Are you saying, then, that you're unwilling to change no matter what the circumstances? That your opinion is so hallowed it can never be altered? How, then, does anyone ever grow?
On this particular subject? Let me make this clear (again. Since obviously it's been overlooked or ignored in the rampant haste to stop me from going home and caning my son since I've been at work all day and he hasn't.): I do not spank my kids daily, weekly, or even yearly. I don't HAVE to spank my kids daily, weekly, or even yearly. I am not advocating that anyone who doesn't want to use corporal punishment do so. I am not of the opinion that a child MUST BE SPANKED in order to grow up with respect and consideration for other people. I do not believe that most of the daily infractions committed by children are corporal punishment worthy. I do in fact believe that with preparation and thought by the parent, corporal punishment can and should be avoided. But I don't discount it as an effective tool in certain circumstances. THAT?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That opinion right up there in bold? Yes. My mind is pretty solidly made up. My personal experience as a parent over the past sixteen years indicates fully that my approach is perfectly suitable to my lifestyle and to the people I hope my children grow up to be.
I really don't think this is a fair question. None of us really know how much time and thought Shimmered has put into her belief, so it's pretty disrespectful to just dismiss her and say she's "unable to grow".
It also fills the coffers of the porn industry and provides us with an almost infinite supply of fresh starlets.
I made no value judgement about your opinion. In fact, I don't think I've weighed in too much on whether or not spanking is okay or not in this thread. I was speaking of the fact that you are so rigid in your belief. If it can never be changed and it's written in stone, why are you debating it? What's the point, if not to learn how other people see the world and maybe incorporate different ideas into your own life?
Leave the baby at a firestation fresh out the vagina. Otherwise, you're stuck with it and have to make the best of it. It's REALLY DIFFICULT to abdicate parental responsibility to an already overloaded foster care system. I'm always curious about the mindset and logic processes of others. I'm always curious about how someone reaches a decision.
By framing your argument's perspective as immutable fact, and continuing to frame the entire argument in a black and white way, you do yourself a disservice. You stated quite plainly that, like junk food, it won't harm a kid in moderation. And then you back pedal, talk about not hitting dogs (all, and I mean all military working dogs are physically punished during their training). Shimmered states that SOME children need corporal punishment, and for those that do, it can be a great tool when used properly. Nobody stated that it should be used for all children or indiscriminately. Your own biases made those claims for them.
No, I said that like soda, its negative effects accumulate, and at low levels they usually aren't noticeable.
To be fair, this accounts for at least 98% of the (serious) opinions from 100% of the members of this board. Honestly, a lot of people responding in this topic (Aetius and MoreCowbell in particular) don't have kids nor were they raised with any sort of physical punishment. They turned out great. Nevertheless, their perspective on the matter is limited. They're very passionate about the matter, but without either experiencing it firsthand or raising a kid themselves. Why is that? Child-rearing is an extraordinarily complex issue. That's why I add the disclaimer "in my experience". In my experience, there is little to prevent young children (particularly myself) from being disrespectful monsters if an adult wasn't around to give me a proper whack on the arms. If that was unnecessary for you growing up, great. But it sure as hell helped me and all the other really well-behaved kids I knew. I could write dozens of anecdotes about seeing kids raised in a very progressive manner, and what it resulted in. Everything from children hitting their parents out of anger and receiving no punishment to even my shock in 6th grade when a girl casually told her mother to "shut up".
I don't have kids, and was spanked probably less than 10 times as a child, so I can't really pretend to have a good perspective on the situation...but I guess I'll try to bring up a few points regarding these words in relation to the issues some in this thread seem to have. No doubt all agree that a quick slap on the wrist or a spanking will solve the situation, if solving the situation is getting the child to stop being a little shit and shut up. Where some would have a problem is considering what kind of "in charge" this dictates, i.e. the child learns to obey those that are bigger and stronger for fear of the physical consequences. As Aetius and others have suggested, what happens when the child is the biggest and strongest, say in a social setting with peers? Has the child not learned that in such a setting, he or she is de facto in charge? I'm not so sure that is the greatest point, but it is one that should be thought about. Inevitably the dynamic is much more subtle than anyone is ever able to put plainly in words...no child is hit in a vacuum, and I would think generally the context of that punishment more than the punishment itself would dictate how the child would view it and learn from it. I tend to think you're right that corporal punishment doesn't necessarily harm a child, but I also agree with MoreCowbell that if the situation gets to the point that hitting is the only recourse to control the child, something has gone wrong. To put it simply, it would seem the child does not respect your authority so you have to use force to get the child to. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, but I think most are wary of whether, if the respect is not there in the first place, a few slaps are going to instill it. Now, going back to the first thing I said, if solving the situation is getting the child to stop some particular bad behavior, then yeah, corporal punishment of course will work. And if it is used sparingly, for that specific purpose, I agree with you that it is probably a good option. But then, who are you helping in that situation, yourself or the child? (I don't mean to be callous to the difficulties of parenthood, of which I have no conceivable clue... and I'm certainly in no way judging anyone.)
The third law of TiB: All discussions involving children in any aspect will eventually devolve to an argument about physical punishment. Do we really need to do this again?
Really? You're serious? What kid doesn't at least try to test the boundaries at least once? They wouldn't be normal kids if they didn't...they'd be boring, mindless drones. This right here is not helping your case for living with respect vs. fear. Love you, lady, but this is the only thing with which I disagree. So fucking what if a parent is interrupted by their child's behavior? Unless it sincerely hinders the parents' ability to provide for their child, then who cares if the parent is inconvenienced for a hot second. Once you have a kid, that's it. It's your number one responsibility. Girls Nights Out, Dad's Poker Night, all that "what about me and my life" bullshit is one of the central reasons why parents suck so badly today. Of course, I'm not trying to take your argument, Shimmered and pick on you for one little thing...I certainly don't mean it personally. Rather, I just wanted to point out that I see a real shift in culture in that many parents tend to put themselves and their lives on a higher level than their child's life--something I think is fundamentally wrong in general. Other than that, I'm right smacking behind you on everything else.
I'm not talking about the 'rental fun stuff. I'm talking about real interfering with day-to-day living. How many parents can pick their kids up from school every day? How many parents can drive their kids around where they need to be during the middle of the day or in the afternoon without having any effect whatsoever on work? How many parents can afford to pay for college because now their children have lost out on their track football baseball basketball golf or academic scholarship that they could possibly have achieved because of their misbehavior home? That's the inconvenience I'm referencing. Not a loss of grown up time.
Apparently fucking so. Move on, people. Or, more to the point, back on the topic of the goddamned thread, if you please.
Seriously, put me on a bus with those kids, I'll take all the abuse but I'd donate $50 of the $400+k instead keeping it all to myself that selfish old lady.
I think that some kids are shitty kids who grow up to be shitty people, and that some kids are good kids who grow up to be good people. I think a lot of this has to do with genetics, a lot of it has to do with the environment they grow up in, and a lot of it has to do with how their parents raise them. I think that even if a parent does everything right, their shitty kid is going to grow up to be a shitty person, and that even if a parent does everything wrong there's still a good chance their good kid is going to grow up to be a good person. I also think all of this is obvious, but it seems like I might have the minority opinion here. If they're a shitty kid and they don't respond to any kind of punishment, then I think they're going to be a shitty kid no matter what you do, and that the bad behavior can't be beaten out of them. Personally, I think what has the most effect on the behavior of a kid is whether or not their parents are around and demonstrate how they care about them. Maybe it makes me a big hippie for thinking that love is more important than fear in parenting, but in my experience - since we're all drawing on our own experiences here - that's what works best. And I know the other option is supposed to be respect, but sometimes people respect someone because they love them, and sometimes they respect someone because they fear them. I agree that a lot of shitty kids these days are shitty because their parents aren't being parents and are trying to be friends, who don't ever punish their kids in any kind of way. But, most of the shitty kids I knew were shitty because they didn't think their parents gave a crap about them and didn't care about making their parents happy or not giving them grief. Sometimes this was because they equated corporal punishment with not caring about them, or because of more obvious abuse, or because the parent wasn't a part of the kid's life, either physically or mentally. Since shimmered has become the spokesperson for one side of the debate, hopefully she won't mind me saying that -obviously I don't really know the details - but from how she talks about her kids on here, I think it's obvious that she really loves them and cares about them, and that that's a much bigger reason for why they'd be good kids rather than an occasional spanking. Generally, I've been a good kid/daughter most of my life, but the few years that I was a shitty kid perfectly coincided with when my dad was kind of mentally absent from parenting. We were both depressed and he left me alone (literally and figuratively) and I did all sorts of stupid shit that he was mostly aware of but ignored. I liked the freedom but, at the same time, it escalated the bad behavior because I associated his distance with him not caring about me anymore, so I didn't care about him or how he felt about me. Then, when he finally sat me down and said "Hey, I know what you've been doing these past few years. Can you stop being an asshole?" (or in so many words to a sixteen year old), I almost immediately scaled back from being a mega-asshole to just a normal amount of teenager dickishness. Again, I don't think I was really ever going to be a long-term shitty kid, so maybe this wouldn't have worked for a kid that was going to be shitty regardless, but I've always felt that that's what matters most in terms of good parenting. Edit: In an effort to scramble to make this related to the focus of the thread, replace "shitty kid" with "bully" and it kind of works.
Seriously, if all it takes is a sympathetic video, I wonder how long until we are staging these sorts of things...
Didn't imagine my stupid example would spawn this many replies. Yes, it was intended as a genuine question. She took it as an affront to her faith and whined to my dad. Yes, I got beat. Clearly I learned a lot from this series of events. It is a culture of (authoritarian, oppressive) respect if done right. It is a culture of fear if done wrong. I will leave you to figure out which is more common. Again, corporal punishment as a tool in the toolbox? Different story. But you can go fuck yourself about the "culture." You don't know what you're talking about, simple as that. If you hit the kid when he's little, he won't have the balls to fight back when he's big. (Or maybe I'm just a pussy, I dunno.)