I may not have the qualification to speak...sealgairOctober 20 2006, 05:58:24 UTC
but I wanted to put my two cents in here. I believe in spanking... to a point. When the child is non-verbal and therefore one cannot reason with them - a smack, more noisy and startling than anything else, on the thigh or buttocks to get across actions=consequences, no more. Once the child is verbal, this no longer applies. Carrying it farther than a... swat is abuse, no question.
Am I making sense? I may have no room to speak, as I don't have children, nor do I want any, but I do have friends with them, and was a daily part of my best friend's daughter's life from the time she was 4 months old until she was three. (then they moved away... we still see them!) I formed my opinions by babysitting and watching Angel & Jef raise Kaitlin. She's currently a well-adjusted 10 year old. (blech, I didn't want a reminder of how old *I* am!)
There are a disproportionate number of children that have earned all sorts of perjorative names and they generally have parents (and I use that term generously) who deserve them. Unfortunately, society as a whole also must cope with them.
Spanking does not equal child abuse. It's one more tool in the box of proactive parent.
Perhaps spanking does not equal child abuse in your book, but the chastening rods? Don't tell me you approve of that!
And being prepared to spank for discipline too often leads to striking in anger, and going from discipline to physical abuse.
Both my husband and I were spanked as children... and we both remember being beaten severely for childhood accidents, not disobedience. And learning to avoid our parents at certain times, and cover up mistakes instead of owning up to them.
Looking back now, I can see that the times I was beaten for mere mistakes were when my father was already stressed about something, probably from work, and just got carried away in his 'discipline'. But the child I was learned to think of him as something like a wild bear... to be respected for his power, but not loved unconditionally.
But even he wouldn't have done some of what Dr. Dobson recommends. Did you read the article? Excerpted from the books that this man hawks to parents all over the country, as part of his Focus on the Family?
Yeah, I read most of the article and what I read was a blatantly manipulitive smear piece.
Look, I'm not a big fan of Dobson. He's yet another in a legion of people who want to stick their noses into other people's business. But I'm an even less big fan of "journalism" that seeks to inflame and enrage by preying on people's emotions using selective quotations, half truths and other disengenous means.
I said spanking is a tool and I stand by that statement. But like all tools if you want to use it effectively you need to know how and when to use it. Taking your workaday frustrations out on your kid is not an effective use of spanking.
Telling your kid if he's mouthing off or acting like a little hellion in a restaurant that if he keeps it up then he's going to go outside and get the flat of your hand on his butt and then following through if he persists is.
Yes, the article used strong language and was quite clearly biased against Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family, and one could probably call it a pale shade of yellow journalism. But then, I rarely read unbiased articles about the Nazi Party either. A party that, if one reads the history books, actually did great and wonderful things for the country of Germany; raising it up from the shattered and poverty-stricken state it was in after World War I, into a major player in Europe in less than two decades. Of course, that huge turnaround had its drawbacks for some people
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Comments 5
Am I making sense? I may have no room to speak, as I don't have children, nor do I want any, but I do have friends with them, and was a daily part of my best friend's daughter's life from the time she was 4 months old until she was three. (then they moved away... we still see them!) I formed my opinions by babysitting and watching Angel & Jef raise Kaitlin. She's currently a well-adjusted 10 year old. (blech, I didn't want a reminder of how old *I* am!)
er... I'm done rambling now. :}
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There are a disproportionate number of children that have earned all sorts of perjorative names and they generally have parents (and I use that term generously) who deserve them. Unfortunately, society as a whole also must cope with them.
Spanking does not equal child abuse. It's one more tool in the box of proactive parent.
Reply
And being prepared to spank for discipline too often leads to striking in anger, and going from discipline to physical abuse.
Both my husband and I were spanked as children... and we both remember being beaten severely for childhood accidents, not disobedience. And learning to avoid our parents at certain times, and cover up mistakes instead of owning up to them.
Looking back now, I can see that the times I was beaten for mere mistakes were when my father was already stressed about something, probably from work, and just got carried away in his 'discipline'. But the child I was learned to think of him as something like a wild bear... to be respected for his power, but not loved unconditionally.
But even he wouldn't have done some of what Dr. Dobson recommends. Did you read the article? Excerpted from the books that this man hawks to parents all over the country, as part of his Focus on the Family?
Reply
Look, I'm not a big fan of Dobson. He's yet another in a legion of people who want to stick their noses into other people's business. But I'm an even less big fan of "journalism" that seeks to inflame and enrage by preying on people's emotions using selective quotations, half truths and other disengenous means.
I said spanking is a tool and I stand by that statement. But like all tools if you want to use it effectively you need to know how and when to use it. Taking your workaday frustrations out on your kid is not an effective use of spanking.
Telling your kid if he's mouthing off or acting like a little hellion in a restaurant that if he keeps it up then he's going to go outside and get the flat of your hand on his butt and then following through if he persists is.
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