Author Topic: An argument about ways to discipline children (from EP327: Revenants)  (Read 5598 times)

Frungi

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I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what I missed in this one. Or was the story really that banal and commonplace? Was it just an excuse to describe the setting?

Also:
Jesus H. Christ, people, beating children is not the solution to discipline problems.

Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?



Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #1 on: February 09, 2012, 07:58:58 PM
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what I missed in this one. Or was the story really that banal and commonplace? Was it just an excuse to describe the setting?

Also:
Jesus H. Christ, people, beating children is not the solution to discipline problems.

Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?
Ohboyohboyohboy! One of these arguments :D

Cogito ergo surf - I think therefore I network

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Devoted135

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Reply #2 on: February 09, 2012, 09:41:38 PM
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what I missed in this one. Or was the story really that banal and commonplace? Was it just an excuse to describe the setting?

Also:
Jesus H. Christ, people, beating children is not the solution to discipline problems.

Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?
Ohboyohboyohboy! One of these arguments :D


As one of the people that Scattercat is insulting *ahem* addressing, can I request that we not have one of these arguments?



tpi

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Reply #3 on: February 10, 2012, 04:53:45 AM

Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?

How could one? There is no difference.
If if someone is spanking their children, certainly the children should be taken away? How anyone can even think otherwise? It is a crime. Or at least if the country is half civilized, it is a crime.


Frungi

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Reply #4 on: February 10, 2012, 09:13:16 AM
Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?

How could one? There is no difference.
If if someone is spanking their children, certainly the children should be taken away? How anyone can even think otherwise? It is a crime. Or at least if the country is half civilized, it is a crime.

There's a huge difference, to my eyes, between giving someone a black eye or a bruised rib and slapping their bum. Anyway, none of this has anythng to do with whether this story had a story, and no one's pointed it out if it's there. Interesting setting, yes, but nothing meaningful set there.



tpi

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Reply #5 on: February 10, 2012, 10:03:52 AM
]

There's a huge difference, to my eyes, between giving someone a black eye or a bruised rib and slapping their bum. Anyway, none of this has anythng to do with whether this story had a story, and no one's pointed it out if it's there. Interesting setting, yes, but nothing meaningful set there.

The difference is only in degree. Both give the message: It is totally ok to hit someone else. Getting in the situation that you you "should" spank your children is a total failure in parenting.


eytanz

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I split this topic off the main episode thread. People are free to continue this discussion here (and those who don't want to have this discussion are free to ignore it) as long as it's done civilly.



Talia

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Do you seriously not see a difference between spanking and beating?

How could one? There is no difference.
If if someone is spanking their children, certainly the children should be taken away? How anyone can even think otherwise? It is a crime. Or at least if the country is half civilized, it is a crime.

I could not disagree more. I really don't think it's fair to judge a parent on if they've ever spanked a child. Particularly to suggest the child should be "taken away" on that merit alone.

I don't know if you're aware of what child protective services are like at least in the U.S., but it's not good, and there's an excellent chance by removing a child from a home where he or she happened to get spanked once or twice, you'd destroy his or her life forever, not to mention that of the parent. There's a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE, HUGE, HUGE, HUGE difference between the occasional spanking for bad behavior and child abuse. It's really, really, really important to recognize this and not overreact punitively. I say this as someone who has friends who lost their children to the state based on limited information observed by a government worker. It devastated all involved, and certainly no justice was done for the children. Perhaps the government worker felt better about herself though. Maybe she came out the winner in the end.



Bdoomed

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as someone who's been spanked before, I can say it's not that bad... like... at all.
It's just discipline.  I don't know if I'd spank my kids, but I don't think it's anything to consider vile or worth taking a kid away for.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Scattercat

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The mother in the story in question was emphatically not in a situation where even spanking was worthwhile.  The kid was just not acting up in a way that even came close to meriting physical discipline.  Bemoan the overly intrusive government (which definitely was present in "Revenants"), by all means, but it's not somehow impeding education or child-rearing that teachers, for instance, can't physically discipline children anymore.

And honestly, spanking is the easy source of discipline.  It's fast, it's always available, and it certainly silences the children when they're being disruptive.  But I have never seen anything that suggests that spanking is anything but the crudest and most harmful method of disciplining children.  I think one study, ever, found positive emotional outcomes associated with spanking, and that was very carefully limited in the wording of the paper to mean rare one-time incidents of single slaps not hard enough to even leave a red mark, paired with conversation both prior ("Your father and I have decided to give you a spanking for these reasons...") and after ("We still love you, and we will never hit you without having these sorts of talks beforehand.")

So yeah, when I see people complaining about how terrible it is that spanking is being gradually lumped in with child abuse, I can't really feel very guilty for upsetting folks.  It is very, very, VERY easy to abuse a child if you use corporal punishment regularly, and the benefits of spanking just do not seem worth it to me compared to the risks.  In other words, yes, I see a difference between spanking and beating, in the same way I see a difference between green and blue Jolly Ranchers; the one is just barely tolerable while the other is an abomination, and it's still mostly the same stuff with only a thin line and sometimes blurred line separating them.



tpi

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Are you serious folks? Is spanking really so accepted in US? It is hard to believe.
Here in northern Europe spanking IS child abuse without even a slight doubt. And someone speaking for spanking would be considered as a disgusting and irresponsible person. Probably corresponding someone speaking about "niggers" in normal conversation in US. Or more so.


Darwinist

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Are you serious folks? Is spanking really so accepted in US? It is hard to believe.
Here in northern Europe spanking IS child abuse without even a slight doubt. And someone speaking for spanking would be considered as a disgusting and irresponsible person. Probably corresponding someone speaking about "niggers" in normal conversation in US. Or more so.

I don't think spanking is so accepted anymore here in the US.  I believe is is gradually fading away, but there are still practitioners and they are in the minority.  I was spanked as a kid and don't think it harmed me deeply in any way but my wife and I raised our two boys with no spanking and it worked just fine.   My wife is a teacher and had a couple child psychology classes in college and was a pro at raising kids and I followed her lead.  We knew our kids and what they liked, and it was easy to devise a suitable punishment by taking away things or activities they liked.   They knew that if they made wrong decisions the consequences would suck, this was a great deterrent.  I think our kids turned out better being raised this way.   

But as someone pointed out before, most parents don't know how to handle kids at all.  Spend a half-hour in Target or any other store with toys / candy and you'll see kids having a fit because they can't have something and the parents trying to negotiate with them rather than diffusing the situation properly.  The kid ends up screeching and carrying-on the whole time while in the store.   I think most parents don't want to spank their kids but don't have the wherewithal to handle them using other means. 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


CryptoMe

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It's very easy to feel smug about your own success as a parent. However, I have seen bad parents do very well, because they had mild-mannered and compliant kids. I have also seen great parents struggling because they have very bright and willful kids. Every child is different and it is not possible to apply one blanket strategy (including no spanking) across the board. It is also not possible to judge other parents until you have tried to parent their children.

For those who think there is no research that contradicts the claims that corporal punishment is harmful for children, please consider these for a start....

A blanket injunction against disciplinary use of spanking is not warranted by the data, D Baumrind, Pediatrics 98 (4), 828 -831, 1996.
    
Does causally relevant research support a blanket injunction against disciplinary spanking by parents, D Baumrind, Invited Address at the 109th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 2001.  
    
Nonabusive physical punishment and child behavior among African-American children: a systematic review, I.B. Horn, J.G. Joseph, and T.L. Cheng, J Natl Med Assoc 96(9), 1162–1168, 2004.  
    
Comparing Child Outcomes of Physical Punishment and Alternative Disciplinary Tactics: A Meta-Analysis, R.E. Larzelere and B.R. Kuhn, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 8 (1), 1-37, 2005, DOI: 10.1007/s10567-005-2340-z. (Here's an Executive Summary for this one.)

The Science and Statistics Behind Spanking Suggest that Laws Allowing Corporal Punishment are in the Best Interests of the Child, J.M. Fuller, Akron Law Review 42 (243), 2009
    
Are Spanking Injunctions Scientifically Supported? RE Larzelere, D Baumrind, Law & Contemporary Problems 73, 57-88, 2010.

Corporal Punishment and Child Development, J. Fuller, Akron Law Review 44, 6-67, 2010.
 
BTW, the last one on this list is a particularly eye-opening read...
« Last Edit: March 05, 2012, 10:33:56 PM by CryptoMe »