Talk about liberal idiots. Just what we need in this country, less disipline! Fortunately, this bill has little chance of passing and the rest of the country seems to be moving the other direction:
Let's have a Beat the Children Amendment added to the Constitution! Yaaaaaay! Can't find any real news tonight ant?
What are you talking about? Discipline is very important to a child's development and future success.
There's a big difference between a beating and a spanking, in my book. A spanking is a quick disciplinary swat to the butt. TO THE BUTT!!! I heard someone talk about spanking their child "in the head". ????????? A spanking, while done for disciplinary action, should never be done out of anger or just because you lost your patience and want to hit something. It's done only enough for the child to get the picture that they've done something wrong, not, as my great-aunt believed, to make the child cry. I can't think of any reason to apply corporal punishment to a child in any other way or for any other reason. One other thing, you don't spank a frikkin' teenager. (Yeah, I know some parents who have tried this. It just never seems to work.)
While a slight swat to the butt is enough to discipline a small child, you'd have to literally beat the crap out of a teenager to make an impact. I spank my young kids (6,7, and 8), but my teenager gets his computer and/or videogames taken away. My wife never spanks the kids, she threatens them with the threat that I will. You can see the difference in their behavior . When dad says, "Go to sleep", they listen. When mom says it, they keep on jumping around the room. One of my children has Down's Syndrome, and I even spank him (I basically just treat him exactly like the others). For a while, he was misbehaving in class. The teacher wanted to put him on drugs. The last thing he needs is to further impair his brain function. I told her to send a note home whenever he misbehaved. He would come home, I'd check his backpack. If there was a note about him misbehaving, he got a spanking right then. This happened for three days in a row, then his behavior improved. Children need discipline. Without it they become out of control brats and never grow up. The undisciplined child becomes the undisciplined man.
I see nothing wrong with giving a child a sane spanking. However, it should not be the totality of moral instruction. I was spanked a few times as a kid and I feel no animosity or ill will towards my father for it. I was also smacked across the cheek once or twice and, also, no problem whatsoever. To give your kid a brutal beating is obviously quite different. IF you are seriously injuring your child, then you are not doing what is appropriate. Ideally, all punishment should be no longer needed after they've reached puberty. If you raise your kids well, they oughtn't have too much trouble in highschool and such. Ultimately, at the point where a child is developing into an adult, one ought to shift gears towards training them to be adults, and not simply good children. And this is not at all inhibited by earlier stages when spanking and other punishments are far more common. People who are obsessed with spanking are just absurd.
Children start out as baby animals and have to learn to become adult humans. You have to discipline baby animals with physical punishment because that is the only way you can get their attention. Children have no time sense, no ethics, no concept of deferred gratification. They have no idea how the things they do affect other people and they don't have the social maturity to care about it even if they did. Some puppies need to be spanked once or twice during their puppyhood because that is the only way they understand that they've done something wrong. And I mean a light spanking, just enough to get their attention and make them not want it to happen again. Not all do, in fact I'd say most don't, but some do. Some children need this too. Again, just enough to get their attention and make them not want it to happen again. And if it has to happen more than once a year, or beyond the small one-digit ages when their social skills should start to develop, then there's a deeper problem in play. I think parents who deliberately withhold corporal punishment under all circumstances are teaching their kids a very dangerous lesson: No matter how badly you treat someone, you can never make them so angry and irrational that they will hit you. That is not true, and I don't think people should be allowed to reach their late teens and twenties before they find out.
Come on... that's a lesson every kid learns as soon as they mix with other kids. If not personally, then from observation. So it's possible to discipline children without physical force, right? You do it with your teenagers, why not with the young ones? Yes... but discipline doesn't necessarily require spanking. The discussion isn't about whether discipline should be allowed, but whether spanking should be allowed. You see the difference, right?
Not very young children. They do not understand other punishments well. Whereas older children would require more than a simple swat on the bottom to make an impact. Fortunately, by the time they are that old there are many other ways to discipline them. They then have the mental capacity to understand cause and effect even when they are seperated in time. They also have many more priviledges than a young child that can be taken away. Furthermore, if you've done a good job up to that point, you (hopefully) won't need to do much disciplining. (So far that's proved true with my seventeen year old. He was spanked as a young child, and now rarely requires any discipline. Of course, I have three more to go, so we'll see.) I personally think that the banning of corporal punishment in schools is in large part responsible for the need to drug an entire generation of boys. I'd much rather see young boys spanked than see them turned into zombies with psychoactive drugs.
How old do you think a child needs to be before they can understand other discipline? (Which need not involve "punishment", by the way... just "consequences". That might appear to be splitting hairs, but it makes a big difference to the development of a child.) In my experience (two sons, plus childcare centre work), four years old is old enough to understand the idea of rules and consequences. Under three is usually too young, but at that stage physical punishment is a waste of time because they don't connect their action with the punishment. All it does is teach them to be frightened of you. I agree that spanking is better than inappropriate medication, but it's a false dilemma. Good discipline doesn't require either of those, if it's done well from an early age. I disagree. You can get attention without punishment, either physically or verbally. If they are pre-language, then you pick them up and move them away from the action. You can also look them in the eye (holding their head if necessary, and say "no", firmly but not angrily). If the child can understand speech, then there are a number of verbal tricks you can use - "Look at my eyes", or "What's in my eye", or "What have I got". A well practiced "No!" is often a good attention grabber as well. But if all else fails, then a physical non violent approach is still viable.
I watch my step-brothers and my sisters a lot. My step-brothers weren't raised by my step-dad, but by his family who let them do whatever they wanted when they were young. They're very bad kids. They've been to counseling, and been admitted into hospitals for it. The thing is...there's nothing wrong with them...they talk in full sentences, they don't get crazy mood swings, they have friends who are their age, and one of them even gets good grades in school. The ONLY reason that they're so bad is because they weren't disciplined right when they were younger. Anyway, I've figured out that sticking them in a corner works better than hitting them with the belt somethimes when I'm watching them(or even when my mom's watching them, since they listen to me better anyway). However, sometimes it's necessary to use force to get them to stand there(or to stand there right). I was punished the same way, and if I ever have kids, I would punish them the same way(and maybe some other ways aswell). Spanking and beating are hardly the same thing. I don't live in California though, so I don't care. No. Many times, spanking is necessary for proper discipline. If my mom's watching my step-brothers, and no one else is here, they won't listen to her, at all. There's only one difference between my step-da or me and my mom, can you guess what it is?
I'm guessing that the difference is that you clearly spell out the rules and the consequences of breaking those rules, and then follow through as promised. The fact that those consequences include spanking isn't terribly relevant - any explicitly defined and followed through consequence would be sufficient. Spanking isn't necessary for proper discipline. Following through on defined consequences is. Try it! Withholding pleasantries can be a useful consequence, as long as it's within a reasonable time. Shorter times for younger kids - maybe minutes for 3 year olds, up to a few hours for 7 year olds, maybe a day for 10 year olds.
This is how an apparent lack of understanding of what we are (animals with a sense of the absurd) is driving society to what we see today - chaotic, egomaniacal self importance. The west is basically a snotty, spoiled child. Fraggle is right. We start as baby animals and need to learn two things at that stage. You will be punished for disobeying your parents edicts, and that punishment can be physically meaningful, in addition to metaphysical. After a certain age, denial of freedoms becomes far more effective. Lack of physical discipline at an early age can (not always) result in the child associating all punishment with denial of "things" thus placing the child's focus completely on "things". Can anyone say "consumeristic psychosis"? (the USA today imo). When your children are young, spank them to enforce your rules. As they mature, replace this with denial of freedoms. These are the two consequences that actually happen in the real world. The biggest thing is to be consistent. And california is a land of incompetent idiots. And anyone who classifies a discliplinary spanking as a "beating" should go live in california.
That would be a lack of appropriate discipline, which doesn't have to involve spanking. The most effective discipline in my experience in early childhood is the (short) denial of affection and attention... not things.
How does California plan to enforce the ban on spanking? How many laws, rules are there now in California which the police and courts can't or won't enforce? Baron Max
I am going to agree with Pete. Unfortunately I have done spanking a few times and it's been a while since I stopped. As far as my children are concerned nothing would have changed if I hadn't spanked, and believe me they are wild. (4 and 7) I'd rather they understand the reason behind the rule with their own thinking than punish them physically. It seems like the situation Pete described works for now. We don't only focus on things but the other treats that they are entitled to. (like movie time, playground etc..) And they don't care so much if I take away things anyway. They obey the rule better once they understand. It's my personal experience, would it work for everybody, it's worth the try. By the way, everybody knocks down California, maybe because of jealousyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
So you see, I would never let my child think I would withold affection or attention. I'm kind of suprised you would do that pete. I think we are making a mistake when we try to subvert behaviors (good ones that it) that are at the core of our evolutionary development. You will see a mother gorilla cuff (sometimes pretty hard) her youngster, but she will never ignore or not cuddle the child as punishment.
