To Spank or not to Spank, we're talking about child discipline

[The Arrogant Worms]

Spanking 100%. If youre kid isnt being hit then he will an annoying brat

You have no idea what you are talking about.

[73 Percent]

I spanked my kids once with my hand and they just laughed at me. It didn't hurt. At least not enough. They already treated smacks on the bum as a game. Rather than escalate it to what i got at their age once in awhile, a metal spatula, which definitely hurt, I decided to cool off and approach it more diplomatically.

They will act up from time to time, but they generally do what they're told. This I think is due to consistency with day-to-day discipline, patience, not giving in to every demand, being firm, but not angry, and diplomacy when required.

I have no desire to physically harm my own children, even if it's just a spank. Yelling can be just as traumatizing as well, so it's best to keep that to a minimum. The problem I see with other people's kids is that they can let them dominate a household. That should be totally unacceptable. You have to curb that behavior right away, no matter how tired you are, otherwise you'll have bigger problems down the road.

i like this post. I dont have kids. I was spanked as a kid. I thibknive got my $&!# togather compared to others my ager who weren't spanked so I may lean towards that side when I am a father. I do like how you approached the subject on cdc and in real life. Rather than going on some silly rant how spanking is aabuse you simply stated that id didnt work for you so you found alternate methods of keeping your children in check.

My hat is tipped to you. I have alot of respect for you right now. Not that that means much on cdc lol.

[aGENT]

Boundaries , structure, follow through etc. Not enough parents do these consistently (or at all) because it's HARD, frustrating and VERY time consuming.

Without them, you get parents who 'need' 'last resort' spanking IMO.

All hitting does is teach your child to fear the people they're supposed to love and trust the most and that violence is an acceptable solution to unwanted outcomes. Great lessons both

Pretty much a consensus from any child psychology experts that it is at best ineffective and at worst damaging. Time to re-think your norms.

[Provost]

You can't be serious.

Yep... because you have no freaking clue. You have all these ideas about how things should and will be in your head and most of them turn out to not be true in real life. I have serious doubts about whether there are non-parents posting on this thread that are world renowned child psychology and parenting experts.

You are welcome to post in the thread, but your opinion is largely meaningless.

I have twins and "spanked" one once which consisted of a single and not very hard slap on the butt to shock her and get her attention when all else failed and she wasn't in a safe spot where I could just leave her to have a tantrum and work our her feelings on her own.

It worked and was a safer and less physically harmful solution than any others that were open to us at the time.

Hitting a kid in anger or frustration is crossing the line in my books though. I have given myself time outs in the past when I recognized that my level of frustration and anger was too high to calmly deal with a situation.

[TOMapleLaughs]

i like this post. I dont have kids. I was spanked as a kid. I thibknive got my crap togather compared to others my ager who weren't spanked so I may lean towards that side when I am a father. I do like how you approached the subject on cdc and in real life. Rather than going on some silly rant how spanking is aabuse you simply stated that id didnt work for you so you found alternate methods of keeping your children in check.

My hat is tipped to you. I have alot of respect for you right now. Not that that means much on cdc lol.

Say what? Respect? I'm honored.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

http://www.scienceda...31211103958.htm

http://www.huffingto..._n_1258351.html

http://tulane.edu/ne...pr_03122010.cfm

http://www.scientifi...r-not-to-spank/

Discipline is important, spanking is lazy and largely ineffective.

No offence but posting a few articles is not a very strong argument. It has about as much meaning as studies that state kids playing COD are more likely to become murders. I can do the same, with positive effects of kids who were spanked.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/26/news/mn-38403

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/548-new-study-finds-spanking-is-good-for-kids

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/6926823/Smacked-children-more-successful-later-in-life-study-finds.html

http://www.newsmax.com/US/spanking-studies-children-spock/2010/01/07/id/345669/

The problems is with these types of research articles is that they are not set in a controlled environment therefor the results will be ALWAYS skewed. How did each kid get spanked?, 2-3 smacks or hit till the kid is bleeding, is the kid being spanked for reasonable causes or are the parents abusing their authority. Are the alcoholic dads that beat their kids out of anger being lumped into these results. The same can be said about the opposite side of the argument. Not all parents that don’t believe in spanking will discipline their same way. Some parents chose work life over parenting life and rarely see their kids, studies show that kids with less involvement from parents tend get more involved in criminal activity. Since these parents don’t spank kids, can I lump them into the results of all parents that don’t spank their kids? No, and that’s market research 101. In order for the results to be accurate and decisive, the variables need to be held in controlled environment. Something that is impossible to achieve in regards to parenting styles because all parenting styles are different. You can’t lump all kids spanked into one grouping just as I can’t lump all kids not spanked into another.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

Boundaries , structure, follow through etc. Not enough parents do these consistently (or at all) because it's HARD, frustrating and VERY time consuming.

Without them, you get parents who 'need' 'last resort' spanking IMO.

All hitting does is teach your child to fear the people they're supposed to love and trust the most and that violence is an acceptable solution to unwanted outcomes. Great lessons both

Pretty much a consensus from any child psychology experts that it is at best ineffective and at worst damaging. Time to re-think your norms.

I got stung by a bee once as a kid when I tried to pick it up, even though my parents told me not to and explained to me that a bee sting really hurts. Yet as a curious kid I still went after the bee......Guess how many times I attempted to grab a bee after that...

[aGENT]

I got stung by a bee once as a kid when I tried to pick it up, even though my parents told me not to and explained to me that a bee sting really hurts. Yet as a curious kid I still went after the bee......Guess how many times I attempted to grab a bee after that...

Cute story.

Nothing to do with spanking or my post.

[inane]

Spanking kids is lazy. Do your job as a parent and you don't need to 'get to a last resort' and spank the kid. Parenting is hard work that requires constant work. Spanking is a lazy way out of doing your job that damages the kid long term.

Teaching kids that mistakes or making bad decisions or doing something they shouldn't will result in physical pain, and not a freaking bee sting, but willful pain from your parent is just crazy.

But, do what you gotta do I suppose, I'm tired of agreeing with JR so strongly it's a bit unsettling.

[Baka]

IMO spanking is only productive when the child is to young to understand basic logic and is only being bad out of ignorance they are yet to comprehend. For example one of my exes friends had a son who was I think 2 and he couldn't yet speak or understand deeper logic but he had a very nasty habit of picking things off the ground and just eating it even if it wasn't food. So his parents broke the habit almost like training a dog. As soon as he would reach down to do it they would tell him No and if he picked it up anyway they would give him a smack on the wrist and tell him No again. Gentle smack, didn't bruise him but would make him cry. The logic was since he would not understand you explaining why it was a bad habit he would simply associate the act negatively through the smack. They had to do it a few times but he learned not to fairly fast.

To me those are the only scenarios where it is helpful.

Outside of that it is counter productive. I say that as someone who was spanked growing up as well as my sisters. Way to many negatives come with it and it is lazy parenting.

[butters]

I get what the pro spankers are saying, but I think the point they are missing is that a good deal of parents are not as rational as them and if spanking moved back to being a social norm a lot of spankings would be for the wrong reasons, as they were back in the day.

[Mr. Ambien]

No offence but posting a few articles is not a very strong argument. It has about as much meaning as studies that state kids playing COD are more likely to become murders. I can do the same, with positive effects of kids who were spanked.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/26/news/mn-38403

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/548-new-study-finds-spanking-is-good-for-kids

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/6926823/Smacked-children-more-successful-later-in-life-study-finds.html

http://www.newsmax.com/US/spanking-studies-children-spock/2010/01/07/id/345669/

The problems is with these types of research articles is that they are not set in a controlled environment therefor the results will be ALWAYS skewed. How did each kid get spanked?, 2-3 smacks or hit till the kid is bleeding, is the kid being spanked for reasonable causes or are the parents abusing their authority. Are the alcoholic dads that beat their kids out of anger being lumped into these results. The same can be said about the opposite side of the argument. Not all parents that don’t believe in spanking will discipline their same way. Some parents chose work life over parenting life and rarely see their kids, studies show that kids with less involvement from parents tend get more involved in criminal activity. Since these parents don’t spank kids, can I lump them into the results of all parents that don’t spank their kids? No, and that’s market research 101. In order for the results to be accurate and decisive, the variables need to be held in controlled environment. Something that is impossible to achieve in regards to parenting styles because all parenting styles are different. You can’t lump all kids spanked into one grouping just as I can’t lump all kids not spanked into another.

Too much critical thinking.

You're supposed to listen to people who spend 10 seconds on Google, cut and paste the first handful of crap they come across and skim two sentences of.

Anyways, my children showed signs of being able to understand their screw-ups when they were very young, my daughter, for example, around 11 months old. At that point, I find spanking okay. There's no point in spanking if they don't understand it. As she's gotten older, I've spanked her far less. I find other avenues are more productive at getting the concept of punishment across.

And spanking is never anything but with a hand. I was hit with switches, studded belts, along with many other punishments of overkill (forced to sit on my knees with my feet on the carpet floor and my knees up about 45 degrees on entrance/foyer tile, leaning forward, for 2-4 hours), and they never taught me anything.. only produced permanent damage from which I have an extremely high sensitivity to regarding pain (especially stinging pain when I get even playfully hit on the lower back).

I haven't really listened to what people say. I mean, I regularly hear the dumbest crap regarding kids. One time at the mall I was waiting outside the women's bathroom while my wife changed my daughter, she was pissed and screaming bloody murder (wet crap diaper, probably broken skin because of it, had the craps all day) while being changed. Some idiot women walking out were saying stuff like "wow you hear that, she must be abusing that poor thing". Most don't have a clue, so.. in the end, I don't really listen much to anyone else's opinions on parenting (most of my opinions center around the "gfy" variety), and I tend not to give advice to others unless they ask for it. There's a special kind of stupid reserved for people who try and tell others how to parent.

[inane]

IMO spanking is only productive when the child is to young to understand basic logic and is only being bad out of ignorance they are yet to comprehend. For example one of my exes friends had a son who was I think 2 and he couldn't yet speak or understand deeper logic but he had a very nasty habit of picking things off the ground and just eating it even if it wasn't food. So his parents broke the habit almost like training a dog. As soon as he would reach down to do it they would tell him No and if he picked it up anyway they would give him a smack on the wrist and tell him No again. Gentle smack, didn't bruise him but would make him cry. The logic was since he would not understand you explaining why it was a bad habit he would simply associate the act negatively through the smack. They had to do it a few times but he learned not to fairly fast.

To me those are the only scenarios where it is helpful.

Outside of that it is counter productive. I say that as someone who was spanked growing up as well as my sisters. Way to many negatives come with it and it is lazy parenting.

lol so they treated their child like a dog. Sounds like responsible parenting.

[thejazz97]

I get what the pro spankers are saying, but I think the point they are missing is that a good deal of parents are not as rational as them and if spanking moved back to being a social norm a lot of spankings would be for the wrong reasons, as they were back in the day.

I've said this in the election thread where this all started, but I only got spanked for doing something rebellious (which, even then, they'd give me the "count to three" bit and that usually straightened me out). That being said, I was fairly rebellious growing up. Lots of spankings lol. But considering almost all of them were done out of discipline, I do consider myself more respectful than many people my age.

You have to know what kind of parents you are, and what kind of kids you have. If spanking works, do it - and not out of anger, but out of discipline and love. If spanking doesn't work, don't do it. It should be as simple as that.

[inane]

Too much critical thinking.

You're supposed to listen to people who spend 10 seconds on Google, cut and paste the first handful of crap they come across and skim two sentences of.

Anyways, my children showed signs of being able to understand their screw-ups when they were very young, my daughter, for example, around 11 months old. At that point, I find spanking okay. There's no point in spanking if they don't understand it. As she's gotten older, I've spanked her far less. I find other avenues are more productive at getting the concept of punishment across.

And spanking is never anything but with a hand. I was hit with switches, studded belts, along with many other punishments of overkill (forced to sit on my knees with my feet on the carpet floor and my knees up about 45 degrees on entrance/foyer tile, leaning forward, for 2-4 hours), and they never taught me anything.. only produced permanent damage from which I have an extremely high sensitivity to regarding pain (especially stinging pain when I get even playfully hit on the lower back).

I know, research is so boring. People say 'evidence please' and when provided it's just blah blah blah. I get it. You want to spank, you FEEL like it works. So go ahead.

[TOMapleLaughs]

There's a special kind of stupid reserved for people who try and tell others how to parent.

A lot of people don't know how to parent though. I guess that's another, more impactful reservation of stupid.

[Baka]

lol so they treated their child like a dog. Sounds like responsible parenting.

No. The logic is similar to how a dog learns. I used that wording because dogs mental capacities are considered along the same intelligence levels of a 2 year old human.

With that said you are welcome to finish your thought as I am always interested in knowing better methods as well as the dangers of said method. So what is the best way to handle that situation and what damage did they cause?

[MJDDawg]

Im all for spanking. I got spanked, kids these days lack disiplin. But spanking should be a last resort.

I also used to get the belt, or my family had a wooden spoon i would get smacked with. This i am against.

LOL!

Are you Italian? I am and I use to get the same thing. It got to the point where my dad didn't even have to get the belt. He just had to stand up and make a motion to take his belt off for my brother and I to get the message.

[riffraff]

LOL!

Are you Italian? I am and I use to get the same thing. It got to the point where my dad didn't even have to get the belt. He just had to stand up and make a motion to take his belt off for my brother and I to get the message.

LOL this.

To this day I vividly remember the sound of the belt ripping through the belt loops as my pops made his way towards either my brother or I or both..... My moms weapon of choice was the wooden spoon which shattered several times to which we would start to laugh at as we got older....

I also remember my mom giving me the option of an immediate spanking or wait till my dad came home.

We turned out fine ftr. My mom and I have a solid relationship and I love(d) and miss my dad dearly RIP.

I didn't become violent or aggressive nor did I become timid or frightened.

I have three children from 2-7 and I don't spank them. Not saying they don't deserve it at times and I don't necessarily disagree with doing it, or why some parents would.

It's always a learning process, u don't have all the answers and I'm just not convinced it would work with my kids. On a personal level, I would never want it to be a reaction as a result of me losing control and being angry.

I would never look down on another parent for spanking unless it's obvious abuse and an easy out. Parenting is tough and judging sucks.

Aside from all this, the risk of an outside agency taking your kids away is much higher these days...there is way more chance of an "intervention" if your kid mentions the word spanking...and I would say public spanking is taboo.

[riffraff]

No. The logic is similar to how a dog learns. I used that wording because dogs mental capacities are considered along the same intelligence levels of a 2 year old human.

With that said you are welcome to finish your thought as I am always interested in knowing better methods as well as the dangers of said method. So what is the best way to handle that situation and what damage did they cause?

Actually animals are physically reprimanded in nature by their parents, elders and dominant members of the pack; so that's why it works with dogs. All dogs seek the alpha.

There are many options when it comes to children outside of physical punishment. I'm not a doctor so I won't debate the comparitive mental capacities of a dog/2 year old but I garuntee the child is far more advanced emotionally at this age.