Quote:
Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
FD, I do feel the action of spanking is violence regardless what the feelings of the hitter are. Whether the spanker is feeling angry or coldly calm or regretful, hitting a child is still hitting a child to cause the child pain, and that is violence. I do not feel love involves fearing a person. Fear is fear and is not love.
--Erica
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Ok, without beating semantics over the head repeatedly, just assume that I meant (out of my own experience) that proper physical punishment (without going overboard) isn't "abuse" and it was effective for me.
What I'm saying is that in my family's case, physical discipline worked and nothing bad came out of it. Neither I, nor any of my siblings have grown up to be violent in any way. We're productive members of society and fully functional adults. In fact, even now that we're all grown we're still the most closely knit family I've ever come across.
Other families might have success with non-physical means. That's fine. But to imply that all physical discipline is destructive to your child completely flies in the face of my own personal experience and a lot of other people's as well
What I say is you do what works.
I just don't believe in parents letting this socially concocted fear of responsible physical discipline get in the way of their parental options.
Hey, if your kid is responding fine with your methods, that's fantastic! But when you find yourself with a child who doesn't respond to anything you can do mentally, then you've got two options: Give up and let the kid do what he/she wants, or let that kid in on some easily understandable consequences.
I guarantee you there's no kid around that can manipulate his/her way out of the effects of a physical consequence.
I'm not saying either is right or wrong. I'm just saying, as a parent, you have the right to decide what to do. If you're any kind of reasonable person, you will have exhausted your options before taking it a step further. The only thing I truly advocate here is that the parent makes those decisions based on love and true intentions, not anger and impatience.
I was spanked growing up, and it worked. But don't mistakenly believe that I'm automatically going to use that as a first option for my own children. I'm a little smarter than that.
I think where parents sometimes go wrong is they automatically think the way they were raised was the right way. Following that creates a generational trend that doesn't work in every scenario, and it's because of THAT, and the unthinking parents, that children are improperly raised, regardless of whether it's via physical or non physical discipline.
Putting every child in the same box is stupid. But on the same token, thinking no children can benefit from certain parental strategies is just as dangerous, and not only that, it's completely ignorant.
Just ask around.