Smacking kids doesn’t teach them discipline or right from wrong, it teaches them to fear you. How you can form a healthy relationship with a child that is scared of you is beyond me.
If a child understands that they’ve done something wrong, they don’t need to be hit and if they don’t understand why what they’ve done is wrong, then they won’t understand why they are being hit.
I don’t know how (most) adults can understand that it’s wrong to hit eachother, but when it’s your own defenceless child, suddenly it’s ok.
It’s absolutely disgusting and I’m so glad that I live in a country where it’s been criminalised.
I have to believe every parent wants to be able to reason with their kids and would to address behavior just by explaining to their child that what they did is wrong.
But kids aren’t rational and so when a child is melting down and not listening to correction, I understand the temptation to lean on fear which pretty much universally motivates kids to temporarily change their behavior. Especially when parents are both working long hours, could be stressed about affording their mortgage, childcare, caring for an aging parent, it’s hard enough to regulate yourself let alone while your child is acting a fool and wailing their head off.
That being said I went into parenting with an open mind about spanking as punishment, it was my parents’ preferred method of discipline, but I have never found a situation where it was justified because there is no reason to hit a child. Spanking is a tool that will never come out of my toolbag.
You know what happens when you use pain and fear as a deterrent for doing things? Do you think they learn not to do it or do you think they learn not to get caught?
As you said, “kids aren’t rational,” so they wouldn’t connect the act with the punishment. They connect getting caught with the punishment.
The same thing has clearly been shown to be true for adults as well! Retributive punishment does not decrease recidivism in prison populations. If anything, harsh punishments just cause previous convicts to be locked into committing further crimes.
I’m glad you didn’t hit your kids, but keeping an “open mind” in regards to beating children is kinda wrong. The research has been in for just… so long. Corporal punishment has a net negative effect on children. Saying there might be a reason to use it puts that tool in every parent’s tool box just means kids will be hit.
I absolutely agree with you on all your points. There is simply no excuse to spank and fear doesn’t address a behavior, it just temporarily disarms it.
The message I want to get across is that parents need to support each other. And that most* people don’t want to hit their kids but feel like they HAVE to because they don’t have otherwise effective strategies. Spanking is NEVER an effective strategy but if we are dismissive of each other’s struggles then we are going to further entrench their beliefs that they MUST spank and other parents just don’t understand, rather than encouraging people who need support to seek family therapy or advice from a parenting coach.
I mentioned that I had an open mind because that was how my parents raised me and I didn’t believe that I was abused but my attitude changed after becoming a parent. My goal isn’t for people to keep that tool in their toolbox but help encourage them that may have been like me to take it completely out of the toolbox.
* I say most people because there is a line where it crosses into abuse. It’s like porn, you know abuse when you see it. That shouldn’t be met with support but with a report to your local child/family services agency.
Fuck parents who hit their kids.
When I’m overstimulated to hell because my children are being incredibly loud demon spawn and they just broke something and nobody will listen to a word I say, I always wonder how much easier my life would be if I would just spank my children. Still not going to do it.
I was mostly a good kid but all kids get the devil up them occasionally, and when I was playing up I would occasionally get spanked, but it also backfired when I would try to wriggle away or just say they weren’t hitting me hard enough, leaving them with the issue of “do I genuinely hurt my child” or “i have to change tact”
later, I grew up and worked in education with some difficult kids- and of course, you can’t hit them, often you can’t even restrain them. Instead you learn the skills to deal with difficult behavior. And you learn - like with so many things - there are no easy solutions and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying.
Yeah it’s pretty bad here. In my state a parent’s “right” to hit their child is specifically enshrined in law, because otherwise it would be battery. You know, because hitting people is frowned on and you can go to gaol for it, unless your victims are defenseless and trust you utterly.
There isn’t any good reason to hit your children as discipline. It may stop the behavior but it is gonna teach kids to use violence to deal with conflict with their peers or cause them anxiety later in life.
Spanking is coping for the parent, it isn’t effective or fair for the child. That being said, fear works and being generally gentle doesn’t so I understand why some parents feel like they have to. But it causes more damage than it fixes.
If you feel overwhelmed by parenting there is nothing wrong with seeking help via family therapy or even hiring a coach to assist you on how to handle difficult discipline situations with difficult children
I always struggle with this because it wasn’t ever a big deal and I say that as the one getting spanked. It happened twice and afterwards, the threat was used to let me know when I was crossing the line. I certainly didn’t “use violence” against my peers growing up.
I feel like most folks when they talk about kids being spanked, what they’re imagining is more akin to child abuse rather than spanking.
It’s just a tool like any other. It works on some kids, it doesn’t on others.
I have similar experience. I am not aware of any grudge or lasting impact as a result of the beating. I am curious if you remember why you were beaten or if you, like me, only remember the beating itself. I probably remembered the reason for a year or so afterward but I have long since forgotten the offense that inspired the beating.
It happened twice and afterwards we debriefed so I could learn and understand the lesson (I’m paraphrasing you)
Yeah, that is not what we’re talking about here.
We’re talking about people who routinely, on a daily basis hit their children. Not hard enough to bruise, not full on beatings, but people who as part of normal daily life do things like smack their child’s face or butt, grab them by the hands and lift them off the floor, push them down into seated position.
There are a LOT of people who really and honestly believe that physically bullying a toddler is a valid form of parental discipline, and would never believe that they were being abusive because they don’t full on beat their children with a belt.
That’s the behavior we’re talking about here.
Ignoring the mountain of evidence that you can find with a quick search that corporal punishment in general, and “spanking” in specific doesn’t work in the way people think/want it to, there’s a giant flaw in logic here.
If a stranger does a thing to your kid, and you would want them arrested, why would you do the same thing?
Seriously. That’s the glaring flaw in the arguments. If I discipline your kid with a single swat to the rear, I have committed a crime. One which most parents would not only insist come with legal consequences, but a significant amount would feel totally justified in using force to protect their child ( and they’d be right in that use of force, imo).
But then you want to do the exact same thing or worse and don’t expect it to affect the child at least as severely as the trauma from battery by strangers. If someone is going to argue that they need to hit their kid to maintain discipline, then claiming that it only works when a parent does it is just stupid.
Worse, claiming that the affects of the trauma of an assault is magically not going to happen because it’s a parent is outright insane.
That’s why, even for the very limited benefits that can come from using spanking as a tool (that are achieved better by other methods) you end up with more drawbacks than it’s worth.
As I said to my parents and my family regarding my kid: if you attempt to use spanking or other violence to “discipline” or “teach” my kid, that means such methods are effective. If that’s the case, then me beating the fuck out of you and never letting you near my kid again is most definitely going to be effective in teaching you to never hit my fucking kid.
If you kiss my child or take their underpants off and help them clean their genitals, you’ve also committed a crime, but I do both regularly to my children.
I just had to clean diarrhea of the floor and then stick him in a bath to clean his… like. Entire lower body, including feet, somehow, because he’s got a stomach bug
“Parents shouldn’t do anything to their children that they don’t want a stranger to do” is a very flawed way to view parenting.
Anyway, I’m home with a sick miserable child today, so I think I’m just super tired and crabby, and I think I know what you actually meant lol.
Anyway, I don’t hit my children. I do reserve the right to scoop them up and force them to talk with me if they’re being violent. My kid hit someone, and he was off his feet and sitting on my lap in an intense conversation about it shortly after. That’s physical interdiction, and that is absolutely necessary sometimes.
Just read the Inuit traditionally are super calm with and around children, so they learn to be cool instead of having tantrums. Can’t find the post any more tho.
//edit
Article was still in my browser history: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger
Yeah. Honestly, 99% of the time my kid is having a fit, it’s because he’s hungry. I never yell either. Never have and probably never will (barring seriously dangerous things that need to immediately stop).
After a couple months of feeding him when he’s upset, watching him calm down, apologizing if I angered him and then asking him if maybe he was so angry because he was really hungry, now he’ll actually tell me mid-fit that he’s really hungry. Or sleepy, scared, etc. Talking basic needs, not just hunger.
Honestly I’m really happy. The emotional maturity of a toddler that can recognize that in large part his anger is being hungry it’s pretty cool.
I enjoyed reading this, but I don’t like the idea of lying to kids either. So my daughter is a poor sleeper. I could tell her that if she makes loud noises at night, the monsters who have very good hearing will find her in the dark and take her away. No, the world is scary enough without monsters.
You know what’s worse than feeling angry? Feeling angry and also feeling guilty about it, because it’s an invalid feeling that needs to be suppressed. Anger isn’t all about losing control. It’s about trying to express that something isn’t working for you. The first step in making it better.
But yeah hitting is not helpful.
It’s not that they can’t express their feelings, they’re just not expressing them in negative ways. From the article:
We’re training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems.
You know how they used to say that when you were angry to go hit a pillow to vent the aggression at something that wouldn’t harm anyone/thing? And now they say that’s bad because it just trains our brain to associate anger with acting out physically? It’s the same thing. They express those feelings, even anger, without aggression. Being outwardly angry does nothing other than potentially escalate a situation. But train children early on to respond to anger in healthy ways and they can respond calmly and rationally for their entire life.
“When you try to control or change your emotions in the moment, that’s a really hard thing to do,” says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University who studies how emotions work. But if you practice having a different response or a different emotion at times when you’re not angry, you’ll have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments, Feldman Barrett says. “That practice is essentially helping to rewire your brain to be able to make a different emotion [besides anger] much more easily,” she says.
So there was a whole article that talked about using proven methods for developing healthy behaviors, but you read the short bit about them telling stories about monsters and used that to try to discredit the whole thing? AND you ignored the part where they talked about how those stories enable them to teach children about dangerous scenarios without actually putting them in danger? It’s whole purpose for being there.
I had a zen calm mother who never yelled and it didn’t help me with my own temper. Nothing is “proven” in behavioral science. Every person is different. Eskimos might be calmer than us because they didn’t have trace lead poisoning, like most boomers do. They may also just have calmer personality traits through natural selection. Those who panicked (or didn’t listen to warnings), died. Testosterone is a very different hormone to deal with than Estrogen. Screaming into a pillow does help, as well as chopping wood or breaking something with a hammer. Don’t go around invalidating others feelings.
Imagine if the article was about how eskimos never cry. Would that be a good thing? Should we raise kids who don’t cry? Anger and sadness are both valid human emotions and both can overwhelm you at times, and that’s okay.
A lie with a reason is still a lie. Tell kids about drowning and hypothermia, not monsters. Teach kids about morals and ethics, not fear of god.
The downvotes on the comments here imply that about 1/4 of Lemmings think that hitting your children is OK, but they’re clearly not brave enough to state why they think that.
they really should listen to other artists than Akon.
I was a spanked kid. I had a violent and easily angered parents. Getting hit never worked, it just made me cover things up.
One thing dear old dad didn’t anticipate, though: spankings made me vindictive. I started to retaliate in creative and expensive ways, and when you have a kid who starts showing signs of being mechanically inclined at six months of age, you really don’t want them to be a vindictive teenager.
Ooo. Malicious compliance and Home Alone rolled into one?
