I had very lax parents myself. I can remember being spanked once in my entire life. I got grounded a few times once I reached high school and for good reasons, but other than that I didn't really receive discipline much from my parents. My husbands family on the other hand is in favor of spanking; at one point I though I was too but am now against it...but still have to stifle laughs when I hear a parent say, "use your words" to a kid throwing a tantrum; maybe because I am yet to see this work.
I am in Community Nursing this semester. The placement I am at has a brochure on why you should not spank. The brochure was very informative on why you should not spank but it lacked any information on alternative ways to correct behavior/discipline. I chose not to had this out because I felt the information was not complete. Not being a parent yet myself, I did not feel equip to give alternatives if asked once the brochure was read and the client found that no alternatives were included.
the sole purpose of parents is to teach their children so that they can survive.
survive.
we are human beings who have the ability, need and the desire to nurture, comfort and love our young.
nurturers and comforters.
nuturers and comforters are the backbone of a developing child or teen ego.:heartbeat
lol
this much cynicism appalls:no:me and i wonder how it came to be.
spanking in no way diminishes that trust.
it most certainly does, if done harshly, out of parental wrath, or to humiliate the child. there are better ways to correct after a child is past toddlerhood.
has anyone noticed the correlation between the rise of all this happy, no touching silliness and the decline of american youth...
an older generation has discussed, ranted about and mourned the passing of polite
youth as they have sunk into debachery and decline.
every generation, since the time of the ancient philosophers, has not sunk a level lower because they were loved, nutured and cherished by their parents.
we are human beings who have the ability, need and the
desire
to nurture, comfort and love our young.
desire and ability don't equal need. we do nurture and comfort our children but those are not necessary for survival.
nuturers and comforters are the backbone of a developing child or teen ego.:heartbeat
nope, the backbone of developing children is love.
or do all the other cultures that love their children, but raise them differently than you, have it wrong? nurturing, comforting, coddling are american traditions. you find that nonsense in short supply elsewhere.
this much cynicism appalls:no:me and i wonder how it came to be.
it's called life. :) cynicism is always the result of life. naivete is always the result of not having experienced it...
it most certainly does, if done harshly, out of parental wrath, or to humiliate the child. there are better ways to correct after a child is past toddlerhood.
we are talking spanking. not humiliation or harshness. some of you all continue to try and link abuse and spanking. spanking is not abuse.
an older generation has discussed, ranted about and mourned the passing of polite youth as they have sunk into debachery and decline.
every generation, since the time of the ancient philosophers, has not sunk a level lower because they were loved, nutured and cherished by their parents.
we have declined. the only thing kids need are love and discipline.
coddling leads to whiny, spoiled, people that think they should have everything done for them. much like the majority of our fellow americans today...
It's not the spanking itself that is what I would consider abusive. Those of us who have been there (and I was rarely spanked, but I was indeed abused) know it is more the near-constant humiliation and the parental desire to hurt and beat a child down, either with hitting or with what one says or does to their child. I am very keen to the words I say to my children, knowing that what I say has the potential to lift them up or scar them for life. Perhaps that is the viewpoint from some parents who were physically abused--we are so attuned to it that we want to avoid it at all costs. Yes, ONE WRONG WORD ONE TIME can do it, and I imagine it may the the case with an ill-timed spanking with the wrong intent. Most garden-variety spankings are not going to scar a child by any means. I believe that most spankers out there are doing it simply to abort an undesirable or dangerous behavior and not as a malicious act.
If a child received soap in the mouth and would always throw up (and not just because the kid cried hard enough to puke) or get severe diarrhea and wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom to stay clean or something like that, then yes, that is abuse. If it is simply a child getting an undesirable punishment without the intent to make fun of him or her, then that's up to the parents, I guess.
I have to say, though, that I haven't really heard of an abuser yet who thought they messed up raising their kids (and refuse to believe their kids when told otherwise), and there are plenty of abused kids who turn out really well despite their upbringing. Abusers can be VERRRRRY sneaky and look like pillars of the community and the "cool" parent to everyone else, but when the doors are closed, watch out.
if kids don't need comfort and nurturing, then how do you define love?
love - knowing that my parents would die for me before allowing harm to come to me. knowing that even though my mom was crazy and abusive, that when people or situation threatened me, she would turn into a mother lion and do what it was to end the threat. knowing that i could trust them more than anyone else on this planet.
knowing that no matter what i ever did, my parents would be there.
that's love...
and while kids do need discipline, that remains a rather ambiguous term.
discipline to one parent, can be parameters, guidelines...
while to another parent, it is spanking and 50 situps.
while appropriate, your statement is extremely broad.
it's broad on purpose. what is discipline? what works on one kid does not work on another. some kids need spanking. some don't. some kids need the living hell scared out of them. some just need a look of disappointment.
different kids need different things. that's why i only say discipline and not which kind.
and if i went by your perception that kids only need to learn survival, i daresay we'd all be stuck at the bottom of maslow's hierarchy...
not healthy, stan.
not at all.
i never said it was healthy. however, survival is the base need. besides, who exactly is healthy???
survival is the only thing we need. everything else is nice but not necessary to live. i would have liked parents that coddled me. gave me everything i wanted. made my ego nice.
instead, i got parents that, while not always nice and sympathetic gave me every tool that i would need to make it. they had no idea i would end up bipolar but somehow i have the tools that i need to survive.
:)
imagine that. my father that spanked me and my abusive mother helped me more than hurt me. i love my parents now more than i did as a child.
i'm as healthy as i can be leslie.
i survived. survival comes before everything else. i couldn't learn the rest of the things i needed to without surviving first.
This is a very interesting topic. I live in a country where it is ILLEGAL to spank your child and doing so and being caught would result in jail time. The idea of the act was to stop child abuse but we all knew that this wasnt going to stop those who were hitting their children with force. And in fact there have been two high profile child abuse cases in the past week where the child was subjected to horrendous abuse both physically and mentally and died as a result of injuries recieved. So what do you do when your child is screaming the place down in the middle of the supermarket? Tie them to the trolley and put your earmuffs on (only joking) Enabling your child to understand that there are consequnces for good behaviour rather than bad behaviour allows them to make choices. For example giving them a ride on the rideon toy at the end of the supermarket ride for GOOD behaviour. You dont have to do this every time you go out but maybe there are other things that you could do to promote good behaviour, a picnic, kite flying. I had a star chart for good behaviour and when the chart was full we would go out and do something fun. I know it sounds like hard work but believe me it works. Our children are now in their 20's and are great kids with good morals and a sense of whats right. And my husband and I are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and hope that when we become granparents our children will bring them up with the understanding that being good is normal behaviour. Bringing up children can be hard work but more than that its about having fun and remember children learn from what they see... in other words you must choose your words to each other carefully and to those around you.. keep your voice down and be civil.
In the Parenting classes I taught, I suggested that children stay home with a sitter, or that shopping "pools" of friends be organized to keep expenses down. That works by giving the designated "shopper" your list and a check made out to the store without an amount on it (you really have to know the "shopper well and for some time, to develop the trust for that to be comfortable). If you're not the "shopper", then you look after the kid(s) of the "shopper" just for the time it takes for that task. (Bad feelings develop if visiting, getting nails done, etc. happen which can abuse the person caring for all the kids, as the objective is getting your shopping done without upsets caused by young children. It has a side benefit of preventing impulse buying.
No one likes being in the market with their own or anyone else's screaming child. Things are placed where they are in markets as "hypnotic" suggestions, well known in that trade. Young children have no defenses against them and become frustrated when refused a desired object. Also it's not "good" for them to be given stuff just to shut them up!
When a child is in Grade 2 and up, they are usually old enough for short trips to the market. A cause of discord may also be a toddler who wants to toddle all over the place, screaming to be let out of the chair part of the basket. If that child isn't belted in, they can end up with a head injury.......
leslie :-D
11,191 Posts
does anyone use the old, tried-and-true, soap in the mouth?
never hit my kids, but have resorted to that a few times.
leslie