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How do you do this to your kids?
shmokes:
Also consider, when deciding whether spanking is hitting, that the purpose of spanking is to inflict pain. You don't want to inflict permanent damage, and you apparently want the mark to be one that will disappear within 20 minutes, but there's no point to it if pain is not inflicted. Spanking without pain would be like grounding your kid from riding bikes when he doesn't own a bike or know anybody who does. It's only a punishment if it hurts.
horseboy:
I never said it didn't hurt. When you are kid most things like that are gonna hurt. My point was that they did it hard enough to make a point, but not hard enough to do much else (like cause permanent damage or leave a bruise).
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: shmokes on October 01, 2006, 06:24:43 pm ---Also consider, when deciding whether spanking is hitting, that the purpose of spanking is to inflict pain. You don't want to inflict permanent damage, and you apparently want the mark to be one that will disappear within 20 minutes, but there's no point to it if pain is not inflicted. Spanking without pain would be like grounding your kid from riding bikes when he doesn't own a bike or know anybody who does. It's only a punishment if it hurts.
--- End quote ---
You should revisit stuff like this when you have more experience. Spanking, on many kids, has a far stronger emotional pain than physical pain. It's all individual. Some kids won't listen unless they think they're going to get their ass tanned. Other kids will cry if you whack them lightly in the back of the head. It's all about how it is received.
As someone who got spanked a lot as a kid I don't spank my kids much at all. I've pretty much only done it when their safety was at risk, like when my son decided it was a good idea to pull pots from the stovetop. Repeatedly, maybe 7-8 times. I haven't ever done anything like the stuff I got pretty often as a kid.
Those beatings that do leave marks, the ones you mention, aren't all that painful after a while. The kid just stops caring much about it. It's gonna happen, you're gonna have a black eye or bruised ribs, and they'll go away. Not that those are the types kids should ever get but I can tell you from experience that aside from the actual moment the pain isn't as much as people would think. At least not in the way people think.
shmokes:
Chad, that's just another position of convenience. I'm automatically wrong because I only have one two-month old baby.
Drew's neighbor has more experience than me. The ladies who drowned their kids, the one in the bathtub, the other by pushing the car into the lake, have far more experience than me. There are millions of Americans who don't spank their kids ever. This isn't some wacky, unheard of position that I'm bound to renounce once I understand the realities of parenting. And if I did renounce it, it wouldn't be any more or less valid.
FWIW, I have fourteen siblings (I'm number 9), the yougest of which are currently 10 and 12. I've seen a lot of parenting. I may not be right, but what makes spanking, or name-calling, or grounding, or rewarding, or reasoning, or any other behavior modification tactic good or bad isn't whether I grow up and decide to use it. I don't mean to say that my childhood qualifies me as an expert in parenting, but I also see no reason to think that the idea of never spanking your kids is some kind of impossible fantasy that only a person who's never raised his own kids could possibly dream up. Millions of people do it. Everywhere. And their kids seem to turn out at least as well-balanced as the kids who get spanked, and probably quite a bit better than most kids who get the severe stuff.
Also, for the record, I figured I had already made clear that it's the emotional damage that concerns me with spanking. The discussion about pain was meant mainly for the side-argument about whether spanking and hitting are two different things.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: shmokes on October 01, 2006, 07:43:10 pm ---Chad, that's just another position of convenience. I'm automatically wrong because I only have one two-month old baby.
--- End quote ---
Sigh. I didn't say you're wrong. I am saying that I have seen many situations where your comments didn't work given the parties involved. They are too narrow, IMO.
You are way too quick to find a reason to disqualify a person's comments entirely if they disagree with your opinions.