VEGANGELICA

I agree with posts made by adidasss and Hesher (and Toretorden, of course). I oppose hitting anyone, whether adult or child. Causing someone physical pain is never a solution because it is also a problem.

I agree with the current philosophy of schools and teachers in the U.S. (and Australia, as Laterus describes) that people should use their words to resolve issues and should not physically harm or hurt others. This is succinctly stated in the phrase, "Hands are not for hitting." I believe this strongly for logical reasons and because of my experiences as a child and as a parent:

(1) LOGIC: if you are teaching a child not to hit others (which is usually the number one lesson we have to teach children), then we should not hit children. Children are quick to pick up on hyprocrisy and unfairness. My ethical view is that people who have power over the weak should not exploit that power but should instead be merciful and gentle, so that those who are weak feel safe, unthreatened, and protected, and in turn protect others who are weaker than they are.

(2) MY OWN EXPERIENCE: my dad spanked me when I was 5. Once. I don't remember what my behavior was that he didn't like, but I *do* remember running and hiding behind my bed. My mom eventually coaxed me out. I never felt as close to my father emotionally as to my mother while growing up, and his hitting me was one of the reasons. My dad apologized years later and I accepted his apology. If he could do it over, he said he wouldn't have hit me.

(3) PARENTING EXPERIENCE: I have never and would never hit my child, now 6, because I do not want him to feel it is okay to use his body to physically harm others, including myself. Also, I do not want to hurt him physically or emotionally. The fundamental lesson I am teaching my own child is to use his words, not his body, to tell how he feels.

We use "time outs" as a discipline method--and the "time out" simply consists of sitting with our child (for the number of minutes equal to his age) and not doing anything, then discussing the reason we gave him a time out. We only give our child time outs for actions that are safety issues, such as if he hits one of us. If he is refusing to do something that is not directly safety-related (such as refusing to pick up all his toys that he has left out in the living room, causing a tripping hazard), then I explain that it is his responsibility to clean them up since he made the mess in common space, and if he chooses not to do so then we will take away his TV privileges for 1 day. He can make all the messes he wants in his private space (his room), but in the common areas we have different rules so that we can share the space.

One of my great delights as a parent is having my 6-year-old argue with me, because he is using his reason and his words and is not afraid to tell me what he really feels. Viva Free Speech! I would recommend always explaining to children, regardless what age they are, what your reasons are for doing things (like taking away privileges), so that even if they can't understand your reasoning they see you using your words and communicating peacefully about a problem, which models the behavior you want them to follow.

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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Freebase Dali

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.

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VEGANGELICA

Hi FD,

Strap on the reading glasses, if you want to get through my long reply.

I agree with you that every child is different. However, I still feel that physical punishment is the wrong choice because it hurts the child and there are always discipline options that do not involve causing the child physical pain.

When a parent resorts to punishing a child using physical punishment (and by that I mean the intentional infliction of pain on the body for purposes of punishment or controlling behavior, such as slapping, spanking, hitting with objects, pinching, shaking, and forcing to stand for long periods of time), I would argue this shows the parent has run out of patience, not options.

Public preschools and elementary schools where I have volunteered as well as the domestic violence shelter where I worked always had a series of non-painful methods for dealing with children's undesired behavior. These methods do not involve causing children pain and instead respect their body's boundaries and strive to be nurturing.

I agree that physical punishment will rapidly (although not necessarily permanently) cause a child to stop doing a behavior you don't like, because people, like other animals, hate pain and will usually do whatever they need to in order to avoid pain. Yet I still argue that there are always other discipline methods that do not involve physically harming someone to steer her behavior in the direction you want.

And, there are many good reasons for avoiding physical punishment. The Center for Effective Discipline lists many of these reasons, so I won't go into them here, but I found their website very interesting and thorough and think you may, too (The Center for Effective Discipline).

FD, I did not mean to imply that your mother didn't love you because she disciplined you physically when you were a child, and I did not mean that physically disciplining a child will necessarily cause the family to grow up fractured with seething hostilities and rifts (although it can). What I meant is that in my view the physical discipline and the fear it causes...fear of the hitter, fear of the pain being repeated...are not love, even if the physical punishment is meant with good intentions. And, the action of hitting someone to punish her or him is not love.

Also, since a parent never knows in advance how his child will look back on his physically hurting her, I feel it is wise for parents not to hurt their children physically. Your child may grow up to be like you, content and supportive of the parent's choices, or she may react to you having hit her as a child by feeling distant from you and feeling bad about herself, since she may feel you believed she was so worthless as to be "hittable," even if you told her you loved her after you hit her. She may respond by treating herself and others more dangerously, and she may perpetuate the mentality that when we don't like people's behavior, we should hit them. She may accept others, including adults, hitting *her* because she was told (by you) that "people who love you can (and should) hit you" if they feel you are bad enough.

One thing I was ignorant of in my last post is that some U.S. schools actually *do* still allow physical punishment. I didn't know this until I did some online investigating. Although physical punishment of children in schools is forbidden in my state, Iowa, and "most urban public school systems in the United States have banned all forms of corporal punishment," Wikipedia says that:

"As of August 2008, 21 states allow corporal punishment in schools. Some private schools, again largely in the South, also still use corporal punishment, especially Christian schools, 'historically black' schools and military-style boarding schools. Statistics show that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be paddled than white students, possibly because minority-race parents are more inclined to approve of it. Statistics collected by the federal government show that the use of the paddle has been declining consistently, in all states where it is used, over at least the past 20 years."

My general observation of physical punishment is that the child's behavior for which an adult is physically punishing her is always less severe than the badness of the action of a big person hitting a little one. Also, even if one does subscribe to physical punishment of children, as some stated earlier, physical punishment only "works" when you use it against a defenseless young child...not when that child grows up to be big enough to defend himself.

I do feel it is always wrong to hit a child, whether she or he is young and defenseless or older and bigger. I would not have hit/spanked you if you had been my child, regardless what you were doing (and I am curious now, what *were* you up to so persistently that led your mom to feel at her wit's end!). More generally, what behaviors do you feel warrant physically punishing a child?

JayJamJah, I'm glad you thought they were thoughtful and laid out well. Thanks for telling me!

--Erica

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