Discipline for children

[Angry Floof]

Disagree all you like; it worked for me. That's a more powerful argument in my mind than all the studies in the world.

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

 

[Rhea]

Interestingly babies that age don't bite out of being mean or trying to inflict pain on another. So biting back is just silly. It's usually a combination of inability to communicate and teathing of all thing.

His was a sensory issue - his mouth was how he experienced the world, including the test of how solid it was by biting it. Later, after he learned biting people was not okay, he started licking them. It was a positive step. Now, in High School, he doesn't lick people any more. (~laugh~ he hasn't actually since elementary school, but I still like to tease him about it)

 

[Jokodo]

Way to not respond to what was said.

Excuse me? You told me i could find "what I seek" in "any child-development textbook." I responded.

I never said spanking automatically equates to child abuse.

Perhaps not, but many others in this thread have.

However, spanking, as a form of punishment is ineffective, not recommended and has been shown to be detrimental to children.

Nonsense. If spanking were ineffective,<snip>

If praying were ineffective...
If homeopathy were ineffective...

This argument really doesn't work.

 

[Playball40]

Interestingly babies that age don't bite out of being mean or trying to inflict pain on another. So biting back is just silly. It's usually a combination of inability to communicate and teathing of all thing.

His was a sensory issue - his mouth was how he experienced the world, including the test of how solid it was by biting it. Later, after he learned biting people was not okay, he started licking them. It was a positive step. Now, in High School, he doesn't lick people any more. (~laugh~ he hasn't actually since elementary school, but I still like to tease him about it)

LOL! - and they learn biting is not ok once they develop empathy (which isn't until later). Some parents get so freaked by biting babies, like they are miniture bullies. So silly!

My youngest daughter had sensory sensitivity too, but to sound. She couldn't stand being in preschool with lots of other kids and she hated movies or parades. Now, she goes to the performing arts middle school studying music. It's funny how that all turns out!

 

[Davka]

Disagree all you like; it worked for me. That's a more powerful argument in my mind than all the studies in the world.

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

It comes from skeptics here every single day. Pick a topic, and someone will take the position that their personal; experience outweighs whatever studies might say to the contrary. In fact, I'm certain I could find examples of you doing the exact same thing if I took the time to search the archives.

Face it; all the studies in the world do not outweigh personal experience. Your "climate change" example is extremely poor, however, because people who say "it's snowing here therefore global warming is false" are not relating their personal experience of climate change, but rather their personal experience of localized weather. My experience of the effects of spanking on children is exactly that. It's not the result of a category confusion, like "weather v. climate." It is direct, personal experience with the specific topic under discussion.

For all the years my kids lived at home, I was repeatedly told by other parents that my children were the kindest, most considerate, most well-behaved kids they had ever met. Spanking them as small children, and continuing the same rules with different consequences once they were old enough to reason, WORKED. Studies that claim that it's not snowing in my back yard when I'm standing in 3 feet on my back porch are somewhat less convincing than the evidence my own freezing feet.

- - - Updated - - -

Excuse me? You told me i could find "what I seek" in "any child-development textbook." I responded.

I never said spanking automatically equates to child abuse.

Perhaps not, but many others in this thread have.

However, spanking, as a form of punishment is ineffective, not recommended and has been shown to be detrimental to children.

Nonsense. If spanking were ineffective,<snip>

If praying were ineffective...
If homeopathy were ineffective...

This argument really doesn't work.

Point.

OK then, if spanking didn't work, my kids would not have been the best-behaved, most caring, considerate children that other parents had ever seen.

It works. It's high time it was studied honestly.

 

[Angry Floof]

What climate change example? Are you confusing my posts with someone else's? I haven't mentioned climate change.

Anyway, I think <edit>

 

[braces_for_impact]

Excuse me for interjecting, but the studies which confirm global warming directly contradicts my experience of the last few winters I suffered through before I moved last year. Yet, I still accept the science of current warming trends. If I didn't I would be one of the ignoramus right wing people that exclaim that global warming is an Obama made conspiracy to take our guns because it's 20 below outside.

Part of being a good skeptic is accepting valid evidence even when it personally disregards our personal experience. Statistics and numbers is another good example of this as we humans really suck at understanding chance, randomness, probability, etc. Just because skeptics also make these mistakes and instead rely on their personal experience doesn't invalidate good critical thinking ideals.

What I see in this thread is a hot topic which causes a lot of emotional upheaval on all sides. Davka, I don't think you were a child abuser. I have no doubt your children turned out as fine, well adjusted adults. Let me ask you a question. Do you think it's a possibility that your case is more the exception than the norm? Do you think in general it's better to not hit a child than to hit a child to induce corrective behavior? In child rearing, do you think we should convince children to behave appropriately using the least harmful means possible? Do you think than in general the scientific consensus is correct but may not apply to you in your case? Please note I am not being facetious: there are always outlying anomalies in regards to scientific data.

As for me. I abused my first two children, and I'm not proud of that. Not in like a seriously violent way true, yet my anger and desperation as a parent came right through. I was young and dumb and had no idea what I was doing. It still haunts me to this day. Although I've asked my children for their forgiveness long ago, it's the one thing I would change in my past if I could. I went from spanking to escalating things out of desperation, and I was out of control. I take full responsibility for my actions, but I also have to look at the social context I was living in - in which spanking is seen as not only socially acceptable, but even required, in a way. How many times do we hear that the problems with younger generations today is that they need a good ol'fashioned ass whoopin'? By God, that's what happened to me and I turned out just fine! (Or did I? How would I know how I would have turned out if my mom had used better corrective methods?) While my actions were mine alone, IF I had been in a society in which it was socially unacceptable to spank, or I had at least heard that it can cause other harmful effects in some children, or I knew that some children were successfully raised without spanking, I may have sought other tools to use as a parent. I think that with regards to the general populace, people need to be aware of these issues, because they cannot and do not spank the same way or within the same set of circumstances that Davka did.

I'll have limited Internet access soon, but if needed I'll try to reply.

 

[fromderinside]

Disagree all you like; it worked for me. That's a more powerful argument in my mind than all the studies in the world.

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

From among visiting religious believes (pro-spanker here) I claim we do what we experience. Males are have taken the dominant position because.......wait for it........ they can dominate. Parents physically dominate because....... they can. Spanking is a ritualized form of physical dominance usually designed to get attention rather than harm. So one could say spanking is more appropriate than beating, throwing over a cliff, etc.

As for your search for any positive effects of spanking, the above outlines one, and this citation Disciplinary Spanking: The Scientific Evidence

http://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Cit...ary_Spanking__The_Scientific_Evidence.14.aspx is another.

 

[prideandfall]

We do, however, have a bit more leeway in our social mores with hitting or slapping adults who are beyond reason. Consider how many TV shows or movies you've seen in which one character is panicked or in some other fashion irrational, and their friend slaps them to "bring them to their senses". That serves very much the same purpose, and is a close (but not perfect) parallel to spanking a child.

most excellent! i hadn't thought of that, and indeed i would agree that these are equivalent.
the question though that it makes me wonder is whether or not that sort of thing ever actually happens in real life - which it well may, but i don't know. i've never observed or encountered the 'slap the panic out of them' in the real world, that may be a TV/movie convention.
of course there's also technically the question of equivalence of purpose, snapping someone out hysterics in order to deal with an immediate situation that needs attending (which is always the case in the example you provided, even on TV you never see someone just slap another person for say crying at a funeral) but while i may be nit-picking on this, i do commend you for coming up with an example at all, which nobody else had managed in 18 pages.

Conceded, but note that it is ONLY in those cases where you have reasonable guardianship over another adult. You could not do this with any random adult without it being considered either assault or kidnapping. In much the same way, with a child over whom you are a guardian, it is considered a spanking, and with any other adult it would be considered assault and battery.

think this has been pretty thoroughly covered in other replies.

Your example is not acceptable. You as an individual aren't restraining the adult in prison, the state is acting to do so. The state is not restraining your child. In order to provide an acceptable counter-example, it needs to be a case of an individual and autonomous adult physically restraining and constraining the movement of another individual and autonomous adult.

huh, alright - i hadn't approached it from that angle, but i see what you're getting at.
i'm not thinking of it in the terms you are, i don't consider the ultimate source initiating the action the relevant piece here, so i don't really have a way to directly address your point - i get where you're coming from but it's a way of looking at it rather outside of my perception of the issue so i'll have to ponder that more before i have a reasonable reply.

These are not direct equivalents. They are not individual adults punishing another individual adult for their behavior by taking their things away. In the case of losing your job, it is the severing of a contract, you don't own the job, it doesn't belong to you. In the case of your car or house being repossessed, it is breach of contract not punishment of misbehavior. Same thing for the amusement park. In no case are you allowed to decide that your next door neighbor is acting out in an inappropriate way, and take away all of his sports equipment and power tools.

like above, i don't see the source of it making much difference, as the "action > consequence" part was the bit i was focused on.
again i see your point, but don't have anything concrete to respond with at this time.

 

[Jokodo]

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

It comes from skeptics here every single day. Pick a topic, and someone will take the position that their personal; experience outweighs whatever studies might say to the contrary. In fact, I'm certain I could find examples of you doing the exact same thing if I took the time to search the archives.

Face it; all the studies in the world do not outweigh personal experience. Your "climate change" example is extremely poor, however, because people who say "it's snowing here therefore global warming is false" are not relating their personal experience of climate change, but rather their personal experience of localized weather. My experience of the effects of spanking on children is exactly that. It's not the result of a category confusion, like "weather v. climate." It is direct, personal experience with the specific topic under discussion.

For all the years my kids lived at home, I was repeatedly told by other parents that my children were the kindest, most considerate, most well-behaved kids they had ever met. Spanking them as small children, and continuing the same rules with different consequences once they were old enough to reason, WORKED. Studies that claim that it's not snowing in my back yard when I'm standing in 3 feet on my back porch are somewhat less convincing than the evidence my own freezing feet.

- - - Updated - - -

Excuse me? You told me i could find "what I seek" in "any child-development textbook." I responded.

I never said spanking automatically equates to child abuse.

Perhaps not, but many others in this thread have.

However, spanking, as a form of punishment is ineffective, not recommended and has been shown to be detrimental to children.

Nonsense. If spanking were ineffective,<snip>

If praying were ineffective...
If homeopathy were ineffective...

This argument really doesn't work.

Point.

OK then, if spanking didn't work, my kids would not have been the best-behaved, most caring, considerate children that other parents had ever seen.

It works. It's high time it was studied honestly.

They say about my kid too. I don't spank. So that leaves a few possibilities:

A) Some kids turn out great with or without spanking.
B) Either or both of us are taking the polite praise other people give us through our children too literally.
C) Both of us are just such great parents that the negative impact of (not) spanking is drowned by all the other things we do.
D) People in my country and your country have different standards of comparison.
(Others)

It does not allow you to conclude that "it works".

The only conclusion that does follow is that anecdotal evidence is inappropriate to assess this question because the signal is going to be drowned by random noise (uncontrolled confounds and individual differences). We have to go to large scale studies. Exactly what you're refusing.

 

[Davka]

Excuse me for interjecting, but the studies which confirm global warming directly contradicts my experience of the last few winters I suffered through before I moved last year.

Wrong. Unless you are personally involved in the ongoing climatological studies, you have ZERO personal experience of global warming, and thus nothing to predict.

The correct analogy is this: The LOCAL WEATHER is cold, therefore the LOCAL WEATHERMAN's prediction of "hot and sunny" directly contradicts your personal experience.

The truth is that all parents have direct personal experience of what works and what doesn't. Some idiot ivory-tower theorist writing that "making choo-choo noises won't help you get your toddler to eat" is directly contradicted by the personal experience of untold numbers of parents. And the same goes for those so-called spanking studies.

 

[Davka]

It comes from skeptics here every single day. Pick a topic, and someone will take the position that their personal; experience outweighs whatever studies might say to the contrary. In fact, I'm certain I could find examples of you doing the exact same thing if I took the time to search the archives.

Face it; all the studies in the world do not outweigh personal experience. Your "climate change" example is extremely poor, however, because people who say "it's snowing here therefore global warming is false" are not relating their personal experience of climate change, but rather their personal experience of localized weather. My experience of the effects of spanking on children is exactly that. It's not the result of a category confusion, like "weather v. climate." It is direct, personal experience with the specific topic under discussion.

For all the years my kids lived at home, I was repeatedly told by other parents that my children were the kindest, most considerate, most well-behaved kids they had ever met. Spanking them as small children, and continuing the same rules with different consequences once they were old enough to reason, WORKED. Studies that claim that it's not snowing in my back yard when I'm standing in 3 feet on my back porch are somewhat less convincing than the evidence my own freezing feet.

- - - Updated - - -

Excuse me? You told me i could find "what I seek" in "any child-development textbook." I responded.

I never said spanking automatically equates to child abuse.

Perhaps not, but many others in this thread have.

However, spanking, as a form of punishment is ineffective, not recommended and has been shown to be detrimental to children.

Nonsense. If spanking were ineffective,<snip>

If praying were ineffective...
If homeopathy were ineffective...

This argument really doesn't work.

Point.

OK then, if spanking didn't work, my kids would not have been the best-behaved, most caring, considerate children that other parents had ever seen.

It works. It's high time it was studied honestly.

They say about my kid too. I don't spank. So that leaves a few possibilities:

A) Some kids turn out great with or without spanking.
B) Either or both of us are taking the polite praise other people give us through our children too literally.
C) Both of us are just such great parents that the negative impact of (not) spanking is drowned by all the other things we do.
D) People in my country and your country have different standards of comparison.
(Others)

It does not allow you to conclude that "it works".

Of course it does. We both took different approaches to raising different children in different circumstances. Both of us are in the unique position of relating what works and what does not work for our kids. A blanket statement such as "X does not work" needs only a single example of X actually working to falsify the claim. If eating raw oysters stops the hiccups for me, then nobody can accurately claim that this method does not work.

The only conclusion that does follow is that anecdotal evidence is inappropriate to assess this question because the signal is going to be drowned by random noise (uncontrolled confounds and individual differences). We have to go to large scale studies. Exactly what you're refusing.

I'm not refusing large-scale studies of the difference in effect between spanking, non-physical discipline, and abusive punishment. I am calling for those studies to be done. They have not, because it is currently politically incorrect to acknowledge those three different categories. Any attempt by a child behaviorist to distinguish between harmful corporal punishment and non-harmful (potentially helpful) corporal discipline would be professional suicide. It would be like a psychiatrist in 1960 publishing a paper showing that homosexuality is not a mental illness. Career-ending suicide.

- - - Updated - - -

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

From among visiting religious believes (pro-spanker here) I claim we do what we experience. Males are have taken the dominant position because.......wait for it........ they can dominate. Parents physically dominate because....... they can. Spanking is a ritualized form of physical dominance usually designed to get attention rather than harm. So one could say spanking is more appropriate than beating, throwing over a cliff, etc.

As for your search for any positive effects of spanking, the above outlines one, and this citation Disciplinary Spanking: The Scientific Evidence

http://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Cit...ary_Spanking__The_Scientific_Evidence.14.aspx is another.

That's cheating. You're not allowed to introduce actual published papers which contradict the dominant paradigm. You WILL submit.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Just because spanking can produce positive results doesn't mean that it somehow becomes acceptable behaviour. There's likely at least some women who've gone on to have happy and productive marriages after a few beatings from their husbands taught them their place. Some communities have probably been made safer by the cops planting evidence on a suspect who they damn well know is guilty but they can't prove it. An banker could potentially rob money from his clients' accounts to cover some losses and reinvest it so that everyone's investments become profitable and stable. Bad actions can sometimes lead to positive results but that doesn't mean that the action is somehow less bad.

It can be difficult to distinguish between a disciplinary spanking and child abuse because both are an adult hitting a kid and using physical pain to get it to stay in line. The effectiveness of it is a moot point. It's the action itself which should be condemned.

 

[Godless Raven]

For the record, I am against corporal punishment. I do think there are some circumstances where a tap on the hand would work, but over all I think it's wrong to hit someone because they did something you don't like or that's deemed "wrong".

With that said, I am 100% for something my wife and I call "Slap-a-teen-day" or STD (yeah, I know). This would be one day every year where adults can legally walk up to a teen, any teen, and slap them right upside the head. First, there are a whole hell of a lot of teens that could probably use a good slap upside the head. We all know several we either grew up with or know now...we may have even been a teen that someone should have slapped upside the head. And because most people wouldn't want to slap just anyone upside the head, it would in theory, mostly be applied to the fuckers that have it coming. It's the ultimate policing Santa Claus style...if you're good all year round, you're probably not going to be on anybody's radar, but if you're a little twat, you might just get your head slapped 20 times in one day. It may not make teens want to behave 365 days a year, but I bet some of the worst of the lot would be minding their manners for the couple of weeks leading up to STD.

 

[Playball40]

Excuse me for interjecting, but the studies which confirm global warming directly contradicts my experience of the last few winters I suffered through before I moved last year.

Wrong. Unless you are personally involved in the ongoing climatological studies, you have ZERO personal experience of global warming, and thus nothing to predict.

The correct analogy is this: The LOCAL WEATHER is cold, therefore the LOCAL WEATHERMAN's prediction of "hot and sunny" directly contradicts your personal experience.

The truth is that all parents have direct personal experience of what works and what doesn't. Some idiot ivory-tower theorist writing that "making choo-choo noises won't help you get your toddler to eat" is directly contradicted by the personal experience of untold numbers of parents. And the same goes for those so-called spanking studies.

Ok, well smoking doesn't really cause health issues because my uncle lived to be 90 and smoked three unfiltered packs a day.

 

[Unbeatable]

Disagree all you like; it worked for me. That's a more powerful argument in my mind than all the studies in the world.

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

That's probably why we don't see it very often from skeptics. Because when a skeptic bluntly admits the truth-- that they, like humans in general, are not wired to trust statistical abstractions over personal experience, especially not on matters of personal importance, and that they aren't sufficiently devoted to some ideal of rationalism to fight their own cognitive biases in daily life, especially when they're not really causing them any problems-- chances are someone'll try to shame them for it by comparing them to The Enemy. It doesn't change the way they think or live; just what they're willing to admit to. Religious believers don't have the "don't be irrational like those wacky supernaturalists" social norm, so they'll admit to their actual epistemology, while refusing to admit to other things, like their sexual inclinations.

 

[fromderinside]

- - - Updated - - -

Now there's a statement we don't see every day on a skeptic board.

Oh, wait, yes we do. It just usually comes from visiting religious believers, not skeptics.

From among visiting religious believes (pro-spanker here) I claim we do what we experience. Males are have taken the dominant position because.......wait for it........ they can dominate. Parents physically dominate because....... they can. Spanking is a ritualized form of physical dominance usually designed to get attention rather than harm. So one could say spanking is more appropriate than beating, throwing over a cliff, etc.

As for your search for any positive effects of spanking, the above outlines one, and this citation Disciplinary Spanking: The Scientific Evidence

http://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Cit...ary_Spanking__The_Scientific_Evidence.14.aspx is another.

That's cheating. You're not allowed to introduce actual published papers which contradict the dominant paradigm. You WILL submit.

Damn shame isn't it. All I did was read Steven Pinker's "...better Angels of our Nature" and the dominant paradigm just crumbled. We are violent but we live in Leviathans whose enforcers are feared enough to get us to be more civil over time. Seems the Leviathans evolve too producing more inclusive constructions as we go along. apparently thing s work better, by better I mean more people share more of whatever is produced, for the species when we do such.

Now if that's the way cultures work why aren't religions keeping up. Power envy I guess.

Bottom line, ritualistic even symbolic tokens or relative power keep us becoming more adaptable to including others who do likewise. So throwing over the cliff or into the river, becomes beating that only damages, becomes spanking that signals daddy rules, becomes mommy walking Timmy to his bedroom with her arm around his shoulder instructing him on proper behavior and doing what is kind to others signally her sharing power and advancing cooperation is better than forcing, to Timmy hugging his little girl friend Shanika saying shes just like him, to .....beat, beat, beat, .......

 

[Emily Lake]

That is also, however, disingenuous of you, hylidae. The science presented said that spanking your child with a belt or a paddle once a month over a period of three years increases the risk of negative outcomes. Which I suspect nearly everyone in this thread who is not categorically anti-spanking will heartily agree constitutes child abuse!

Really? A spanking advocate thinks one spanking a month constitutes child abuse? YOU might, but I don't think that is a common view. And the article said "frequently" with paddles, although I don't know why getting hit with hands might seem better to you that you would leave it out. Do you think hands can't do as much damage?

First, I've already said, and will repeat, that I'm hardly a "spanking advocate". I don't go around recommending that people spank their children. No more than I go around recommending that people get abortions. I'm not an "abortion advocate". I find the emotion-laden language to be offensive.

Second, if you've paid any attention at all, you'll know that nearly every one of us who has taken a stance that is NOT categorically anti-spanking, has also taken a stance where spanking is something to be used sparingly and as a last resort. So despite your affected disbelief, I stand by my suspicion that nearly everyone in this thread would consider monthly spankings with a belt or paddle over a period of at least three years to be abusive.

Anyway, whatever lines the authors wanted to draw, hitting children reduces gray matter, period. No matter how small that reduction or how tiny the effect on the nervous system as a whole, why would you advocate risking it?

Please provide proof that hitting children in any fashion at all reduces gray matter period. That has not been supported by any of the material presented so far. The material presented showed a reduction in gray matter for children hit with a belt or paddle on a monthly basis over the course of at least three years. Which certainly doesn't support your implied claim that any form of hitting a child reduces gray matter absolutely no questions. Therefore, I request that you support your claim.

Emily, tell me what is the maximum level of corporal punishment needed to avoid the risks discussed in the articles?

I have no idea... I've already said that LESS THAN what was used in the study is certainly a good start. SIGNIFICANTLY LESS THAN that is probably a pretty good bet.

 

[Emily Lake]

Ya think? They can say it until they turn blue, but I asked for evidence that hitting children actually does any good and I'm not getting it.

I think the question should be can anyone show evidence that hitting children actually does any good FOR THE CHILD? Every "rationalization" I've seen benefits the parent, not the child. By stopping a behavior that is annoying or unruly to the parent. Or not adhering to the parents wishes or wants. I'm not seeing any examples of benefits to the CHILD.

Somehow I think you might be missing the whole "grow up to be a human that can get along in society and isn't a universally reviled asshole" element of the behavioral bit.

 

[Emily Lake]

Well I'm happy for you that you have a kid who is so precocious as to be able to understand such reasoning at such a young age, and who seems to have never experienced a full-fledged middle of the store meltdown. I applaud that you may never have to spank your child. I do, however, ask that you recognize that not all children are like your child, and no amount of patient explaining will necessarily make them so. Until you've actually dealt with the full on meltdown, I suggest you reserve judgement.

And you really believe spanking a two year old magically makes them understand? Ludicrous.

Understanding of the reason has nothing at all to do with it. Creating a negative consequence to discourage an unwanted behavior is the only thing at play with a child that young. It's all carrots and sticks at that age. Mostly carrots, preferably, but once in a while a stick might be needed.

A two year old "meltdown" as you put it is nothing more than frustration of the child being unable to effectively communicate their wants/needs or control their environment (which they are just discovering they can do). No words are necessary. If you cannot distract them out of the 'meltdown' then as a parent you have two options. Removing them from the situation or ignoring the behavior. Anyone who believes hitting a child during a temper tantrum is going to alleviate the situation, or 'teach' the two year old ANYTHING is deluding themselves.

Sometimes removing them is not an option, and sometimes ignoring them is also not an option. Your very trite academic answer is wonderful as long as you never find yourself in a situation that doesn't conform to your textbook scenarios...