Spanking

[jnmorrow]

As our memberships grows, I would like to hear how people think and
feel about spanking as a form of discipline.

Nonmembers can also post temporally, so you can get to know the group
better.

[jnmorrow]

I am against spanking. Although, I have spanked my daughter once, but
I decided it was ineffective, and made me feel awful, so I will never
do it again. I think that hitting a child in any capacity only teaches
them that you can not think of a better solution. But I am not
completely judgmental about it. I have read research both for and
against, but I think it is in general not a good idea to get in the
habit of spanking, because I think there are better ways to handle
things, and spanking can maybe lead to other forms of violence later,
if you find that the spanking does not work, you might feel inclined
to do worse later.

[TayMae27]

I think spanking is wrong. Why is spanking any different from hitting?
This always confused me as a child, and being a teenager, it still
does. I tended to take things very literally as a child. If my mom hit
me, I thought I could hit someone smaller than me too.

On Jan 27, 1:12 am, jnmorrow <JNSmor...@gmail.com> wrote:

[jnmorrow]

I think spanking is very wrong too. It teaches the wrong things. Check
out the page I posted on what Dr. Spock said about spanking. If you do
not know he is, he is a pretty well know Doctor who was very active in
giving parenting advice and very knowledgeable.

[jnmorrow]

I can not post the page for some reason right now. I will try later.
But you can also read it here.


What Spanking Accomplishes

by Dr. Benjamin Spock
reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P.
For many years now there has been a debate about whether spanking
children is a good thing or a bad thing. Most parents report that they
use spanking, at least some of the time.

Most--but not all--pediatricians and psychologists agree that spanking
is not a desirable or particularly effective form of discipline. For
example, the American Academy of Pediatrics' official policy says, in
part:

"Despite its common acceptance, spanking is a less effective strategy
than timeout or removal of privileges for reducing undesired behavior
in children. Although spanking may immediately reduce or stop an
undesired behavior, its effectiveness decreases with subsequent use.
The only way to maintain the initial effect of spanking is to
systematically increase the intensity with which it is delivered,
which can quickly escalate into abuse. Thus, at best, spanking is only
effective when used in selective infrequent situations."

(American Academy of Pediatrics, April 1998. For full text, go to
http://www.aap.org/policy/re9740.html.)

Certainly, many perfectly healthy, well-adjusted people were spanked
as children. It also seems clear that many children who are never
spanked grow up fine as well. The research does not show a huge effect
of spanking by itself.

The much more important issues are whether discipline is effective and
whether the parent-child relationship is a healthy one. That said, we
would agree with the Academy of Pediatrics in advising against
spanking for several reasons:

Reasons to avoid physical punishment
Imagine that your six-year-old has taken a toy from a friend's house
without asking. This form of stealing is not the sign of a future
criminal career, but it is a sign that he has not yet learned an
important lesson about property. When you tell your child that what he
did was wrong, you would like him to feel a little sorry or a little
guilty. These uncomfortable feelings can resurface, when needed, to
remind him that stealing is wrong.

Suppose instead that you give your child a spanking. Afterward, he is
more likely to feel resentful and angry at you. In the future, when
tempted, his only thought will be to avoid being caught. If the
spanking is hard enough, he might also feel afraid of you. None of
these feelings will help him, in the long run, be the kind of person
you want him to be.

What spanking really teaches
Spanking teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the
power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right. Some spanked
children then feel quite justified in beating up on smaller ones. The
American tradition of spanking may be one reason that there is much
more violence in our country than in any other comparable nation.

Physical force vs. reasoning
When an executive in an office or a foreman in a shop is dissatisfied
with the work of an employee, he doesn't rush in shouting and whack
him on the seat of his pants. He explains in a respectful manner what
he would like, and in most cases this is enough. Children are not that
different in their wish to be responsible and to please. They react
well to praise and high expectations.

In the olden days, most children were spanked on the assumption that
this was necessary to make them behave. In the 20th century, as
parents and professionals have studied children here and in other
countries, they have come to realize that children can be well
behaved, cooperative, and polite without ever having been punished
physically or in any other way.

I have known hundreds of such children myself, and there are countries
in the world where physical punishment is unknown.