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[Koren]

Holding a child's hand isn't violent or abusive, like when grabbing your kid's hand to stop them running into traffic. It's not about banning physical contact, it's about stopping fill grown adults from striking children.

Yes, I agree...

The thing is, when you turn this into laws, you must have clear rules. I took extreme examples.

More on the point, when you want to prevent a child to do something, even when it's not directly dangerous, you cannot always do it with words. Physically dragging a child to his/her room can be physically semi-violent. I just say it's hard to draw a line.

I'm not sure you really need laws about child education, I've yet to see a case where a problem of violence isn't just child abuse.

None of my friends use physical punisments against their child, but I know a single couple that have a strict "only words" rule... Well, the result is that the strict "only words" rule don't work. I've seen e.g. bedtime lasting more than 3 hours...

I was referring to the last line. Just because there are other ways to harm children outside of violence doesn't make physical punishment any better.

I agree... Problem is, saying physical punishment is bad and never saying you can have as much an impact with non-physical punishment is really dangerous.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Yes, that's why children in Sweden and Germany are the least disciplined in the world.

That map is actually inaccurate. 49 countries have banned corporeal punishment of minors in all forms.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

Just because you can conjure up a convoluted proposition where someone ends up spitting at someone that ends up killing them, you're neglecting basically what being a person is, since you're putting it forth that unless you hit your child, your child will not understand that someone can hit them. The biological effect you're talking about is psychological, it's physiological. I don't get what you're saying is supported by science. We have the fight or flight response, we have flash bulb memories, we have all these various physiological processes that help us learn. Most of these are related to our endocrine system. If you touch a stove and it hurts, it's likely a flashbulb memory, helped by the endocrine response of adrenaline and cortisol. Most of the things related to these responses are helped by those two hormones. They are there to ensure that you don't forget things that are important to remember, be it positive or negative. The problem is that these responses have nothing to do with psychology. It is a completely distinct process that is in place when someone in a position of authority reacts in a way in response to your actions. That is not a direct consequence.

The problem is that the fear you talk about is a completely different manner from the other situations you're invoking. You can have a fear response IN response to being caught, if you then know you're gonna get punished, but it's a completely different process. It's a social process, and it's a much more complicated and more developed part of our brain, thus it's not at all the same.

I'm not disagreeing with any of what you've written here, just that it is still a part of the learning process that some might see as valuable and is literally hard-baked into people. I am not pro-spanking, but I do really wonder about the unintended consequences that come from human intervention into biological processes that have existed as long as sentient life has. We see words such as anxiety and lack of confidence as bad things, and in our current state of existence they mostly are, but it's techniques like this that have literally kept the human race alive this long. I do believe we can and should rise above animal tendancies, but I don't believe we're all the way there yet with fully understanding this issue.

 

[haimon]

That map is actually inaccurate. 49 countries have banned corporeal punishment of minors in all forms.

Does picking up a child and carrying them to their room count as corporal punishment?

 

[Gutek]

That map is actually inaccurate. 49 countries have banned corporeal punishment of minors in all forms.

Well, shit. Better be on the wrong side of history, OP.

 

[Koren]

That was fiction. Don't use a fucked up anime writer as a parenting coach.

It may be a mirror of what society thinks right, though (and may even push the idea to some).

But well... I've seen worse than that... Doesn't the girl in Esper Mami poses nudes before her father so that he can paint her in order to get money?

 

[Clinton514]

Good question. I enjoy the insight from other parents. Kids these days have it mad easy and I think if it gets to the point of anything physical there needs to be a discussion with the child as to why you think it got to that point.

But there is a thin line between discipline and abuse.

 

[Griss]

In my direct personal experience, it does. That's what makes the constant drumbeat in favour of violence so frustrating. My two are both around 30 now. We didn't terrorise them or beat them. We did our best to show them how to live. It made us both into nicer people, as we learned to discuss the world with respect. How could we have learned that respect of we had resorted to hurting the very people it was our responsibility to protect?

But there are times with children where they WILL NOT listen to words. In my childhood it was maybe only 5 or 6 times ever, but they happened. This is because children are not as rational or wise as adults. They throw tantrums, they behave erratically sometimes. We know this, it makes sense.

As a result, what do you do in those situations? Where words are not enough? Where the life of your child is perhaps in jeapordy if they keep doing the thing you are trying to discipline them not to do? (Like running out into the road).

Completely wrong and proven wrong by study after study.

Using negative reinforcement and striking children activates stress, anxiety and fear responses in the brain and actually damages the connections between neurons, including the ones you really want to keep.

The negative reinforcement needs to be the last tool in your drawer, not the first and violence is never effective. You may get the "results" you want, but you can't see the physiological damage you cause.

It's hard, I know, I have felt like hitting a brick wall at times and my daughter is only 13 months, but constant, positive parenting is proven long term to have better results. At the end of the day, your children are a reflection of you. If you feel like violence is an answer to a problem, so will they.

First of all, spanking only even has the possibility of working if you're able to explain to your child why you're doing it. So any kind of even the lightest spanking has no place for children from birth to at least 3-4 years old. And I agree with constant, positive parenting. As I said, my parents raised me that way with the exception of 5 or 6 times in my life, and I'm saying that on those occasions I think they made the right call. Because they were either teaching me about how the pain I was inflicting on another child actually feels, or they were ensuring I would no longer do something that might put my life at risk.

Even as a child of 5-8 I was able to understand the general rational behind this and understand why they did it, and it worked. Because 99.9% of my childhood life was filled with love and nurturing of my parents, I was quickly able to put those punishments in perspective, even as a child. That's what I'm saying. That it's possible that there is a time and place where it is a decent or the best option.

 

[Cyframe]

Far too many parents think just having children makes them ideal caretakers. It doesn't. It takes work, and parenting is going to be one of the hardest jobs that you do. I see children who have behavioral issues virtually mirror their parents but they're the ones only getting physically punished for that. So a kid is being hit because their own parents are deficient.

For those who say they turned out okay after being hit, if you still think hitting children is okay, then something went wrong. I'm not saying that your parents are abusive but we really need to ask ourselves why hitting children is okay but adults facing physical punishment from a job or spouse is unacceptable.

A lot of parents do not know how to have a dialogue with their kids. They bark orders and demand obedience but they don't really check in on a child's wellbeing. If a kid comes home with failing grades and the response is to get the belt, that's not parenting. You have to sit down, figure out what works for your child and parent. I feel corporal punishment is an abdication of parental responsibility. You can be a firm disciplinarian without hitting your kids.

Also, many children can have learning disabilities, autism, even a vitamin deficiency. Those effect behavior and if I was a parent who beat their kids only find out that their children had a certain diagnosis, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

And I always hate the argument of, if you don't have kids you can't chime in because most people were raised by parents, so they have a variety of experiences that could be very useful to listen to but an all too common response is" No kids, no opinion." Even if you do have children the response to that is "mind your own business". Far too many parents refuse to grow and don't even want to consider other alternatives.

My parents never hit me. They did foster care so they often took care of children who were abused in the worst ways possible and their parents commonly got them back just to beat their kids again.

When I have kids in the future, I would never hit them. Physical strikes are not required for discipline. Sometimes, you have to ask your children important questions. You are going to have to acknowledge that something that works for child A doesn't for child B. Or just talking to them, and forging a relationship of trust, not fear. Again that doesn't mean letting your child run wild.

 

[Septimius]

I'm not disagreeing with any of what you've written here, just that it is still a part of the learning process that some might see as valuable and is literally hard-baked into people. I am not pro-spanking, but I do really wonder about the unintended consequences that come from human intervention into biological processes that have existed as long as sentient life has. We see words such as anxiety and lack of confidence as bad things, and in our current state of existence they mostly are, but it's techniques like this that have literally kept the human race alive this long. I do believe we can and should rise above animal tendancies, but I don't believe we're all the way there yet with fully understanding this issue.

Again, you're mixing processes. The ones you tried to mix in are physiological, not psychological. There's a huge difference. Evolution has this tendency only to care for survival, as it is the only thing that... well.. ensures survival. Our forefathers may have been a lot more anxious, but just because that "closer related to biology" doesn't mean that it's desirable.

Again, this are not human interventions. And if you're talking about our society coddling kids today, I just saw statistics showing how like 900 kids used to die in traffic every year in Norway, and it's down to like 9, now. We do all these things that stop preventable death, and we do the same to stop preventable anxiety.

 

[RoadHazard]

It's always scary to me how many GAF members will come out in defense of physically abusing your children every time we have a thread like this. If you believe that children need to be beaten to become upstanding citizens I feel sorry for you, because your parents clearly didn't treat you very well. That's such a twisted view to have.

 

[Gutek]

It's always scary to me how many GAF members will defend physically abusing your children. What's wrong with you people.

Most likely, their parents hit them. That’s what’s wrong with them.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Does picking up a child and carrying them to their room count as corporal punishment?

In the process of doing so are you intentionally trying to inflict physical pain on your child by striking or hitting them as a form of discipline? It's not "corporeal punishment" to restrain your child from running into the street or forcibly removing a dangerous object from their hand. This isn't a mushy line.

The science on this is very well established.

From the American Psychological Association:

”Unfortunately, all research on parent discipline is going to be correlational because we can't randomly assign kids to parents for an experiment. But I don't think we have to disregard all research that has been done," she says. ”I can just about count on one hand the studies that have found anything positive about physical punishment and hundreds that have been negative."

”It's a very controversial area even though the research is extremely telling and very clear and consistent about the negative effects on children," says Sandra Graham-Bermann, PhD, a psychology professor and principal investigator for the Child Violence and Trauma Laboratory at the University of Michigan. ”People get frustrated and hit their kids. Maybe they don't see there are other options."

But spanking doesn't work, says Alan Kazdin, PhD, a Yale University psychology professor and director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. ”You cannot punish out these behaviors that you do not want," says Kazdin, who served as APA president in 2008. ”There is no need for corporal punishment based on the research. We are not giving up an effective technique. We are saying this is a horrible thing that does not work."

”Physical punishment doesn't work to get kids to comply, so parents think they have to keep escalating it. That is why it is so dangerous," she says.

If parents aren't supposed to hit their kids, what nonviolent techniques can help with discipline? The Parent Management Training program headed by Kazdin at Yale is grounded in research on applied behavioral analysis. The program teaches parents to use positive reinforcement and effusive praise to reward children for good behavior.

Kazdin also uses a technique that may sound like insanity to most parents: Telling toddlers to practice throwing a tantrum. Parents ask their children to have a pretend tantrum without one undesirable element, such as hitting or kicking. Gradually, as children practice controlling tantrums when they aren't angry, their real tantrums lessen, Kazdin says.

Remaining calm during a child's tantrums is the best approach, coupled with time outs when needed and a consistent discipline plan that rewards good behavior, Graham-Bermann says. APA offers the Adults & Children Together Against Violence program, which provides parenting skills classes through a nationwide research-based program called Parents Raising Safe Kids. The course teaches parents how to avoid violence through anger management, positive child discipline and conflict resolution.

Parents should talk with their children about appropriate means of resolving conflicts, Gershoff says. Building a trusting relationship can help children believe that discipline isn't arbitrary or done out of anger.

 

[ZdkDzk]

All it did was make me feel like a sub-human. I was smart enough to know that beating a kid "works". It and a handful of other things made me resent my parents and adults in general, and ultimately led to me fighting back when they tried to beat me.

I've still got a complex about adults (even as an adult) so I'm going to say, no, it did not work for me. I didn't even get beat that often (a couple time a year), but it still stuck. My younger cousins got it way worse. Oldest got "small" beatings almost daily and he's still struggling with the baggage. All of them love their parents, but the only one who respect their parents is the youngest, who was born after their parents shifted away from corporal punishment because it stopped working. I remember babysitting them once, and it was immediately obvious how little respect they had for their parents when they weren't around.

Even ignoring all those studies, the fact that you can't predict how it will affect your child should make it a clear no. You don't want to find out 20 years down the line that your kids still has hangups as a direct response to what you did to them, especially something people told you was wrong.

 

[Clinton514]

It's always scary to me how many GAF members will come out in defense of physically abusing your children every time we have a thread like this. What's wrong with you people.

Who's defining abuse and who's defending what?

 

[Bakercat]

My fiance and I have had this discussion about children one day. we both agree to use other methods first and only use spanking as a last ditch effort to say hey stop that shit and I mean it. it really just depends on the kid's personality to me. some kids learn from timeouts or negative punishment. Some are just little shits who do not give a fuck and need their ass beat to learn some manners and respect people. Of course, if I had to spank i would talk to the child before and after the spanking to explain to them what they did wrong and how not to get punished again. We both joked that I would send them to their room and make them wait for the spanking. while they wait on their bed i would pull my belt out or something and make loud smacking noises with it to make it seem worse before going in to talk to them. Also, don't ever spank your child while being angry or upset, you are more likely to let out that anger on them and do more than intended.

 

[Littlefang]

But there are times with children where they WILL NOT listen to words. In my childhood it was maybe only 5 or 6 times ever, but they happened. This is because children are not as rational or wise as adults. They throw tantrums, they behave erratically sometimes. We know this, it makes sense.

As a result, what do you do in those situations? Where words are not enough? Where the life of your child is perhaps in jeapordy if they keep doing the thing you are trying to discipline them not to do? (Like running out into the road).

What do you do if a smack on the butt doesn't work?

 

[Impeccable]

It's always scary to me how many GAF members will defend physically abusing your children. What's wrong with you people.

It’s fucking staggering and makes me feel ill as a father of a special needs child who has a harder time understanding things. This is always the one topic on here where science doesn’t apply, apparently.

If I manage to not hit my kid you fuckers can manage with a normal kid.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

Absolutely not, you are teaching them that violence solves problems.

I disagree. With relatively little explanation, if even that's necessary, I think even a small child understands the exception of a parent-child relationship.

 

[RoadHazard]

Most likely, their parents hit them. That's what's wrong with them.

Yep. I edited my post a bit right as you were replying to it. I feel sorry for these people who were treated badly by their parents and now believe they have to treat their own children the same way, passing that twisted view on to another generation.

Who's defining abuse and who's defending what?

Hitting your child is abuse. Period. It's illegal in the most progressive countries for a reason.

 

[HawksWinStanley]

I prefer a psychological punishment. Whenever my kid misbehaves I'll tell them to bring me their favorite toy.

Then I'll break it in front of them. Cuz fuck yo toy.

 

[RoadHazard]

I disagree. With relatively little explanation, if even that's necessary, I think even a small child understands the exception of a parent-child relationship.

So you're teaching them that parents abusing their children is fine, and that they should do the same to theirs when they grow up. Great.

 

[Gintamen]

If you deliberately hurt your children you failed as a parent.

Yes, fuck those parents that do.

 

[sanstesy]

I never took a vaccine and I'm a perfectly healthy human being👍

it worked👌 therefore my children will get the same treatment🤗

 

[btrboyev]

It worked on me when I was a child. I knew to stay out of trouble for the most part.

 

[Harken Raiser]

My parents hit me when I misbehaved and I turned out alright, but I don’t plan on hitting any future kids of my own.

 

[RoadHazard]

It worked on me when I was a child. I knew to stay out of trouble for the most part.

I knew that without my parents having to hit me. It's called good parenting.

 

[SpecX]

I knew that without my parents having to hit me. It's called good parenting.

Are you saying any parent that has ever laid a hand on their kid automatically makes them a bad parent?

 

[btrboyev]

I knew that without my parents having to hit me. It's called good parenting.

I call bullshit, good parenting or not. Kids and young adults do dumb shit. Parents usually never know about it.

And no may parents never beat me or my siblings. But have I felt the ass end of a ladle? Yep.

 

[Soran]

I got my grabbed by the hair and furiously shaked as a kid because I was having trouble learning how to read. Needless to say, I totally against physical punishment.I still have speech issues anyways coupled with self hating.

 

[Lunaray]

Far too many parents think just having children makes them ideal caretakers. It doesn't. It takes work, and parenting is going to be one of the hardest jobs that you do. I see children who have behavioral issues virtually mirror their parents but they're the ones only getting physically punished for that. So a kid is being hit because their own parents are deficient.

For those who say they turned out okay after being hit, if you still think hitting children is okay, then something went wrong. I'm not saying that your parents are abusive but we really need to ask ourselves why hitting children is okay but adults facing physical punishment from a job or spouse is unacceptable.

A lot of parents do not know how to have a dialogue with their kids. They bark orders and demand obedience but they don't really check in on a child's wellbeing. If a kid comes home with failing grades and the response is to get the belt, that's not parenting. You have to sit down, figure out what works for your child and parent. I feel corporal punishment is an abdication of parental responsibility. You can be a firm disciplinarian without hitting your kids.

Also, many children can have learning disabilities, autism, even a vitamin deficiency. Those effect behavior and if I was a parent who beat their kids only find out that their children had a certain diagnosis, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

And I always hate the argument of, if you don't have kids you can't chime in because most people were raised by parents, so they have a variety of experiences that could be very useful to listen to but an all too common response is" No kids, no opinion." Even if you do have children the response to that is "mind your own business". Far too many parents refuse to grow and don't even want to consider other alternatives.

My parents never hit me. They did foster care so they often took care of children who were abused in the worst ways possible and their parents commonly got them back just to beat their kids again.

When I have kids in the future, I would never hit them. Physical strikes are not required for discipline. Sometimes, you have to ask your children important questions. You are going to have to acknowledge that something that works for child A doesn't for child B. Or just talking to them, and forging a relationship of trust, not fear. Again that doesn't mean letting your child run wild.

I think this is my position now. Where I come from, beating your children to discipline them is normalized, and so I never had very strong objections to corporal punishment. But if you really think about it, it's lazy parenting, and comes from an era where parents could not afford the requisite time and resources to raise with children in a manner that emphasizes communication and dialogue.

 

[Gutek]

Are you saying any parent that has ever laid a hand on their kid automatically makes them a bad parent?

Pretty much. I don’t see how hitting a defenseless minor is anything but horrible.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

Again, you're mixing processes. The ones you tried to mix in are physiological, not psychological. There's a huge difference. Evolution has this tendency only to care for survival, as it is the only thing that... well.. ensures survival. Our forefathers may have been a lot more anxious, but just because that "closer related to biology" doesn't mean that it's desirable.

Again, this are not human interventions. And if you're talking about our society coddling kids today, I just saw statistics showing how like 900 kids used to die in traffic every year in Norway, and it's down to like 9, now. We do all these things that stop preventable death, and we do the same to stop preventable anxiety.

Look, now I'm not sure what you're getting at because all of psychology is just trying to understand and leverage physiological responses to external stimuli as it relates to human behavior. Punishment is just the human construct of tapping into the same physiological process as touching a hot stove. Again, I agree with you that there may not be much of a place for these techniques these days, but we're mostly going against biological processes for parenting by going against said techniques. That doesn't mean we shouldn't heed current studies, but I'm curious as to how it's changing humanity as a whole, possibly not for the better in some ways.

 

[Gutek]

Look, now I'm not sure what you're getting at because all of psychology is just trying to understand and leverage physiological responses to external stimuli as it relates to human behavior. Punishment is just the human construct of tapping into the same physiological process as touching a hot stove. Again, I agree with you that there may not be much of a place for these techniques these days, but we're mostly going against biological processes for parenting by going against said techniques. That doesn't mean we shouldn't heed current studies, but I'm curious as to how it's changing humanity as a whole, possibly not for the better in some ways.

Being hit by the person you depend on to survive is the same as touching a hot stove. Got it.

 

[Xe4]

Just, FWIW if we're all gonna post anecdotal evidence, my parents never laid a finger on me and I turned out fine. That's not to say they didn't punish me, they just weren't dumb enough to think the only way to do that was to harm me. They were special education teachers, so they knew ways to deal with unruly kids very effectively.

Not that it matters, because anecdotal evidence is worthless. Study after study after study has shown corporeal punishment on children to be a net negative. And that's ignoring that it's wrong to hit your kids, despite what any evidence may or may not say (though evidence, as I've said reinforces this point).

And yes, spanking your children is hitting them.

 

[ApharmdX]

Hitting your child is abuse. Period.

In the US, spanking is not defined as abuse. Because (done within reasonable limits) it isn't abuse, and is culturally acceptable besides.

BTW, this stance is ridiculous and devalues actual child abuse. Which is a severe and widespread problem.

But there are times with children where they WILL NOT listen to words. In my childhood it was maybe only 5 or 6 times ever, but they happened. This is because children are not as rational or wise as adults. They throw tantrums, they behave erratically sometimes. We know this, it makes sense.

As a result, what do you do in those situations? Where words are not enough? Where the life of your child is perhaps in jeapordy if they keep doing the thing you are trying to discipline them not to do? (Like running out into the road).

This is well-said.

 

[Onivulk]

Nobody ever hit me and I'm still fucking garbage.

 

[The Futurist]

Well, after all this, I've learned one thing.

My parents gave me a great childhood and great life. They made sure I had just about everything I needed as a child. I had toys and cool shit, I did well in school. They encouraged me in sports and eventually made sure I had a good education which led to a good job and almost everything I could ask for as an adult.

But my mother hit me as a child, so my parents are pieces of shit.

Thanks neogaf! You've done it again with reasonable thinking and clearly knowing where everything falls in a perfect world of black and white!

 

[Gutek]

Well, after all this, I've learned one thing.

My parents gave me a great childhood and great life. They made sure I had just about everything I needed as a child. I had toys and cool shit, I did well in school. They encouraged me in sports and eventually made sure I had a good education which led to a good job and almost everything I could ask for as an adult.

But my mother hit me as a child, so my parents are pieces of shit.

Thanks neogaf! You've done it again with reasonable thinking and clearly knowing where everything falls in a perfect world of black and white!

Just your mom. Your dad is a cool dude.

 

[SpecX]

Pretty much. I don’t see how hitting a defenseless minor is anything but horrible.

In the US, spanking is not defined as abuse. Because (done within reasonable limits) it isn't abuse, and is culturally acceptable besides.

BTW, this stance is ridiculous and devalues actual child abuse. Which is a severe and widespread problem.



This is well-said.

It's well said, but people will continue to dig their heels in and call you a horrible parent. I assume these are people who have no kids or have never dealt with a situation like this.

I will just accept the fact that I'm a horrible parent even though my kids have everything provided for them, I take countless hours out of my day to play with them, teach them, care for them, they show me love unconditionally as do I, yet the 1 smack on the hand has automatically made me a horrible parent since this conversation has have an absolute answer to one extreme or the other.

 

[ChubbyHuggs]

Half of gaf is going to say they were physically disciplined and it worked out fine for them while the other half is going to say it's abuse and you shouldn't have kids if you "beat" them.

 

[tonysidaway]

But there are times with children where they WILL NOT listen to words. In my childhood it was maybe only 5 or 6 times ever, but they happened. This is because children are not as rational or wise as adults. They throw tantrums, they behave erratically sometimes. We know this, it makes sense.

As a result, what do you do in those situations? Where words are not enough? Where the life of your child is perhaps in jeapordy if they keep doing the thing you are trying to discipline them not to do? (Like running out into the road).

Everything that can normally happen to any parent happened to us. Saving a child who is imminent danger doesn't require any punishment at all. We learned pretty quickly that if a child was in danger it was our failing. Until they've got the mental capacity to avoid danger themselves, you keep the child safe.

Tantrums and the like are avoided, we learned, by careful planning and managing expectations. But when a child does get upset you can address the cause, or failing that distract them.

It never once occurred to us to lash out at our children. I had certainly seen enough of that at first hand. It was never an option. We just had to learn to be the decent, loving parents we wanted our kids to have.

 

[The Futurist]

Just your mom. Your dad is a cool dude.

Well, I'll leave my guesses as to which parent is responsible for creating you to myself.

Thanks for the insight.

 

[Gutek]

It's well said, but people will continue to dig their heels in and call you a horrible parent. I assume these are people who have no kids or have never dealt with a situation like this.

I will just accept the fact that I'm a horrible parent even though my kids have everything provided for them, I take countless hours out of my day to play with them, teach them, care for them, they show me love unconditionally as do I, yet the 1 smack on the hand has automatically made me a horrible parent since this conversation has have an absolute answer to one extreme or the other.

Yup, super well said.

Hey, this kid is in imminent danger. Better beat it quick!

 

[SpecX]

Yup, super well said.

Hey, this kid is in imminent danger. Better beat it quick!

Yup, why let the car take all the fun out of it!

Spoiler

/s

 

[Agent_ShortBus]

Also worked out fine for my brothers and I. Not gonna lie we sometimes deserved the belt or the sandal, we could be little shits at times. All of us grew up to be normal and well adjusted people. My brothers and I all agree that physical punishment isn't the answer and we wouldn't do it but we turned out perfectly fine.

Edit: I'm also Brown lol.

 

[Clinton514]

It's well said, but people will continue to dig their heels in and call you a horrible parent. I assume these are people who have no kids or have never dealt with a situation like this.

I will just accept the fact that I'm a horrible parent even though my kids have everything provided for them, I take countless hours out of my day to play with them, teach them, care for them, they show me love unconditionally as do I, yet the 1 smack on the hand has automatically made me a horrible parent since this conversation has have an absolute answer to one extreme or the other.

Yes! Thumbs up here.

 

[Griss]

Everything that can normally happen to any parent happened to us. Saving a child who is imminent danger doesn't require any punishment at all. We learned pretty quickly that if a child was in danger it was our failing. Until they've got the mental capacity to avoid danger themselves, you keep the child safe.

Tantrums and the like are avoided, we learned, by careful planning and managing expectations. But when a child does get upset you can address the cause, or failing that distract them.

It never once occurred to us to lash out at our children. I had certainly seen enough of that at first hand. It was never an option. We just had to learn to be the decent, loving parents we wanted our kids to have.

My parents may have spanked me a few times, but they never once lashed out. It was always preceded by a talk, administered calmly, then followed by another talk, then hugs and making up once they were sure I understood what had happened. Physical punishment can be a calm, rational choice.

I am also not talking about saving a child, I'm talking about teaching a child. For those moments you can't be around or you're distracted - and every parent knows those moments will come. My parents spent so much time educating me and my siblings about pool safety because there were pools everywhere where I grew up. Had I disobeyed those rules as a young child, I may have gotten a talk. Had I done it again and again, I may have gotten a spanking. As it happened, that wasn't the case. But it's about teaching a child so that the worst doesn't happen when you're NOT there, not about saving them in the heat of the moment.

 

[jmizzal]

Let me start by saying getting beatings does not mean your kid will turn out to be a nut case or a mental mess with depression.

There is a difference with spankings and abuse which can screw a kid up in the long run.

Not saying you should spank your kids but do what you want

I have two brothers and one sister we all got beat, we are all black middle class

Not one of us has ever been arrested or strung out on drugs

We all have good jobs the two with kids raise their kids the take good care of them.

So in short it had no effect on us at all

Now if our parents just put us in timeout would it have turned out the same I dont know that

 

[Rick1o1]

I've never been given a beating as a kid but my mom gave me a slap once in a while when it was needed. It hurt, but it wasn't really meant to hurt me. It was more to shock me I guess. I wouldn't call that abuse. Repeated slaps or actual fist punches I would call abuse. Using objects like belts or sticks is also abusive imo.