Physical Punishment for Kids.....

I'm pretty new to the parenting world and I can say I have never spanked my son. I just can't justify spanking him. I mean if he slaps me or bites me, and I hit him back what am I teaching him? I would feel sick to my stomach if I ever spanked him. I love how Super Nanny/ Nanny 911 handles it. There ideas make alot of sense, and I do use them when Nevyn gets out of hand. I do from a parents perspective see how frustrating and tiring it can be sometimes, and why some people might spank. But me personally I just leave the room and calm myself down. I don't want him to fear me, I want him to respect me. Just my 2 cents anyway. I don't know what Nevyn will be like when he's older, but I would like to hope that non-violent methods will work.

probe1957

chelsea_b

Uhm... DUH!!! If you think your child's bad behavior is not your fault, whether you use physical punishment or not, you're delusional.

I don't find personal attacks very convincing but,

Wasn't a personal attack. It was, again, a general "you". I'm sorry you took it personally.

Whether or not I correct inappropriate behavior is.

Correct doesn't have to = pain. "No" can be a correction, or a "hey, don't do that...you might get hurt" or a time-out, or removing privileges...there are a million ways to "correct" without inflicting pain, and the level of correction can be adjusted depending on the kid. My niece responds to a simple "Hey, don't do that" and then an explanation of why not to do it (so she doesn't do it again next time), my nephew needs more than that. Kids are different. I don't believe for a second that any kid naturally requires physical punishment, but some kids may need it after their parents screw them up (I might lose it and haul off and whack my 6 and 8 year old cousins if I had to spend more than a couple hours two or three times a year with them. But their parents totally screwed them up. They're not naturally bad.).

I don't have children of my own.  But, I can add that my father liked to use hitting to get his points across.  It always seemed more like he was taking his frustration and/or anger over what I did out on me not trying to teach me anything.  And, now as an adult although I have a nice relationship with him I also still have those memories filed away.  It's really rather confusing. 

So for these reasons I don't believe I would hit my own children.  At the same time, we are living in a different world now.  Kids threaten to call the authorities on their parents if they get hit now.  If I had ever said that, I would of got hit again!

I was raised in a loving, very traditional family, but by golly when we stepped one little bit over the line we got the belt.  And Lordie, how we hated it when Dad got a NEW belt for a gift.  Those hurt the worst!  Yep, there were bruises, yep there were welts, and today, it would be considered abuse.  Then, spare the rod, spoil the child was the rule.  However, OUR punishment was not swift.....Dad worked 24 hour shifts and "wait until your father gets home" was enough to make our blood curdle right in our veins!

My oldest son was a very compliant little boy.  My youngest......a total terror from birth!  He however, had some real issues, including ADHD and a spanking did ZIP to correct him.  And the spankings I gave were a very controlled swat on the butt, never brutal.  But, from the time he was 2 or so, I had to start learning new and better ways to deal with him.....he was one of those kids who would LAUGH out loud at a swat on the rear.....and he and his older brother both benefited.  Working with therapists and professionals to learn HOW to help my youngest, I learned an awfully lot about the kinder and gentler ways to motivate, to mold and to HELP both my sons to grow into fine, upstanding men, without violence.

My sons were the reason I grew a spine and left an abusive husband.  I wanted the cycle to stop.  I did not want my sons to grow up to hit and hurt women.  How could I justify using violence against them?  I couldn't, and didn't want to.  Hitting a child only teaches them that it is ok to hit someone who is smaller and weaker than you are, and the sperm donor had already taught them that lesson.

My sons are wonderful men.  Both have responsible jobs and are respected in their communities.  As teenagers, they came to me with their problems, they talked to ME, not their (step who they've always considered their true) dad about sex and girl problems, about smoking dope, about drinking, you name it, they brought it to me, and we could talk about any and everything.

Yes, in the very early years, I did spank, because thats what I knew to do, but certainly NOT in the way my father had spanked, BUT, my sons grew up basically without fear of physical reprisals, and I promise you, they certainly didn't roll over me in any way, shape or form.  WE as parents ran a pretty tight ship and we did so without violence.

Just my opinion based on my own experiences......

Well, I raised two girls from the age of 1 and 3 mos. on my own. I yelled alot, probably too much, but I didn't want to spank them all the time.  I did spank when I felt was due.  I never pinched them, although I  have witnessed my sister-in-law doing this, and was SHOCKED and felt so bad for my nephew!  I hugged him afterwards.  I did get into a brawl w/ my oldest daughter when she was a teenager.  I mean an out right brawl, because she didn't come home one night and w/ those dam cell phones....she was just a sneaky PITA and always lied about everything and anything!   I got into a brawl w/ her over that dam cell phone ... I told her to give it to me, and she said "no"!  Well, that was it...I took it from her and man...I felt like I was on Jerry Springer.  Everytime I think about it, I'm not proud of myself, but I don't think I had a choice.  I think if I didn't do some of the things I did, my kids would have wound up dead or kidnapped, or any of the horror stories you hear on the news anymore ... they would have been one of them.  They were good girls, graduated w/ high or distinguished honors, weren't pregnant, and as far as I know didn't do drugs.  So, if my tactics were harsh...they worked.  I'm not ashamed of that!  I believe sometimes a kid does need a crack in the butt, but you don't get out of hand.  I used to give them a  smack (while they were in diapers) in the butt.  They couldn't feel it, but the impact of it was like "whoa, what was that?  uh, oh, I didn't please mom, doing that!"  It always was enough.  It's when they're teenagers, that they're behavior shows what kind of parent you are.  Sometimes kids need a good crack, while others, just need a good talking to.

To be honest i have never ever heard of pinching a child until this thread!!

there is a huge difference between a corrective swat on the butt and an all out beating.... Ron if i was your mom and found out some guy just gave my seven year old forty licks for playing in the dirt that SOB would be in jail - thats AFTER my brother, dad, and 6'6" 210lb viking Neanderthal cousin finished with him.... i think thats one reason why my mom never remarried... she didnt want some strange man punishing her kids when she wasnt around. i got paddled at school once - me and some other kid were disrupting the class so i got three licks with the paddle... but i have to hand it to the teacher.. she spent an entire week trying to break us up.. we sat out during play time, wrote thousands of sentences, had our desks moved across the class.. we were relentless... so when friday rolled around and we were cutting up during the spelling test she scheduled a nice beating for us.... when my mom found out she went psycho on the teacher... she didnt mind the spanking but she wanted to be there to witness it or find out why i was being punished... not just a note sent home sayng something like "Oh by the way i spanked your kid, you can thank me later" ....

and yeah it depends on the age of the kid... you cant explain to a one year old why he shouldnt stick a screw driver in a light socket.... in fact if you take that screw driver away he's going to get suspicious about WHY you wont let him do this..... i swear they think along the lines of: "adults hog all the fun! oh look! a fork! Now wait a minute... she took the fork away too.... i saw a pencil round here somewhere.. there it is! now lets see what happens.... when i ram into those little holes there!!" 

the other thing my son learned to do was standing up in his high chair.... he learned that the moment he learned to free stand when he was 9 months old....  he even does it WHILE i'm looking! he'll stand up in his high chair and give me this look like "Whadya gonna do about it??" those little straps dont work either.
... i know he isnt really thinking "Whadya gonna do about it" . he's testing me. thats why some kids continually do the wrong thing more than four times in a row... if they get a different reaction each time then they are learning all kinds of things about THAT adult in charge.... some times the fastest way to teach them not to stick screw drivers in light sockets is to give them a good smack on the rear end, tell them no, take away the dangerous object and move them to a different area of the room with their toys...

you can go stark raving mad trying to do the whole repetition thing with kids under two years old.... they're like those little toy cars that when you roll them backwards they roll forward on their own..... at a faster pace!

i will say my oldest doesnt act anything like his two cousins.... when i say no, stop, drop it, get back in there/outa there, lie down, sit, stay .... he follows those commands to the letter! physical punishment LATELY is only reserved for when he tries to go outside by himself.... twice so far he has opened the screen door and walked into the wilderness out back... the last time i thought he was with his dad.. i was putting away laundry... when his dad came back inside i asked where Cajah was.. "i dunno.." so of course i thought his dad was being a smart@$$.... no, he REALLY didnt know where the kid was! i look out the window and see Kaydee looking intently at SOMETHING in the woods... our son! headed DOWN the hill, into coyote/hog/bear/deer hunter territory!

at two years old he has no clue about danger.... and he wont have any clue about danger until somewhere around the age of five or six. i'm not going to beat the sense into him.. of course not. he wont understand that! but he DOES understand that if he touches that screen door without holding an adult's hand he's in deep doo doo..    he's also trained to put his shoes on before going outside, and he cant do that alone, so he runs to me saying "SHOES!!", waving shoes and socks at me... and once they're on his feet he stands at the door hopping up and down saying "outside!!" but he knows he isnt allowed to open the door himself.
 

 I was spanked fewer than 5 times as a child. I don't remember it at all, and I only know it happened because my mother told me. There was little to no pain, I think it was more a "dominance ritual" (lol!) than anything else. Definitely did not scar me for life, though it seems kind of unnecessary.

I remember being physically corrected a few times.......but, usually being threatened by my mother that she would tell Dad was enough for me and my sister......yikes.....we really respected our father.....he never lost his cool much......he didn't hand out physical punishment......but, I can say we knew to behave, even though I really don't know what the ultimate punishment would have been like coming from him......lol......he is a retired military man....and he was a drill instructor for many years....so, one could just imagine how he ran a household....lol

Growing up we were spanked, not often but enough that I remember it. I will tell you that my father did most of the spankings, but there was no fear. Now if my mother so much as raised her voice let alone her hand we trembled, not because she could hit us, I think it was more the fact that we had hurt her in some way. Since all of us turned out ok I will call it a success.

One thing my sister decided when my niece was young was that she would never hit her. I am not going to count the occasional poch on the diapered behind, and to my knowledge she has never been struck by any of us. And I can also say that we treated her as a little individual with rights and feelings, none of that "because your a child" thinking. My father started taking her to restaurants for breakfast when she was 18months old, we all took her with us everywhere, she was expected to behave and taught what was acceptable and what was not.

The one thing that drives me absolutely loonie is the parent that does this:

parent to child "John you stop that or I am going to send you to your room"

child continues on...........

parent, again " I said stop that, you hear? I mean it, your going to go to your room if you don't"

child still continues on...........rinse, repeat. Alot of parents need to work on their follow-through.

My parents did spank us, but not much.  And they had rules about it.  They would never do it when they were angery, and they would only spank on the butt with a paddle.  They also used something called extrapolation.  If we did something that deserved a spanking, then they would swat us very lightly, not enough to hurt, if we kept doing it it got harder.  I wasn't ever really spanked really hard, but the other kids got it once because they were actually jumping off the roof on to a mattress while the parents weren't home. (the parent's didn't let us do it while they were there either, lol)  My brother was 13 at the time and was supposed to be babysitting.  I told them it was a bad idea, but they didn't listen to me.  After that if they left us home I was in charge and if anyone disobeyed me they got in trouble.  No, I did not abuse my power, if I did then I was in trouble, lol.

As soon as we understood, they would ground us from things like the computer if we did something wrong.  If we wanted to do something that they didn't want us to, we had to convince them using logical arguments and pros and cons.  If we couldn't convince them, we couldn't do it.  It made us think through what we were doing.

After sixteen we had no rules and no punishments, unless we did something dire, which never happened.  It is their belief that we are adults and should be able to make our own decisions.  All my siblings friends are jealous because we don't have any rules like they do.  However, there is a flipside to that, all the other parents are jealous because we behave better than any of their teenagers.  My dad says that his goal is not to raise kids, but to raise adults.  If we want to do something that they think is wrong, we will discuss it, but it is ultimately up to us to make the decisions. 

Chuffy

You wouldn't say "because I said so" to an adult. 

How funny that you said that. "Because I said so" is one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me absolutely insane. It's just not in my vocabulary.

chelsea_b

Chuffy

You wouldn't say "because I said so" to an adult. 

How funny that you said that. "Because I said so" is one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me absolutely insane. It's just not in my vocabulary.

I took it from your post on the other spanking thread   "Because I said so" says to me that my parent couldn't be bothered to explain anything to me, that I wasn't worth investing their time and effort in.  You can imagine how much I respected such people.  A spank also says to me that there was something seriously lacking in communication.... that is only my personal experience and observation.

Chuffy

chelsea_b

Chuffy

You wouldn't say "because I said so" to an adult. 

How funny that you said that. "Because I said so" is one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me absolutely insane. It's just not in my vocabulary.

I took it from your post on the other spanking thread   "Because I said so" says to me that my parent couldn't be bothered to explain anything to me, that I wasn't worth investing their time and effort in.  You can imagine how much I respected such people.  A spank also says to me that there was something seriously lacking in communication.... that is only my personal experience and observation.

Thats not entirely fair to say that or judge a parent OR adult that way. Sometimes time is of the essence and there isnt time to explain because of a safety factor and the adult in charge must correct the situation and being harried by a kid asking "WHY NOT WHY NOT WHY NOT???" every two seconds only makes things worse.  

Absolute defiance is the best place to use the spanking. It says that you are in charge and that. also as humans are just a creature of nature likes dogs cat or what ever there is a certain amount of things that are instinctual. a spanking is less harmful to the kid than a childhood career of bartering for everything he thinks he should have. if you, as the adult, say no constantly, set time outs constantly, and have discussions about things that should not be discussed more than once (example, get away from the stove) the child a lot of times will show this difiance that he or she is in charge and that you are not. Again you dont have time to let a child think its ok to second guess you in matters of safety.. that he can decide over and above.. its my experience he needs to get away from the stove. if he turns and tries to go there anyway then he gets a spanking. whether you're an adult or not, the older child may have to do the same. its about protection. The people who abuse it spank because they're mad. its not ever to be used just because you're mad. we all get mad... and thats a good time for a time out for BOTH of you... however.. for defiance your position needs to be clearly stated. No means No. and a swat on the bum takes care of that.

The best part about it is again time. i can do the same thing with two swats to the butt in less than ten seconds then the child gets to go on and do what ever he or she was doing, playing with friends or toys. I get to go on and continue doing what i need to be doing, cooking, cleaning, watching the other kids. Possibly.... if i have to barter and discuss why i said no with this bratty mouthy kid.. the two year old is sneaking out the back door, wandering down the hill and into the woods all by himself. Nobody wants that..

Its my opinion that not only are spankings abused but so are time-outs. they have their purpose.... but thats usually when, again, both of you need it to get over tempers or frustrations. and spankings are abused usually when they dont know when to use a time out.

Since we are human there is a possibility for any and all forms of parenting to be incorrect at any point in time. There are no absolutes that work every time for everyone. You dont spank a kid or dog because someone told you to. they're yours to raise. YOU have to live with them.  

the bottom line is not too much spanking - emergencies and defiance only.. if you notice reading from the people who were spanked(not abused) they learned boundaries and respect. few of the people here were scared of their parents abusing them physically. the ones who were spanked (as far as we can see, this is the internet after all) didnt turn into raging psychopaths or cowering, recluses....  

Every spank, as well as every time out should be followed by a very reassuring hug and an explanation as much as time allows. When i've had to spank Cajah i've done just that.... my dad did that for me... and it worked. i knew my dad loved me. It kinda gets a kid ready for the real world... in the real world no one sits you down in a chair and calmly explain why you're losing your job, wife, children and very few people get to barter their way out these situations.. They have to be able to handle the absolutes. The kids dont understand that they have hurt your feelings or that you're scared for them. they only understand that you , the parent, is in the way of what they want. When you spank the child they know they have either hurt you or scared you. if you sit them in a corner they dont know crap!!! All they see is this big person, prison guard, wall, keeping them from getting what they wanted. A time out can make you into the bad guy just as much as spanking can. the only difference is spanking is over in an instant. Its funny how this is pretty much the same as anything else in a humans life... That simply is "TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE (of anything) CAN KILL YOU!" All Things in Moderation is the key to happiness... use your brain lol Everyone told my mom to beat my brother's ass when he acted up... and he always acted up.... what they didnt tell her was to set boundaries.... she did neither... if it hadnt been for the military and police academy he would have never known what boundaries were. You think some Drill Sgt is going to say "OK Johnny.... Go sit in the corner... i want you to think about what you did when you cussed me out for telling you keep your head down during the machine gun exercises." AGAIN he's gonna pop ya! and its for your own good.  Next time you'll keep your head down. ................................................. Prison .................. isnt that just one big time out?

 

DumDog

... if i have to barter and discuss why i said no with this bratty mouthy kid..

You brought up bartering several times in your post and I didn't see anyone advocating that (although I could have missed it). That's a whole separate issue from time outs. IMO bartering is basically bribing- "if you're good, then you'll get this". I do think parents should set boundaries that aren't open for discussion. And if a kid is being defiant by trying to touch a hot stove, I agree that the parent needs to take immediate action, but it doesn't have to be spanking. Like you said too, spanking is over in an instant. In some cases it might be better for the punishment to be a little longer- like sitting in timeout (and not in a room full of toys or in front of the t.v. either).

As far as preparing them for consequences in the real world, I guess I don't understand how spanking goes along with that. If you screw up continually, your boss isn't going to hit you, he's going to fire you. So if a kid does something really bad, a warning could be given (like your boss writing you up at work). Then if it continued they would lose something like their gameboy for a week. That does teach them consequences.