Discipline for children

[dx713]

Thanks in advance for staying within the TOU

 

[Frikki]

You can't use your words when you are frustraited and the smartest thing you can come up with is lashing out with violence. This is what a child does. An adult reasons.

At what age do you think you can reason with a child?

I can use reason, I am the grown up. I'm sorry if you guys are so limited that you can't outwit a child but I can. It's not that hard, they are children.

 

[dx713]

Corporal punishment may deter unwanted behavior, but not by teaching right from wrong. It teaches fear of retribution.
You can mold a dog's or a lab rat's behavior with painful stimuli just as easily, but don't think you're teaching them right from wrong.

You can impose good behavior, but not morality. Morality is an internalized ethic, not an external, enforced inhibition.

Punishment doesn't teach respect, but fear. "If you did wrong, you got a spank" is not respect, or even an understanding of right and wrong. It's submissiveness; unquestioning obedience. Corporal punishment creates authoritarianism, not morality. It discourages moral reasoning and teaches you to know your place, defer to authority and follow orders.

Our goal should not be compliance or submissiveness. We need to teach our children to question the rules and challenge them if they're unfair or dysfunctional. Dissent should be encouraged, not suppressed. Our goal should be to instill a moral conscience and teach moral reasoning. Bad behavior should be inhibited not by fear of retribution, but by the psychic pain an anti-social act would cause.

This.
It even goes farther than corporal punishment. It goes into our logic of punishment more generally.
You don't want a kid to act in fear of a punishment, even not-corporal. You want them to understand consequences.
I don't say this is easy. I caught myself punishing this week-end, instead of applying consequences. And it's even less easy in a "punishment-oriented" house. A boy who was spanked earlier in his life isn't going to understand the difference between "I remove the computer as a punishment for not listening to me" and "I remove the computer because you're obviously not ready to manage the time you spend on it versus your homework and chores", for him the final consequence is the same (no computer today until everything else is done) and he's heard the first reasonning too many times for the second to sink in easily.
So I'm not judging those who apply punishment. But NOT thinking reward/punishment should be the goal of parents. Kids are not pets, they're much more intelligent than that.

Dancer's don't get "participation trophies" so I don't know how pervasive this practice is. Do you have examples of older, more experienced sports players receiving "participation trophies"?

In Primary school, at sports carnivals, all kids get a participation ribbon, with the place getters getting ribbons for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. The really young kids don't get ribbons, but they do all get a sticker that says 'I ran a race' or 'I swam in the pool'.

To me this doesn't give anything for the kid to really strive for. 'Oh, it doesn't matter if I don't place, I will get a ribbon anyway.'

Kids aren't dumb. They know the difference between a participation ribbon and a first place ribbon.
Actually, that's a problem with participation ribbons. Most kids know very well it's bunk, because they know very well the sports they're participating in is supposed to be competitive (except for the youngest ones, who shouldn't be doing competition anyway, just learning to move their bodies, so the ribbons are playing their roles for them).
If the school aim isn't to select athletes but raise the average health of citizens by teaching kids to take pleasure in moving their bodies, it needs to completely move away from competitive sports and let them to after-hours clubs or special 'athletes' courses.
A kid who's not athletic or not into competition won't make more efforts without a participation ribbon, he knows those first place ribbons are inaccessible or unpalatable for him anyway.

As someone else posted, sometimes kids don't respond to anything else. A 'time out' would have meant nothing to me. I didn't mind being alone in a room by myself. Guess that punishment was invented by social butterfly people who think being alone is a punishment.

That would be because a properly applied timeout isn't supposed to be a punishment. It's part of an education method where you don't do punishments. It's a way to remove a child from a situation too exciting or frustrating for him to respect safety or social boundaries, and leave him time to think about it and gather resolve for the next time.

As for who turned out well and who didn't...well considering the entire nation used to be OK with spanking in schools up until the 1960s, I guess everyone raised before then must have been "brain and nervous system damaged and suffered psychologically and emotionally" or whatever.

That enough of an 'anecdote'?

Because you think the world is turning right? People are not thinking of coercion and violence as first correction to problems? People are not displeased at the social nets because they might help people who didn't "earn" that help? People are not wanting to forbid other to marry who they love just because they don't want to face that other people live differently? Our politicians aren't fighting to restore growth as a solution to all our problems while the planet is finite and most of the planet economies are past the growth phase anyway, clinging to a 50 years old model? No one is telling girls to be gentle and not to be sluts and boys they should fight and not cry?
The world could use gentler parenting of the next generation!

Sorry, but no. The poster said being spanked caused brain and nervous system damage and made the spankee suffer physically and psychologically.

(citation needed)

It is saying children are not adults. They don't have the same responsibilities and expectations as adults because they don't have the brains to. Again, obvious.

Yes, but a child is an adult in progress.
Of course, you have to put yourself at their level, you can't talk to them like you would to an adult. But a child can show surprising smarts, if given opportunity to do so.

At what age do you think you can reason with a child?

I have reasonned with 18 month-old kids. (yes, them not being able to respond with spoken language doesn't mean they can't understand it)
I have communicated intent and received a coherent response from toddlers, but I'm not sure we can call that reasonning, it's more at an emotional level or immediate action level at that age.

Once again, after that flurry of quote/answers, I'd like to stress that I'm not calling people who spank or punish evil (been there, knows how/why you do it), or equating spanking to beating. Nor am I saying that all spanking necessarily leads to bad outomes. Kids are resilent, and most parents are reasonnable and the spanking is often rare, or more a mark of displeasure than something physically felt. No strawmen please.
I'm just thinking that in the 21st century, we should know better, and strive for better. And that definitely outing spanking from our social norms would help those who have difficulty in that strife, like I did, rather than validating them by just saying "I was spanked and turned out good".

Plus, once again, it would help fighting again deranged people like the Pearls and the disfunctional messages they spread.

 

[Jokodo]

Dancer's don't get "participation trophies" so I don't know how pervasive this practice is. Do you have examples of older, more experienced sports players receiving "participation trophies"?

In Primary school, at sports carnivals, all kids get a participation ribbon, with the place getters getting ribbons for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. The really young kids don't get ribbons, but they do all get a sticker that says 'I ran a race' or 'I swam in the pool'.

To me this doesn't give anything for the kid to really strive for. 'Oh, it doesn't matter if I don't place, I will get a ribbon anyway.'

When I was in school the only reason I got a ribbon for 3rd was because there were three swimmers in the race. I didn't feel proud of that accomplishment, because I still knew that I had come last.

You are basically contradicting yourself here: Claiming that "getting a ribbon anyway" gives kids nothing to strive for when your own experience tells you that kids still know they didn't do well.

 

[Playball40]

I don't see being spanked as 'breaking the will' within me or my brothers. We knew we had done wrong - especially if mum brought out the BIG wooden spoon. We learned to recognise how wrong our action was by how severely we were punished. A good lesson IMO.

same escalation of violence in my childhood, it just taught me to lie first always and to be constantly manipulating my parents to not get caught.

Wow, we agree on this!

 

[Playball40]

I'm not a child who needs discipline. You do know the difference between adults and children, right?

explain to me how something which would be called physical assault in a heartbeat in ANY other facet of human existence somehow magically isn't when the victim is a child.

Because a child isn't an adult. I think that's obvious. Guess we should just let toddlers run into traffic because grabbing them and hauling them back against their will is 'assault' as well.

That enough of an 'anecdote'?

no, it isn't.
just because some women in africa think female circumcision is OK or some women in saudi arabia think the way that culture treats women is OK doesn't mean that there can ever be enough anecdotes to make it OK.

Sorry, but no. The poster said being spanked caused brain and nervous system damage and made the spankee suffer physically and psychologically.

In order to make such a claim, that would mean almost everyone throughout history was brain-damaged.

Are you willing to say that?

Technically spanking is not really discipline, it's punishment. Discipline is "to teach". Spanking is only "teaching" to be afraid and distrustful of adults.

 

[Playball40]

You are saying opposite things here. On the one hand, you say you didn't feel any sense of accomplishment whe you won the third place ribbon because you were smart and realized that with only three people in the race, third place didn't mean anything.

Yet, on the other hand, you said that having participation ribbons didn't give anyone anything to strive for. You don't think they are smart enough to know that there in a race with 20 kids, there is a big difference between "participation" vs first, second or third place?

I've seen good arguments on both sides of this particular question, and don't have a strong opinion either way though.

Apologies RavenSky, it does sound different. I will try and elaborate. I was a child who, until I got those third place ribbons for coming last, had never received a ribbon for placing in anything as I am not sporty in any regards. Because of that, I knew that to get a ribbon you placed, but also realised that I only got it because there were only three people swimming.

Littlies are getting these ribbons and stickers etc from an early age for just participating and so I don't think they realise that they should strive for the place getters ribbons. They are being raised with the belief that they will get a ribbon just for running etc so why try hard? Does that make sense?

I pointed out a league where they get participation trophies but there was no comment. It is a recreation league to learn the sport. They move into competitive leagues later.

 

[Playball40]

This.
It even goes farther than corporal punishment. It goes into our logic of punishment more generally.
You don't want a kid to act in fear of a punishment, even not-corporal. You want them to understand consequences.
I don't say this is easy. I caught myself punishing this week-end, instead of applying consequences. And it's even less easy in a "punishment-oriented" house. A boy who was spanked earlier in his life isn't going to understand the difference between "I remove the computer as a punishment for not listening to me" and "I remove the computer because you're obviously not ready to manage the time you spend on it versus your homework and chores", for him the final consequence is the same (no computer today until everything else is done) and he's heard the first reasonning too many times for the second to sink in easily.
So I'm not judging those who apply punishment. But NOT thinking reward/punishment should be the goal of parents. Kids are not pets, they're much more intelligent than that.

Dancer's don't get "participation trophies" so I don't know how pervasive this practice is. Do you have examples of older, more experienced sports players receiving "participation trophies"?

In Primary school, at sports carnivals, all kids get a participation ribbon, with the place getters getting ribbons for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. The really young kids don't get ribbons, but they do all get a sticker that says 'I ran a race' or 'I swam in the pool'.

To me this doesn't give anything for the kid to really strive for. 'Oh, it doesn't matter if I don't place, I will get a ribbon anyway.'

Kids aren't dumb. They know the difference between a participation ribbon and a first place ribbon.
Actually, that's a problem with participation ribbons. Most kids know very well it's bunk, because they know very well the sports they're participating in is supposed to be competitive (except for the youngest ones, who shouldn't be doing competition anyway, just learning to move their bodies, so the ribbons are playing their roles for them).
If the school aim isn't to select athletes but raise the average health of citizens by teaching kids to take pleasure in moving their bodies, it needs to completely move away from competitive sports and let them to after-hours clubs or special 'athletes' courses.
A kid who's not athletic or not into competition won't make more efforts without a participation ribbon, he knows those first place ribbons are inaccessible or unpalatable for him anyway.

As someone else posted, sometimes kids don't respond to anything else. A 'time out' would have meant nothing to me. I didn't mind being alone in a room by myself. Guess that punishment was invented by social butterfly people who think being alone is a punishment.

That would be because a properly applied timeout isn't supposed to be a punishment. It's part of an education method where you don't do punishments. It's a way to remove a child from a situation too exciting or frustrating for him to respect safety or social boundaries, and leave him time to think about it and gather resolve for the next time.

As for who turned out well and who didn't...well considering the entire nation used to be OK with spanking in schools up until the 1960s, I guess everyone raised before then must have been "brain and nervous system damaged and suffered psychologically and emotionally" or whatever.

That enough of an 'anecdote'?

Because you think the world is turning right? People are not thinking of coercion and violence as first correction to problems? People are not displeased at the social nets because they might help people who didn't "earn" that help? People are not wanting to forbid other to marry who they love just because they don't want to face that other people live differently? Our politicians aren't fighting to restore growth as a solution to all our problems while the planet is finite and most of the planet economies are past the growth phase anyway, clinging to a 50 years old model? No one is telling girls to be gentle and not to be sluts and boys they should fight and not cry?
The world could use gentler parenting of the next generation!

Sorry, but no. The poster said being spanked caused brain and nervous system damage and made the spankee suffer physically and psychologically.

(citation needed)

It is saying children are not adults. They don't have the same responsibilities and expectations as adults because they don't have the brains to. Again, obvious.

Yes, but a child is an adult in progress.
Of course, you have to put yourself at their level, you can't talk to them like you would to an adult. But a child can show surprising smarts, if given opportunity to do so.

At what age do you think you can reason with a child?

I have reasonned with 18 month-old kids. (yes, them not being able to respond with spoken language doesn't mean they can't understand it)
I have communicated intent and received a coherent response from toddlers, but I'm not sure we can call that reasonning, it's more at an emotional level or immediate action level at that age.

Once again, after that flurry of quote/answers, I'd like to stress that I'm not calling people who spank or punish evil (been there, knows how/why you do it), or equating spanking to beating. Nor am I saying that all spanking necessarily leads to bad outomes. Kids are resilent, and most parents are reasonnable and the spanking is often rare, or more a mark of displeasure than something physically felt. No strawmen please.
I'm just thinking that in the 21st century, we should know better, and strive for better. And that definitely outing spanking from our social norms would help those who have difficulty in that strife, like I did, rather than validating them by just saying "I was spanked and turned out good".

Plus, once again, it would help fighting again deranged people like the Pearls and the disfunctional messages they spread.

At that age toddlers are just discovering they are separate beings that can manipulate their environment. They also are forming new synapses so "reasoning" with them is an excellent teaching time. The trick is redundancy and consistency until it sticks. Also, they will want to "test" things out. OFTEN. So many people mistake this in toddlers for defiance. It's not...they don't even have a sense of empathy yet, they sure as hell aren't defiant. Striking a toddler just seems so wrong to me on so many levels.

I'm not judging because I admit to swatting my oldest on more than one occassion (sometimes out of fear). I just know it's not useful, effective or true discipline.

 

[dx713]

Agreed, but, for the sake of keeping the discussion civil, let's agree that the OP was not about striking toddler (and no one else in this thread was, to my understanding)
This is more an aside about things like what the Pearls teach.

But the image, could be. If I read it right, the authoritarian tone, and the praying, could quickly lead someone fully agreeing with it to theories like To Train Up A Child, where "breaking the child will" as soon as possible is part of the "education" system.
I'm afraid of a world where some adults agree 100% with this image.

 

[rousseau]

I have vivid memories of being spanked as a child. And at whatever age I was being spanked I can tell you that it wasn't a deterrent for bad behavior. I have absolutely no recollection of being about to do something 'bad' and thinking "nope, I better not get spanked". Instead, I would do something bad and with no understanding of why it was bad I would get hit, and not really understand why I was getting hit. All the spanking did was create a traumatizing moment.

When you do the math it's easy to see that spanking, most of the time, doesn't make sense, just don't expect the average person to understand the psychological nuances of rewarding/punishing behavior. Most of the time when I see other parents/children out in public, all I can think of is that it's children raising children. Most of them don't have a clue what they're doing.

 

[braces_for_impact]

There has been a lot of research into this area, and frankly, spanking is harmful to children. The most insidious part of it is that it encourages those that were spanked to also spank their children. There are things that most of us would do differently in raising our children than our parents did with us. Spanking is one of them. There is nothing wrong with this. Saying you turned out OK and you were spanked is fallacious reasoning. I spanked my first two children, and I regret doing so. I'm raising my youngest differently.

There is scientific consensus that spanking children is harmful.

More than 100 studies have detailed these side effects of spanking, with more than 90 percent agreement among them. There is probably no other aspect of parenting and child behavior where the results are so consistent <snip>

-Spanking harms the child parent relationship.

-Spanking does not correct behavior better than other methods.

-Spanking increases the probability that the child will hit other children and their parents, and as adults, hit a dating or marital partner.

-Spanking also slows down mental development and lowers the probability of a child doing well in school.

- There is a link between spanking and behavioral problems and crime.

More than 20 nations now prohibit spanking by parents, and with good reason. One way to have a successful, happy child is to have a violence free home, and decent financial stability. That last part is hard for me, but I am making sure I adhere to the first.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131211103958.htm

 

[prideandfall]

It is saying children are not adults. They don't have the same responsibilities and expectations as adults because they don't have the brains to. Again, obvious.

yes... i'm still not seeing exactly how this links to "and that makes it OK to physically assault them"

Says who?

says the law.

The person trying to run might be thinking something completely different. Who are you to stop them without their permission? Especially if the kid kicks and screams and fights to be released? I can't see how you can say that is anything but assault.

because it literally isn't assault.

Well, then there you go. Almost everyone from our Founding Fathers to the Great Generation to your great grandparents were all retards.

more or less, yeah.

 

[prideandfall]

...

 

[Davka]

Now we know that spanking causes damage to the brain and nervous system and sets up children for lives of psychological and emotional suffering.

Source?

I've seen studies which show that physical abuse does this. But equating spanking with abuse is like equating a bb-gun with a howitzer, or pot-heads with meth-heads. The biggest problem I see with spanking (and with conversations about spanking) is that nobody bothers to define terms. So we end up with statements like 'all spanking is abuse," which are about as helpful and thoughtful as statements like "all sexual intercourse is rape."

This kind of black-and-white moralizing has two very detrimental effects. First, it discourages thoughtful, nuanced conversation on the subject. Secondly, and most damaging, it allows sadistic abusive assholes to simply dismiss all objections to corporal punishment as extremist, pointless ranting. So the abusers go right on beating children with switches, belts, and fists, secure in their conviction that "it's just a spanking."

If the anti-spanking crowd wants their voice heard. they're going to need to acknowledge that some forms of loving and self-aware corporal punishment might, at the very least, do no lasting harm. Otherwise these conversations end up being about as productive as having a YEC-ist plug his ears and chant "la la la I can't hear you!" in a scientific discussion about the age and scope of the Universe.

 

[Davka]

Technically spanking is not really discipline, it's punishment. Discipline is "to teach". Spanking is only "teaching" to be afraid and distrustful of adults.

Nonsense. When a puppy is smacked with a rolled-up newspaper for piddling on the floor, that's called "training." It's not punishment, it's teaching. Young animals of all species can be taught pretty much the same way.

 

[Davka]

...

 

[prideandfall]

Source?

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?2621-Discipline-for-children&p=74689&viewfull=1#post74689

I've seen studies which show that physical abuse does this. But equating spanking with abuse is like equating a bb-gun with a howitzer, or pot-heads with meth-heads. The biggest problem I see with spanking (and with conversations about spanking) is that nobody bothers to define terms. So we end up with statements like 'all spanking is abuse," which are about as helpful and thoughtful as statements like "all sexual intercourse is rape."

tell you what, i'll totally back down and admit i was wrong and defer to all of you violence advocates if just ONE of you can come up with a single situation where you could take the kind of shit you're supporting doing to children, do it to an adult, and not get arrested for assault.
show me one place in our society where it's not only accepted but actively encouraged by many people for someone to restrain and strike another person for the purposes of "teaching them a lesson," and i'll consider you to have won the argument.

is it OK to hit women to teach them their place? after all, they're only women, how else can you teach them?
is it OK to hit blacks to teach them their place? after all, they're only blacks, how else can you teach them?
is it OK to hit retards to teach them their place? after all, they're only retards, how else can you teach them?

This kind of black-and-white moralizing has two very detrimental effects. First, it discourages thoughtful, nuanced conversation on the subject. Secondly, and most damaging, it allows sadistic abusive assholes to simply dismiss all objections to corporal punishment as extremist, pointless ranting. So the abusers go right on beating children with switches, belts, and fists, secure in their conviction that "it's just a spanking."

i'll agree it's black-and-white moralizing if you can come up with any other situation in the whole of Western culture where it's acceptable to do to an adult nothing more than precisely what you and yours are advocating you do to a child.
or hell, if you can come up with any situation where it would be acceptable to do to a dog what you're advocating doing to a child, and not be arrested for it and crucified by public opinion.

If the anti-spanking crowd wants their voice heard. they're going to need to acknowledge that some forms of loving and self-aware corporal punishment might, at the very least, do no lasting harm.

well of course - that's absolutely true.
some forms of loving and self-aware rape might, at the very least, do not lasting harm either - that doesn't mean that you're any less of a psychotic for suggesting that behavior-correcting rape is not only acceptable, but that the woes of our society are because women aren't being corrective-raped enough anymore.

 

[Davka]

I'm not a child...

You can't use your words when you are frustraited and the smartest thing you can come up with is lashing out with violence. This is what a child does. An adult reasons.

More bullshit.

People, we're supposed to be well-reasoned, freethinking, intelligent humans here. Why is it that on this particular subject, the enormous, unfathomably complex Universe of nuanced shades of grey suddenly becomes a tiny self-righteous bubble of black-and-white?

I spanked my kids. I never, ever "lashed out with violence" or "beat" my children.

Seeing the world in black-and-white is what a child does. An adult reasons.

 

[Davka]

tell you what, i'll totally back down and admit i was wrong and defer to all of you violence advocates

No, you won't. You'll deliberately use loaded, bigoted, closed-minded phrases like "violence advocates" and refuse to open your mind even the tiniest amount to the possibility that thoughtful, loving spanking might be neutral at worst. The above pretense at rational thought is no different from starting a post on racism with "i'll totally back down and admit i was wrong and defer to all of you Nigger-lovers . . . "

You are welcome to try again. But unless and until you are willing to admit (even if just for the sake of argument) that there is a difference between spanking and child abuse, you will not be attempting conversation, debate, or even understanding. You will merely be spouting your own opinion, just like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity aren't debating politics, they're simply parroting the party line.

 

[prideandfall]

People, we're supposed to be well-reasoned, freethinking, intelligent humans here. Why is it that on this particular subject, the enormous, unfathomably complex Universe of nuanced shades of grey suddenly becomes a tiny self-righteous bubble of black-and-white?

because you're blithely and casually advocating that not only is violence against the most defenseless and vulnerable in our out species the right thing to do, but that it would be wrong to not assault them.

that is completely deranged and unhinged and fucked up beyond measure.

I spanked my kids. I never, ever "lashed out with violence" or "beat" my children.

so you're telling me that if i pull you off the street and dropped your pants and hit you in order to teach you a lesson that i decided you needed to learn, but didn't "lash out" or "beat" you, that you would find this completely acceptable?

Seeing the world in black-and-white is what a child does. An adult reasons.

an adult also doesn't use violence as a scare tactic and an adult doesn't go out of their way to physically assault the most helpless of us, who also by the way trust you implicitly and are the most physically destroyed by your actions.