Is hot sauce and cold showers discipline or abuse?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Cifo, Jan 31, 2011.

  1. Cifo Day destroys the night, Registered Senior Member

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    Is hot sauce and cold showers discipline or abuse?

    I believe in discipline and punishment, but I think this is child abuse except without leaving any *visible* scars/marks. For all intents and purposes, hot saucing is "the scalding, branding or burning of a child". Do you think the law's only concerned about leaving scars or not? Think of the pain signals wracking his little brain, and what if he inhaled some of that hot sauce? Same thing with the cold showers. I think this is abuse without the scars. What do you think?

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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Absolutely it's abuse.
     
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  5. Gremmie "Happiness is a warm gun" Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, it's abuse... Both mental, and physical.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm more concerned that it will leave children with a lack of appreciation for hot sauce as a culinary item. If it's used as punishment, people might be scarred from using hot sauce for life, and that's tragic.
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    If you forced an adult to eat hot sauce and forced him into a cold shower, he'd have an action against you for assault.

    So...
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

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    I watched the video in the link and it was horrific.

    She submitted the video herself.

    The child and his twin were adopted from Russia when they were 5 years of age. The "punishment" involves having to hold tabasco sauce in the mouth while she screamed abuse and asked questions that the child could only nod or shake his head to. During the video she kept screaming at the child to not swallow it and to not dare spit it out. She then stripped the child naked and shoved him into a cold shower, at which point you can hear the child's screams and sobbing incoherently as she screamed more abuse at him.

    The video then ends and it gives you options to look at the next segment, which showed the audience in tears and she looked a tad astounded because she felt she hadn't really done anything wrong.

    Considering the heat of Tabasco sauce, now to imagine the pain this 7 year old in particular went through, take a mouthful of it and hold it in your mouth for several minutes without spitting it out or swallowing it. Even without some woman screaming abuse in your face for those minutes, the pain would be extreme. Consider what this would do to the psychological health of a child, not to mention the pain they would have to go through during the "punishment" itself.

    This isn't punishment.

    This is child abuse. There is no other way to explain it than child abuse.
     
  10. birch Valued Senior Member

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    my god, he is so little too. i don't think she loves her child. there is no way a woman who really loves her child would do that. it would hurt her to see her child hurt and frightened.

    this is so mean. so many people are so harsh in the world. the biggest thing is it's not appropriate for his age, he's just a little kid, baby really. all she's teaching him is to be frightened. he will probably become very insecure person who may easily be stepped on by others and second guess himself.

    ahh, found out that's also her STEP-SON, not her biological child. very dangerous and fucked up situation when a child is brainwashed to think a nonbiological parent is their parent but treats them differently or not with genuine respect, concern or love. they definitely may be interested in the child or even spend a lot of time on the child but it could mean for bad or negative reasons which is worse than being ignored.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2011
  11. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    I can't get to the video right now, but that's clearly child abuse. Discipline is simply this: boundaries are clear. When a boundary is crossed the correction is administered in a fair, calm, consistent and loving manner. The correction is not dehumanizing, degrading, or frightening. It can be a bit physically painful, but only just a bit, and that is highly dependent on temperament.
    After the correction has been instantly and very briefly administered, the relationship is restored and the (okay, I'll admit where I'm getting this from) dog is reassured that they are loved and are in fact a good doggie, that their human person loves them very much, etc. I usually give mine a scratch and a smooch as soon as they do what I want them to do. Which means you have to disregard the five minutes of disobedience that just had you ripping your hair out...but they'll obey faster next time, trust me.

    It's always better to walk away than lose your temper. If you can't discipline yourself, you can't discipline a dog or a child.

    That too, those poor kids...jalapeno strawberry smoothies make the world go round...

    There's much cross-applicability between the training of small children and dogs, except that kids learn far more from imitation than a dog ever will. That means it's about 2000 times more important to hold your temper with the kid because how you behave is precisely who the child is going to grow up to become.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2011
  12. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I'd think "the rack" would have been much better!

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  13. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    That is not abuse at all. Perhaps not a method I would choose myself, but I wouldn't call the police on someone who has their child hold hot sauce in their mouth for lying. If that is the extent of this woman's disciplinary methods then I'm sure the kid will be just fine mentally and physically. She was not driven by outrage, these punishments had been set beforehand, he knew what would happen if he lied and if he got in trouble at school. She didn't make him sit for hours with hot sauce in his mouth, it was less than a minute and the same for the shower. She didn't make him take an ice bath until his limbs turned blue.

    People these days consider everything abuse, it kind of down plays actual abuse.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Suppose she had done this to you for lying, SilentLi89. Do you think it would be acceptable?
     
  15. Bells Staff Member

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    I see.

    So you would do the same to your spouse if they lied to you? Employees? How about your employer? You would find it acceptable if you arrived to work late and as punishment, your employer made you hold tabasco sauce in your mouth for well over 3 minutes while they stood there and screamed at you and then made you strip down naked and shoved into a cold shower? You would do the same to your spouse if they didn't get dinner on the table on time or got home late?

    There was a part while the child was in the shower and she leaned in and over the screams, you could hear her actually hit the child. Is this acceptable also?

    Actual abuse involves causing pain and harm to your child, that includes physical, emotional and psychological pain. That child's posture was one of absolute fear and terror. Discipline is not meant to involve your child being so scared that they tremble in fear or pee their pants or scream in pain. This is a 7 year old child. It would be deemed assault on an adult. Yet you seem to believe that it is acceptable for a child?

    The mouths of children are very sensitive and their tastebuds are still developing. Tabasco would have been excrutiatingly painful in that child's mouth. And it wasn't even a drop. It looked to be approximately a mouthful. She needs help and those children should be removed from her care until she can prove that she is fit to parent. Because at the moment, she is not.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I watched the video, and the hot sauce was the least of it. Some physical pain is something a child can stand, but the way she was chewing him out was emotional torture. He would have had to do something really evil to deserve that, and it sounded like he was just fighting with some other kid at school.
     
  17. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    1,891
    I agree with most people here in saying it's abuse. And Spidergoat- yes, it's a waste of hot sauce.

    I am just amazed that parenting has to go to such lengths to get a point across. I never beat my child (which is a good thing cause he's 14 and can take me). The worst punishment I ever did to him was to send him to his room only to let him out a few hours later after a long, boring to him talk about right and wrong.

    When do you as a parent cross the line and start smacking the kid? I think that's even too much. But to go ten degrees beyong that to hot sauce and cold showers- I wouldn't want us doing that in Gitmo no less in Anywhere, USA!

    Granted, it is a Dr. Phil topic- which I generally completely avoid- there is some validity in pointing out that perhaps they have gone too far as parents.
     
  18. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    My yelling at my son is enough to bring him to tears. Then off to his room to contemplate. Hot sauce and cold showers is abuse.
     
  19. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    I don't know who she is so yeah that would have bothered me. But if my mother would have done it to me, yes I would think it was acceptable.
     
  20. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    Adults are not children, there are lots of things I would allow my mother to do to or for me but not my boss or co-workers. Also if my partner did something terrible to me I could leave or they could leave. Last time I checked kicking children out of the house isn't okay because they are children. If something doesn't bring some kind of discomfort it isn't a punishment. Hot sauce and showers are uncomfortable not dibilitating or even all that painful. As the child of someone who was actually abused, I feel comfortable saying that this is not abuse, it isn't even close. Abused children wished their parents gave them cold showers for misbehaving in school instead of a frying pan upside the head or being burned with a hot iron.
     
  21. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    So the message this child is learning is this:

    The people in authority over me have contempt for me. They will hurt me. They will do painful things to me for little or no reason. I am powerless, helpless, hopeless, worthless. The world is a dangerous place in which bad things will happen and I have to be wary all the time. It's not safe to trust. The people who love me will hurt me.

    This will create a very risk-averse adult through learned helplessness. The adult will also be a perfectionist-possibly so afraid to fail that they never risk anything. Or conversely, a risk junkie may be made-since the adult thinks they're worthless anyway, they self-destruct for fun's sake.

    Abuse is addictive to the parent who uses it to achieve compliance...because it achieves the short-term goal of compliance. What abuse does not do is produce a well-adjusted adult. It produces either abusers or psychological cripples.
    I know this one from the inside, thanks,*bows*.

    And quite frankly, it was the things they said, rather than the blows, that still stick with me after all these years...the psychological programming that, because the brain's so ready to recieve it when it's growing, that's next to impossible to eradicate, such that it still comes out like a video clip. I've been trying to eradicate some of the crap they pushed on me for 20 years.

    That, and I was always afraid my Dad was going to kill me, because when he went off...he went.

    It's not that you can't make your child miserable-but it needs to be fair, calm, clearly administered, warned beforehand, and not torturous. If I get around to having a kid and they fight at school, I'll find some other way to make them miserable than hot sauce.

    I suspect it would involve cleaning a kitty litter box for two weeks straight...to let them know how crappy I think their behavior is. With gloves for safety, of course. Evil, yes. Abusive? naah.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2011
  22. birch Valued Senior Member

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    your perception is skewed and so your judgement. because the burning and frying pan is more extreme, you automatically assume that what she did was not abuse but it is. abuse is still abuse even though there are different levels. what she did was really cold and frightening to a child. her whole demeanor and attitude is of terrorism and instilling fear.

    she was too harsh on him, she was quite hateful and nasty too. period.

    you explained it well. that is the psychological effects that abusers do to children. it's heinous to do that to a precious child who deserves all the help and care they can get. life is hard enough as it is without people making it worse which is what's really horrible about abuse. it just compounds the problems or cripples before they even have a chance.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2011
  23. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    Isn't everyone's perception skewed based on their own experiences? It is what gives one a personal opinion, right? So in my personal opinion...holding hot sauce in your mouth isn't abuse. Now if she had poored it into his eyes or made him hold bleach in his mouth, I might feel differently. But hot sauce is food it's supposed to go in your mouth it's not going to hurt you. People even reccommend it for nail biters trying to quit and hot sauce/chili-pepper is mentioned in several parenting books as an alternative to spanking.
     

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