Daleth

Yes, the dog learns not to do the action that led to the punishment and a child may learn the same, but then again might not because the child is smarter than the dog and may just learn to be a better liar. What the dog doesn't learn and never will is why not to do the thing. A dog needs to learn simple obedience. A child needs to learn to make decisions about their actions, even when there's nobody around to punish them for what they do. They need to learn how to become good adults.

And as someone who has been involved with lots of abused and neglected dogs, ditto what Brighid said about positive reinforcement working better.

Not sure what bonding has to do with spanking or not spanking.

Claudia

How can I teach my kids to never hit weakest than them if I do it? I believe in teaching by example

Farren

I concur with Claudia. Hitting children automatically vindicates violence as a means of conflict resolution, like it or not. Any child administered any form of violence as a means of instruction is more likely to use violence to "instruct" dissenters in later life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that because you got paddled when you were 11 you're going to paddle your boss every time you have a disagreement.

But its obvious if violence never featured at all in your childhood you're going to be reticent to emply it in later life, so there's likely a correlation between the number of adult disputes that end in violence and the number of children spanked.

Equally, turning a blind eye to bullying is an endorsement of violence by adult caregivers.

Is violence effective as a behaviour modifier? Not in my case. I hated my father and ran away from home five times in one year. He had a foul temper, although he was always violent in a formal manner (over the knee with a belt) rather than lashing out with his fists. It didn't stop myself or my siblings recognising that it was his temper, not our misdemeanours, at fault.

A happy postscript is that after I ran away for the fifth time and articulated my feelings and the reasons very clearly when dragged home, he actually consulted a doctor about his temper and was referred to a specialist who discovered he had a malformed valve in his heart causing high blood pressure. He's been taking heart medication and has been an absolute teddy bear since.

The evidence presented above is anecdotal, but I'm providing it to demonstrate a scenario I believe is common. Rarely as a child was I administered violent discipline by a calm and regretful parent. He was always visibly angry and barely in control. I've heard this testimony over and over when discussing it with others and I can't help feeling that a fair proportion of violent punishments are not inflicted by parents in a fair minded manner.

I've met people who defend their parent's decision to use violence to teach them and I must accept that for some it evidently has modified their behaviour. But I have to ask if the modifying behaviour is the same as teaching good living principles.

The argument runs that an adult, through violence, may stop you doing something bad for yourself when you are too young to understand how it is bad for you, and you learn why later. But all too often I find advocates of the most violent approach to discipline rarely have a rational world view about why the principle they're trying to inculcate is right or wrong.

In other words, because they blindly believe in the rightness or wrongness of something without a reason, they have no way to explain it, so they beat a child instead.

In the abstract form the concept that you can simply stop or modify a child's behaviour now, and they'll find out why later seems fine. But in the real, developmental sense children don't connect present events with past events as readily as they connect present events with present events. So the principle "don't run into a busy road when dad's around because dad will beat me" is far more deeply ingrained than the more sensible alternative.

I feel that violent punishment only serves to reinforce later submissions to authority where an overt or even symbolic stick being waved, which doesn't make society a better place. My instincts tell me that it is the memory of violence in our childhood that allow the aggressive alpha male to more effectively dominate his colleagues in the workplace - - when we shout down the poorly paid clerk for her company's policy over which she has no control, emulating the irrationality of our parents.

I see no value in hitting children. I'm extremely happy that our government has followed the lead of some Northern European governments in declaring excessive physical punishment a crime (even "formal" punishment like caning or applying a belt, rather than just lashing out with fists), and banned corporal punishment in schools.

A rural Zulu girl recently phoned a child help line and they assisted her in having her mother sentenced to 5 months community service, for the kind of excessive discipline that in the old days wouldn't be remotely like a case of abuse. The girl's request to rather live in a state orphanage was also granted, although with her consent the mother was given visiting rights. This kind of progressive thinking is one of the things that makes me immensely proud of being South African right now

BDS

Parents should never hit their children, except in anger.

Daleth

Farren, Bravo! Everything I wanted to say and didn't have the patience to type.

BDS, Got any sort of reasoning to back up that drive-by opinion?

BDS

BDS, Got any sort of reasoning to back up that drive-by opinion? [/B][/QUOTE]

Certainly. Beating a child as a form of dispassionate discipline smacks of sadism, and is a less than ideal form of discipline.

Occasionally smacking your child (as opposed to beating him) when he pisses you off is (as long as you don't do it very hard) both natural and healthy, for child and adult alike.

Hey, there are times when smacking other adults is acceptable, too. Fighting words occasionally deserve a fight.

I made the comment because some advocates of spanking (which I am not) say, "Never spank your child in anger -- it's meant to be a dispassionate form of discipline." This is precisely the attitude with which I disagree.

Daleth

Yes, that I agree with.

I can see where it's natural to react violently to anger, but I fail to see how it's healthy, especially for the person on the receiving end. Who's ever been hit and then felt better than if they had a V8?

Self-defense deserves a fight. That's when violence is moral. Hurting someone because they said something about yo mama is immoral, childish, uncivilized and stupid, and the person you hit now has the moral right to beat the crap out of you in self-defense.

On what occassion is it moral to hit someone who absolutely can not defend themselves against you? Why is it moral? What philosophy is behind this? Why is it healthy for the person doing the hitting? Why is it healthy for the person being hit?

Yeah, I figured that was what you were getting at. But it doesn't make sense in that when people act like you're suggesting, they just end up raising more people who think it's OK to hit somebody over words, and most of us don't want to live in a society where we are at risk for being beaten up any time we say something somebody else takes badly and happens to be in a bad mood.

yguy

Really? You think sadism is without passion?

Daleth

I'm in no mood to play linguistic games. Go away or I'm gonna slug you for saying the wrong thing.

yguy

Aw, cm'on, Dal - get some guts. It's an honest question. I double dare you to say "yes".