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JohnHwangDD wrote:

JEB_Stuart wrote:My parents did spank me and are very good and loving parents. I continue to have a great relationship with them today, and I am sure that others here on Dakka might say the same thing.

I dunno, maybe Legoburner can run a Dakka Poll?
- My parents spanked/beat me, and I'm good with them
- My parents spanked/beat me, and I still resent them for it
- My parents spanked/beat me, and I spit on their graves!
- My parents never spanked/beat me, and I'm good with them
- My parents never spanked/beat me, and I'm alright with them
- My parents never spanked/beat me, and I hate them
- pie?

And then he can do one on whether we spank our kids:
- My parents spanked/beat me, and I'm spanking/beating mine
- My parents spanked/beat me, and I'm NOT spanking/beating mine
- My parents never spanked/beat me, and I'm spanking/beating mine
- My parents never spanked/beat me, and I'm NOT spanking/beating mine
- pie!

How about no, because you are automatically lumping in spanking with beating. Not comparable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

olympia wrote:Look, take two rats and teach them a maze. For one rat shock the hell out of it every time it fails. For the other rat give it a treat pellet every time it succeeds. Both rats will learn the maze, but rat that gets the pellets will be the happier of the two. I hate to give such a blunt endorsement of behaviorism but the same principle applies to raising children, basically.

Wow, I am soooo glad that children are just as good as rats nowadays. They also found that rats that smoke don't always get cancer, but they still got the endorphins. I guess we could to the same to our kids!

Olympia, your last two posts are mildly offensive and a gross oversimplification of the situation.

Plus, child rearing isn't anything like rats in a maze or Roman conquest...

olympia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Lots of psychological research shows that reward is more effective than punishment as a way of influencing behaviour but punishment is easier to do and people often enjoy doing it.

People who spank are just bad parents. They haven't the time, energy, or ability to control their children except through violence. As Tacitus noted with the Roman Empire, it is much easier to control people with rewards, privileges, and honors than through violence. It's a basic lesson of empire that is also applicable to child rearing. It does, however, require a lot of time and effort.

Your post made me so angry, I used the belt on my boy. And he blames you.

I love the picture of the perpetrator. If ever a man looked like he would smack a two-year old in the face, it's that guy.

I suppose I fit Olympia's definition of a bad parent...I use the Teddy Roosevelt principle.

And fear will keep the star systems in line. It's show business, not show friends.

olympia wrote:People who spank are just bad parents. They haven't the time, energy, or ability to control their children except through violence. As Tacitus noted with the Roman Empire, it is much easier to control people with rewards, privileges, and honors than through violence. It's a basic lesson of empire that is also applicable to child rearing. It does, however, require a lot of time and effort.

While I think that violence should be used as sparingly as possible, children aren't always rational. The younger they are, the more wound up they are, the less likely you can persuade them with words or rewards. A little smack on the hands or bottom will get their attention a lot quicker.

I was trying to find a funny, but all I could find was cutesy .



Yes... they do remind me of children... so very very much, how did I not see that before...

Behaviorism is all nice and well to do, but a lot of those experiments are designed FOR those animals, and having a brain the size of the moon makes a teency bit of a difference when you determine how and if someone is reacting to something in the pre-assumed manner.

If you gave me a banana, I would eat it, but I have absolutely no qualms breaking the button when I get tired of bananas...

dienekes96 wrote:Your post made me so angry, I used the belt on my boy. And he blames you.

I love the picture of the perpetrator. If ever a man looked like he would smack a two-year old in the face, it's that guy.

I suppose I fit Olympia's definition of a bad parent...I use the Teddy Roosevelt principle.

And fear will keep the star systems in line. It's show business, not show friends.

My uncle used to beat his children. During and after the beating he would say in a sad voice, "Why did you make me do that?"

Well, why did they make him do that?

dienekes96 wrote:Well, why did they make him do that?

I'll have to ask them. Usually they were too slow when he screamed at them to change the channel on the TV. They didn't have a remote control and the children would be playing outside and Uncle Stan would be sitting on the couch drinking Falstaff and watching T.V. He would scream, "Sal! Sal! Get your ass in here and change the channel for me!" If they were too slow...off came the belt.

p.s. the more you tighten your grip, dienekees96, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

So your uncle was an asshat then?

That is child abuse, and you are clearly using that experience to dogmatically force your zeal on other people. If your uncle was a total douche, I see no reason to even compare him to all of the other parents so liberally. It is completely clear if you get out into the world that most parents are simply not like that regularly, and everyone vents there emotions in different ways (yes... parents have emotions, can you imagine that!). All of the things you described add up to your uncle being wrong to be sure, but yet again, I will say that is clearly unfair to use those ground to group all actions into the same bucket.

It is the old Charlie Manson is in all of us nonsense, which is provably ignorant logic.

Bad and good are one thing. Good and evil is an entirely different story, especially in the context of parenting...

You do have to keep social perspective on this whole conversation though. I have absolutely no doubt that centuries ago it might have actually been necessary to be so harsh as to actually beat sense into a young person, even then though, no small child was considered to expect that level of punishment. This is all a matter of context, but we should all realize that violence is not something you willfully inflict on children.

dienekes96 wrote:I suppose I fit Olympia's definition of a bad parent...I use the Teddy Roosevelt principle.

And fear will keep the star systems in line. It's show business, not show friends.

As to keep my hands clean of this whole argument, I simply cannot agree (on principle) that using any physical tool of punishment to get your points across is entirely necessary.

Raising a child and working in show business? I am really missing the point of some of these arguments...



Something along the lines of that I think... and I could extrapolate deeper, but I know the image will just not hold it's integrity.

olympia wrote:p.s. the more you tighten your grip, dienekees96, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

I only have one to worry about. I'll just keep a deathgrip.

My parents used the belt and a ruler or spoon on us when my bro and I acted up. My mom didn't like to dole out the punishment so dad did mostly.

25+ years later and not once have I ever committed a violent crime, nor has my brother. Hell, the worst offense I've committed is a speeding ticket. Neither one of us has ever been to jail or prison, and both of us love our parents to death and we know they raised us right and proper.

It sickens me that people abuse their children such as torture, closed fist beatings, using a blunt (or sharp) object to inflict as much pain as possible, even going so far as to break bones. The ones that beat their children till they die ought to have the same done to them.

I too am offended by the sweeping generalization that parents who spank are bad parents. A swat or 2 on the ass with a belt hurts but it is not in the same caliber as a parent breaking a 2x4 across the kids back.

I learned real quick not to put my hands on my ass to try to stop the belt or catch it in my hand. A slap on the palm is a hell of a lot worst than across a buttcheek and my dad gave us 5 slaps. Every time we tried to stop him he'd restart the count.

Just remember the old saying.

Violence is not the answer.








It is the question. The answer is Yes.

good on him I reckon, it wouldnt be neccessary if people could control their kids..

I was on a Carribean island and the kids I saw were all well behaved when with their parents.. cause otherwised theyd get whooped..

olympia wrote:Look, take two rats and teach them a maze. For one rat shock the hell out of it every time it fails. For the other rat give it a treat pellet every time it succeeds. Both rats will learn the maze, but rat that gets the pellets will be the happier of the two. I hate to give such a blunt endorsement of behaviorism but the same principle applies to raising children, basically.

But that's the thing, you can't be blunt with behaviorism. Children are too insanely difficult to comprehend. Some are impatient others can wait. I'll give you the marshmallow test. Even though it was to test for other things it just shows that children come in a variety. The tes put children in a room with a marshmallow and a scientist told them that if they would leave for 5 minutes, during that time the child could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited then they would get two marshmallows. The result concluded that some kids waited and others wanted instant gratification.

I will also go with my babysitting again. I was associated with pizza to the two year old and here was his thought process, I believe; babysitter= mom leaving, mom leaving= pizza for dinner, ergo babysitter=pizza.

I would declare that rational. You also have to include culture of the childs' ancestors.

For me, spanking worked. I was spanked whenever I did something bad or when I failed in class(which I didn't do much afterwards). Now the instrument used for spanking is always different; for me it was a wooden paddle, for others it was a switch or a bare hand.

Beating usually involves, well, beating with fists or other objects that lead to bruising or long term damage. Hitting a kid on the rump with an open hand does little damage compared with a fist to the chest.


To conclude my counter argument I will go with macchiaveli and say that people are fickle. If you treat them good, then they'll turn on you when you do anything wrong; if they fear you, then you can do just about anything you want.

Fateweaver wrote:25+ years later and not once have I ever committed a violent crime, nor has my brother. Hell, the worst offense I've committed is a speeding ticket. Neither one of us has ever been to jail or prison, and both of us love our parents to death and we know they raised us right and proper.

To be fair, there are plenty of people whose parents didn't spank them that could claim the same thing.

My parents spanked my sibling and I, and we both turned out fine. But I dunno that spanking was really the thing. The important points are really that we were punished effectively and in a timely way when we misbehaved.

While both my wife and I had parents that used corporal punishment, we have no real plans to spank our son. It might happen later -- we reserve that right -- but IMO corporal punishment has its limitations. You can't use it when they're little. And it reaches a point when they'll outgrow it too. Way I see it, the only punishment you can apply at all ages is loss of privileges/freedom/stuff/etc.

People may laugh at time outs, but my son HATES them. Just hates every second. And so when he acts up, all it takes is a "do you want a time out" and he shapes up fast. Obviously, we won't be doing time outs when he's older, but we sure as heck can ground him, take away his console games, and strip him of basically every freedom he has, lol. Really, the concept is no different from how school and society will punish him for misbehaving later in life (detention, jail time, etc.). *shrug*

Just so I'm clear here, I'm not gonna judge others on this. My parents and in-laws obviously used corporal punishment effectively, and they were good parents in pretty much every sense. This just seems like the right approach for *our* family.

But I do believe what some are getting wrong in this thread is that it's less about the form of punishment than it is its application. A bad parent can use corporal punishment *very* ineffectively. A good parent can use noncorporal punishment very effectively. In the end, it's about the parenting.

I will agree with that. But either way you are punishing a child so of course I support it.

Ask my parents and they'll tell you that I have a healthy fear of God and mom. (my mom punished me thanks to my dad being in the navy)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would also like to say that I rather enjoy it when people say "If it was MY kid...". I mean if you see this going on are you just going to stand around and let it happen or are you going to go after the guy?

I babysit and I work in a toy store. If a guy tries anything funny with the kids I'm babysitting, then I'm going to break his arm. If a guy tries to harm a child in the toy store(I'm talking serious injury) I'm going to do something. If its the legal guardian I'm going to ask him to stop, if he's not the legal guardian, I'm going to the sporting goods section and then I am going to proceed smashing his ribs(same if its a female, I'm not a sexist).

The lack of response seen is rather revolting, I guess that people who shop at wal-mart have no morals.

Halonachos, you were "spanked" when you failed at chess? Could you elaborate if you are comfortable? What it a case of just losing or not knowing the correction version of the Sicilian Defense that got you hit?

Chess was never a class. However, failing to turn in homework, forgetting to do projects, getting D's in class were all unacceptable. Hell, C's were pushing it, although the spanking has ended as of when I was 14. I now get grounded.

And no I wasn't "spanked" I was spanked with a wooden paddle on the rump.

I think you were actually beaten close to death with a tire iron, and you suppressed the memory.

That would explain the rod shaped "birthmark" on the back of my skull...

olympia wrote:Halonachos, you were "spanked" when you failed at chess? Could you elaborate if you are comfortable? What it a case of just losing or not knowing the correction version of the Sicilian Defense that got you hit?

Where did you get chess from?