Does this girl simply need a good spanking?

She was 18. In my opinion, her parents have no control over her at that point and are therefore not responsible for what she does. They certainly are not required to pay for college tuitions, either. She needs to get a sense of the real world, that’s what.

According to the second link, the president says “her parents do have a contractual obligation to pay.” In that case, the $5306 should be paid by the parents. But whether she left on her own or was kicked out is irrelevant since she is 18. But before that age: parents’ house, parents’ rules. I want to know what kind of “abuse” went on. It looked like all it was was her being defiant and not doing simple things such as chores.

By law, a parent has an obligation to support a child who cannot support themselves,

At age 18, she is no longer a child. The parents are under no obligation.
Next case…

She’s NOT a child. Therefore, she needs to pay her own way if she thinks she’s grown enough to make it on her own. I wouldn’t be paying a dime if I were her parents. Spoiled brat with a sense of entitlement – that’s all she is.

I agree with @filmfann. She moved out voluntarily, so to me she forfeited being taken care of financially by her parents.

@Cruiser: “Does this girl simply need a good spanking?”

You’re suggesting assaulting her over this?

Anyway, this is some personal f*cked-up family issue. If this lawsuit has any legs, it will be decided by the courts. We know nothing about any of the facts here. This family could be way more screwed up than we imagine. Providing our opinions about this – or suggesting that someone beat her – seems a little odd.

@hominid I do not consider a good spanking assault…I know it very well as an attitude adjustment.

@Cruiser At about 12, I thought to myself that it was assault. ;)

@KNOWITALL at 12 I found out saying “that did not even hurt” was not a good idea! lol

Costs after she turned 18 are hers, not parents’.

@zenvelo is clearly taking a nap.

My take on the whole thing is “the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” Her parents sound like self centered jerks, and that is what they raised.

If i were the judge, I’d make her parents cover her high school and personal expenses through the end of teh school year, after that she’s on her own.

@janbb got busy at work :)

I’d never advocate striking a female.

A well applied severe beating with a cat ‘o nine tails and subsequent keel hauling might be a better choice than just a mere spanking with a belt. And be sure to apply the beating equally well to the parents.
(But I, too, do not adhere to the idea of striking a female).

Yes, she needs a good spanking—as does the entire cheerleading team. I am willing to sacrifice my valuable time and energy to do so.

The time for spankings is long gone.

I will lend a hand to @Kropotkin‘s endeavor. In fact, I’ll lend both hands.

What did you see that led you to the conclusion that you drew about the parents, @zenvelo? I haven’t seen much of this story, and almost nothing about them.

Nope, the parents should pay up, to compensate for their shitty parenting. They should also pay for the psychiatric treatment that the girl needs.

I gave this a GQ because I was considering asking it myself. I heard about it on the radio this morning. The girl was 18, so she is legally an adult. They were saying since she cannot go by the rules of the house she should get out and support herself. They were saying the parents are not obligated to send her to college.

I would send my daughter to college, so this would not be me, but I do agree that the parents are not obligated.

@jca I would send my kids to school too…but if they got bratty like this, basically saying “Don’t want you, don’t need you, you suck, good bye,” I might pull the rug out from under them too.

I had read about this case on yahoo news, so I was already aware of it for several days now. I’m not sure what the laws are in each state concerning parental responsibility to someone who’s already at least 18, and I’m reasonably certain these would vary from state to state.

My own opinion concerning this case is that this girl suffers from the princess syndrome. I don’t feel her case is even close to being justified considering the fact that many people have more adequate reasons for filing lawsuits. Let us guess who’ll be footing the bill for this nonsense too.

It’s too late, they ruined her. The parents are now hopefully a million miles away from her and took their bank accounts with them. Break all ties if possible with this little monster and find peace elsewhere.

Sometimes kids just turn out bad, in spite of good parents. I don’t see how anyone could make such a judgement call without knowing any of the facts about their parenting.

Ah-HA! I knew it had to be all about a boy friend the old man did not care for!

“The father contended that Rachel moved out because she didn’t want to abide by simple household rules — be respectful, keep a curfew, return “borrowed” items to her two sisters, manage a few chores, and reconsider or end her relationship with a boyfriend the parents believe is a bad influence.”

Wish we knew more about the boyfriend. They may have very valid reasons for disliking him. The article also noted that the father said, ”... his daughter’s college fund is available to her and not withdrawn or re-allocated, as she has alleged.”
So she wants to be a brat, live on her own, but doesn’t want to support herself. Tough shit. My son moved out when he was 17. I figured he’d be back withing a couple of months….but he made it on his own. Worked at Braums after school and he graduated. I still get sad thinking about that day. I didn’t say a proper good bye. ;(

The other question is: doesn’t a parent have the right to enforce reasonable rules in their own home?
YES! A God given right, in fact it is a command that parents control and train their children. In this day and age the chickens are coming home to roost. The fruits of avoiding ”spoil the rod, spare the child” are becoming quite evident; so why should anyone complain. You don’t have to put coolant in your vehicle but when it overheats and the engine seizes don’t be surprised, it was bound to happen.

Yeah, it is a real shame we made it illegal for parents to kill their disobedient children.
#Deuteronomy 21:18–21

@Hypocrisy_Central Some kids turn out even worse it they’re overly controlled and restricted. It’s not like kids didn’t turn out bad in the generations before us.

@CWOTUS The story I read yesterday told about the parents deciding to arbitraily punish her and then telling her on her 18th birthday that she needed to conform to rules or get the hell out. It seems to me that the parents had raised her to a sense of entitlement, and their way of correcting their own mistake was to kick her out.

I am not excusing her behavior, and while I vehemently disagree with @Hypocrisy_Central‘s method of discipline (whih is really abuse) I do agree that “the chickens have come home to roost”.

^^^ When you quit flying your spiritual Sopwith Camel and start flying a spiritual F-22 Raptor you might make sense and quit leading the redacted to redacted with you.

It’s almost a he-said she-said situation at this point. I’d be interested in hearing what the sisters had to say. According to one of the stories she was bullying them.

@Hypocrisy_Central Could you explain why your god promotes actions which are evidenced to be harmful and contradict scientific knowledge?

Why is your god so ignorant about psychology and child development when he’s purported to have created our species?

Are you aware that rights are not given by deities, but are administered by law and more akin to social conventions? And one particular developing convention is the idea that corporal punishment within the private confines of the home is actually abuse, and what you think is a “god given right”, is actually immoral, repugnant, and evidenced to be psychologically and socially harmful?

Thank g-d we’ve gotten back to religion. I was kinda missing it lately.

@Kropotkin Corporal punishment within the private confines of the home may be seen as abuse by you but it is still currently legal to do so. A good chunk of our country still permits corporal punishment to be administered in school.

@janbb LOL

@Cruiser – Keep in mind that something being legal doesn’t guarantee that it is correct. Slavery wasn’t correct prior to it’s abolition. Society is slowly moving towards adjusting our laws to conform with the evidence, and to make them more just. We are on the verge of having children that will find it absurd that there was a time when two adults of the same gender couldn’t marry.

And I understand that you support corporal punishment. But your wording to @Kropotkin makes it seem that it’s simply @Kropotkin‘s opinion, like his position on an ice cream flavor. It’s not, however. There is now plenty of data on the effects of corporal punishment on child development. And it’s not surprising that medical associations’ statements on the issue are unambiguous.

@Kropotkin Could you explain why your god promotes actions which are evidenced to be harmful and contradict scientific knowledge?
First off, I do not follow any gods, those stone and wood figures who can’t speak, reason, walk, talk or anything, is not for me. However, the God I serve has done nothing contradictory. I can’t say how those who administered corporal punishment did so, or how many did it in line with the Bible so it very well maybe only what is found in families that misused it outside the context of the Bible. Any failure would be due to man’s misuse not the design. Look at the effects sleeping around has had on society, people chose to do it their way, not the way relationships were intended to go. God did not put on anyone what would not work, misapplication by the user is where the failure came from. One of which, “People get frustrated and hit their kids. Maybe they don’t see there are other options.”, a byproduct of doing it their way when the child was young, or simply ending up with a child as a byproduct of fulfilling their fleshy lust.

[…10 of 13 alternative discipline techniques, including reasoning, removal of privileges and time out…] Spankings have gone way, way down over the decades, how has crime kept up. Even when the overall rate of crime has gone down it was not attributed to less spanking in the home. Certain crimes have even become for vicious, and certainly not from having less corporal punishment. What one could try to add on the front, by fact certainly is lost on the back. Many of us who are now in the 40s to 60s experienced some corporal punishment and we are not criminals or psychopaths, and that is real-life fact not a small sampling of families who agree to participate; actual facts kinda render those studies inconclusive or weak at best.

There’s a limit to rules that parents can set. Chores and respect are fair rules to set. Brainwashing is not fair. Spanking is not fair. Any physical harm is not fair. Any physical harm is not fair. From what it looks, there was no brainwashing or physical harm done. She just wanted to get away, but as @Dutchess_III said, she couldn’t live in the real world herself.
From the link: We’re heartbroken but what do you do when a child says “I don’t want your rules but I want everything under the sun and you to pay for it?”

It’s hard to blame the parents. I wouldn’t. I have no evidence supporting the possibility that they in fact did have flaws in their parenting. From the links you gave me, I find her out of her mind.

@Hypocrisy_Central It’s not fair to relate crime rates to corporal punishment. That sounds like post hoc to me. I say put the paddler and other torture devices away. On me, they only made things worse.

I find it interesting that a friend’s father is footing the bills for the suit. What is his dog in this fight? It is a bizarre story all around but I agree with those who say it is unfair to rush to judgment without knowing the whole story (which we never will.)

@janbb She is living with her friend’s parents and they are paying for her provisions and all.

Her friend’s dad is an attorney.

@dxs Yeah, I understand that but why he is encouraging this suit is odd.

@Dutchess_III Hmm…but still odd.

I had that question too. I just wonder what angel the guy sees in it.

So far the attorney costs are up to $12,000. If she loses her case, who pays that?

@dxs It’s not fair to relate crime rates to corporal punishment. That sounds like post hoc to me.
Why, because it debunks trying to use a sample of 7,000, to maybe 8,000 families, only a fraction of all US families, to define all families, who may or may not use corporal punishment. If one wants to sling the numbers game, they should be careful that it can cut both ways. Certainly it would not be fair to try to use secular data to disqualify spiritual childrearing and use of spanking when they would not be administered under the same principals or reason.

@Hypocrisy_Central I knew a preacher here that used spare the rod, spoil the child as an excuse to abuse, so it’s not always okay, but I do see your point.

I don’t necesarily see anything wrong with slapping hands or swatting bottoms for disobeying, but that’s a long way from hitting when angry, which is what some people do.

@Hypocrisy_Central I’m honestly really confused by the way you speak. I just can’t get past your idiomatic expressions and verbose language, so I am having trouble taking in your overall message.

@hominid I was a few times the victim of severe Corporal Punishment and am not a fan of it but I would never dream of taking that right of a parent to choose what kind of punishment to meter out to reign in a very stubborn disrespectful, combative child. And truth be told I do think a stubborn rude, belligerent and disrespectful kid that ignores and even mocks other forms of parental discipline can benefit from both tough love and a good swat on the behind.

My son came awfully close to get a much deserved spanking when he called my wife a fucking bitch and continued on his tirade for another 20 minutes despite knowing he just lost all privileges for over a month. My best and most punitive punishments did not stop him from using that language another 2 times…so far. I would have never dreamt of being that disrespectful to either of my parents because I knew I would have received the spanking of a lifetime.

To me there is a distinct line between a corrective swat on the behind and a beat down I have seen kids…some my own friends get when they pissed off their parents. The belt whipping kids and I got is IMO way out of line in terms of being effective punishment and would certainly fit the definition of abuse.

Oh, Christ. Now we have lawyers seeing angels? Speaking of logical impossibilities…

Update

From @Judi‘s link:
“She also wants a judge to declare that she’s non-emancipated and dependent as a student on her parents for support.”
What?! Since when does a judge have that responsibility? They should support their child, though she is being a ____, but they nonetheless are absolutely not legally obliged to.

“In court filings, Canning’s parents, retired Lincoln Park police Chief . . . ”

No contest. The parents are liable. I hope she gets every last cent she asks for.

Well, I see it this way. Any thing she has created in debt before the age of 18, the parents should pay. It is not the vendors fault for any debts she created.
After that, it is not their problem. Even if the parents are shitty parents, that is simply the end of it. I believe in foster care, children are released at the age of 18 and the state doesn’t see them as their problem to support. If she is an ungrateful child who feels entitled, than tough cookies. If the parents are douches, then she got a cruddy deal and unfortunately will have to learn to stand on her own two feet from here on. There are plenty of children who have raw deals and still manage but you can’t nor should the law, change. If they were abusive, then she should take them to criminal court. That is within her rights.
Seems to me, she wanted to be independent and then realized that she needed mom and dads help but doesn’t want their rules. Too bad, so sad. Time for her to grow up. Probably ran out of friends she could leech off of and treat like crap.
The parents do have a contractual obligation with the school and should fulfill their obligations. The school has nothing to do with the family feud.

As long as a child can reasonably expect support from its parents, it should receive such. There is no age limit in this respect in my mind.

With reference to this case… I don’t know enough of the details.

I do know that I find spanking to be barbaric to begin with, unless it is between consenting adults.

I don’t mean to blow everyone’s minds here, but there’s no such thing as being legally an adult. There is the age of majority, the age of consent, the driving age, the drinking age, the voting age, and a number of other legal milestones related to how many years it has been since exiting the womb, some of which are colloquially understood as marking adulthood, but the notion of being an adult is ultimately cultural. Even official legal documents that refer to someone as being an adult have fine print explaining what the term means for the purposes of that document, and the reason they need that fine print is because “adult” is legally meaningless.

Furthermore, there are plenty of rules and regulations that set what could be called an “age of responsibility”—which is to say an age at which parents stop being responsible for their child—and most are set above 18. This is why children can stay on their parents’ health insurance until 24 and why students applying for school loans have to report their parents’ income even if their parents refuse to pay for college. It is expected that parents will help with college, regardless of any non-legal estrangement, so long as their children are under the relevant age of responsibility. The girl will have her parents’ income held against her when applying to college, so it makes perfect sense to try and get their expected contribution out of them.

(Also, anyone saying she left “voluntarily” is oversimplifying. She was told to get out because she wouldn’t let her parents micromanage her life.)

@janbb “Thank g-d we’ve gotten back to religion. I was kinda missing it lately.”

@Dutchess_III “I just wonder what angel the guy sees in it.”

I think @janbb was being facetious. ;-)

@SavoirFaire I read a little bit of it. There was even a recording that the judge heard and the girl had a filthy mouth and told her mother that she wished she could shit all over her face because she hated her so much. There is also a claim that she ran away after being told she couldn’t date a boy that they didn’t like. She was told not to date him because they felt he was influencing her and she had just gotten suspended from school. But here’s the point. There house, their rules. She doesn’t have to agree with them and they don’t have to pay for college for her. For her current school. Yes, because she is finishing high school and the parents entered into that agreement before she left home. But no one is obligated to pay for college for their kid. No one. She can join the service and get her money for college or even try for scholarships. Plenty of people do it that way, all across america. There is a saying that I always believed in. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

I think people (family) who are supporting her are being naive. They are mistaking this families tough love approach for not being caring. I think they are caring but don’t think it is a good idea to let their daughter dictate to them what she can and can’t do. They have two other children in the home and how they handle this situation can come back and bite them in the ass if they let her have her way. If they haven’t given her a way out of her parents home, I bet she would’ve been home already. One of the demands they made was for her to be respectful to her mom. This was a non negotiable point with her dad. I don’t think that is a lot to ask.
I had a lot of strife with my mom as a teen, and never once did it occur to me to be disrespectful to my mom. No matter how much we disagreed or fought, I always felt she did her best to raise me and worked hard to feed, and clothed me and take me to doctors when I was sick. She also had my back against the rest of the world if I need it.

People need to stay out of how other people raise their children. Not every kid is the same and children are notorious for making themselves seem like angels when they are far from that. Everyone has two faces usually. The one they present to the world and the one they only show at home. No one but her family, really knows her family face. This recording doesn’t show a pretty family face for her.

Humans have been at war constantly and continuously throughout history, and corporal punishment was constantly and consistently the norm.
Coincidence? I think not.
Corporal punishment teaches humans that violence and violent oppression are the preferred solution to problems.

Arguing over spanking kids, crime rates, and religion – all over a question about a girl suing her parents for her debt. Only on Fluther.

@ragingloli A lot of things have consistently been the norm through those wars. It doesn’t mean one caused the other.

@SavoirFaire Actually there is a “legal” age of becoming an adult it is also known as the Age of Majority which is 18 in the US unless you live in “Alabama (19),Nebraska (19 or upon marriage), Puerto Rico (21)and Mississippi (21)”

“The age of majority, on the other hand, is legal recognition that one has grown into an adult.”

ANGLE!!!!! Sry!

@Kropotkin I disagree. The kid needs to learn to accept the consequences of her actions. If she tells her parents to “F-off and give me money”....no. Not happening.

Well, round one goes to the parents.
Judge Peter Bogaard denied the request for high school tuition and current living expenses at a hearing Tuesday in New Jersey State Superior Court.

@Dutchess_III It seems that the parents haven’t learned the consequences of their actions—and they have fewer excuses.

Regardless, my point was that I noticed the father is a retired police chief, which makes me think he’s likely to be a priggish authoritarian thug who affected his daughter’s psychological development with years of petty demands and asinine “rules” to follow—and it seems that may well be the case.

@Kropotkin, that’s kind of prejudiced thinking isn’t it?

You’re making ridiculous leaps of assumptions @Kropotkin. By your own criteria, I can say the girl is a teenager, which makes me think she’s likely to be acting like a spoiled brat because most teenagers do at one time or another. This is a good lesson for her.

This whole thing is starting to get bizarre and making less sense to me the further along it goes.

Here she says…“She said taking legal action was necessary to ensure that she is able to accomplish her future goals.”

Hell if she just stayed home and live by her parents rules she could most certainly achieve her goals. I can’t imagine what all the legal bills are amounting too either? What irks me the most is this Inglesino couple who are enabling this girl to pull this stunt of hers. They should just butt out of this families problem. I hope they get stuck with their legal bills.

So far the legal bills are $12,000.

@Judi Yes, I’m prejudiced against authoritarian thugs.

@Dutchess_III Hardly, and I don’t think you’re capable of ascertaining or recognising a “ridiculous leap of assumptions”. I admit my point was speculative, but I think it’s plausible and with some validity—it at least offers some explanation for the development of this scenario.

Your dismissal of the girl’s grievances as just some manifestation of typical teenage behaviour is what is ridiculous and an assumption. A daughter trying to sue her own parents is hardly typical behaviour—it’s exceptionally rare, and there’s obviously a long history to motivate something so drastic. Even if she is a spoiled brat, whose fault is that exactly? As for lessons—what’s that? She’ll learn about law?

@Cruiser I agree with you. ‘My house, my rules’ is fairly typical in American households, and everyone knows it.

I answered based on my own personal experience with teenagers. They can be horrible, hateful people for no reason sometimes. They can end up acting like spoiled brats even if they weren’t spoiled.

I agree, suing one’s parents is not typical. But I’ll bet it wasn’t her idea to begin with. She wound up living with a lawyer (her friend’s father) so it isn’t surprising that it took this turn of events with that kind of influence.

As for lessons….if she has to start paying her own damn way, she’ll come to appreciate what she had, and perhaps attempt to get it back. That won’t happen if there are no consequences to her action though, which is what the lawsuit is trying to make happen.

Again, I say, the way a kid turns out is not always the fault of the parents.

@Kropotkin, so you make the assumption that all law enforcement are authoritarian thugs? That is quite a leap.
I knew a guy once who was mugged by two black guys. Does that make it ok that he now hates all black people? Shees.

@Judi No, where did I say they’re all authoritarian thugs? I said it was more likely, and I said that given the context of the daughter’s testimony and that this situation arose in the first place. I do indeed believe it helps to be an authoritarian to have a career in “law enforcement”, and this guy won promotion….

@Kropotkin The dad being a retired Police Chief if anything makes him an expert on spoiled brats. Just imagine how many loud mouthed teenagers he has encountered and how many times he had to keep his cool despite all the insults being spewed at him by these out of control teenage brats. All his words so far seem very measured and sincere and I applaud him for his words and actions so far. As a parent I can’t think of anything I would do differently. If either of my kids think they are independent enough to ignore my rules I will help them pack their things.

@Pandora You’ll notice that I didn’t side with the girl in my answer. I pointed out mistaken assumptions that people were using in their answers and noted that some responses were oversimplifying the issue. In no way is that an endorsement of either side of the case.

@Cruiser I am well aware of the age of majority, and you’ll notice that I mentioned it in my response. Shocking as this may be to you, Wikipedia is not the best source of information when it comes to a strict interpretation of the law. As I said before, many legal milestones are colloquially associated with adulthood. The age of majority is one of them, but that has no legal force. That’s why—as the quote from your own response notes—the age can vary from state to state. It is also why the Wikipedia article talks about adulthood being conceptualized as, rather than identified with or defined as, the age of majority. These are fine distinctions, to be sure; but fine distinctions are what the law is all about.

@SavoirFaire You are obviously smart and capable of rational and original thought and I did not intend to make a mountain out of a molehill….but you came on strong with this statements…“I don’t mean to blow everyone’s minds here, but there’s no such thing as being legally an adult.” when in fact there is such a thing as a “legal adult” recognized in every state in the US and country in the world. Thanks for your clarification of your thought process.

@Cruiser And here’s one more clarification, since it doesn’t seem to have taken the first time: the Wikipedia page you quoted is wrong. Adulthood is not a legal concept. Use the word “adult” in a contract without any clarifying language and you’re setting yourself up to get screwed (to use the technical term).

@SavoirFaire We both used ‘age of maturity’ to qualify our interpretation of “legal adult” and you are still beleaguering the point why? Time to stop beating a dead horse already! Sheesh!

If you commit a certain crime at the age of 17, then commit that same crime at 18, the second crime is treated far more seriously. That’s a legal issue/definition.

The word “adult,” is variable. You can have 30 year olds who don’t act like adults but there has to be some line. 18 is it, in the U.S.

@Cruiser Because you didn’t present it as a qualification. What you said was “in fact there is such a thing as a ‘legal adult’ recognized in every state in the US and country in the world.” This is false, and not presented as a stipulation. If your latest post is meant to clarify what you meant to say, then fine. In any case, my original point wasn’t aimed at you, since your question is not predicated on the mistake I was pointing out. As such, I’m not sure why you were so upset by my point in the first place.

@SavoirFaire Honestly I was not upset…just confused as to why you employ the concept of age of majority in your comment to qualify your answer and precede that statement that there is no such thing as a legal adult??

As a psychologist, I don’t think a good spanking is needed. Corporal punishment isn’t very effective, especially on teenagers. I think the whole family is dysfunctional, and the best resolution would be for all of them to realize how out of hand this has gotten. The parents probably have both moral and legal responsibility to support their daughter even if she’s acting out, but that’s not the real issue. The girl needs to grow up and her parents need to let her.

But by that I don’t mean they should throw her out and watch her fail or that she should have to break up with her boyfriend like her parents want. I mean she needs to learn the value of compromise and the parents need to learn to let go. So I don’t think this is about suing or spanking. I think it’s about normal teenage rebellion that the parents lost control of. They need counseling, not court.

@SavoirFaire Isn’t the age of majority just about legal competence? Age of consent marks competence to consent to sex, and age of majority marks competence to make a contract. It’s just different ways of not being a minor, which just means someone who isn’t legally allowed to make legally binding decisions of a certain kind. Is that right?

I don’t think the question was a literal one @Patton.

As far as “letting go,” she said, “I don’t like your rules, I’m leaving!” and they let her go.

I find it interesting that she spent the first two nights with her boyfriend before she went to her friend’s house. Why didn’t she stay at her boyfriend’s? Sounds like a learning experience to me

@dxs I’m honestly really confused by the way you speak
Let me bring it down to Dick and Jane, using a small random number of willing participants to prove a theory is suspect at best. Life as we lived it with 100% participation with everyone has proven corporal punishment has not increased crime or bred crime, or criminals. Many of the middle-aged people today have tasted some form of corporal punishment and are more together than younger people who were just made to sit in a corner. Even the talking heads when speaking of certain crime indexes shrinking never said it was because the belt leather was not used to correct bad behavior; it was always due to the birth rate of that generation, economics, etc. The numbers game only works on the feeble minded. Now, was that clear enough or should I simply it even more?

@Hypocrisy_Central “Many of the middle-aged people today have tasted some form of corporal punishment and are more together (sic) than younger people who were just made to sit in a corner.”

Evidence? And why is “toughness” (not that you’ve even defined this trait) something to be valued?

“Even the talking heads when speaking of certain crime indexes shrinking never said it was because the belt leather was not used to correct bad behavior . . .”

Straw man. No one but you has brought up crime.

Corporal punishment may have long-term negative effects on children’s intelligence

Let me guess. You were subjected to corporal punishment, and it’s not done you any harm! LOL.

maybe he was the designated whipping boy

@Kropotkin Straw man. No one but you has brought up crime.
So you introduce not only a straw man but one of paper? That article said nothing really. A sampling of children in an African school, no numbers given or how long into adulthood those children were tracked.

While overall performance on the executive-functioning tasks was similar in the younger children from both schools, the Grade 1 children in the non-punitive school scored significantly higher than those in the punitive school
Same type of parlor shuffle game anyone can play. I want to show bike riding is dangerous all I have to do is include data that connect a set number of BMX stunt riders or those doing tricks on bikes with how many end up at the ER and conclude, 4 out of 11 riders end up in the ER within any 5 years span, so bike riding is dangerous. The only thing they could point to was grade 1, what about the others?

Let me guess. You were subjected to corporal punishment, and it’s not done you any harm! LOL.
Actually I didn’t. Did not hate my mother, did not grow up violent, and certainly was not made retarded because I got spankings mostly when I truly deserved them. Guess children got too fragile these days.~~

”. . . and certainly was not made retarded because I got spankings mostly when I truly deserved them.”

@Hypocrisy_Central So—what is your excuse?

^ I have nothing to make an excuse for…..you?

@Hypocrisy_Central Why don’t you ask the people who are victims of that kind of abuse then. Do you have any statistics on that? Do the majority of them think that they deserve beating and that it helps them? And who are Dick and Jane?

@Hypocrisy_Central

You frequently amaze me with a seemnigly complete disrespect for real life evidence around you. (This is not about God…. So please don’t take it there, this time…)

There have been so many debates on spanking and punishment on fluther, that you cannot deny there is a lot of evidence to indicate the negative effect of spanking / corporal pusihment on the development of children. Now you can come to different conclusion than others, after reading that evidence… Denying its existence, however, is just intellectual hypocrism…

Looking fr scientific evidence:
try this, or this or just this

but muh bible~

^^ Hypocrism should be a word… (Too late to edit.)

@whitenoise Hypocracy is the noun.

*hypocrisy

Stupid noun.

@ragingloli You’re right; it didn’t look quite right. Way too early in the morning for me!

“I never met a man so narrow that he can spell a word in only one way.”
– Mark Twane

@CWOTUS
Twane?! Are you testing me, Satan?

OLO!!

@CWOTUS Or woman?

Extrapolating from what he wrote, ”‘Man’ is just another way of spelling ‘woman’.”

And yet…

@Hypocrisy_Central Why you engage with people who are so blatantly disrespectful of everything they don’t agree with is beyond me.

Corporal punishment doesn’t cause harm, abuse does. I know many extremely smart people who were punished with a spankings and are fully functioning, well-adjusted adults in professional careers and financially solvent. Nor are any of these people anti-social in the least!

Most people I know got a spanking about once every six months or less, for a major infraction, and with intelligent parents who explain the punishment, it’s not harmful in the slightest, except maybe to their pride.

^ Except that all of your anecdotes contradict the evidence. We’ve gone over this many times here. The reason psychology discourages corporal punishment (the good old kind that you are comfortable with) is not because they all have just decided to sing the same tune here. If you smell conspiracy (like many do with climate change), you should do more than provide your anecdotes.

@KNOWITALL Is talking about me again!

@hominid Pyschology discourages corporal punishment because PARENTS aren’t able to control themselves. In my area, you can ‘opt out’ for your child to receive corporal punishment in school.

“A variety of situational factors, such as the parent/child relationship, can moderate the effects of corporal punishment. Furthermore, studying the true effects of corporal punishment requires drawing a boundary line between punishment and abuse. This is a difficult thing to do, especially when relying on parents’ self-reports of their discipline tactics and interpretations of normative punishment.” (See link #2 below)

“The two important reasons for the second type of myth are that the harmful effects do not become visible right away and that only a small percentage of spanked children experience obviously harmful effects.” from @whitenoise‘s link.

Fabulous bi-partisan article.
http://debatewise.org/debates/547-corporal-punishment-should-be-reintroduced/

Baumrind et al. suggest that those parents whose emotional make-up may cause them to cross the line between appropriate corporal punishment and physical abuse should be counseled not to use corporal punishment as a technique to discipline their children. But, that other parents could use mild to moderate corporal punishment effectively. “The fact that some parents punish excessively and unwisely is not an argument, however, for counseling all parents not to punish at all.”
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2002/06/spanking.aspx

@KNOWITALL – Better. Thank you.

But what I am asking for is evidence that hitting a child is more effective than other methods of teaching children, which do not have the negative effects. It’s also interesting that you use parents’ inability to control their hitting and often move into more serious abuse as a reason why we should consider gentler hitting to be acceptable. One of the reasons is of course that parents escalate their hitting. It is one of the reasons people don’t hit their kids any more.

Let’s try this: if you are a parent and your intention is to teach a child that you are their protector, that you would never hurt them, and they are safe, why would you hurt them? If you are a parent and you want to teach your children that hitting people is not the correct way to solve problems, why would you hit them to solve your problem? If you want to teach your children self respect, and want them to never allow themselves to be hit by a partner or anyone in their life, why would you teach them that people who love them may hit them for their own good?

I’m honestly confused. There is nothing more disgusting than the thought of an adult hitting a child. Most of the arguments I have heard here are full of “well, it’s not all that bad if you don’t let it get too bad”. Well, what a failure of imagination. What a way to announce that you’ve given up being a parent.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on men hitting their wives, or younger adults hitting senior citizens. I am not talking about really hard hits – no broken bones, no blood – just good old hitting to teach them. Are you ok with this?

@hominid I’m not really interested in trying to change your mind on this subject.

At least, I can take some comfort in the knowledge that in most of the modern world, corporal punishment, including spanking is forbidden by law. I can merely hope that the US will see the light as well, one day.

@KNOWITALL
To quote the link a bit wider:
”This, in turn, raises the question why most Americans defend spanking, and several reasons are offered for it. The two important reasons for the second type of myth are that the harmful effects do not become visible right away and that only a small percentage of spanked children experience obviously harmful effects. The paper concludes by noting that although the principle of respect for minority rights and family privacy conflict with the principle that it is wrong to treat children in ways that might threaten their physical and mental health, there is enough evidence to seek an accommodation between our commitment to individual freedom and our commitment to the well-being of children and of society. Contains 30 references. (BAC)”

As you can read: it mentions ’obviously’ harmful. The article itself also concludes that on a balance there are good reasons to not use/condone corporal punishment.

We don’t allow it with inmates or employees either… So why do we with children?

Because traditionally, children, like women, were seen not as people, but as property.
And tradition dies slowly.

@ragingloli – Agreed. But why is it unacceptable to hit your wife but perfectly fine to hit a child?

Traditions do not die at the same speed.
Because children are under the authority of their parents for 18 years, this acts as shield to protect the abusive practices of parents, while adult women have a lot more opportunities to just leave.
And it is not as if hitting your wife is universally unacceptable today. Consider “Christian Domestic Discipline” or how women are treated in the middle east.
And even in the west, the condemnation of hitting your wife is less than a century old, as is the woman’s right to vote in elections.

@Dutchess_III I used the title to segue. Sue me. Anyway, they didn’t let her go. That’s just a play on words. They pushed her out. Letting go means learning that your child has to slowly grow up, which means they get to make more of their own decisions (and consequently, their own mistakes).

And why didn’t the girl stay with her boyfriend? I don’t know. None of us do. Maybe she realized that she wasn’t ready for cohabitation. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong to stay with him, though.

@whitenoise This is a list of countries where it is illegal. Considering that there are 196 countries I’d have to disagree that it’s illegal in “most” of the modern world. Don’t know why it’s listing the countries twice but too tired to edit. Just got up. This came from wiki
2010 Albania
1989 Austria Austria
2000 Bulgaria Bulgaria
2010[4] Republic of the Congo Congo, Republic of
2008 Costa Rica Costa Rica
1999 Croatia Croatia
1994 Cyprus Cyprus
1997 Denmark Denmark
1983 Finland Finland
2000 Germany Germany
2006 Greece Greece
2013[5] Honduras Honduras
2004 Hungary Hungary
2003 Iceland Iceland
2000 [a] Israel Israel
2010 Kenya Kenya
1998 Latvia Latvia
2008 Liechtenstein Liechtenstein
2008 Luxembourg Luxembourg
2008 Moldova Moldova
2007 Netherlands Netherlands
2007 New Zealand New Zealand
1987[7][b] Norway Norway
2010 Poland Poland
2007 Portugal Portugal
2004 Romania Romania
2011[10] South Sudan South Sudan
2007 Spain Spain
1979[c] Sweden
2007 Togo Togo
2010[12] Tunisia Tunisia
2004 Ukraine Ukraine
2007 Uruguay Uruguay
2007 Venezuela Venezuela

Because I was talking about the modern world, I limited the base group and from that this list is a majority.

I admit that my view is culturally biased.

@dxs Do the majority of them think that they deserve beating and that it helps them?
Hardly anyone I know thought that they deserved to be punished when they were. The real of it, we are not speaking of beatings, anyone who can’t tell the difference from a true beating and a spanking more than likely can’t tell the different between flying and being shot from a cannon.

@whitenoise There have been so many debates on spanking and punishment on fluther, that you cannot deny there is a lot of evidence to indicate the negative effect of spanking / corporal pusihment[sic] on the development of children
Sure there have. For as much evidence there are in support, there is as many or more that says it isn’t. What you can’t doctor is life, seeing how those who lived through spankings actually are speaks more than a small sampling of participants in a study.

@Hypocrisy_Central Hardly anyone I know thought that they deserved to be punished when they were.
I will go out on a limb and vouch for the majority of us delinquents who thought we could get away with whatever….and the moment we got caught/busted….we swore we were innocent…we found God and begged for a second chance. That belt on my ass proved to me the choice I made was not a good one and elevated my desire to not repeat that same dumb move to a higher level.

I know a guy that – as a kid – used to cross the railway tracks near our house with his eyes closed, out of fear for trains.

He’s still around, for as far as I know. It doesn’t make that type of crossing tracks a wise choice, though.

Trying to change your minds on this topic is like trying to fix a broken watch by shaking it. I am not even trying anymore.

I will on the other hand also not hide that I find it repulsive and barbaric to willingly inflict pain on a child under your care. More so, since there are so many other alternatives out there that have better results in general.

To insinuate that there is scientific ambiguity on this topic is just nonsense. But then again, if you have an interest to believe in whatever you believe in, confirmation bias pops up and true reasoning seems the first victim. Awfully akin to the global heating discussion, I fear.

Re @hypo

@whitenoise There have been so many debates on spanking and punishment on fluther, that you cannot deny there is a lot of evidence to indicate the negative effect of spanking / corporal pusihment[sic] on the development of children
Sure there have. For as much evidence there [is] in support, there is as many or more that says it isn’t. What you can’t doctor is life, seeing how those who lived through spankings actually are speaks more [sic] than a small sampling of participants in a study.

That is the wonder of statistics. A proper sample does actually say more about the population than random anecdotes from individuals.

Your remark on ‘as many or more that says it isn’t’ is just not true. At least not if you focus on research with verifiable observations with proper validity.

Spankings don’t inflict pain.

^ Never hear any kids say that.

And being stabbed does not make you bleed.

@Dutchess_III
The spanking that doesn’t hurt is best left to ‘between adults’.
(Click here for some spanking that I like)

@Dutchess_III: “Spankings don’t inflict pain.”

Well, could you explain what spankings do? What is the intention/lesson? First, maybe you could answer the questions I asked above. In particular, I’m interested in the “if you want to teach” questions, as well as your feelings on hitting women, etc.

Ok, what does time out do? What does a serious talking to do? They reinforce your message. Spankings simply do it in a physical way. A swat on a well padded, cloth or diapered covered butt does NOT hurt. I used to cup my hand so it made a loud “POP!” which startled them.

How does hitting grown women because you’re pissed compare with swatting a toddler who just tried to stick a fork in an electrical outlet?

Swats are effective. They send an immediate message.

@Dutchess_III – Let’s try to stay a little focused here. Let me rephrase what I believe you are saying.

You are claiming that spanking them doesn’t hurt – it just startles them. Does it startle them any more than a raising your voice? And it sounds as if spankings are done only when a child is in danger, such as when they are about to “stick a fork in an electrical outlet”. Is this correct? Let me know if I have this correct, and then answer the questions…

1. If you are a parent and your intention is to teach a child that you are their protector, that you would never hurt them, and they are safe, why would you hurt them?

2. If you are a parent and you want to teach your children that hitting people is not the correct way to solve problems, why would you hit them to solve your problem?

3. If you want to teach your children self respect, and want them to never allow themselves to be hit by a partner or anyone in their life, why would you teach them that people who love them may hit them for their own good?

If you could reference the numbers (#1, #2, #3) when responding it would be helpful.

And you didn’t answer the question on your thoughts about men hitting their wives, or younger adults hitting senior citizens. You responded with this…

@Dutchess_III: “How does hitting grown women because you’re pissed compare with swatting a toddler who just tried to stick a fork in an electrical outlet?”

Please elaborate. There are many assumptions that you are making about corporal punishment of children that have not yet been explained to me, so your response to the wife hitting question comes off as “it’s just obvious”. For me the difference is not obvious. That is why I’m asking you to explain it to me.

@Dutchess_III: “Swats are effective. They send an immediate message.”

What is that message?

Yes, it startles them more than anything. I just asked my 35 year old daughter if they hurt. She said they didn’t, but she remembers they were LOUD!

Yes, I reserved swats for dangerous situations and for blatant disobedience. My most common method was time out.

Your points:

1) They don’t hurt.

2) It’s the context surrounding the swat. It was a discipline. I didn’t lash out in anger, which I assume is what a kid would be doing if they hit other kids. As the kids got a little older, the spankings became more “formal.”

3) There is no comparison between hitting a partner, lashing out in anger, and receiving a disciplinary swat. They are two completely separate things. When a person is abusive they hit with the intent of causing injury. They slap and punch in the face and pummel the body. Swats on the well padded butt are not intended to cause injury, and they don’t.

My kids have not wound up with abusive partners, nor are they abusive to their partners.

The message is DON’T DO IT AGAIN and it’s reinforced by the startling swat.

1. If I take your word for it that some spanking doesn’t hurt, and it just startles, what is the reason for using this to startle when a child is about to stick a fork in an outlet rather than raising your voice? In fact, I can’t figure out how someone would manage to hit a child who was about to do this without possibly causing the fork to enter the outlet faster. I think you when you mentioned the outlet/fork thing, you were probably describing something else. Is it possible that the hitting happens after? Anyway, you also describe above that it was not “reserved for dangerous situations and for blatant disobedience”. So, I’m first interested in the spanking-as-startle method for dangerous situations. The “blatant disobedience” is also very mysterious, and very disturbing.

2. You had a problem. Your kid was ____ [fill in the blank]. You resolved your problem by hitting the child. So, are you not teaching your child that adults solve their problems by hitting people? And you describe that as the kids got older “the spankings became more ‘formal’. Could you elaborate here? And what advantage does hitting have over using words? Where does the learning come in here? I’m only seeing that some behavior results in a spanking.

3. In the non-spanking world we teach that our bodies are our own and that nobody is to touch us without permission, and nobody is ever allowed to hit us. It seems to me that an adult who had never been hit by someone who loves them would be significantly-less tolerant to the idea that it was ok.

In areas of the world/country that no longer hit their wives or their children, it’s difficult to understand the desire to give up and just hit kids. It seems to teach the complete opposite of what we are attempting to teach our children.

So, regarding the problems you have attempted to resolve with your children – can you imagine that there may have been another way? Or was it the overall approach to parenting that meant that only external threat of (“non-painful”??) spanking would result in desired behavior? And is “obedience” more valued in the middle east and midwest/south? In all of the things that I would love to allow to flourish in my children, “obedience” has never even crossed my mind as one of them.

[edit: disclaimer – I am involved in absurd multitasking right now. Ugh. Sorry. I hope I was somewhat coherent here. I’ll be back later…]

1) Because it makes a much bigger impression. It does. And the fork in the outlet was a fictional example of when I might use physical discipline. No need to take it seriously.
....1B I said it WAS reserved for dangerous situations and blatant disobedience. For example, if I said “Corrie, go clean your room,” and she said, “NO!!” and stuck her tongue out at me she would instantly receive a swat. I can’t remember a time that they were disrespectful in that way. But perhaps they were, one time, and they never did it again.

2) Again you’re making invalid comparisons.
....2B Where does the learning come in when you give time out or when you yell (which I tried very hard not to do.)
...2C, Making the spankings more formal as in having them come “front and center,” calmly and seriously talking to them about what they had done wrong, then a swat to reinforce it.

3) The same hand that loves them and fees them is the same hand that will discipline them.

If your arguments were valid, I’d be a mess today. We got spankings when we were kids. I think I was 10 when I got the last one. That day I suddenly realized that they didn’t hurt so I didn’t cry. When I was sent to my room, as I always was after a spanking, I just stood in the doorway for about 10 minutes then asked if I could come out. Never got another spanking again.

@Dutchess_III: “1) Because it makes a much bigger impression. It does.”

Oh, I’m not doubting that at all. The impression that it leaves, however, seems to be a troubling one to me.

@Dutchess_III: “1B I said it WAS reserved for dangerous situations and blatant disobedience. For example, if I said “Corrie, go clean your room,” and she said, “NO!!” and stuck her tongue out at me she would instantly receive a swat. I can’t remember a time that they were disrespectful in that way. But perhaps they were, one time, and they never did it again.”

So, what do you think that swat taught Corrie? What lesson did she learn?

@Dutchess_III: “2B Where does the learning come in when you give time out or when you yell (which I tried very hard not to do.)”

I have never given a time out. It doesn’t fit into my parenting style, and I see no use in it at all.

Re: Yelling – this is very relevant to this discussion. Parents are humans and occasionally we yell. This is an escalation that is a result of our own frustrations. People take out those frustrations on people. One of the reasons that the medical community recommends against corporal punishment is precisely because of this. @KNOWITALL was correct in stating that some parents can’t control themselves. If words are your tools, an occasional stressful moment might result in a moment of yelling. If hitting is your tool, an occaional stressful moment might result in more aggressive spanking.

@Dutchess_III: “2C, Making the spankings more formal as in having them come “front and center,” calmly and seriously talking to them about what they had done wrong, then a swat to reinforce it.”

If you were able to draw the connection between the words that were spoken and the swat, then you should be able to make that connection for me now. Provide an example if you need to. I have no idea what you are talking about. None. Words and hitting have no connection at all. You might as well have played Christmas carols on a trombone to “reinforce it”.

@Dutchess_III: “3) The same hand that loves them and fees them is the same hand that will discipline them.”

Not sure what that means.

@Dutchess_III: “If your arguments were valid, I’d be a mess today. We got spankings when we were kids. I think I was 10 when I got the last one. That day I suddenly realized that they didn’t hurt so I didn’t cry. When I was sent to my room, as I always was after a spanking, I just stood in the doorway for about 10 minutes then asked if I could come out. Never got another spanking again.”

Ok. So you then hit your kids. Is that all you learned from those spankings? Or am I missing something completely.

There have to be parents who spank their children for being disobedient, and all the other heinous thing children do—like prodding cutlery into electric sockets. (Happens all the time. Not a sign of a negligent parent at all. Not a misleadingly vivid and emotionalistic scenario whatsoever!)

Where else will the next generation of reactionaries, authoritarians, and Republican voters come from?

@Kropotkin Just chill. None of my kids ever actually stuck a fork in a socket. It was just an example.

So, what do you think that swat taught Corrie? What lesson did she learn? She would learn not to EVER act that way again!

What I learned from the swats was to not repeat the kind of behavior that earned me a spanking in the first place. The WORST part about them, though, was having to go to my room and wait for my father to come home! The dreadful anticipation of a spanking was far worse than the actual spanking.

I’m a healthy, well rounded individual. I don’t hit to make a point to other adults. My husband doesn’t hit me. According to your theory, though, I should be in an abusive, dysfunctional relationship because I was spanked as a discipline when I was a kid, but I’m not. My kids are not in dysfunctional, abusive relationships either.

@Dutchess_III: “What I learned from the swats was to not repeat the kind of behavior that earned me a spanking in the first place.”

So, you learned blind obedience. You learned to do what it takes to avoid being hit. I’m feeling nauseous.

@Dutchess_III: “The WORST part about them, though, was having to go to my room and wait for my father to come home! The dreadful anticipation of a spanking was far worse than the actual spanking.”

I’m so sorry. Yikes.

@Dutchess_III: “I’m a healthy, well rounded individual. I don’t hit to make a point to other adults. My husband doesn’t hit me.”

I don’t doubt any of that.

@Dutchess_III: “According to your theory, though, I should be in an abusive, dysfunctional relationship because I was spanked as a discipline when I was a kid, but I’m not. My kids are not in dysfunctional, abusive relationships either.”

First of all, I haven’t put together any theory. I’m asking questions. It’s completely mind blowing to me. I have no doubt that someone can grow up with intact self-respect, be a critical thinker, and be ok if they were raised being hit. But it seems that this would be despite all of the abuse – not because of it.

I learned to to evaluate my behavior and control myself. To think before I acted. It was just part of the overall goal we have for our kids to become self sufficient. We teach them what is, and what is not, acceptable.

It wasn’t abusive. Abuse comes about when an adult loses control. What WAS abusive, and affected me far, far more was my mother screaming at me. :( But she never hit us.

@Dutchess_III: “I learned to to evaluate my behavior and control myself. To think before I acted. It was just part of the overall goal we have for our kids to become self sufficient. We teach them what is, and what is not, acceptable.”

…and hitting the kids comes in where? I will ask again: Can you imagine any possible way to raise a child and achieve the same result without hitting them? And why do you feel that medical organizations recommend against corporal punishment?

@hominid What discipline do you use to alter your kid’s behavior?

Yes you can raise a kid without spankings. It just wasn’t something I really thought about then. Perhaps I would do it differently today. My point is that to grossly exaggerate an action just to make a point isn’t right.

remote controlled electro shock collar.

“Just chill. None of my kids ever actually stuck a fork in a socket. It was just an example.”

@Dutchess_III You’re really full of the faulty inferences. I know it was an example. I was mocking it. It was a stupid example.

Nor did anything @hominid write imply that you should necessarily be in an abusive relationship.

I’m now wondering if spanking affects critical thinking skills! Oh wait—It does!

Lowers IQ
Slows cognitive development
Has negative effects on children’s intelligence

(I could cite many more.)

But it’s not done you any harm, so it’s okay really.

@Dutchess_III: “Yes you can raise a kid without spankings. It just wasn’t something I really thought about then. Perhaps I would do it differently today.”

That’s fair. My parents have expressed regrets about how they have handled certain things (circumcision, how they handled the divorce, etc). And I will likely regret many of the things I have done when raising my kids.

@Dutchess_III: “My point is that to grossly exaggerate an action just to make a point isn’t right.”

I’m not sure I’m exaggerating it. I’m asking questions and you are providing answers.

@Dutchess_III: ”@hominid What discipline do you use to alter your kid’s behavior?”

This might be difficult to explain. I have an entirely different relationship with my kids. I see them as full-blown people. I have three kids (5, 8, and 11 years old) and they are each 20% of the family. They each have responsibilities that are developmentally-appropriate, and we handle challenges as they come.

Every Saturday morning, we vacuum and clean the house before starting our day. There are times that my 8-year-old might complain about having to vacuum. But my approach with him is to make sure he understands that our family and household works because we are all expected to contribute. If he refuses to do his job, we are unable to move forward with our day.

If there are consequences – there are consequences that are natural and related to the behavior. Last year, my then 4-year-old wrote his name on the window sill. I explained to him why this is not ok, and showed him where we keep the “magic eraser”, which cleans surfaces like this. He quickly erased it and hasn’t done it since.

I don’t know where to focus when describing my parenting style or technique. It is based on the relationship I have with my kids, and is grounded in respect and equality.

The most important things I want my children to learn is self-respect, an understanding of fairness, to base respect on mutual respect and not fear, independence, critical thinking, responsibility, etc. My house is based on positive reinforcement, creative play, shared responsibility, and love. There is no room for authoritarianism in my house. And there is no room for humiliation or hitting.

@Dutchess_III
“I think I was 10 when I got the last [spanking]. That day I suddenly realized that they didn’t hurt, so I didn’t cry.”

That’s probably seven, eight years of believing that once in a while, your parents deliberately hurt you.

^ I suppose I missed this. @Dutchess_III – so the spanking stopped once you stopped crying? So, is the crying part of the discipline? This looks an awful lot like other types of abuse.
From your perspective, what is causing the crying? It’s not pain, right?

Putting them in time out makes them unhappy, too. When they’re unhappy, they cry. When you’re unhappy to learn to avoid the behavior that caused the unhappiness.
What would you do if your kid refused to clean up the window sill?

When my daughter was about 3 I had taught her to write her name. It was spelled CORY then. Then we realized that was the masculine spelling so we changed it to “Corrie” when she was 5. Anyway, she couldn’t read or write, but she could make those symbols and knew they had something to do with her.
One day I walked into the living room and “CORY” was written on the wall with crayon. I said, “Corrie! Come here!”
She came scampering in. I pointed at the wall and said, “We don’t write on walls! We write on paper!”
She looked at the wall, looked at me, and said, “How did chu know it was me?”
I had to struggle SO HARD to keep a straight face! I had to leave the room so she wouldn’t see me laugh! Parenting is SO hard sometimes!

@whitenoise Trying to change your minds on this topic is like trying to fix a broken watch by shaking it. I am not even trying anymore.
You would be thinking you are wasting your time on a broken watch if you were mistaken on how the watch worked; if you figured you had a Timex in your hand but did not know the difference from it and a stopwatch, you’d swear the stopwatch was busted.

I’m really not trying to change his mind. I respect his philosophy and I certainly respect his parenting technique. The only issue I have is in grossly exaggerating an action to make a point.

@Dutchess_III: “Putting them in time out makes them unhappy, too.”

(I mentioned above that I do not – and would not – use timeouts.)

@Dutchess_III: “When they’re unhappy, they cry. When you’re unhappy to learn to avoid the behavior that caused the unhappiness.”

Why is a child unhappy if they are being spanked, which doesn’t hurt?

@Dutchess_III: “What would you do if your kid refused to clean up the window sill?”

In order for me to answer this, I want to make sure that I’m clear – my goal in that situation is not for him to follow my orders. My goal is to teach him what how to resolve problems that you have created. It’s to understand that making a mess requires work to clean up, and that nobody is going to clean it up for him. It’s about learning fairness, work, and personal responsibility. While ultimately I would have to remind him of the natural consequences of this, such as the inability to move on to fun activities until this was done. And we use consistency and a united front.

But overall, I don’t get much pushback from my kids. If I do, it’s only from the 2 boys, and we’re able to work through it. It’s also helpful to be mindful of the patterns. My 8-year-old gets very cranky when he is hungry or tired. So, this might mean making sure he has both. We all have our moments. My children are allowed to have theirs, and they know that I can have mine. I’m expressive about my feelings around them and will apologize sincerely when I have been impatient or unfair with them.

Also, as I have discussed in another thread, my three kids have real relationships that do not involve my wife and I as “middlemen”. They are so loving and supportive of each other. But they also will express frustration if someone is not pulling their weight or being disruptive. There is some peer pressure here that minimizes some of the possible head-butting we might have to face as parents.

It’s not perfect, and it is a challenge.

@Dutchess_III: “I’m really not trying to change his mind. I respect his philosophy and I certainly respect his parenting technique. The only issue I have is in grossly exaggerating an action to make a point.”

I hope you’re not referring to me again with the “grossly exaggerating” comment. I can’t see one thing that I have exaggerated.

Anyway, I’m not trying to change your mind. You no longer have young kids, so it doesn’t matter. I just hope that if someone you knew does have kids and they came to you with a problem, that you might ask them to consider that there is another way.

Why is a child unhappy if they are being spanked, which doesn’t hurt? because it’s a physical representation of the parent being unhappy with their behavior. Screaming and yelling is another representation of a parent being unhappy, and I consider screaming and yelling to be more abusive than a controlled spanking.

As to your last point, both of my kids are very reserved in their physical discipline. Not because of their up bringing, but because of the internet. And that’s a good thing.

And I still stand behind my statement that you are grossly exaggerating spankings and it’s really wrong to do that.

Night for now/

@Dutchess_III: “And I still stand behind my statement that you are grossly exaggerating spankings and it’s really wrong to do that.”

I will accept this statement if you provide an example of me doing so. So far you have been unwilling to. Also, remember – I live in the Northeast. Our exposure to this whole thing is an occasional why-did-I-come-here trip to Walmart. Or it’s discussed in a sociological/anthropological way in college. It’s all very exotic. To be “talking” with someone who supports this is a treat in a way. I have tons of questions.

@hominid do you have kids of your own? If so what are their ages as I am interested to better understand your POV on this subject.

@Cruiser

If I remember correctly from @hominid‘s previous manifestation on fluther, he has two children around 8 to 10 years old. I May be mixing things up, though.

I happen to have two children of 11 years old. They are both boys.

I have rarely used punishment, if ever. Honestly, I cannot remember I have. That doesn’t mean I am not strict though… There are consequences to any of their misbehaviour.

The thing is… Misbehaviour already has a consequence… They may lose respect of their peirs, or from their teachers, or from their parents, in case they are inconsiderate, for instance. I don’t need to punish them…. All I need to do, is to help them see those consequences. That works for me so far. Punishment would actually delude the message.

@Cruiser @whitenoise

If you read this post, you should see that @hominid has ”...three kids (5, 8, and 11 years old)....”.

@Brian1946
I missed that post.

Thanks.

@Cruiser:

From one of your earlier posts:

“Corporal punishment reinforces shame of the event they are being punished for and IMO the worst way to punish and correct an undesired behavior in the child. In my experience that undesired behaviors root cause is a breakdown in the parents behavior in the home. Lead by example and praise and reward healthy happy behaviors. Simple no belts or hair brushes or verbal insults required.”

From your post above ^^^^^:

“That belt on my ass proved to me the choice I made was not a good one and elevated my desire to not repeat that same dumb move to a higher level.”

Did you change your mind?

One of the core failures of corporal punishment is the fact that it teaches a child to not do something, not because the action the child takes is bad, but because it gets punished for it.
It gives actions a consequence, that is disconnected from the action itself.
To use the “sticking a fork into the electric outlet” example, the child learns that putting a fork into the socket leads to being hit by the parents.
What it does not learn is the actual consequence of sticking a fork into the socket, namely that it leads to electrocution.

@Cruiser – I have three kids: 5 (boy), 8 (boy), and 11 (girl).

@whitenoise No I did not change my mind. The belt I got as a kid made up my mind that I would never ever do that to my own kids.

Belts?

@hominid I’ll try to explain. Have you ever raised your voice at your kids? I’ll assume you have. Then I can go off on a rant about how you scream at your kids and how horribly, mentally abusive screaming at your kids is. It can scar them for life. I should know. My mom used to scream. All you teach them is that the way to handle things is to scream at people.

In other words, according to your arguments, a controlled spanking is to beating is what raising your voice is to screaming.

Raggy…what you’re referring to is external control vs internal control. Toddlers are controlled by external control. In other words, they don’t do something because they will get in trouble. They don’t know anything else. They haven’t developed a sense of morality, or right from wrong.

As a parent, it’s our goal (or should be) to gradually get them to a point where they don’t do certain things because it’s wrong, not because they’ll get in trouble.

Many prisoners have never developed that internal control. That’s why they are perpetually under the thumb of external control.

An interesting question to ask an adult is “Would you ever steal a car, and why or why not?”
I asked a guy I was dating once that question and he said, “No, because I would get in trouble.” WRONG answer! We didn’t last long.

@Dutchess_III The last time I got popped was when I called mom a B-witch at age 14 I believe. I’m pretty sure I thought I was cool since my besty was in the car. Without pausing a beat, my mom popped me right in the mouth while driving. Of course, the whole ‘don’t EVER talk to my like that again’ conversation, besty had to go home, I was grounded.

For me, it was an effective lesson not to call my mother names again, and I didn’t.

OMG! I can’t even imagine EVER calling my mom a name! Ever! The spankings I got didn’t hurt, but the beating I would have gotten after that one would have!

@Dutchess_III You comment about the old BF’s answer reminded me of a quote of a local politician that is on a commercial on the radio here where he says….
“Don’t do the right thing because there is a penalty for doing the wrong thing…..do the right thing because it is the right thing to do!”

I ask a similar question about stealing at all my interviews with prospective new hires and you learn a lot about a person by their answer.

@Dutchess_III Yeah, that’s the whole point. I got hit with a clothes hanger, a leather strap and a shoe once, too. I was never hurt, nothing except my pride. If anything it taught me to control my temper.

You won’t see me out shooting people in theater’s or schools, or anything, because my mother taught me discipline. No means no, stop means stop, etc… She always told me what I was being punished for and why, and half the time tears would roll down her face for having to spank me.

@Dutchess_III: ”@hominid I’ll try to explain. Have you ever raised your voice at your kids? I’ll assume you have.”

No assumption necessary. If you read what I wrote above, you will see that I did say that I have raised my voice at my kids.

@Dutchess_III: “Then I can go off on a rant about how you scream at your kids and how horribly, mentally abusive screaming at your kids is.”

Bingo. And here is where you let us know that you are missing the point.
Note, however, that I have addressed this point multiple times above. So, at this point, I’m beginning to think that you are either not reading my comments, or having as much difficulty understanding what I am writing as I with you.

Let’s parse what you are saying, because you got a bit sloppy here. I’ll do you the favor of putting this into a more coherent position….

a. spanking = calm parenting
b. hard spanking = abuse

c. speaking = calm parenting
d. raising your voice = abuse
e. screaming at your kids = abuse

So, if this is what you are saying, please confirm.

@Dutchess_III: “It can scar them for life.”

The “it” here is what should be cleared up once you define what you are talking about. Please reference a – e above. And when you do, define what you mean by “raising your voice” and then “screaming at”.

@Dutchess_III: “I should know. My mom used to scream. All you teach them is that the way to handle things is to scream at people.”

I couldn’t agree more. Verbally abusing – whether it be loud screaming or quiet humiliation and derision is horrible abuse. Trying to make the connection to this conversation. Help me out.

@Dutchess_III: “In other words, according to your arguments, a controlled spanking is to beating is what raising your voice is to screaming.”

I think you need to go back and read my comments. When I raise my voice or are short with my kids, it is a problem. A big one. (Listen to what I am saying, this is critical and will go a long way in clearing up some of the confusion you have.) Very rarely when I have had a bad day and I am inpatient and raise my voice with my kid, it is not my chosen parenting style. It’s exactly the thing I want to avoid. But when a parent uses spanking, that is exactly what they want to do. When they veer from their intended calm parenting style, the equivalent of raising their voice is hitting harder (abuse).

tool = voice, failure = raising voice, being impatient
tool = hand, failure = stronger hitting/abuse

And like I said above, when this has happened, it becomes yet another time to sit with my kids and talk. I apologize, and we discuss our feelings. How did they feel? How did I feel? How do I feel now? I ask them for suggestions on how I could have handled things differently. You’d be surprised at the response I get.

So, is this what you were talking about, or did you have something else in mind?

@KNOWITALL: “Yeah, that’s the whole point. I got hit with a clothes hanger, a leather strap and a shoe once, too. I was never hurt, nothing except my pride. If anything it taught me to control my temper.”

I still don’t understand this “pride” thing. And again, if it doesn’t hurt, you might as well replace spanking (a symbolic beating) with…jumping rope…or anything, right?

@KNOWITALL: “You won’t see me out shooting people in theater’s or schools, or anything, because my mother taught me discipline.”

She taught you obedience. Not right from wrong.

@KNOWITALL: “No means no, stop means stop, etc.”

But it’s external. It requires an external force, rather than encouraging the growth of an internal compass that understands right and wrong. This ties into the whole carrot/stick situation with religion, and why many religious people can’t imagine how and why nontheists are able to act ethically.

@KNOWITALL: “She always told me what I was being punished for and why”

I would love to hear an example of something you did that needed “punishment”. I suspect you simply needed something else.

@KNOWITALL: ”and half the time tears would roll down her face for having to spank me.”

I can imagine. If she was raised to believe this was the way to best help her child and never questioned it, it must be torture. The mere thought of hitting my child (or anyone hitting a child) makes me nauseous. This isn’t hyperbole. I am feeling sick.

@Dutchess_III: “As a parent, it’s our goal (or should be) to gradually get them to a point where they don’t do certain things because it’s wrong, not because they’ll get in trouble.”

…And we have reached a point where we agree. That’s one of the reasons I oppose corporal punishment, which seems designed to produce the opposite result.

I’m not sure what your point was in the post above. My comparing raising your voice to screaming was an example of grossly exaggerating the act @hominid. Raising your voice is NOT the same thing as screaming, and for me to continue to insist that it is would be wrong.

The point of spanking is not to hit hard. It’s to simply swat. It’s a mildly physical reinforcement of the message you’re getting across.

If the kids ever did something that really, really made me angry I’d sent them to their room for a few minutes so I could calm down before I administered a spanking. Because ya. If you’re angry you’re liable to hit harder than you ever intended.

…corporal punishment, which seems designed to produce the opposite result. Anything taken to extreme can produce the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

I remember sitting in a crowded waiting room once and this mother had a two year old that she could NOT control. The kid was crawling under and over chairs, bugging people and the mom just kept saying “That is not acceptable behavior, Honey Boo Boo. Stop that. That is not acceptable behavior.” The kid flat ignored her. But hey…she never gave the kid a swat so it’s all good.

@KNOWITALL: “For me, it was an effective lesson not to call my mother names again, and I didn’t.”

Exactly. You were taught that it’s not in your best interest to call her names again. You got grounded and hit in the face. This has nothing to do with right/wrong, respect, or problem solving.

@Dutchess_III: “I’m not sure what your point was in the post above.”

You can’t get away with that. You could point out something in particular that didn’t make sense to you. I think I was pretty clear. Did you read it more than once? What didn’t you understand?

@Dutchess_III: “My comparing raising your voice to screaming was an example of grossly exaggerating the act @hominid. Raising your voice is NOT the same thing as screaming, and for me to continue to insist that it is would be wrong.”

Ok, you didn’t read my post above. There’s no other explanation.

@Dutchess_III: “If the kids ever did something that really, really made me angry I’d sent them to their room for a few minutes so I could calm down before I administered a spanking. Because ya. If you’re angry you’re liable to hit harder than you ever intended.”

What? So, a kid does something that you do not want the child to do. You send them to their room, meditate or something, then go to their room and use your hand to administer a painless swatting. This swatting does something. And it’s such an important something that you feel it is essential to raising a healthy child. I’m lost. What does that symbolic spanking session do for the child, you, or your relationship with the child? And how does this work, psychologically?

@Dutchess_III: “But hey…she never gave the kid a swat so it’s all good.”

That mother is likely as shitty a parent as someone who hits their kids. We know nothing about their parenting. It’s as likely that that woman beats the shit out her kid, but chooses to not do it in public. Therefore, the kid – without threat of being hit in public, was not listening. Let’s keep to the topic at hand without veering off into…whatever that just was.

I think you’re over complicating things @hominid.

@Dutchess_III: “I think you’re over complicating things @hominid.”

Am I? By asking questions about corporal punishment? Regardless of your current position on the issue, you will likely agree that this matters, right? If spanking children is required to produce a happy child who has a healthy internal moral compass, then you should be an advocate for spanking. It would be unethical for you to keep quiet and let more and more people break their children by refusing to spank them. You should be able to draw a clear connection between the act and the results you are hoping to achieve, and you should do so passionately.

But if it’s the case that the reason we don’t hit kids any more is that it is wrong, those of us who do not hit our kids should be speaking up and advocating for the cessation of the practice.

Controlled discipline of some kind is needed to produce a happy child who has a healthy internal moral compass. I don’t know that they could even develop that in a void.

My biggest issue with you is that comparing swats to “hitting” and beating is over the top, just like comparing raising your voice to yelling and screaming would be over the top.

@hominid I think you choose not to understand, and that’s okay. If your child wandered out to a pond on your property time and time again, what would you do to stop them?

I was a child raised around dogs, guns, cattle, many ponds, and lots of woods. If I didn’t obey my elders, then I would have died many times over.

Today, if I didn’t obey laws, I’d be in jail. I’d rather take a whipping from my mother than be in jail, and many many people agree with me that it did us no harm.

I’m not in an abusive relationship, I’ve never been in a fight in my life, and I have a perfect driving record and no criminal record. I work full time, I vote, I’m married with no children, I pay taxes, so what exactly is so wrong with me (or people like me) that makes you 100% correct in your opinion? Can you assure me that you won’t/heven’t spawned an entitled child that may someday choose to kill because they weren’t disciplined enough?

Hitler was spanked as a child.

@ragingloli How about all the people who believed he was right for so long? All spanked, too?

@KNOWITALL Probably, most of them.

@Dutchess_III: “My biggest issue with you is that comparing swats to “hitting” and beating is over the top”

You linked to my first post in this thread. Since you have claimed that spanking = nonpainful, I have made it clear to describe spanking as such. Are you sure that’s your biggest issue with me?

Yes @hominid. That is the issue I have with those those who claim that spanking is “abuse.”

If spanking produces such bad results, why are the vast majority of people of my generation just fine?

@Dutchess_III You’re a very violent psychopath under your nice normal exterior…lol, it’s just so ridiculous.

@KNOWITALL: “Today, if I didn’t obey laws, I’d be in jail. I’d rather take a whipping from my mother than be in jail, and many many people agree with me that it did us no harm.”

Again, exactly my point. External rather than internal.

@KNOWITALL: “that makes you 100% correct in your opinion”

I am not 100% convinced of anything – especially my parenting. I’m open to the possibility that something I am doing will likely be considered barbaric 30 years from now. We make progress by discussing this stuff. It’s worth it.

are they?

Yep.

I completely disagree.

@hominid If a child has access to the internet, they have access to more violence than previous generations.
Psychologists say children don’t have violent imaginations, but they’re exposed to violence in other aspects constantly in real life, unless you homeschool them. I mean do you listen to rap or music?

I am very fond of children although I chose not to have any of my own, and I would stomp anyone who touched a child in my prescence, and even lost a good friend over something like that specifically, but I don’t feel that spanking a child for their safety is wrong or harmful if done in moderation by a caring, intelligent parent.

@Dutchess_III: “If spanking produces such bad results, why are the vast majority of people of my generation just fine?”

I’m not sure I ever claimed that the majority of people who have been hit will not survive it and will become monsters. The data shows negative effects of corporal punishments, but we’ve left that behind us for this discussion. I am asking you to draw simple connections for me, and we’ve typed thousands of words and you have been either unwilling or incapable of doing so.

And just as we’ve voluntarily left the data behind us for this discussion, it would be wise not to jump over the stuff we’re talking about and make sweeping statements about “your generation”. I would imagine you don’t want to open that can of worms.

And we’re not talking about a single metric or single person. “I am not in jail” is not relevant. It’s not even relevant to say that “you’re ok”. There are people who have survived the most horrible things and are “fine”. That is not how decide the best way to raise children.

If you are unwilling to explain to the me how a gentle, nonpainful swat is a reliable, healthy tool to use when teaching children, I’m not sure where we can go. I can see how it can be a tool to teach obedience to authority or encourage a desire to not get caught. But I’m trying to figure out if those areas of the country that still use corporal punishment do it because they have different goals or that they truly believe that spanking a child will result in the healthiest child.

It’s the overall relationship parents have with their kids that really determine the outcome. Spanking or not spanking are just minor details. @hominid if you choose spanking as part of your discipline your kids would still turn out fine because you are a loving, thoughtful and controlled parent.

It’s just another tool @hominid. They don’t like it. They don’t like timeouts either. They learn to avoid that things that cause them to receive something they don’t like. Yes, that’s external control, but that is required up to a certain point. You have to combine any discipline you mete out with explanations.

I’m not saying spanking is the best thing to do. But it’s not the worst, either. It’s just another tool.

@Dutchess_III: “It’s just another tool @hominid. They don’t like it. They don’t like timeouts either. They learn to avoid that things that cause them to receive something they don’t like. Yes, that’s external control, but that is required up to a certain point. You have to combine any discipline you mete out with explanations.”

Why don’t they like timeouts (I don’t use timeouts, which I have already mentioned)? I suspect because they are left alone or something?

Why don’t they like getting spanked? It doesn’t hurt, right?

And if you’re also parenting alongside spanking, why is the spanking required?

Ok. I have to focus on my work. Thanks for talking. I beg you, though, please make a connection between the tool and the desired result. Something like…

child throws ball in house and breaks vase -> spanking does ______ -> child now understands _____
(You can alter this if you want. Just connect the dots for me. Thanks.)

@hominid Child touches glass figurine after being told not to, child touches and gets spanked, age four.

Child sees gun cabinet unlocked, after being told not to ever touch it, child does not touch it BECAUSE they know the repercussions, age thirteen.

@hominid You probably already realise this, but you’re having a discussion with authoritarians.

These are people who are not good at logical thought— notice the number of faulty inferences made. They boil things down to personal anecdotes and sample sizes of one (usually themselves). They follow traditions and conventions without question. They like to believe what they believe with scant or contradictory evidence—and no amount of scientific research will convince them of something they don’t want to believe.

Obedience and submission are things they positively value. It doesn’t matter if a child is doing something instinctive or normal—if it is somehow embarrassing, or contravenes some priggish notion they’ve imagined should be followed, then the child needs to be disciplined and its behaviour modified. If it’s something worse, then they need even fewer excuses to rationalise their violence.

The result is we get people like @KNOWITALL, who thinks Snowden is a traitor, and who jingoistically supports the military, and defends state spying on its citizenry—and completely lacks the self-perception to realise she’s got the exact traits that Hitler took advantage of.

“Child sees gun cabinet unlocked”

And as if @Dutchess_III‘s stupid, and misleadingly vivid example of a child poking cutlery into an electric socket wasn’t foolish enough—@KNOWITALL comes back with another one. I know, you’ve never actually left a gun cabinet unlocked around children. You just want to use this scenario that’s actually indicative of parental negligence and stupidity, because it’s conveniently emotive.

And what does this actually teach? Perhaps that adults make the environment so dangerous to explore, that we must discipline children with fear and pain to make them avoid exploring it.

@hominid It’s making me nauseous too, by the way.

Why are you so hung up on the hurting thing? I don’t like a lot of things even though they don’t hurt. Time outs don’t hurt either, but they want to avoid them. The spanking is just a physical sign that you are unhappy with what they did.

You can fill in the blank with any number of logical consequences to get to the result “Child now under stands not to throw shit in the house or something uncomfortable is going to happen to him.”

They don’t like spankings because they’ve been raised to understand that getting spanked is a bad thing in response to them doing something they shouldn’t have done, like Pavlov’s dogs. It’s a mild physical reinforcement.

HA! That reminds me though, when my grandson was about 3 he had this softball and he wanted to throw it sooooo bad! I kept saying “No! Don’t throw it, Ryan! Don’t do it!” I was approaching him carefully because he was set like a spring ready to throw that ball. Any sudden move would release him! He spun around three times then just flung that ball! It bounced off the back of the couch and came back and nailed him in the forehead! Knocked him down! No other consequence was necessary. I said, “Well, I told you not to throw it!” Then left the room to go roll around on the floor!

@Kropotkin Insults don’t change reality. You can breed psychopaths without personally teaching them violence, it’s a fact.

@KNOWITALL That’s interesting. Do you have any other “facts” that are completely irrelevant to the discussion?

@Kropotkin Most anti-spanking articles say that spanking breeds psychopaths, violent tendencies, poor verbal skills, etc… Geesh.

@KNOWITALL I can’t know what you’re referring to if you don’t cite anything. I linked abstracts of scientific research earlier, but no one here arguing against spanking has mentioned a thing about breeding psychopaths. So—what are you talking about?

@Kropotkin Do you think it’s possible that instead of focusing on the negatives of spanking you could focus on the positives? Obviously Dutchess and I are not psychopaths.

Is being a law-abiding citizen with a healthy respect for authority such a bad thing? (Without bringing Hitler into it please.)

@KNOWITALL There are no positives I’m aware of. And why do you keep mentioning psychopaths?

“Is being a law-abiding citizen with a healthy respect for authority such a bad thing?”

It depends on the context. If you respect an authority that’s corrupt or in some way illegitimate or manipulative, then it’s pretty bad. If laws are a genuine expression of common norms, then abiding by laws may be fine—if they’re not, then they’re a form of oppression.

It’s partly for this reason that authority, by its nature, should require a heavy burden of justification. It is not something that is respected or accepted by default—unless you like the idea of totalitarianism.

The positive is that if you tell your kid not to do something, they won’t do it because they don’t want the spanking that will be sure to follow if they disobey. There are a lot of ways to achieve this. Spanking is one of them. It’s effective and immediate.

I wonder if John Carter was spanked when he was younger?

He doesn’t remember!

@Dutchess_III I bet it was his mom shaking her finger at him for smoking pot that set him off

”It’s effective and immediate.”
So is shooting them in the head. they will never disobey again.

Or she may have raised her voice, @Cruiser

Since we don’t have any details about the family history of John Carter, there’s no real way of knowing whether he was spanked or not when he was younger.

However, since spanking promotes anti-social behaviour in later years—he may well have been.

I’m beginning to think you all need a good spanking and I’ve got just the flippers to do it. Line up!

I’m not anti-social. Neither are my kids. Neither is @KNOWITALL. Or @Cruiser.

@Dutchess_III No one said that you or your kids are anti-social—so why are you mentioning it?

@Kropotkin You said ”..... spanking promotes anti-social behaviour in later years.” We were all spanked as kids. We aren’t anti-social. That’s why, ding a ling.

@Dutchess_III I say we petition the courts to allow @janbb mete out his much deserved and overdue punishment. Gently and lovingly of course. I will have to say though that I bet if you were not spanked as a child you probably would not be calling people Ding-A Lings

@Dutchess_III I suppose I have to be careful with my choice of words when talking to people with a seeming inability to grasp nuance, context, or make correct inferences.

Spanking increases the long-term risk of anti-social behaviour. This and other negative effects (I’ve cited the studies earlier) are likely amplified and made more probable with more frequent and/or harsher spanking and corporal punishment.

None of this means that you, or others on this site defending spanking, must be anti-social. Nor does your lack of anti-social behaviour falsify the claims of the studies, ding-a-ling.

I’d probably be calling them much worse!

@Dutchess_III and @KNOWITALL – I’m curious – putting the discussion of corporal punishment aside, what are your thoughts on children? Do you feel that they are scheming creatures that are indifferent to positive feedback? Do you believe that children are good? Are they people, or are they people-in-training?

@hominid If it is not too much to ask…could you ask those very good questions in another question please….this thread is derailed enough as it is.

Yes – it would be interesting to get back to the subject of the girl. the judge seems to be siding against here but the final hearing is in April.

@Cruiser – Will do. Sorry.

@janbb I just wonder why it has to take so long to decide this matter. Are they making a federal case out of this now?

Thanks @hominid

@Cruiser Wonder too. I heard some of the judge talking to her lawyer and he was pretty disgusted.

When I was in college, my father didn’t support me.

Since my parents were divorced, he felt it not his responsibility. He did pay for my brother’s college education abroad, though. As a complication to me: because of his (high) income, I didn’t qualify for full grants and my mother couldn’t afford to help me.

I know I am not entitled to my parents help, I do feel parents should try to help their children, though. My father was drinking 200 dollar bottles of whiskey. All he had to do is switch to a cheaper brand and he could easily afford to support me somewhat.

Later he once asked me why I never went abroad to study medicine, like my (half) brother. I came close to hitting him in the face.

I know that feeling a parent should help is a far cry from forcing them through court. Nevertheless, I feel there may be circumstances where the girl would have a case.

@Cruiser: Anything where court is involved can take months.

@jca I understand that but couldn’t a judge step in and force this girl and parents to work this out outside the court with the help of a mediator? Seems so bizarre to air out a family matter in the court of public opinion.

For more forehead slapping commentary from this young lady check out her new Facebook page

@whitenoise
You should not have held back.

@Cruiser wow. Looks like the court of public opinion is 100% against her!

I was not against her.

@Cruiser: I am not a lawyer so I am just guessing, but maybe once it goes before the Court, it’s beyond the possibility of a mediator.

@ragingloli
On that particular facebook page, most if not all responses are (very) hostile.

I am leaning towards the position that she is being a child and her parents acting as one…

Without more info, I find it hard to dismiss her case. She needs a fair chance in court. That is why we have them.

@hominid Waiting for your question!

”[..... spanking promotes anti-social behaviour in later years.” We were all spanked as kids. We aren’t anti-social.
But all those smart people and their selective studies said we are, and how can we not believe that?

Looking up ad hominem

OK. ad hominem all over the place here! Bad humans!

It’s not technically ad hominem anyway.

I think of oatmeal when I see that word.

@Dutchess_III Funny…I think of grits. Nothing like another ad-hominy attack to make me hungry! ;)

I think of @hominid cause it sorta sounds like it.

ad hominem hominid had hominy

Guess who went HOME. I bet the friends parents figured out it was none of their business, and the judge saw this blackmail for what it was.

What loving parents. That’s all I can say.

Who knows what the truth was in that family? What a circus!

Ok, so who gets to pay the $12,000 in legal fees that she’s incurred??

I love how people scream “Abuse!” but the abuse conveniently disappears at their convenience. My ex tried to tell me I was abusive and that’s why he took our oldest daughter with him when he moved 2000 miles away…but left the younger kids with me!

Gretta Van Susteren has a good off the record comment on this story….
“And as for her lawyer, and the lawyer who fronted her legal costs, they have no excuses. Lawyers have an important role in our society, but a lawyer should be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

And here is a pretty good wrap up ‘aftermath’ story on the latest activities with comments from the parents attorney.

@Dutchess_III According to my last link story, it appears that the friends dad who fronted the money for the $13,000 in legal fees may well be stuck with the tab! A true happy ending IMO.

Cool!

(I watch my six-year-old grandson after school. Yesterday he said, “Why do you watch kids after school?”
I said, “Cause I like ‘em!”
He said, “Well, if you like ‘em, why do you put them in time out?”
I had to laugh and then said, “Well, when you do something you know you shouldn’t do I put you in time out to help you remember not to do that anymore. So the next time you think you want to do the wrong thing you’ll stop and think ‘I better not do that or I’ll be put in time out.’”
He said, “Oh. I see. Well…it works.” LOLL!! :)

What a wasted opportunity. You could have taught him about confirmation bias.

What?