent should spank? Of course not. But parents that do are not bad people or inferior to parents that are against spanking.

I hit my husband in a benign manner at times if I am completely honest. A nudge, or tap on the arm. Sometimes in jest sometimes in frustration. But, it’s a nothing, not meant as punishment or trying to control him. I guess if you are strict hands to yourself I violate that, but between my husband and I it is almost one body.

I would never truly hit someone else in anger, I never feel the urge.

I don’t have children and imagine I would never hit them. I have cared for children and never felt compelled to hit them.

@livelaughlove21 Some adults hit other adults to control them, it is not just utilized to defend oneself.

I don’t hit anyone.

@livelaughlove21: “But who is anyone to say which is the right way to raise a child? ”

I don’t know, maybe the American Academy of Pediatrics?
And certainly, you wouldn’t say that there is no way to determine that there are harmful ways and less harmful ways, right? You’ve already determined that there is a difference between “abuse” and “spanking”. In order to do this, you’ve determined that there is a wrong way to raise a child.

@livelaughlove21: ” But parents that do are not bad people or inferior to parents that are against spanking.”

Really? Since we know that there are other ways to raise a child without hitting them, and that hitting them is bad for them, then what conclusions should we come to? What about parents that gave their 8-year-old cigarettes to smoke? We wouldn’t say, “who’s to say if their method of parenting is inferior”.

But back to hitting of adults – other than hitting for self defense (or sexy time), you wouldn’t hit your spouse for non-compliance, correct?

I just want to throw something out there in this conversation. In speaking on the federal law banning female circumcision, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that doctors should be willing to perform a ceremonial “nick” to a young female’s genitalia so the family won’t go overseas to have a full blown circumcision performed. When their statement on their beliefs and stance on the subject became public the outcry against this was intense. The group of some 60,000 physicians withdrew their stance.

I just think it is important to know who you are taking advice from.

No, I don’t believe in violence of any kind to make a point. I do not hit anyone.

@bkcunningham – Good point. You shouldn’t blindly accept an organization’s position on something just because they have taken a position. My point, however, was that there are plenty of studies that show that corporal punishment may not be the best way to parent (and on the coasts, we seem to be able to raise children without hitting them – and without the need of these studies). This was in response to a statement that seemed to imply that we had no way of determining what was harmful to children.

Not that it is any of your business, but I smack my granddaughter in the face.

@tom_g, this is interesting. From your first link above: “But some family researchers argue that spanking, used properly, can be appropriate discipline.
‘Certainly, overly severe physical punishment is going to have adverse effects on children,’ says psychologist Robert Larzelere, of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. ‘But for younger kids, if spanking is used in the most appropriate way and the child perceives it as being motivated by concern for their behavior and welfare, then I don’t think it has a detrimental effect.’
“A 2005 scientific review he co-authored, of studies comparing spanking with non-physical discipline methods, identified an ‘optimal type of physical discipline,’ referred to as conditional spanking, and said that when it was used as a backup to nonphysical discipline it was better at reducing noncompliance and antisocial behavior.

“While the new study rules out the most severe cases of physically lashing out at children, ‘it does nothing to move beyond correlations to figure out what is actually causing the mental health problems,’ says Larzelere. He criticized the study’s reliance on memories of events from years earlier, and says it’s not clear when punishment occurred. ‘The motivation that the child perceives and when and how and why the parent uses (spanking) makes a big difference. All of that is more important than whether it was used or not.’”

Also, @tom_g, from your second link: “Afifi and colleagues decided to examine five forms of physical punishment — pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping and hitting — that took place in the absence of even more severe acts of abuse or neglect such as punching, burning, physical neglect or sexual abuse. Other related research has not specifically included or excluded more severe types of abuse, meaning that the abuse — and not the grabbing or slapping — may be driving the relationship between physical punishment and mental disorders.

“She did not examine spanking because it’s not easy to define: what’s considered spanking varies from parent to parent. But, she says, ‘a push is a push, and a grab is a grab.’ ”

I think the last paragraph is at the heart of the discussion.

@tom_g slaps himself for not reading links he posts.

@bkcunningham – Damn you and all your reading.

I like you @tom_g. You are funny. Sorry.

How common is corporal punishment where you live? Here in Massachusetts, you only see that type of thing when you go to Walmart. But you never meet anyone who actually hits their kids. And it seems that many of us were raised by parents who were hit. My father, who never hit me, was hit with a belt on a regular basis. I guess it’s probably for another topic, but I’m wondering now really how common this is? I get the impression that it only happens with poor people with drug addictions. Their husband is spending time in jail and they are at their wits end and have no idea what to do.

I wonder how likely it is that people who spank their kids tend to think in terms of children should not question and also are not inclined to explain to their children why they shouldn’t do something. I know with a very young child explaining might not work or have any real effectiveness, but at fairly young ages kids can start to reason and display social awareness and comply with social norms.

As far as who uses corporal punishment all levels of social class use it where I used to live from what I can tell in the Memphis area. I remember once watching Delta Burke (Desinging Women) and her husband in an interview talk about it, and they definitely believed in it. I saw more kids hit in public living there for 7 years than I saw in my other 38 years of my life.

I’ll hit anyone up for rides, payday loans, butting in line… And if you come at me swinging a frying pan, I’ll hit the dirt real fast.

@tom_g, @JLeslie – I do not know what it is like now but when my child was growing up I went round and round with the junior high school vice principal re: corporal punishment. I was called into the office one afternoon because they were having so much trouble with my son and the punishments administered didn’t seem to be working. They were frustrated, out of ideas and thinking of expelling him permanently.
When I told them that they had my permission to try busting his butt when he acted out, the VP insisted they couldn’t do it, but research on my part had indicated they could. So, the story changed and the truth came out. No longer was it that they couldn’t but that the principal had chosen not to. We compromised, and any time my son acted out or broke some school rule I was called in to administer punishment. After the first six months doing it their way, which wasn’t working, I probably had to do it a half dozen times in the two years he was there.
I know it sounds cruel but they were talking about expulsion and I knew from personal experience that a person could survive a spanking. Before we went this route if he broke a school rule he was given an ISS ( In School Suspension) which starts out with isolation from your regular classes for one day, then three, then comes suspension from school (maybe three time, I don’t really recall) until you get to the point where we were at, expulsion.
This probably works fine for the vast majority of the students but with my son, diagnosed with ADD, all he did was dig himself deeper into trouble, His ISS would become a suspension from school when boredom set in and he got into trouble there. He was missing too much classroom time and his grades were suffering. Plus, if he did make it the three days he could not remember what he had gotten into trouble for in the first place.
By spanking him instead suspending him the punishment was immediate, effective and meted out on a sliding scale appropriate to the infraction, he knew exactly what he did wrong and why he was being punished. Additionally, once administered the punishment was over. It did not drag out for days and days which, for an ADD child, is torture.
Not once did he balk at getting his licks. He accepted his punishment then went back to class, chastened but with a much better attitude. In addition, he did not get into further trouble while being punished for being in trouble. For us it was a win/win situation. Getting licks meant he got to stay in class and subsequently his grades improved. It also meant that I did not have to miss work to stay home with him during the suspension. While not eliminating the in class disruptions it certainly reduced the number of occasions and increased the time between them. Even the vice-principal reluctantly told me that, at least for my son, he thought this was the best solution.

@JLeslie I’m aware of that. In fact, I also said that people hit other adults in anger and hostility. There are other reasons, but none that are relevant here.

@tom_g Well, @bkcunningham beat me to the punch in regards to reliability of sources. However, I still have a few points to make.

From your link directed at me:

”...with >90% of American families reporting having used spanking as a means of discipline at some time.”

So, in your view, 90% of American parents are shitty parents? That’s simply ridiculous. Let’s just get that out of the way…

“Spanking, as discussed here, refers to striking a child with an open hand on the buttocks or extremities with the intention of modifying behavior without causing physical injury. Other forms of physical punishment, such as striking a child with an object, striking a child on parts of the body other than the buttocks or extremities, striking a child with such intensity that marks lasting more than a few minutes occur, pulling a child’s hair, jerking a child by the arm, shaking a child, and physical punishment delivered in anger with intent to cause pain, are unacceptable and may be dangerous to the health and well-being of the child. These types of physical punishment should never be used.”

This basically lays out exactly what I was saying. Spanking and abuse are two separate entities. One is unacceptable, and one is not. Controversial, yes, but not unacceptable, according to your source. Leaving marks on your child is NOT okay. Using paddles or switches or any other tool on them is NOT okay. Intentionally causing them pain for the hell of it is NOT okay. No one is saying that it is. Those against corporal punishment seem to think that parents that give their kid a swat on the butt every now and again are the same as parents that beat their kids to a bloody pulp and stick them in the closet for a few hours. Again, ridiculous.

“Parents who spank their children are more likely to use other unacceptable forms of corporal punishment.21 The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults.20 Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence22 when used with older children and adolescents.”

All this means is that a positive correlation has been found among these things. Correlation does NOT equal causation (psych 101 stuff here), and it is simply impossible to determine whether adult aggression, criminal behavior, or violence is caused by childhood spanking. There are way too many genetic and environmental factors going on in that person’s life to isolate spanking as a cause.

Now, something you said,

“You’ve already determined that there is a difference between “abuse” and “spanking”. In order to do this, you’ve determined that there is a wrong way to raise a child.”

Of course there are wrong ways to raise a child. I didn’t say there was NO wrong way. I said that in spanking vs. not spanking, one is not more “right” than the other across the board. It’s not my job (or yours) to make pronouncements on the parenting skills of those around me, UNLESS they are actually abusing the child or doing something illegal.

“Since we know that there are other ways to raise a child without hitting them, and that hitting them is bad for them, then what conclusions should we come to?”

Aside from the comment that “hitting them is bad for them,” which I believe I already addressed, this is a weak argument. Let’s extrapolate it – criminal offenders. There are many ways to “punish” a criminal for breaking the law. Fees, probation, prison time, a jail sentence, and numerous other non-traditional interventions. Take prison time – there are plenty of studies that show the damaging effects of prison life on offenders. So, should we just take that out of the picture altogether? Let’s just take all criminal offenders – from the drug dealers to the murderers – and put them on probation. Obviously, that’s a bad idea. So, what’s the answer? To look at each case individually and determine the best solution for each offender. Similarly, one single disciplinary tool works for all kids. Sorry for the crude comparison, but hopefully you get the point I’m trying to make.

“But back to hitting of adults – other than hitting for self defense (or sexy time), you wouldn’t hit your spouse for non-compliance, correct?”

No, I wouldn’t. My husband is an adult, I’m not responsible for him, and I don’t tell him what to do. He’s old enough to know right from wrong without any help from me.

The bottom line is that there is a difference between spanking and abuse, spanking is not abuse, and how someone chooses to raise their child is their own business unless they are doing something truly harmful. Instead of demonizing spanking, maybe we should be more concerned with parents that actually are hurting their kids with physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse that is a whole lot more likely to have damaging effects than occasional spanking.

@rojo About 22 states still allow corporal punishment in school, it is illegal in the rest. In some school districts it is against school policy even if it is legal. I hope your son grows out of the stage of a spanking controlling his behavior. I’m going to assume that if you feel it is effective that he actually learns a lesson, and does not repeat the same bad behaviors over and over. Having a more expediant punishment means nothing to me if the bahaviors are not changing for the future. I know ADHD children can be very trying. A friend of mine has a son who is off the charts, especially when he was very young. They also diagnosed him with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and he indeed was extremely defiant. ADD drugs made a huge difference for him, but aren’t perfect of course.

Also, I have no idea if this applies to your situation, but my friend had her son in private pre-K and he continued in that school through 1st or 2nd, I don’t remember exactly which grade. One day she called me saying she might put him in public, which really freaked her out. She wanted him to go to Catholic school, she worried he would get lost in public with bigger class sizes. My response to her was I think she should change his school, because the one he is at expects him to misbehave and he has relationships and interactions with the teachers there that become hard cycles to break probably. She moved him to the pubic school and he was significantly better. It isn’t a story of private vs. public, rather a story of giving him a change and a new start.

Only in jest or if I’m hit first. I was walking with several people and one of them whopped me on my bottom. I looked at the guy moving up behind me and asked if he had done that. He nodded, yes. So I said ,“Shame on you,” and whopped him back at least as hard, and I hoped it was a little harder than he hit me. End of incident. I don’t believe in physical punishment.

Yes, in extreme cases I spanked my kids, or slapped their hands, but never just because I was frustrated or angry. Younger children need to have instant consequences. For example, if we were at the store and they reached out to touch something I’d told them not to touch, they’d get an instant smack on the hand. You can’t say, “OK, when we get home in two hours you’re going to sit in time out!”
(Heh. I was at the store with my grandsons one time. I had practically raised the older one, who was about 14 at the time. His little brother was about 8. We were in line, and I told Blake not to touch something. He did anyway. Ryan goes, “Uh oh….” I said, “Dang it. He just had to test me.” And an instant later he wasn’t reaching for whatever anymore. Ryan said, “I could have told you she wasn’t playing, Blake! If she tells you not to do it, you’d better not do it!”)

Mostly, though, I opted for time out.

No, I don’t spank adults. I don’t give them swats and I don’t slap their hands. I also don’t tell them they can’t touch stuff in the store, and if they want to stick their finger in a light socket, or run out into the street without looking or take food off of other people’s plates at a resturaunt, have at it. If they want to throw a temper tantrum in JC Penny’s, they can go right ahead. They can also find their own way home because I would leave them there.

I did try to break a dude’s thumb in a bar once, because he thought it was OK to pinch my butt.

Good answer, @Dutchess_III. lol

I remember one time being at the tag office, or some place. There were rows of fold up chairs and the place was full. I had my two kids with me. The were about 3 and 5. There was another little girl, about 4, who was crawling under the chairs and annoying the hell out of people. The mother just kept saying over, and over and over, “Come out from under there! That is not acceptable behavior Bunchkins! Come back up here and sit by mommy! That is not acceptable behavior, Bunchikins!” She didn’t do a damn thing and the kid never did stop. My kids were just staring at this other kid in utter disbelief. Man…if my kids ignored me they would have found themselves in a Come to Jesus Meetin’ in the bathroom before they knew what hit them (pun intended!) And they would most definitely get a swat. Maybe even two.

My dad hit me when he felt like it, and my mom hit me to punish me. Often I didn’t know why.

I still flinch when people raise their hands near me.

I don’t like it when people hit me, even as a joke or gesture of culturally engrained male bonding bullshit. I tell them that.

I would only hit adults who want me to (during private adult time), and even then, it’s for their pleasure. I am a service sub, not a sadist.

@livelaughlove21: “So, in your view, 90% of American parents are shitty parents? That’s simply ridiculous. Let’s just get that out of the way…”

If 90% of American parents hit their kids, then 90% of American parents are shitty parents. Did I get that out of the way? I’m not saying they’re shitty people. Many of them may be just tired, overworked, uneducated, have a history of abuse, or just don’t know what to do. But if they are hitting their children, then they have failed. When you raise your hand to someone and it’s not self-defense, then you are a failure. When you raise your hand to a defenseless child that needs you to show them what is right and wrong, you have failed on so many levels.

@livelaughlove21: “Controversial, yes, but not unacceptable, according to your source.”

I’ll admit that that I had not heard of this Larzelere guy doing the meta-analysis stuff from the University of Ohio. Sure, there may be some controversy in the research. But the people who are tasked with studying this research and coming up with policy statements to protect children seem to come up with the conclusion that there is enough evidence to advocate for a cessation of corporal punishment.

@livelaughlove21: “It’s not my job (or yours) to make pronouncements on the parenting skills of those around me, UNLESS they are actually abusing the child or doing something illegal.”

Consider for a moment that to someone like me, “spanking” does appear to be abuse. It’s not only the fact that it’s for the lazy and dull. It’s something that is unfathomable. When my first was born, I instantly got really protective about my child. The thought of someone hurting my daughter sent my brain into all kinds of extreme protective mode. To then imagine hurting my daughter is just something I can’t imagine. To teach her that it’s ok for people to hit her, to tell her you deal with conflict by hitting people, to tell her that I am uneducated and know nothing about human development – this is something I couldn’t imagine.
But that’s not all. I don’t take your statement above seriously because I know that I bet I could come up with something that is not illegal that would cause you to judge me as a parent.

@livelaughlove21: “Let’s extrapolate it – criminal offenders.”

Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. Seriously. Are you saying that parenting is similar to criminal justice? I thought parenting was raising developing humans into adults. I have read this over and over and can’t figure out where you are going with this.

@livelaughlove21: “Instead of demonizing spanking, maybe we should be more concerned with parents that actually are hurting their kids with physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse that is a whole lot more likely to have damaging effects than occasional spanking.”

If a parent decides to have a relationship with their child in which hitting that child is for their own good. Do you think it might be possible that occasionally, the child might anger the adult in a way that makes it more likely that the “spanking” edge ever closer to “abuse”? For those of us who haven’t given up – there isn’t even a temptation to hit our kids. There’s no chance that a bad mood or life stress event will end up with an extra hard hit.

And why is it that we have to allow for something that resembles abuse to many parents, professionals, and countries (I believe it is now illegal in 31 countries for parents to spank their children in the home) because some parents don’t know how to parent?

Listen, I’m sorry if I offended you. I’m sure we’re not going to come to an agreement on this. This is clearly a “controversial” subject – and the fact that it is makes me sick.

@tom_g

A core part of Ancient Greek and later Roman culture which originally started out in Sparta was Agoge. This was a rigorous training and education regime. It starts by separating all children from their parents at age 7 till 29, and puts them into training involving the cultivation of loyalty to one’s group, military training, hunting, and punishment (pain tolerance), mentorship, philosophy, social communication. The children were underfed for several reasons. One was so that they learn how to successfully acquire food, another was to accustom them to hunger when fallen to such conditions and thirdly, to maintain fitness and its easier to train on a semi-empty stomach. When they were caught stealing they were severely punished. They were thrown into the wild to test their survival skills. You gain strength by taking on more mass, stress. If you can overcome the mass, stress, you can increase your mass, stress intake. If you don’t overcome it, you get hurt, or die. The alternative is stagnation.

The point of this was to turn Greeks/Romans into the the most intelligent, influential, and strongest warriors on the planet which is exactly what they were for a long time.

@tom_g, how do or did you deal with teaching your daughter about unacceptable behavior or behavior that could cause her great harm? You know what I mean. How did or do you discipline her when she disobeys you?

@tom_g “Consider for a moment that to someone like me, “spanking” does appear to be abuse. It’s not only the fact that it’s for the lazy and dull.” What would you call the mother that simply kept telling her kid, “That is not acceptable behavior, ” but never actually DID anything? I mean, according to your comment, me taking my children into the bathroom for a serious talking to and a swat, makes me lazy and dull, but the mother who keeps reasoning with the child is the enlightened one? Where do you think her kid is now 20 years later? In trouble somewhere, I’ll bet. Mine aren’t,

I have spanked my kids but never would hit a man. I cannot envision such a dangerous thing to do nor imagine being with a man I’d like to hit ! Well, I have had fantasies of the cast iron skillet to the skull more than once but would never act on it.

I hit a man once, Aster. I was about 17, and I thought I was like, in the movies. You know, where the woman is insulted and she slaps him. Yeah. Don’t work like the movies. He knocked me across the room. He wasn’t anyone I was seeing. It was a friend of my sister’s, actually. He never came back to the house. I never hit a man again.

@tom_g I’m not offended. Again, I’m not a parent and I’ve never spanked a kid, nor have I been spanked. I’m simply having a conversation with you.

I guess I just didn’t get the memo that you’re the parent of the year. ;)

The criminal offender thing, as I said, was crude. Criminal justice is just a field I’m familiar with. I wasn’t equating the system to parenting. I was comparing punishment of children to punishment of adults. Not even that, really, I was just pointing out that just because there are other options doesn’t automatically mean there’s only one correct answer.

There are things people do that I think is wrong or stupid. Does that mean those things are wrong and stupid? Not necessarily. You’re allowed to be against spanking, and feel free to not spank your kids, but you can’t make people parent the way you see fit. You’re not some authority on parenting and it’s quite possible that you’re overreacting about the spanking thing.

I really don’t think the simple act of swatting or spanking a child is going to harm them, as long as the parents genuinely love and care for the kid.
If they spank a kid, but also neglect him, ignore him, don’t watch out for him, act like they hate them, then the kid is going to have issues even if they never spanked him

Spanking by itself doesn’t cause harm.

@Dutchess_III Exactly.

@Dutchess_III
There is ample scientific research that indicates that any corporal punishement actually does harm a child.

On top… to suggest that it is the only way is nonsense. In most European countries spanking is not accepted at all. In many, such as the scandinavian countries spanking is even punishable by law. Do you think all children there are now being raised to fail?

There are far better alternatives to spanking if you want to raise a child. Hell, we don’t pinish employees and prisoners this way. Why do prisoners have better protection against corporal punishment than children?

@whitenoise does the research compare ALL aspects of the children’s lives? And do you have a link to the research?

I didn’t suggest it was the only way. And if a parent cares about their kid, and chooses ways other than spanking then they aren’t failing. I think the biggest deciding factor is the overall relationship the child has with the parents, not whether they were spanked or not.

Re: Prisoners. Because prisoners are adults. You really gonna turn a 30 year old guy, who’s built like a linebacker, over your knee and spank him? You gonna swat his hand? That isn’t a valid comparison.

@Dutchess_III: “I really don’t think the simple act of swatting or spanking a child is going to harm them, as long as the parents genuinely love and care for the kid.”

So this gives me an opportunity to come back around to my original question. As long as a man genuinely loves and cares for his wife, would the simple act of swatting or spanking her harm her?

@bkcunningham: “how do or did you deal with teaching your daughter about unacceptable behavior or behavior that could cause her great harm? You know what I mean. How did or do you discipline her when she disobeys you?”

She’s 10. “Discipline her”? I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. There are five of us in our family. My wife and I, and 3 youngin’s (10, 7, and 4). I demand a lot from my children because they share responsibility within the house. We model respectful behavior, and we get to really know each other. I can’t imagine what type of behavior we’re talking about here. If my son doesn’t help with the dishes, the natural consequence is that we’ll likely have less time to read books at night. What exactly are we talking about here?

My middle child (boy) will have moments where he feels overwhelmed sometimes (he has some sensory issues, as well as some possible ADD). He might have a tantrum occasionally and yell at us. I work with him to develop skills to calm down (progressive relaxation, breathing, etc) and occasionally just give him space. When he “comes back”, he is very apologetic and we both know the reality – he doesn’t want to be bad. He is an individual, and has certain needs that some of us in the house do not. We have to work with him in particular ways to make sure that he’s able to grow as a person who can manage his sensitivities on his own. We meditate occasionally and do progressive relaxation at night after we read books.

Both of these kids are in school and we constantly hear from the teachers that they are model students. Are we amazing parents? No. Are we able to raise kids who have a vested interest in being decent full-members of our family and honest kids without hitting them. So far, yes. I’m sure I’ll hear from the parents of teens or post-teens that will tell me I’m raising future criminals. Of course, I’ll disagree. When people (neighbors, etc) ask why our kids are so f*cking amazing, all I can say is “ask them”.

Parenting is hard work. Probably some of the hardest work that people can do. But it’s important. And I didn’t have kids to raise compliant robots. I expect my kids to true 3-dimensional characters, with their own ideas, desires, likes, temperaments, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, etc. But in order to do this, I approach them as though they are full people right now. They might have different abilities and be at different developmental levels, but they are people. They are the 3 most amazing people I have ever known.

@tom_g, if you have no idea what I’m talking about I can only assume your wife or someone other than you was with the children the majority of the time from infancy to the time they started school.

@Tom_G It is not a husband’s place to discipline his wife, or visa versa. Kids don’t get spankings after a certain age, either. I think my son was 8 the last time he got spanked.

I also have to say I really admire the way you’re raising your kids. It’s that relationship you have with them that’s going make all the difference in the world, not the fact that you don’t spank them.

@bkcunningham: “if you have no idea what I’m talking about I can only assume your wife or someone other than you was with the children the majority of the time from infancy to the time they started school.”

That would be an incorrect assumption. Very incorrect.

Also, my kids teacher’s always told me they were very well behaved. In fact, my daughter’s 3rd grade teacher said Corrie, my daughter, was her life line! Occassionally a teacher will “lose” a classroom for a while. Can’t get the kids to settle down, or whatever. When that happened she said she’d look over at Corrie, and Corrie would be sitting quietly, with her hands clasped, on her desk and looking at her (the teacher) with such sympathy. If the teacher caught her eye, Corrie would just shake her head sadly.
Once, during their elementary school years, I told the kids I had given the principal permission to spank them.
Corries says, “But Mom. We never get sent to the principal’s office!”
I said, “Oh yeah. Nevermind!” :)
They got their fair share of spankings. Not a lot. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I gave them a serious spanking.
I still say it goes back to the overall relationship with the parents.

@tom_g, part of the natural progress of children is a state of rebellion where toddlers try to gain their own independence. I’ve known people who taught their kids right from wrong during this process through discussions, time-outs, spankings, taking away pleasures (like you said you do with reading) and other methods. I just wondered how you disciplined your children and tried to teach them right from wrong. Are you saying you never had to discipline your children?

EDIT: how you taught them boundaries?

I think she’s asking what the consequences for misbehavior was/is.
I had lots of tools I used, not just spankings.
LOL! I used to run a daycare. One time I came around a corner, and my five year old son was sitting in the time out spot. He’d been outside with all the other kids. I said, “What are you doing? I didn’t put you in time out!”
He sighed and said, “Well, as soon as you hear what I did you’re GOING to put me in time out so I thought I’d just get started.”

Yes, @Dutchess_III. That is what I’m trying to ask.

I think consistency is very, very important too, no matter what method you decide on.

My ex-husband spray painted a big black line across our driveway and that was the line the kids were not allowed to cross when they were riding their bicycles. At the time we lived on a corner lot directly beside an elementary school with the kids best friends living on the corner diagonal from us. One day the kids across the street were being walked home from my house by their father. My daughter, who was about five at the time, asked if she could walk them home.

I told her absolutely not. I looked out the window as they left and there was Brittany on her bike doing a big circle in the middle of the intersection. There wasn’t a lot of traffic except when school was starting and ending for the day. I stood on the porch and called her in. Sat her down and explained why I was going to have to paddle her bottom and I did just that. It was the one and only time I ever spanked her. I cried harder than she cried.

Other things worked for her. Her brothers were a different can of worms. I had spanked her brother one day and he had tears welled up in his eyes and looked at me and said, “You can’t make me cry.” I told him I wasn’t trying to make him cry. He looked at me again with his hazel eyes swimming in tears and his chin jutted out and said, “My mom tried to make me cry and couldn’t and you can’t make me cry either.”

I never spanked him again. My children were taken from a home where they were really hit and abused. They were left to die and burned. I fostered them and then adopted them. My mom told me all I could ever do was love them through difficulties. I am not against people spanking their kids. I am really opposed to well meaning people who think they know better calling it abuse and hitting though. Ask my kids. They can tell you what real hitting is, @tom_g.

I only ever hit on girls, not anymore though, the wife would hit my nuts with a cricket bat if I did…so I don’t.

@bkcunningham: “EDIT: how you taught them boundaries?”

There are consequences to their actions. They are not punitive. There are just consequences, like the books thing. But I really don’t try to focus on the “you didn’t do your chores in a timely fashion, so I’m going to not read books to you”. Rather, because you didn’t contribute your effort towards making things work in our house, we don’t have time for books. There is benefit in helping the family unit do everything that it needs to do in order for us to be able to do what we want to do.

As for interpersonal relationships among the siblings – we take a hands-off approach. We have a few rules (no weapons, no fighting on the stairs, etc). The result – they are learning interpersonal skills in a safe environment (their pack). The boys will duke it out occasionally, but we never get involved. It lasts a short time, and invariably they are playing and telling each other how much they love each other in 10 minutes. The 3 of them really love each other, play together all the time, and really support each other. That doesn’t mean that they don’t drive each other crazy. But they need to learn how to deal with other people in a way that isn’t micro-managed by mom and dad. It means that they know they can’t come to us to resolve disputes. They can’t pit us again each other, and it means that they need to directly address grievances and deal with conflict.

I’m probably not answering your question, although I’m trying. Maybe you could be more specific.

@tom_g Do you talk to the boys about alternative ways of dealing with disagreements other than duking it out? Also, how old are they?

He said earlier the boys are 7 and 4 and he has a 10 year old daughter, @Dutchess_III. I’d hate to think of a 7 year old “duking it out” with a 4 year old. Especially a 10 year old with some sensory problems and possible ADD.

@Dutchess_III: “Do you talk to the boys about alternative ways of dealing with disagreements other than duking it out? Also, how old are they?”

Of course. But they’re boys – I know how relationships work having been a boy. Boys fight and then are best friends the next day.
When we discuss other methods of expressing frustration and anger, it’s not right after one of these spats, which are quickly self-resolved. I am not going to pick sides.

Note: They are 4 and 7. And “duking it out” isn’t what it sounds like. It’s lashing out. Unfortunately, the 7-year-old always gets the worse end of the scrap. It’s literally a 5-second scrap that ends in a few tears and hugs a few minutes later. They know that they don’t benefit from these scraps in any way.

@bkcunningham: “I’d hate to think of a 7 year old “duking it out” with a 4 year old.”

It’s a tiny spat. Seriously. Nobody is pounding on anyone. It’s also important to point out that these spats have gone from 30 seconds to a few seconds because they realize they are not going to “win”. They’re going to get hurt, and more importantly – when they try to mend their disagreement in a few minutes, it will likely take longer and they will not be able to play again for awhile.

But @tom_g, if I wanted to I could blow those spats clear out of proportion, just like people want to blow swats clear out of proportion. I could say that by not intervening you’re actually encouraging the boys to settle things with their fists. However, I don’t think that’s the case, and I’m not going to try and take it there because it sounds like you’re doing a fine job. However, the proof is in the pudding, and when they become adults I’m sure you’re going to look back and wish you’d done this or that differently. We all do.

One of my favorite tools, which I wish I’d learned earlier, was to tell a kid that they needed to go sit in time out and figure out just what they did wrong, and what they should have done differently. However long it took them to figure it out, that’s how long they had to sit and think. If they figured it out in 5 seconds, they only had 5 seconds of time out. If it took them 5 hours, they had 5 hours of time out. Invariably it was on the 5 second side, and then they would magically figure out what they had done wrong (vs “I didn’t do anything!” a moment earlier) and what they should have done instead.
I used that on a school playground between two boys once who were fighting at recess. Told them to walk over to a brick building and figure out who was at fault, and what they should have done differently. It was a 10 second walk and they were talking the whole way. They got to the building, bounced off of it (they figured they at least at to touch the building!) and walked back. Kid #1 took all the blame for starting the physical altercation and said, “I shouldn’t have thrown sand at him!” Kid #2 said, “I shouldn’t have called him a dickhead!” Then they told me the whole story and suggested alternate responses for each of themselves. It was great. So then I told them they had the choice of either kissing and making up, or shaking hands. Which caused them to giggle. :) The shook hands and all was well.

Sure, all the time. When my husband misbehaves in public, I whap his butt right there. At home, if he’s really done something wrong, I lay him across my knee and paddle his ass!

No, I don’t hit people. I have spanked my children when they have really needed to learn a lesson, but I don’t hit people. I have been in two fights, and was only able to fight back in one of them. I slammed her face into a locker, which technically, wasn’t hitting her. But I still “kicked her ass.”

There are lots of ways to abuse someone without hitting. And hitting is not the same fucking thing as spanking, no matter how you choose to twist it. If it were, then that means my husband is abusive. Someone had better call the fucking cops!

@WillWorkForChocolate, may I suggest that you learn to speak your mind and stop holding back? ~

@bkcunningham <hangs head> I can try.

And I’d like to add this, to go along with the person up there who said “every child is different” or something along those lines. That couldn’t be more true. My oldest child is so stubborn, strong-willed, and attitudinal, that sometimes, when she was younger, nothing else worked with her, other than a firm smack on the butt cheeks. My youngest child, on the other hand, is so overly-sensitive that usually just fussing at her works. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to spank her bottom, and she’s almost 7 now. My girls are the exact opposite of each other, and I have to discipline them differently.

Children are the only demographic that an entire culture feels it is acceptable to hit. You need a legally binding reason to strike another person, except children. Pretty strange, huh?

@Blackberry Strange? Not really.

First of all, if I were to spank my husband the same way I might spank a child, it would take a tremendously skilled prosecutor to throw me in prison, if I ever even made it to court (which I wouldn’t). You don’t hit a kid the way you’d hit an adult. I’d repeat the instrumental vs. hostile aggression thing again, but no one seemed to listen the first time.

Second of all, and I’m sure I’ve said this already but oh well – adults are…well, adults. They are responsible for themselves, know right and wrong, and it is on them when they behave badly. This cannot be said for kids. It’s the parents’ responsibility to teach their child what appropriate behavior is and it is on them when that child acts out. If this is done without spanking, well that’s just dandy, but spanking a child is simply not equivalent to hitting an adult.

It still seems like people cannot distinguish “beating” from “spanking.” All “hits” are not equal. I playfully hit and wrestle with my husband way harder than I’d ever spank a child. It’s amazing to me to think someone actually believes an occasional swat on the rear end is going to psychologically damage a child for life. People, these studies on corporal punishment include ALL corporal punishment – not just a spanking here and there. And correct me if I’m wrong, but no one hear is condoning more than that.

I only hit her to show how much I love her~

I’m a hogger not a slugger.

@Dutchess_III
The problem is that this discussion is fake. Spanking children as a corrective tool is more like religion than anything. I can give you all kinds of scientific proof, you are going to ignore it anyway.

See this thread, or this one

There must be a reason it is totally forbidden in 32 countries. These are not backward underdevelopped countries!

If you want research, take a look here. That seems to provide a balanced overview.

You can also look here, here, or here

Sorry it took me some time to respond. I’m in a very different time zone from you.

When one truly reads up on the subject, I feel one has to come to the conclusion that:
1) there are significant risks involved for the child, in corporal punishment, and
2) there are other, more effective methods available, that do not involve these risks.

Why, for heaven’s sake, would you then intentionally hurt your child?

Oh good grief, are people here having a hard time reading English? Spouting out journal articles and Google searches isn’t going to accomplish anything. We’ve already been through the research. No one is denying that there is research on the topic, or what the general consensus is.

And no, @whitenoise, you cannot provide “scientific proof.” The field of psychology has no “proof,” it’s all correlational relationships, some strong and others not. Until we can point to an image of a person’s brain and say, “this is where the spanking fucked them up for life,” it’s not proof. That word simply isn’t used in the field. And as I said, these studies rarely control for the amount and severity of spanking and other forms of corporal punishment. Kids who get a spanking once or twice a month are lumped with parents who use spanking for even the smallest form of misbehavior. And they never control for all environmental or genetic factors throughout a person’s life when they measure “effects of spanking,” simply because that would be impossible.

When the science just doesn’t (or can’t) do it for you, you turn to personal experience. I’ve never seen or heard of a child having permanent psychological damage, or anything like it, from an occasional spanking. Ever. And even if I did, one person (or even two or three or four) that have issues as adults as a result of spanking, which one could never actually determine was the case, that’s still not enough to say one “causes” the other.

Be careful with the word “proof,” is my main point here.

“Why, for heaven’s sake, would you then intentionally hurt your child?”

I’m not addressing that again. No one seems to be listening.

If people are going to only hear what they want to hear, there’s no point in staying to continue going in circles and, quite frankly, I have better things to do. I’m out.

@livelaughlove21
I rest my case… Your words, if not proof, are enough support to me.

@livelaughlove21: Take the fact that the major medical and scientific organizations have decided that there is enough evidence to make a statement about it out of the equation. Take the fact that it’s illegal in 30+ countries out of it. Take the concept of “proof” out of it. You are passionately taking a position that it’s ok to hit a child because you don’t see the harm in it.

I don’t know. This might be one of those “culture war” issues, like gay marriage, church/state separation, reproductive rights, guns, etc. If so, I’m hoping we just make steady progress across the country. I have seen dramatic improvements in this area among my generation (in Massachusetts). I don’t know anyone who hits their kids. But many of these parents who are my age were raised by parents who were hit. So, it seemed to have shifted back in the 70s when my generation was growing up. Who knows.

@livelaughlove21

As you might know from some of my other posts, I’m married to a very intelligent lovely wife. The interesting part is that she has a PHD in psychology and is director of a research institute at a university.

Now, I shared your opinion with her: And no, @whitenoise, you cannot provide “scientific proof.” The field of psychology has no “proof,” it’s all correlational relationships, some strong and others not. [...]That word simply isn’t used in the field.

You may find it interesting to know that she thinks that you are… well…talking nonsense.

Psychology may have no laws, like physics or mathematics, but still it is based on research, theories and evidence. The definition of proof is: the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance.

You so forcefully stated something very untrue about psychology and science, that I felt compelled to add this post.

@tom_g I’d have to agree it is a bit of a cultural war. The divide interestingly in America tends to be bible belt vs. other parts of the country, but of course that is not 100% across the board. There are people in the bible belt who are against spanking, and people in other parts of the country for it. Still, if we look at laws for corporal punishment in schools, bible belt for the most part are the states that still allow it. Living in the midsouth I have never heard so many people talk about how children need to be hit to be controlled. It is a whole different mindset from how I grew up. It is rooted in religion a lot of the time in my opinion, but continues out of tradition some of the time. What I mean by that is even an atheist friend of mine in TN is pro spanking kids who are difficult to control. My dad did spank me a couple times when I was very little, and then intuitively decided that idea didn’t make sense to him.

I sometimes wonder how much genes works into it. Or, environmental factors we don’t understand yet. I also wonder how much is chicken and how much egg. Are the kids more out of control, because they are spanked? Or, are those kids more out of control then many of us understand and the parent finds spanking is what seems to be the most effective in controlling their children. After writing that sentence using the word control so much it occurs to me that I don’t feel my parents sought to control me. I don’t think they would ever use that word.

Anyway, what I am getting at is I was a child who could be reasoned with. I was a child who was very upset when an adult was dissappointed with my behavior. Just telling me I hurt someone or telling me I was not doing something acceptable and explaining why was often enough for me to do the right thing. It seems that some kids really could care less, they are extremely ego driven, more than typical. Sometimes I see where the child gets it, I see it in the parents. But, sometimes not.

I was spanked as a child. I hated being spanked, so I was very mindful of not doing or saying anything that would result in my being spanked.

Needless to say, I didn’t get many spankings.

Interesting enough, as an adult I’m mindful of not doing or saying anything that I think “my elders” would deem inappropriate or disrespectful.

I spanked by boys when they were children. As adults, they’re mindful of not doing or saying anything I would deem inappropriate or disrespectful.

My daughters (2nd marriage) have never been spanked. My wife doesn’t allow it. To their credit, they’re usually very respectful and they comport themselves well. They do occasionally speak to their mother as if she’s their peer, which I find very disrespectful.

Is spanking a bad thing? I guess the answer depends on how you were raised. What’s beginning to bore me is endless debate on whether parents should or shouldn’t spank their kids. I don’t advocate abusing children, but a little heat on that be-hind is often a good character builder.

Yet, I understand parents who don’t accept that approach. All I can say to them is, if you don’t want to spank your child, don’t spank your child…allow other parents to raise their children as they see fit.

@SABOTEUR If all the children are turning out ok, why spank? I think that is what a lot of anti-spank people don’t understand. Why make hitting any part of anyone’s life? Giving it or receiving it.

I’m curious, what specifically do the children say that make you feel they address their mother as a peer? I think most southerners would have felt I at times addressed my parents like they were peers, but I never as a child felt or believed my parents were my peers. I look at southern families and feel like the kids address their parents like they are military sargents. They see it as being respectful. My guess is in both cases it is simply just cultural norms, customs, and misundertsanding the other culture. But, I am not assuming anything about your specific situation. And, I have no idea where you live. And, families cam be very different just living across the street from each other. My comment is only an example of perceptions of interactions between children and parents.

If you feel your girls are disrespectful at times why don’t you correct it? Does your wife feel it is ok? My nephew once was being very disrespectful verbally to his grandmother (my husband’s mother) and my husband interevened and in a stern voice told him he is never to speak to his grandmother that way again. The kid was in a state of shock, because his family is not heavy handed in how they discipline. The child’s mother (my husband’s sister) was glad my husband spoke up.

I could go into great detail concerning this subject, but…with all due respect…I’m bored with it.

In fact, I’m berating myself for contributing when my first impulse was to move on to another topic.

I apologize for my inability unwillingness to clarify my position.

No problem :).

Spankings don’t hurt. They’re loud, and that’s about it.

I don’t hit people and never have, but as a child I was spanked and although I hated it, I don’t feel that it had a negative affect on me. We chose not to have children so it’s a non-issue.

I got spanked too. I was 10 by the time I realized it didn’t even hurt! (That was the last time I got spanked.) It was a good deterrent for me.

I can’t say whether spanking alone had a negative effect on me. There was a lot of other shit going on.
But I think it’s a fucked up idea in general. I still remember the fear of knowing that pain was going to be inflicted on me, and that it was all outside of my control. It was very frightening. Sometimes I didn’t even understand why I was being spanked. I was very conscious even as a 3 year old.
I think that it reduces children to the level of animals, or machines. Getting the control you desire through operant conditioning.

There is no one size fits all method of child rearing. Some need a swat on the bottom, others don’t. It is like the theist/atheist circumcision/uncut, etc. It is doubtful that anyone is going to convince the other. I don’t think a swat or hit if you feel better calling it that, is going to destroy anyone’s psyche or turn them into serial murderers. And let us not confuse a swat, hit, with abuse, they are not even remotely the same thing. This can go round and round, if the new way of child rearing is so superior then I wonder why there are so many more disrespectful, disengaged kids. Now someone always says there aren’t, but years ago there weren’t a myriad of government programs designed to reengage the disengaged. And years ago if a group of kids were standing on the street and someone wanted to go past, they would step aside, today people have to step out into the street to get past. Now this is not totally pervasive but it happens more than one would like. That is just one example, the list could go on and on.

@rooeytoo Well said.

I don’t agree, @rooeytoo. First of all, saying that there is no “one size fits all method” does not mean discussing the subject is futile. Not too long ago, what we would consider abuse was widely accepted. If nobody had argued against that, it would probably still be. Change happens as soon as minds are changed.
As to there being more disrespectful and disengaged kids -

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

This is what Socrates had to say on the matter, as early as 2400 years ago. Sure, there are inconsiderate young people. Just as there are inconsiderate adults. And luckily, some turn out okay.

@tom_g : GQ

@rooeytoo: What does hitting a child on the ass have to do with inculcating respect and civility?

The same as putting them in time out for other, more minor infractions @bookish1. It’s another method of discipline. And if you were actually hurt when you got spanked, then there was something wrong. Sounds like it was much more than a swat.

@Dutchess_III What is the point of a spank if it doesn’t hurt? Just know that mommy or daddy doesn’t approve of the behavior? You can do that verbally. To shame the child? To intimidate them so they worry next time it might be more than a hit? My dad (except for the couple spankings I mentioned when I was very young) never touched my sister or me. He never threw something across a room, never threatened anyone physically in the family or outside, he was not physical at all. I was not afraid I would get a spanking, it was not used as a punishment, and the time of the spanks was so long ago it was not even in my mind growing up. I had not thought of it until the last several years when corporal punishment came up in the schools in TN and discussions here on fluther. I did not even realize it was still done often, or a thing that was in debate so much. Yet, I was pretty afraid my dad could kill me if he got angry. I realized in my late teens that is a ridiculous fear, because he had never really raised a hand to anyone. But, just his temper made me afraid of him when he was angry, raising his voice, and being a little girl and becoming more and more aware of how strong men are as I got older.

What is the point of ANY kind of discipline, @JLeslie? It is to cause discomfort. As I said, 99% of the time I gave them time out. What is the point of time out? Isn’t that humiliating and demeaning? A swat or spanking is mildly uncomfortable. It was to physically reinforce my words and was usually administered on the spot on a well diapered or otherwise clothed behind when we were someplace where time-out wasn’t possible. It also put an instant stop to whatever they were doing, when my words alone weren’t working. If you are consistent and fair then the need for physical reinforcement goes away.
And where did throwing things across the room and threatening your family come from? I just do NOT understand why people keep insisting that people who swat their kids are abusive sadists. That is just ridiculous. It is ridiculous to compare a swat to a punch or a slap, just like it is ridiculous to compare time out to being tied up in a basement and starved…that that’s basically what it amounts to.
@bookish1 is a good example. His disciplines were erratic, unfair and painful. THAT is abuse.
I got spankings when I was a kid. I don’t flinch every time some one raises their hand. I’m not afraid of getting hurt by other people.

The most severe punishment any of my kids got was handed out, by me, to my son. Chris had a tendency to just do things without considering the consequences. He got hurt a LOT! By the time he was 7 the sight of him coming home, pouring blood only prompted a “What did you do this time?” Anyway, this particular time he was about 8. We lived in a big, old 3 story house. Each floor was an apartment. The guys who rented the top floor, Fred, got the only driveway. The rest parked in back. I parked in the street. The drive way was very, very narrow. There was a very narrow curb that ran along side of it. It was about 5 inches wide, and flat on top. Bushes were planted on the other side of that curb and they hung over the curb in places. Well, Fred came home one day, and as he was pulling into the drive way Chris was running along side the car, on that narrow, narrow, curb that had bush obstacles in places, yelling “Hi Fred! Hi!” The car was about two feet away. He could have so easily lost it and fallen under that car. I saw it happen and I almost threw up.
I was SO angry and SO scared I knew better than to do anything at the moment. So I sent him to his room for 30 minutes to give myself time to calm down, to make sure I didn’t do anything rash.
He got three stinging licks with a belt, across the back of his legs (I wasn’t going to ask him to bare his bottom.) I’m sure it hurt. It was meant to. But it sure didn’t hurt like falling under that car would have.
It wasn’t long after that that he started to do something…then pulled back and said, to himself, but out loud, “Maybe I should think about this first.” I was so thrilled to hear him say that.

@Dutchess_III

Your story just made me truly uncomfortable.

Maybe you don’t need to be ashamed of it…
I wonder though why it seems to make you proud.

I was proud to hear him verbalize that he needed to start thinking about things. The spanking didn’t make me proud, but I HAD to make a serious impression on him. He HAD to start thinking about things. And it did and he did.
I’m also proud of the young man he has become.

And how would you have handled it? Had a nice little talk with him? “Now son. You could have really gotten hurt there. Don’t do that again.”

This is what I mean, never the twain shall meet. And with regard to Socrates, the great Greek empire no longer exists does it? So perhaps his words were true and they wimped and spoiled themselves out of existence.

Abuse is abuse, always was and always has been. A swat (hit spank smack, etc) on the bottom is not abuse. This will annoy people, but the same thing is happening in dog training and it is definitely a contributing factor to the increased number of dogs surrendered to pounds, they are not properly trained and they cannot be handled. Same is true of increase in dog attacks on humans. If you train them properly as pups they do not attack you or the neighbor kid when they grow up.

Do not confuse abuse and discipline! There is no one size fits all.

@Dutchess_III I am not saying people who use spankings are abusive. I brought up the throwing things to reinforce how non physical my dad is, I was not implying people who spank are violent in many ways. I also said my dad had a hot temper, which I don’t think was good to be honest, it was a criticism of my dad and admitting there can be very negative discipline without hitting. My mom yelled a lot also, but I was never afraid of her.

You said the spank didn’t hurt. I was just saying that if it doesn’t physically hurt then what’s the point? But, I guess you are saying without it hurting it still stopped their behavior on a dime. I don’t see spanks always work that way, but they do sometimes I admit that. But, I also see them sometimes cause kids to cry, which is just as noisy and annoying as whatever misbehavior they were doing, and I have seen kids continue to do what they were doing even when spanked or threatened with a spank, and I have seen them laugh at their parents when their parents swat them. Now, don’t get me wrong, verbally disciplining kids or sitting them down for time out also does not always work as a parent wants it to, but I just have never seen a situation in public where a spank made any sense to me. I see all sorts of other options the parent could have tried but they didn’t bother to except for saying, “don’t touch that,” or something similar. Now, they have experience with their kid, maybe they tried to explain why we don’t do certain things time and time again many times before and for whatever reason their kid only responds to spanking, but I think that is rare. Certainly not as high as how much spanking goes on in America.

Exactly @rooeytoo.

Why should it have to hurt, @JLeslie? Most swats start while the kid is still in diapers. How could that possibly hurt? It’s loud, and it physically involves them and it works.

As for the rest of the post…it goes back to being consistent and fair, which I’m betting those parent’s aren’t. One minute they let a kid get away with it, then next they’re whopping them. I was always consistent and always fair. See my post above about my son putting himself in time out. There was no doubt in his mind that was going to happen. He didn’t worry about me under reacting one minute and over reacting the next.

@Dutchess_III OK, so a toddler in diapers gets swatted, it doesn’t hurt, but they start to pair up that a swat means mommy dissaproves. You can get that effect with other things I would argue. If the spanks start early they are trained to know you are at your limit because you have soanked them. I knew my mom was at her limit just by her tone of voice.

Yes, Mommy disapproves. But disapproval by itself doesn’t always make that much of an impact, depending on the kid. You yourself pointed out that some kids laugh at their parent’s disapproval, or don’t stop with the bad behavior. When my toddlers did something, like, reach up toward a hot stove I’d tell them “No! Don’t reach for the stove!” If they did it again, they’d get swatted. After that, they wouldn’t DO it again. The swat made a bigger impression than mere disapproval. After a few tests, they learned that if they ignored my verbal warning it would be followed up by action. After that, the verbal warning was enough.

If you knew your mom was at her limit by the tone of her voice, then you’re referring to situations that you remember because you were older. What would happen, @JLeslie, if you ignored the fact that your mom was at her limit?

Oh, and when my kids got older they knew I was at my limit because I’d TELL them I was at my limit. I said it quietly, but they knew I meant it.

@Dutchess_III It didn’t happen much. One time my mom grabbed my arm and said sternly, “if you don’t stop I am going to embarrass you in front of everyone.” Who knows what she would have done? It stopped me though. Mostly, all she had to do was tell us to stop. Sometimes she resorted to yelling at us. If we did something that was dangerous, she explained to us why it was dangerous, the consequence that could happen. The worst was if I hurt someone else’s feelings, she told us why it was wrong, and it was very upsetting to me to have done something mean, I didn’t want to be mean. Probably she had to carry me out sometimes if I had to guess. Leave wherever we were. I would have to ask her. if I wasn’t playing nice I would not be allowed to continue to play. A couple times I did something disobedient and had TV privileges taken away, but I can only remember twice, maybe there were a couple more times I don’t remember.

But, it was very rare I acted up. I asked my mom a few years ago if I fought a lot with my sister when we were little. In my memory we mostly played together, I could remember some fighting. My mom said, “oh no, when sister’sname really wanted something you would just give it to her or distract her and make her happy. You told her mommy doesn’t like noise.” LOL. It makes me laugh, I don’t remember that at all. But, it is true my mom didn’t like a lot of noise and I do remember always sharing with my sister.

I think my mom really tried not to put us in situations where we were going to act up. She didn’t often have us out so long that we became desperate to leave. She tried to avoid us getting overtired. It happened at times of course and we would get whiny, but she generally tried to comfort us in that case, or asked for our cooperation and told us it wouldn’t be much longer, or whatever was the case.

Also, I did not have tons of rules compared to other kids I think. I was trusted from a very young age, and given quite a bit of freedom. Maybe too much when I look back, I have mixed feelings about it.

When I was dating my husband one thing I liked was his parents had been liberal (meaning not extremely strict) in many ways (although I learned later they were quite strict with their older children) and that he was a sweet boy when he was young, and fairly self governed. I thought to myself that we would probably parent similarly. I also thought, if we get a child that is hard to control we would be clueless on how to handle it.

The majority of my friends were never spanked and do not spank their kids.

Some kids just want to be obedient. It doesn’t take anything but a stern look or a show of disapproval to keep them on track. My oldest was that way. I don’t think I ever spanked her. But some kids need more than that. I only spanked when they put themselves or others in some sort of danger—running out into the street, or something. If they pulled the cat’s tail, and I told them not to do it, and they did it again, they’d get a spanking.
I guess I have the impression that those who disagree with spanking think that those of us who do, or did, spank, were just emotionally or physically freaking out, like out of control. It wasn’t like that.

@Dutchess_III I don’t make that assumption about parents who spank. I am not thinking they are freaking out or out of control.

I can see spanking in an extreme circumstance. But, my idea of extreme is probably more extreme than most. It would have to be to stop them from doing something that cause them immediate danger. But, I would be more likely to hold onto them or pick them up and remove them from the situation than spank them. It really does not occur to me to spank a child. It doesn’t enter my mind to do it. A friend of mine swatted her kid when she kept running out in the street. For years her daughter brought it up every now and then. “Remember mommy that time you hit me.” She was a docile child in general and my friend did not believe in spanking except in extreme circumstance when their life might be in danger. Now she wouldn’t use spanking in any circumstance. She talked to her parents and her dad talked about how he utilized spanking with his first 3 kids, but then changed his mind on it and the next three were never spanked. My girlfriend was the second to youngest.

Yes, @JLeslie. Those are the times when I spanked too. When the kids were putting themselves in danger. However, I also spanked for flagrant disobedience, which didn’t happen very often. My kids don’t remember the lessons, but I can tell you, as youngsters they wouldn’t dream of ignoring me or lipping off.

I once had a friend in HS. Before we both had kids she said she would never spank her kids. I told her I knew that I would. She kind of got mad at me about it, telling me it was abusive.
Well, when it came down to it, she used physical reprimands too. She once “spanked” her kid’s feet when he ran out into the street. She had some theory about spanking the part of the body that….had the most to do with the wrong doing. I just thought she was nuts!

There was another time when she was cutting my hair and her son was bugging her and she hauled off and slapped the shit out of him. I was sooo shocked. So speechless. I have NEVER slapped my kids.

I was pretty creative in disciplining my kids. My oldest had a baby at 16. :( Needless to say, I was very involved in raising my grandson (he’s 17 graduating from HS this year.) Once, when he was about two, I was parked in front of their house. I don’t know if I was getting ready to leave or just arriving. Anyway, I saw him start moving toward the street. He kept looking back at his Mom, waiting for her to do or say something. She didn’t. She just ignored it. He…stepped off the curb, right in front of my car. The instant his foot hit the street I LAID on the horn. Scared the living crap out of him and his mom. He started crying and fell down, and his mom got mad. She said, “Why’d you DO that? You scared the crap out of me! I thought he almost got hit by a car!”
Well, duh, dear. I hope it was a lesson for both of them.
PS. I had him much more than his mom did for the first 5 years.

@Dutchess_III What does slapped mean? Across the face?

Had your friend been spanked as a child? Was she stating before she had kids that she would not do as her parents had?

I don’t think my parents would use the terms lipping off or talking back. I have never heard anything close to it from them. There were a couple times my dad said, “do it because I am your father and ai told you too.” Extremely rare though. Maybe three times in 18 years. We were generally allowed to ask why, our opinions were heard. We were treated like little adults, whoch has some negatives believe me, but many positives too.

Yes. Slapped across the face.
I don’t know if she had controlled spankings as a kid. I know she was slapped and things and a lot of crap went on at her house.
I never used the term “lipping” off to my kids either. I never had to. They didn’t do it.

@Dutchess_III So your friend repeated what was done to her. That sadly happens a lot. Children swearing they would never do as parents what their parents did to them, and then they become parents and do a lot of the same. The cycle repeats even with all the good intentions. I think it was @Seek_Kolinahr who mentioned having spanked her kid a couple times, but does not want to, does not want that to be brought down from generation to generation. Sounds like she has learned other ways to discipline and is far from how she was raised.

I made a conscious decision not to treat my kids the way my Mom treated us….which was a lot of verbal insults that hurt WAY more than swats. I succeeded, too. It was a fight sometimes. I had to stop and back off, think things over. I remember one time my oldest, when she was about 7, said to me, “You can spank me but you don’t have to hurt my heart too!” I’ll never forget those words, because that’s what my Mom did. A lot. It was a turning point for me. But I also made a conscious decision to instill the respect into my kids that my folks instilled into me.

@Dutchess_III – I often think this time out business is like shunning and shaming, far worse and with longer last effect than a quick swat on the bottom.

My parents didn’t use time outs. I think there are some negatives about time outs also. I especially don’t like when it is called a naughty chair.

@Dutchess_III Now that you ask…

Child is seven:
“The sight of him coming home, pouring blood only prompted a “What did you do this time?””

You’re kidding, right? You would not be interested in how he was? What was the message you were trying to get across to him?

“The drive way was very, very narrow. There was a very narrow curb that ran along side of it. [...] Chris was running along side the car, on that narrow, narrow, curb that had bush obstacles in places [...] The car was about two feet away. He could have so easily lost it and fallen under that car.[...]”

“I was SO angry and SO scared [...] So I sent him to his room for 30 minutes [...] to make sure I didn’t do anything rash. He got three stinging licks with a belt, across the back of his legs (I wasn’t going to ask him to bare his bottom.) I’m sure it hurt. It was meant to.”

You sent him to his room and then gave him three lashes with a belt? With a belt? And for convenience you used the back of his legs…

Again… What was your message? That not only cars can hurt you, but your mother as well? That when you make mistakes, your mother is ready to punish you a bit more?
Did you even bother to explain to him what culd have happened at that spot?
Did you think that if there was a serious danger for the boy, you would be better of explaining that to him 30 minutes later, at the receiving end of lashes against his legs?

What bond did you want your child to have with his mother? One that allows motivation out of fear? You really want to raise a child, motivated by fear?

What do you think are the typical mindsets of the children on the street that don’t move aside when an elderly comes?
You think it are the ones that were taughempath and to do the things because they are right and abide from the wrong things because they’re wrong? Or do you think it are the ones that were taught to not do things out of fear for their parents?

If your child pulls a cat at its tail, I think you should wonder what is wrong with your child’s empathy? Maybe it calls for a different approach then hitting him. If your wraht should controlhim, then he will still take it out on the cat when you’re not looking. You’re teaching him, after all, that it is perfectly allright to hurt others that are smaller than you and under your care. Had you not spanked him, he might never even have touched the cat.

And to answer your question? I would have taken my son, walked him to where I was standing. Then I would tell hm how he scared me and I would’ve asked him to explain what could’ve happened, had he slipped from that curve. He would not do it anymore, because he would not want to frighten me as he had and he knew what was wrong.

Why in the world would you interpret the fact that I didn’t freak out to mean I didn’t care about how he was? Of course I cared how he was when he came home bleeding. My point is, it didn’t freak me out like it did the first couple of times. I could calmly assess the extent of the injury, like any doctor could without freaking out, and decided whether he needed to go in or not. If so, I’d get him to the doctors, get him stitched up, and then we’d get ice cream.

You conveniently choose not to copy and paste the most important part of my post: ” I HAD to make a serious impression on him. He HAD to start thinking about things. And it did and he did.” It worked, far more than a gentle “No no, you scared me” bit of fluff would have. It was a DAMN serious situation, and the consequences had to be damn serious, too.

Yes, of course I explained what could have happened.

I forget…do you even have kids? You’re making huge leaps of assumptions that I don’t care about my son because I don’t freak out if they got hurt, that I was proud of taking a belt to him and whatever else. It’s ridiculous. You’re probably assuming that I knocked them across the room on a regular basis, or slapped them or whatever. In reality, the spankings (and a belt goes far beyond a spanking—I wouldn’t call it that) were few and far between, and were given for serious infractions, like running out in the street.

And what makes you think I’d hit one of my kids for pulling the cat’s tail?

Also, I don’t think that kids are born with empathy. It’s something that has to be taught, ie: “Don’t stand on the dog to reach that! Get a chair or ask for help! You could hurt her!”

****************
I don’t know how shameful time out is. It just denies them, for a while, of something they want, like playing or watching TV or what ever.

Chris’ friend’s dad brought him home once, streaming blood from a big cut on his head. He’d been snow boarding. Hit a rock. Board went up and, of course, came down on Chris’s head. Where else. If his friend had wrecked, his board would have come down on Chris’ head too. Chris’ head was a meteor magnet.

Anyway, they walked in the house, blood pouring down Chris’ face. He had given Chris a rag to help staunch the flow. The father was really shook up. I took one look and went into action. I threw a towel around his shoulders and sat him down. I had sterilized wash clothes in a sealed in a baggy in an old plastic diaper wipes box, labeled “Clean rags for bleeding wounds” along with steristrips and iodine (Yes, a diaper wipes box. Considering that Chris was about 10, and he was my baby, that tells you how long I’d had the “bleeding wounds” first aid kit around.) I was cleaning up the blood, clipping his hair, and gently swabbing around wound to see how bad it was, etc. etc. It was pretty bad. You could see the bone of the skull. Of course, your skin isn’t that thick there, either, but still…ew!

The dad kept asking if I was OK. First time I mumbled, “Yeah,” cause I was busy.
A moment later he asked again. I finally looked up in surprise and said, “Yeah, I’m fine! This isn’t the first time.’
He asked if I could “make it” to the hospital OK. I said, “Of course.”
Then he asked if I would be OK if he went ahead and left. I said, “Sure. Oh, and do you want your rag?” Which I had bagged up. He said “No, thanks.” So he left, asking one last time “Are you SURE you’re OK?”

So we went. I’ll never forget. The nurse at the ER freaked out, cause it was pretty bloody. The Dr. kicked her out and put ME in charge of handing him instruments!

And then we went and got ice cream. Always ice cream! On fb the other day my son commented, “Yes, I learned the miracle healing powers of ice cream! Need stitches? Ice cream. Get his by a car? Yes, he got hit by a car once Ice cream!”

@Dutchess_III
I was merely replying to what you wrote, nothing more, nothing less.

It was your implication that I would’ve just ”...had a nice little talk with him? “Now son. You could have really gotten hurt there. Don’t do that again.”,
Your writing implied that the alternative to a belt is a weak parent. That provoked me to another post.

I should have known better by now… We will not be able to discuss this without bruisings. So let’s stop here… I don’t doubt your dedication to your children, I just doubt your methodolgy in raising them, which I find archaic and barbaric. (A belt!)

You may doubt the effectiveness of my raising my two ten year old boys. So far, they seem to do allright. I trust your kids are fine too. A good thing is that most kids turn out regardless… This may ease your and mine minds about how we raise our children in different ways.

(Want to hear how he got hit by a car? :)

My point was, @rooeytoo: Every generation is convinced they’re superior to “youth today”. It gets old.
@whitenoise: I wish that would ease my mind. :/

My kids are in their 20’s and 30’s. Getting them through the teenage years is the REAL test.

@Dutchess_III

I see the passion for your kids inyour writing. Hope that he got hit by a car only once :)

(I gave you GA’s because of thatpassion and thank you for sharing your experiences. I think you are great with your kids.) :)

@longgone – my point is they died out, so perhaps it was true. Someone always brings that up in these discussions and that is always my first thought, they’re gone, good old socrates was right!

Thank you Whitenoise. Yes, I love them. Yes, I have regrets, but they are all safe and whole and we love each other. We went through everything together, alone.

I was at work one day. It was summer. Chris was 14 or so. Got a call from the PD. “Chris is OK, but he got hit by a car.”
OK. I freaked out on that one.
I repeated, “But he’s OK?”
She said, “Yeah.”
I said, “Was he on foot or on his bike?” For some reason that seemed very important to me…she told me he was on foot.
So I get over to The Scene. There was an ambulance and two cop cars there. I had to walk about 20 yards towards where my son was sitting, next to an older lady. On the other side of the street, IN the street, was a bike. A totally mangled, twisted, screwed up bike. He WASN’T on foot. My knees almost went out from under me. It was just WHOOSE through my body. I went over to Chris and sat down next to him, trembling, without saying anything. We just breathed. And trembled. Then I noticed the lady. I said, “Did you see it happen?”
She goes, “I’m…I….I’m the…one….I….I…”
It hit me. I cried, ”Oh my God! Oh my God!” and I went and gave her the biggest, strongest hug and told her I was so, so, sorry. How horrible that must have been for her too.
Then I sat next to Chris a while longer without saying a word. I finally said, “Well. I guess we need ice cream.”
He just nodded mutely. I think the cop heard us, just thought I was crazy.

He had slowly come out from an alley behind a dumpster or something. He was being cautious but he couldn’t see. When he DID see the car it was on him. He threw himself to the right and the bike went under the car. God…could you imagine how that poor, poor woman felt. That sound of the bike going under her wheels will probably never leave her. I didn’t blame her….it was an accident, pure and simple.

Life with Chris was NEVER dull.

I thought of this one last thing, @whitenoise. Something we haven’t considered is that we’re talking about two different generations…it was my generation that raised your generation, and I think we were the first generation to even give parenting any kind of thought. We came through the 70’s when all that enlightening stuff was taking place. Our parents, on the other hand, came up through The Great Depression and WWII, some of them even through WWI. They didn’t think about parenting. They just did it. We thought about it more and I think we were a little better than our folks, and you guys are even better than we were.
However, seems to me that the world still ends up with basically the same types of children and people that it has always had. Some are good, some are bad. I’ve got some good ones, in spite of my mistakes. :)

Thank you @Dutchess_III, for making me feel so young.

You might actually not be so much older than I am. I was 35 when I became a father.

:-)

O! Well, I was 35 when I became a grandmother the first time. :O. He’ll be 18 this year.

Than you’re still a wee bit older.

A wee bit. Like, your older sister. Can I borrow some money? :)

How old you, @whitenoise? 42? Yes, a younger brother, @Dutchess_III.

No… My boys are ten, that makes me 45.

You can always borrow money, no problemo. Anything I have.

And it makes me 54. But it has nothing to do with your boys. Are they twins? My daughter had twins, a boy and a girl, in January. Trip!

Ok. Can I borrow…your boat?

Don’t have no boat… I live in the dessert. :)

And… Yes two beautiful 10 year old boys. Almost identical, yet truly unique.

I love dessert. Cheese cake, especially. ;)

And it’s “I ain’t got no boat.” I’m in Kansas so I know these things.

My iPhone and my thick thumbs don’t. :)

The last time that happened I was 13.

I don’t hit women, nor do I hit kids. I’m bigger than they are and it would be wrong for me to raise a hand to them. Except for when I was sparring in Martial Arts I haven’t hit another man in over 30 years. It didn’t go good for the man I hit then. He spent the next 4 days in the hospital. In my defense he was trying to hurt me, I hurt him instead.

I was in Taekwondo for several months in my early 20s. Some guy in my class decided to challenge me. It was a rule that you pull punches when sparring. This guy didn’t pull any punches. For some weird reason he was determined to beat the shit out of me. I don’t know why. I’d never even talked to him. I think in some weird way he was trying to impress me. Or to prove dominance? Maybe if he proved he was stronger than me I’d sleep with him? I have no clue. Men can be so weird sometimes.
One of the black belt instructors was suddenly, magically there….and the asshole was taken down in a split second. I think he got kicked out of class, too.

Could it be that’s why incels can’t complete coed martial arts classes? ;-)

LOLL!! That probably played a roll @Brian1946!