I see this thread is still going strong. Not surprising, given the subject matter. But this irks me in this thread:
Having been a child that received timeouts as discipline, spanked as discipline, and hit just because my mother was angry, I think your statement is full of crap.
I notice that you draw a distinction between being spanked as discipline and being hit because your mother was angry. I presume, therefore, that a difference does exist?
Yes, there is a distinction. And the distinction is this:
Emily Lake said:
The problem that I have with your approach throughout this discussion, as well as the approach of many other people, is that you continue to treat any and all spankings as if they are indistinguishable in effect from the most abusive beatings imaginable. And yet you simultaneously seem to assume that all non-physical punishments are completely benign and non-damaging. You repeatedly cast all spankings as "beating" and "hitting", but you cast confinement as nothing more than "time-outs" as if nothing more severe is even imaginable.
Emily Lake nails it with that quote.
It is no secret that I abused as a child. I was routinely beaten, sometimes bloody. To put that on the same level with my friends who had an occasional spanking to keep them in line is absurd. I'll go a step further - I think it's asinine.
Of all the people I've counseled over the years, the some of the ones showing the most emotive damage and dysfunction came from parents who neglected them. Their parents did not give hugs or have overt expressions of love. They used time-outs like weapons. There was one man I met who could not handle being touched - not because he was ever spanked, but simply because his parents had been so intellectually sterile that their discipline was isolation, the withholding of physical affection and an unfair restriction of activities that his brother "the favorite child" enjoyed - an invisible form of abusive neglect that is deemed acceptable in most households simply because it leaves no marks.
Secondly, all kids are not created equal. There are children in this world that do not respond to easy methods of discipline. They require tough love and a drill sergeant mentality. A few of them will even need a physical tussle or two before they reach adulthood. I have several male friends who admit to this - they were so out of line that it took their father or mother actually smacking them silly to snap them out of it. These same friends ended up in the military because they could not function without that kind of hardline discipline to make them better people. And they say out of their own mouths, "Yes, that's what I needed at the time."
Personally, I think parenting is a hard enough job without equating the average parent with villainy. We are not all calm and collected people 24/7. We're human. And as parents, most of us are just learning without anybody to tell us a damn thing. The children do not come here with instruction manuals. And often most of us are unprepared for the emotional and physical toll children cause.
The way I see it, a toddler is not severely damaged by a time out or a swat on the behind. They will remember neither in the coming years. Damage enters the picture when discipline and anger are fused in a toxic mixture. A teenager with bulima might never have been struck, for example, but she will recall all too well the parent who says she is fat with anger and restricts desserts at dinner. To make it plain, I am simply not willing to say a mother with three kids who swatted her toddler after she'd been awake for six weeks breastfeeding is on par with the parent who smacks the kid just for the hell of it. Same goes for the father who comes home after a 12 hour shift to the 7 year old that gets mouthy and slaps him for it. Shit happens. Again, we're human.
I don't see hard lines here. All I see is gray. Perhaps this makes me an unwise parent, given my background. But I find aspects of this discussion tedious for the reasons I've given above.
...and yet it works when nothing else will.
Works? Killing the child also "works"...
And this comment in particular...
Are you for real?
