spanking (child discipline): a thought and a few questions?

[J.Brown]

spanking, swatting, or disciplining children by striking them as a means of punishment is a huge cause of debate for most young/new parents.

EDF'ers what is your take?
where you spanked as a child?
if so do you feel it was effective as discipline?
if not what was your form of "punishment" for rule breaking?
do you spank your own children or do you plan to?
are there guidelines that should be followed if spanking?
if so what are they?

i was spanked as a child.

i am ok with it, although my parents both now admit that my father was much to strict with me, but i am ok with that as well.

i was usually spanked several times with a wooden spoon until i cried or they knew i had really "felt" it.

i was then almost always explained to what i had done wrong and why i had been spanked. then hugged and pacified....(sometimes "against" my will at this point, as you can imagine) and told that i was loved and that was the end.

it was effective for me and i learned and never hated my parents for it, but i was a good kid and it was fairly rare in general.

i have two young sons. i do not plan on ever spanking, but i am not sure why exactly. the oldest is 3 and can obviously knowingly act out and break rules, but i could just never imagine actually spanking him until he cried.
timeout works just fine for now.

that being said. what are your thoughts and experiences with child discipline and the most effective forms you have used, seen, felt, or been a part of??

later. J.

[Boris]

I think parents worry too much about the issue. I don't think it's a big deal either way as long as the parent doesn't get carried away. I was spanked as a child and could care less. The more important thing is that punishment should be consistent and fair.

My mom broke a wood spoon on my butt one time and I started laughing. I couldn't help myself. Boy did she get pissed about that.

[JaBlue]

Agree with Boris and I was spanked (very, very rarely) as a child. I was real mischievous and deserved it way more than I got it.

I actually remember one time I got spanked: I was 6 or so, mom was driving, me and my brother were fighting (as usual) and she couldn't take it. She asked us to stop a bunch of times and said that she couldn't pay attention to driving but we ignored her. She then threatened to pull over but we still ignored her. Then she actually did pull over and we got spanked. I believe we shut the hell up.

The much more common punishment for rulebreaking for me was privilege denial. I almost never got grounded, but often wasn't allowed to do the things I liked to do. It never worked because my mom was never home so she ended up being extremely lax.

I think parents really shouldn't need to spank their children. My mom was super relaxed on me all the time and I grew up with very little respect for her and what she had to say. My dad, though not strict, was so powerful a presence that if I [censored] up all he had to do was give me a look or a quick talk and I felt like I had really done something wrong. Just knowing that I disappointed him was way harsher a punishment than any of my mom's privilege-taking. Come to think of it, I can't remember if my dad ever really punished me... and he definitely didn't give long-winded lectures.

[jjp]

I have not spanked my children (3, ages 8 and under). My wife has given one a little swat on the behind once, as an attention getter. She grew up getting whacked with a wooden spoon by her mother, so she has misgivings about any kind of spanking. I was only swatted as an attention getter, never to the point of pain.

I think if you are inflicting pain, it is too far.

We use timeouts as discipline, and for the most part it is effective.

We are very consistent in our discipline. We never make a threat we are not prepared to carry out. I see that as a big mistake parents make. "You won't get to go to the party if you don't XXX" Are you really going to not take them to the party? They will figure it out. Once they think you won't carry out the punishment you are toast.

As an aside, my sister in law was over the other night with her 3 year old. She is the worst disciplinarian, never following through, etc. She ended up negotiating with her son to eat bites of hot dog. One bite = one cookie. Unbelievable.

[J.Brown]

[ QUOTE ]
I think parents worry too much about the issue. I don't think it's a big deal either way as long as the parent doesn't get carried away. I was spanked as a child and could care less. The more important thing is that punishment should be consistent and fair.

My mom broke a wood spoon on my butt one time and I started laughing. I couldn't help myself. Boy did she get pissed about that.

[/ QUOTE ]

i tend to agree with you, as is almost always the case.

my brother learned the tense up your butt cheeks/break the wooden spoon trick early on...then always laughed, my parents finally gave up on him, boris you have seen the results of that [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

thanks for the input. J.

[Los Feliz Slim]

I'm pretty sure I was spanked when I was little, but never to inflict pain. It was to get my attention and let me know that whatever I'd done was SERIOUS. I bet it only happened 3-4 times in my life.

I have a 2 year-old daughter and would employ a smack on the rump in very extreme cases, but my wife is adamantly against it so it's not going to happen. My daughter broke free from my wife and ran into a parking lot a month or so ago, that's the type of behavior that I might respond to with the exclamation point of a little spanking. Instead, we did lots and lots of talking about it, and my daughter definitely knew it was a big deal. Now, whenever we get out of the car in a parking lot she says "No running! No running! No running!" over and over.

Basically, I think you need to positively reinforce good behavior and negatively reinforce bad behavior. A spanking is a simple and easily understandable way to negatively reinforce things that MUST not ever happen again. There are other ways to do it also, I think.

Yesterday my daughter stayed at a preschool transition program without her Mommy for the first time, so I bought her a kitchen:

[captZEEbo]

http://www.amazon.com/Parent-Effectivene...9378&sr=8-2

there are some nice testimonials in there too.

Basically, they want you to treat a child as more of an equal, and they behave out of consideration for your feelings instead of behaving out of fear of getting punished.

[guids]

we got spanked, rarely, and it was usually by my mom, but it was more of a scare tactic than anything else, it never hurt, my dad I dont think ever hit us. My grandma was a whiz with the wooden spoon though, she could fly across the room and ding any knuckle on your hand like it was her job. THAT hurt. My grandpa had a belt like the one in the picture for sharpening his razor, he was such a badass, and never talked, all he had to do was look at it if we were acting up, and we behaved.

[Los Feliz Slim]

[ QUOTE ]
Basically, they want you to treat a child as more of an equal, and they behave out of consideration for your feelings instead of behaving out of fear of getting punished.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "treating your child as an equal" plan sounds very good, and is exactly how I planned on parenting. Let my child learn from mistakes, find her own way, pick her path, etc etc etc. When she was nine months old she got a urinary tract infection and would NOT take her antibiotic. She'd clamp her mouth shut, freak out, and even puke from getting herself all worked up. It got to the point that the doctor told us they were going to have to admit her to the hospital so they could give her IV antibiotics. That would've been beyond awful, so I told my daughter that she was taking the medicine one way or the other, and physically forced her to take the medicine. She threw up, and I told her she was going to take it until she kept it down. I gave it to her again, and it stayed down. From then on, when it's medicine time she's known that she might as well just take it willingly.

Sometimes, the parent needs to be in absolute charge. I think kids want and need boundaries. They're always going to test them and push the envelope, but they need to know that there is a line. So, like the running around cars example, it it's a health/safety issue, it's always going to be Daddy's way.

EDIT: All that said, I just bought that book off Amazon, it looks really interesting.

[captZEEbo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Basically, they want you to treat a child as more of an equal, and they behave out of consideration for your feelings instead of behaving out of fear of getting punished.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "treating your child as an equal" plan sounds very good, and is exactly how I planned on parenting. Let my child learn from mistakes, find her own way, pick her path, etc etc etc. When she was nine months old she got a urinary tract infection and would NOT take her antibiotic. She'd clamp her mouth shut, freak out, and even puke from getting herself all worked up. It got to the point that the doctor told us they were going to have to admit her to the hospital so they could give her IV antibiotics. That would've been beyond awful, so I told my daughter that she was taking the medicine one way or the other, and physically forced her to take the medicine. She threw up, and I told her she was going to take it until she kept it down. I gave it to her again, and it stayed down. From then on, when it's medicine time she's known that she might as well just take it willingly.

Sometimes, the parent needs to be in absolute charge. I think kids want and need boundaries. They're always going to test them and push the envelope, but they need to know that there is a line. So, like the running around cars example, it it's a health/safety issue, it's always going to be Daddy's way.

EDIT: All that said, I just bought that book off Amazon, it looks really interesting.

[/ QUOTE ]health issue so quickly turns into physical health, mental health, social health and pretty soon you are controlling wayyyyy too much.