Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"0:-" wrote in message
ups.com...

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"0:-" wrote in message
ups.com...

Please tell us the difference between say a "hard spanking" and a
beating.

To me, the biggest distinguishing factor is whether the parent is out of
control.

There are plenty of people that most coldly and in careful control do
things like take switches to the hands of babies as young as two months
old. It's even taught by one couple that claim to be an information
source for child rearing. They call it, 'training up the child."

Granted, there are nuts, and there are grossly ignorant people who take
advice from nuts.

They don't think they are ignorant. Nor grossly so.

If parents have completely unrealistic expectations, the
results can be tragic, especially if the parents feel like it's their duty
to force their children to live up to their unrealistic expecations no
matter how harsh a punishment is required.

We are in agreement. And here in this newsgroup, aps, I have seen again
and again, pro spankers discuss circumstances where they would spank,
and demonstrating they have extremely unrealistic expectations of
children. The idea that any child, for instance, under the age of 12 or
so, would "willfully disobey." It's nonsense.

They are following natural imperatives to explore the universe. All an
aware parent needs to do is learn how to question and investigate and
when the parent has figured out (even if wrong) some probable natural
imperative the child is reacting to, simply show them how to get their
appropriately. Wanted behavior replacing unwanted behavior.

This isn't rocket science, and no child with parents that can figure
this out is "spanked." It's too damned obvious to a parent that can
think, and is compassionate (even in the absence of exact evidence)
that the child does not need spanking to learn.

But overreacting to one extreme by rushing to the other is not a
particularly rational response. Or should we outlaw cars just because some
people drive drunk?

I'm unable to find in your posts, other than by allusion, what the two
extremes are. I can presume that beating is at one extreme, and not
spanking at all, is at the other.

What will happen if you don't spank?

In a "hard spanking," the parent has himself or herself
under control to a point of being able to think about whether a spanking
or
something else is the most suitable punishment, and to base the severity
of
the spanking on the seriousness of the offense rather than on the
parent's
anger. The reason the spanking is hard is that the seriousness of the
offense warrants it, not that the parent is out of control. Most of the
time, it shouldn't be all that hard for a teenager to distinguish between
these two descriptions if he or she is willing to be honest with himself
or
herself, and to take a little time to think about how the situation
looked
from the parent's perspective.

The current data collected on this, internationally, by surveying
parents, show that regardless of the accepting or rejecting mindset
there are unwanted negative consequences. I posted that recently here.

I'm not in a mood to go hunting through everything you've posted here
recently.

That's okay.

If you want to recount the data, or to give me a clear indication
of where to look, I'm willing to listen, but I don't intend to spend a lot
of time here this time around.

Not a problem. Don't go getting all huffy on me. I can't see where
threatening to leave is a very effective response.

I might just forget you and let you go, unless you wish to make a
commitment to carry through on your commentary, arguments, and claims.
0:-]

Popping in and out is Troll behavior. Tsk.

But, sigh I'm a sucker for a good argument, got one? Here's what you
asked for.

I posted this just yesterday, in fact, and it refers, at the beginning,
to a prior post of mine in April of this year.

I posted the following in April of this year.

From: 0:- - view profile
Date: Sun, Apr 16 2006 10:44 am
Email: "0:-"
Groups: alt.parenting.spanking
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1114110820.htm

" ... The researchers found differences in how often mothers used
physical discipline and the mothers' perceptions of how often other
parents used physical discipline. Specifically:

* Mothers in Thailand were least likely to physically discipline
their children, followed by mothers in China, the Philippines, Italy,
India, and Kenya, with mothers in Kenya most likely to physically
discipline their children.
* More frequent use of physical discipline was less strongly
associated with child aggression and anxiety when it was perceived as
being more culturally accepted, but physical discipline was also
associated with more aggression and anxiety regardless of the
perception
of cultural acceptance.
* In countries in which physical discipline was more common and
culturally accepted, children who were physically disciplined were less
aggressive and less anxious than children who were physically
disciplined in countries where physical discipline was rarely used.
* In all countries, however, higher use of physical discipline was
associated with more child aggression and anxiety. ... "

Those last sentences pretty much says it all for the argument that
where cultures accept more CP it doesn't result in aberrent reactions
in children.

The next is a smaller study on the use of aggressively harsh CP to
preschool aged children.

I've seen posters defend the use of such methods as being "up to the
parent to decide."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0202073032.htm

.... In their article, Roy C. Herrenkohl, distinguished university
service professor at Lehigh, and M. Jean Russo, a Lehigh research
scientist, say evidence points to a strong link between child rearing
and early childhood aggression.

"Infants and preschoolers whose early socioemotional needs are not
appropriately met develop expectations that care is not available and
that others cannot be trusted or caring," the researchers say.
"Consequently, these children may view themselves as unworthy of such
care and become angry in the expectation that their needs will not be
met. This sense of deprivation gives rise to frustration and anger.

"Overly severe physical discipline in early childhood is one type of
violent behavior experienced at a time when the child is learning to
interact with the world. The experience of harsh, physical discipline
both terrorizes and humiliates the child, adding to the sense of
worthlessness and providing a model for coping in social interactions.
....

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/423496
.... Corporal punishment is associated with an increased risk of later
violence: peer violence, domestic violence, and suicide are all
correlated with parental reliance on corporal punishment. Nevertheless,
most American parents spank their children. According to Dr. Howard,
25% of children younger than 6 months old have been spanked, as have
40% of children 6-12 months old. Infants cannot understand the reason
that they are being spanked, and spanking interferes with attachment.

In contrast, parents who learn how to set firm limits without resorting
to violence teach their children a valuable lesson. Parents, in fact,
play enormously important roles in modeling how to deal with conflict
and frustration. There are a number of nonviolent negative
reinforcement techniques, ranging from the "hairy eyeball" to "time
out" models, Dr. Howard noted. ...

Comments?

As for reasons why parents might reasonably view spanking as the most
appropriate choice, I can think of some examples. First, some teenagers
would view a spanking - even a hard one - as less bad than the
alternative
their parents would choose if they don't spank.

Such as?

Second, parents might
decide that spanking makes sense because spankings don't cause nearly as
much long-term hassle and friction as forms of punishment that aren't
over
as quickly. (That would vary a lot depending on the personalities of
individual children.)

It sounds as though you are describing parents that have a more
punitive parenting style. Why must other alternaties cause long-term
hasle and friction? If I found my children doing something I
disapproved of, it was usually dispensed with in a few minutes and
unlikely to come up again.

Good for you. Have you had problems where your children shoplifted
repeatedly?

Nope. Not once, to my knowledge. I did myself at about age 6 though. I
simply was asked to make up for it to the druggist, someone we knew, by
sweeping his store for a week. I still can't pass a Baby Ruth candy bar
without a little shudder.

I wasn't spanked.

Where they drove home drunk?

Nope. My kids were very anti Drugs and alcohol. They still are, in
their forties. I had worked, when they were very small, in a drug rehab
program. I shared with them. 0:-]

Where they vandalized their
school?

My kids? Nope. They were homeschooled mostly.

There are parents who have had those problems, among other very
serious problems.

Yep, and I'd venture not a consistently non-spanking parent among them.


My guess is there are some non-spankers whose children might act out at
some point. My other guess is that they handle it pretty well by
non-punitive methods, and certainly not with CP.

I strongly support efforts to find ways to solve problems without needing
threats or punishments *IF* those ways can genuinely solve a problem without
giving children the idea that everyone else has to adjust to what they want.

One would have to be pretty stupid not to have ways that made clear
what the wanted behavior was. I've known a few parents that stupid.
They are ofte referred to as "permissive." I'm not one of those, nor
ever was.

But nonpunitive techniques can only work properly if the children choose to
cooperate.

Nope. If you can't figure out how to manage to make cooperation more
attractive then I wish you did not have children.

If children refuse to cooperate, and parents refuse to punish,
there is nothing at all to hold the chilren's behavior in check short of the
point where the police get involved.

Yep. Seems like this is a bit of a challenge.

However, what I have seen, quite consistently, is that this is the
problem spanking parents have, not non-spanking parents.

In fact, spanking itself, so destroys the relationship, that either the
child escapes the family and has to work out all the horrors as an
adult, or as a teen they really do kick out the jams, and the parent
can't hit them any more, or risk a punch in the face.

In fact spanking tends not to suppress unwanted behavior and MORE time
and hassle ensues. It also is a very weak deterent when the parent is
not actually supervising.

Which is why nonpunitive approaches are better - *IF* they work.

And you can say that punitive methods work more consistently? Really?

Where the hell have all these criminals come from? Drug addicts?
Mentally Ill?

Those things are a rarity in non-spanking families.

But an
imperfect deterrent can be better than none at all.

Are you arguing that non-spanking means doing nothing?

And third, the threat of spanking could be needed to
enforce the terms of some other punishment - and any credible threat
risks
the possibility that the threat will need to be carried out.

Teaching by threat?

Threats and punishments should NEVER be used as a replacement for teaching.

We agree.

But that doesn't mean they shouldn't ever be used as a backup for if
children choose to reject or ignore what they have been taught.

Give us an example.

snip

Bruising is injury.

I'm really not interested in word games.

Then don't play them yourself. You have repeatedly done so.

Cows and dogs are both mammals,
but that doesn't mean dogs chew their cud or cows bark. Substituting a more
general word like "injury" for a more specific one like "bruising" is far
more likely to obfuscate the truth than to clarify it.

A bruise is not an injury? Not according to medical literature.

ALL bruises are caused by injury. Though of course not all injuries
result in bruises. Grabbing a child and twisting their arm, say until
it breaks, might not leave surface visible bruising.

And if
there is a pattern of spankings hard enough to cause bruises, the
presumption has to be that either the bruising is deliberate or the
parent
is out of control.

I don't think it's a either or situation. If there is bruising there is
injury. Intent has little to do with it.

From both a moral perspective and, in many cases, a legal perspective, there
is a huge difference between deliberately inflicting an injury and
inflicting an injury by accident.

Yes. The issue is that even without intent, say as a spanking parent
would claim, intent turns out to not be relevant.

Failing to judge correctly IS.

It would be nice if parents had a magical
way of knowing exactly how hard they could spank a child without leaving
bruises.

Yep. My point exactly. They don't, as you appear to agree, so why using
CP at all?

But in real life, bruises can be a result of an honest mistake by
parents who misjudged how hard they could spank without bruising.

You could not argue for my point more successfully.

Laws have
to make some allowances for honest mistakes or else overzealous prosecutors
have the power to scare people away from even coming close to the limits of
what the law was intended to allow.

They do, currently. And also in the laws I would propose. The Swedish
model that has NO penalties whatsoever. The law is a social sanction
against CP, not a fine and lock'em up threat.

Although YOUR argument does have some small appeal, when I'm feeling
out of patience with underdeveloped in conscience folks that insist on
playing word games, and claim 'spanking' is not 'hitting,' and other
tricks of mind to fool themselves, apparently.

The child tends, when injured by the parent, to presume the parent
meant to injury, and that the child him or herself, deserved to be
injured.

With any but the youngest children, there is a simple solution if parents
realize they've spanked hard enough to cause bruises they didn't intend to.

So that would work when you punish your neighbor for mowing down your
bed of freshly planted petunias? Sock'm to teach'm and if it breaks
his jaw apologise.

Sure. That'll work.

They can apologize and explain that although they intended for the spanking
to hurt, they didn't intend for it to be hard enough to leave bruises.

I have a very important piece of information for you. It's about the
human body. If one hits hard enough to 'hurt' then there is an
extremely high probability it will leave injury.

That
way, the children can understand the difference between what the parents
intended (and thought the children deserved based on the seriousness of
their misbehavior)

Why is it an adult who has erred, even up to an including killing
others, can not be "spanked" as a punishment, but children can for
doing things that actually did no one any harm?

and what actually happened (which went beyond what the
parents thought their children deserved).

Which brings us back to, "why spank if other methods work at least as
well?"

I've watched adults posting to this newsgroup defend their own beatings
administered by their parents as 'deserved,' even when they were left
bloody as a result.

For what kinds of offenses?

Are you seriously going to argue that if the offense is serious enought
beating a child bloody is acceptable? Well, let's see if you do.

I would expect that either the offenses were
exceptionally serious, or the people taking that view haven't made much
effort to compare the seriousness of the punishments they received with the
seriousness of what they were being punished for.

Well, I guess you ARE arguing that with a serious enough offense it's
appropriate to beat the child until they bleed.

Am I mistaking your meaning?

I'll readily agree that when punishments of any kind are misused, they can
cause enormous and unjustified damage to children's self-esteem and to their
ability to see the difference between justice and overkill.

The highest incidence of 'spanking' is to those children that can NOT
understand why they are being spanking, and certainly are not able to
distinguish mistakes from intent. To them it's simply that mommy hits
me sometimes.

But that
doesn't mean I accept the opposite extreme of sending children the message
that they never deserve to be punished no matter how they behave.

This is always an interesting challenge. But pretty easily answered
when one stops the theorizing and get's real. As in the real world.

There is more than enough unpleasantness for most kinds of unwanted,
antisocial behavior.

If you respond, with the very young child, to wanted behavior with
energetic attention and meeting needs (this is even how animals do it)
you are starting off on the right track.

You don't need to set up an artificially concieved pain delivery
system.

Again and example: If a tiny child hurts you and you inadvertanly yelp
out loud, "OUCH!" because of built in instinctually imbedded reactions
humans have, you will startle that child and they will have an
unpleasant feeling...the one that goes with being startled.

That's ALL that needs to happen. You don't have to get a switch and lay
into them. They won't have the least idea what is going on, except that
you are a dangerous nut and they best start looking for ways to stay
safe around you.

In fact, the latter activity tends to make nutsos and criminals. Make a
child afraid of you and you lay the groundwork for survival skill
building...which just by coincidence, happen to be common to criminal
behavior.

Granted, this still leaves a gray area where the parent's motive is
unclear,
or it is unclear whether the severity of a spanking is warranted by the
seriousness of a child's behavior. But the sad truth is that we live in
a
world with a lot of gray in it, and wishing we could always draw clean
lines
between black and white doesn't make the gray go away.

We should not try, nevertheless?

From what I've seen, the only people who don't see a lot of shades of
gray
tend to be unthinking zealots who are so focused on an extreme position
that
they refuse to see any merit in arguments that conflict with their
preconceptions.

Personally I have no trouble seeing the continuum from a mild pat on
the bottom of say a diapered toddler to forcing a teen ager to drop
their pants and take a sever beating with a paddle, switch, strap, etc.


Of course there is a continuum.

My question has to do with where, exactly, on that continuum "spanking"
without injury leaves off and abusive injury takes place.

Your question here tries to force the issue into a much more simplistic
model than I consider appropriate.

You may "consider" what you wish. I consider it to be fundamental to
the problems associated with chosing to hit children and try to call it
something else.

When I look at the issue, I don't see a
line between "spanking" and "abuse."

That's right. There isn't any line.

Rather, I see a continuum, with
punishments that I consider clearly reasonable on one end; punishments I
consider clearly abusive on the other; and a gray area in between where I
see room for honest, reasonable people to disagree or be unsure about
whether the punishments should be considered reasonable, abusive, or perhaps
neither one.

Then why chose to use methods that are risky at best, and often not
only unsuccessful, but counter productive?

Further, in my view, those areas move depending on how serious a child's
misbehavior is. The same punishment could be in the "clearly abusive" range
for a child who accidentally spills a glass of milk, but in the :"clearly
reasonable" range if a child who is clearly old enough to know better
commits the crime of shoplifting.

At what age does a child "know better?"

The closest I can come to a single clear line is that spanking hard enough
to leave bruises is almost always in the "clearly abusive" part of the
continuum.

So if you can't see the injuries it's okay? Black children with darker
skin, for instance, don't show bruising as easily...but it is there,
medically speaking.

But because the divisions in the continuum move depending on the
seriousness of a child's misbehavior, there are some extreme cases where I
don't regard spanking hard enough to leave bruises as in the "clearly
abusive" range.

I preferred not to experiment on my children. I chose the 'easy way'
out. I simply did not hit them as a means of disciplining them.

And I regard that kind of zealotry as a whole lot more
dangerous than accepting the existence of shades of gray.

Well let's look at that.

Let's say you would call me a zealot.

Frankly, I see no point in name calling as such. The reason I brought up
the issue of zealotry was to point out the danger of trying to force issues
into simplistic black-and-white models when the issues are too complex for
any simple black-and-white model to be complete and accurate.

Neither side has a lock on what is complete and accurate.

But what I can be absolutely sure of is that CP risks injury, long and
short term, that non-CP methods don't.

snip

I believe from evidence I've seen both empirically and in data, that
even mild spanking has a fairly strong risk of producing psychological
injury if not physical.

Unless the evidence has gotten a lot better than what Chris Dugan got me to
look at a few years ago, I think you're overreaching. Straus and
Mouradian's 1998 study identified a group of spanking parents - those who
never spanked as a result of having "lost it" - who had essentially the same
results as non-spanking parents.

I am completely at sea in trying to figure out what you just said. Can
you help me understand it better?

Further, the studies I've looked at
consistently failed to account for the fact that a lot of parents who start
off planning not to spank are willing to change their minds if they don't
like the results they get without spanking.

Your proof would be?

That creates a potential for
the category of non-spanking parents to escape responsibility for
significant numbers of its less successful outcomes

It does?

It seems to me that pro spankers keep coming up with projections. They
presume all this failure on the part of non-spankers without actually
looking at facts.

I know hundreds of non-spanking families, some of whom were once
spankers, and they consistently have better behaved children with fewer
problems of all kinds.

Even the former spankers ... in fact especially the former spankers ...
report wonderful results from cultivating non-punitive parenting
methods. And I don't mean just non CP methods, but turning
energetically to NON punishment methods.

Showing a child, for instance, who is doing an unwanted behavior what
the wanted behavior is is really quite simple and in the best tradition
of teaching.

I do see all sorts of mistakes that parents can make in regard to when and
how they use spanking. Spanking can't function as a viable substitute for
teaching - for helping children to genuinely understand why particular
behaviors are good or bad.

Then I cannot help but ask, why use it at all?

Spanking isn't anywhere near as reliable a
technique as finding solutions that children are willing to cooperate with
voluntarily - if such solutions can be found. Spanking can't make children
magically be able to live up to unrealistic expectations. :Spanking can't
have much effect on children's behavior if children don't have a reasonably
clear understanding of what kinds of behavior are likely to result in
spankings. Threats of spankings can become essentially worthless if they
are almost always empty.

This last is never a problem for non-spankers, as long as they are not
those strange souls who drift from permissiveness to screaming threats.


And they are rare indeed among non-spankers. It's more often spankers
who do this shifting and bobbing about that create the most mentally
disturbed children.

So there are a lot of situations where I would
expect parents who spank not to get good results, either because they aren't
using the tool properly or because they are relying on it too much at the
expense of other, more important tools.

I can't disagree with you, and I also can't resist telling you once
again this isn't a problem for non-punitive parenting families.

But trying to get from there to the idea that all uses of spanking
inherently create unacceptable risks is a huge leap. And so far, I haven't
seen any evidence that supports that leap.

Then you haven't read the literature. From researchers to working
pediatricians, it's all out there. You only need to come to it without
a bias in favor of spanking. A very hard thing to do, apparently. I
admire that that can.

I recall a poster here as I recall, who went from being a spanker to a
non-spanker. It was as though he experienced a different reality. Which
of course, he did.

Another one tried, and went back to being a spanker. Reading his posts
over time and the 'fundy" (not religious, just fundy style thinking)
thinking he exhibitied made clear that the non-punitive method he chose
was impossible for him to incorporate.

I felt very sad about that, though I certainly didn't let him off the
hook for it.

Sometimes we have to push through our biases and keep working the
problem out.

I've seen mild "spankings" gradually over time
escalate into majory beatings that injure the child...and that
progression from milder "spanking" not working.

In fact from the viewpoint of a behaviorist model it appears the parent
is teaching the child to grow more accustomed to more pain. Very
strange thinking to my mind.

How often have you seen that happen when parents' expectations were
reasonable and the parents didn't get in a power struggle over something
that wasn't all that important?

The use of spanking IS evidence of a power struggle.

And to the child the issue no longer is on the table. Only the pain is.


Adults who report on parental use of CP are consistent in reporting
this. They can remember the spankings, but they cannot remember the
'lesson' supposedly being taught. They can't remember their "offense,"
most of the occurances of spanking for it.

Often when they DO remember it's because they were older, and because
so often the offense didn't warrant the injuries the CP left on body
and mind.

I did not believe, until early this past year that passing legislation
to ban spanking was a wise thing to do.

Watching the arguments in this newsgroup, and those put forward in the
media by spanking advocates (who themselves seemed to be speaking in
zealot jargon...no basis in fact, just unsupported claims) it occured
to me I've been expecting things to improve in this area of teaching by
pain and humiliation since I was about 19 years old. So far, not enough
progress.

Conversely, when someone like you

What am I "like?"

puts forth a theoretical model of "how
children react to being spanked,"

It's not theoretical. It's what children, and later adults, have told
me. Both personally and in clinical reports and studies.

and I know that the model is not an
accurate representation of how I reacted to being spanked,

The letter I just referred you back to is a case in point. This
insightful woman points out that she had to structure her reality to
deny her own pain.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Many victims of childhood spanking repeatedly mistake the facts....that
are gathered from other families members, including their own siblings
who witnessed the spankings.

I don't view
claims based on the model as credible. Some of your claims aren't just
unsupported. They say things that I know from personal experience are off
target - or, at the very least, not reliably on target.

I posted recently, and no, it was just yesterday so YOU can look it up
or not as your fancy takes you, a long letter by a women that discussed
her reaction to being spanked as a child.

Read it.

We all have different viewpoints even on things that we both
experienced exactly the same. We don't think we did, of course.

The reality is that people's personal experiences in their own lives ARE
facts.

You are presuming a mistaken notion. We find so often that personal
experience is so colored by the person that indeed they do NOT conform
to the facts.

As police investigators who specialize in interviewing victims and
witnesses.

And when opponents of spanking make a lot of claims that conflict
with those facts, it tends to destroy their credibility.

No it doesn't. Not if you insist on claims like people's remembered
experience being a 'fact.'

I think the whole issue is a lot more complex than people on either side
give it credit for being.

I don't. Not to someone that's made a nearly lifelong study of it.

Opponents pay so much attention to situations
where spanking doesn't work that they ignore the situations where it does
produce useful effects,

On the contrary. That's exactly what IS examined.

while supporters largely ignore how dangerous
spanking can be when parents make mistakes in how they use it or rely on it
too much.

Not only do they ignore, but they deny in the face of actual injury.

So I proposed, which has been routinely lied about by some posters as
"forcing parents to conform," we introduce the Swedish model.

Legislation to encourage and support a change in attitude in all of
society, where spanking is seen as offensive and poor parenting, with
of course the law providing a way to deliver VOLUNTEER services to
families that wish to learn less punitive parenting methods.

As in Sweden, I suggest no penalties for violating this law.

In my view, making something illegal without enforcing the law is a bad idea
because it weakens respect for laws in general.

So many people are raised with the punitive model for controlling human
behavior they are immune to the reality of how social sanctions can and
do work.

If research ever reaches a
point where such blanket opposition to spanking would be justified, I would
consider a resolution more appropriate than a law that turns parents who
spank into technical lawbreakers without any serious attempt to enforce the
law.

A "resolution?"

Explain please.

I think services helping parents learn less punitive parenting methods could
be a wonderful thing - as long as parents aren't forced to swallow
anti-spanking propaganda as a condition for using the services.

If ever there was a propaganda loaded statement ... "forced to swallow
anti-spanking propaganda."

I put carefully researched data on this newsgroup, and immediately it's
attacked as 'propaganda.'

A ploy. By propagandists themselves, who provide nothing in the way of
research to support the claims of spanking as being effective.

There are a
lot of nonpunitive techniques that can be highly useful regardless of
whether or not parents view spanking as a viable option if their other
efforts fail. But the whole point of freedom of speech and of the press is
that people are supposed to be able to disagree with each other without
undue interference from government.

I'm not arguing that we, either of us, be proscribed from debating this
issue publicly.

If government refuses to support parent
training unless it expresses particular, controversial opinions about how
bad spanking supposedly is, that would be a serious breach of freedom of
speech and/or of the press.

No it wouldn't.

Where do you get such strange ideas?

In fact the very claim YOU make applies to trying to force training to
NOT discuss the limitations and dangers of spanking.

YOU and those 'like you' have NO proof that spanking is NOT injurious.
And none that shows it is effective in any away more than non-CP
methods.

So I submit that in fact YOU are trying to censor training to represent
YOUR propaganda...that spanking is not harmful.

Now THAT is zealotry.

For that I've been called a zealot.

It's odd, if one examines certain odd things obout our laws relating to
spanking.

I presume you are arguing that spanking is a good thing.

I certainly do not adopt a blanket view that spanking is a good thing. I
think there are situations where punishing misbehavior is better than
allowing it to go unpunished,

Then logically you are arguing that spanking is a good thing.

You are mincing words.

and in some of those situations, spanking can
offer advantages over other forms of punishment.

Name them. Describe them. Give us examples.

But I think it's better if
parents (and other caregivers) can find ways to reduce the need for
punishment.

I'll say.

Reduce crime, mental illness, injury, addiction. Yep, I'm with you on
that one.


I don't support laws that require us to do 'good things.'

Like I would fight any law that said I had to take vitamins. I'll take
them if I wish.

Yet every state, with one exception, has had to pass laws that
expressly protect this "good thing" called spanking.

Why would that be necessary if we really believed that spanking was a
"good thing?"

In order for you to take vitamins legally, there can't be a law against
taking vitamins.

In order for parents to spank legally, there can't be a
law against spanking.

Yep.

All the laws that "protect" spanking really do is
prevent other laws (or other portions of the same laws) from making it
illegal.

As I said, if it's such a good thing, why do we need laws protecting
it?

I think the answer is obvious, even using your argument.

Further, spanking is merely one of many areas where laws treat children
differently from adults. Precedent speaks very loudly against the idea that
laws have to treat children the same as adults.

That was once, and still survives in some very sick ways, stated about
blacks and women.

They were "different."

They weren't, aren't, and neither are children in precisely the way we
are arguing about.

There is no more reason to believe that the infliction of pain is more
reasonable to teach a child than to teach an adult.

We KNOW that the infliction of pain can reduce learning.

Sometime I'll run across that study again, but it as scientifically
proven by direct experimentation on human subjects. (I think that's
illegal now). Subjects attempting to learn a task, about as complicated
to an adults as handling the glass of milk might be to a child, were
subjected to pain, some to more, some to less, some to none.

Want to guess how it came out, or does you bias allow it self to be set
aside for adults, but remain in place for children.

Pain and humiliation are NOT teaching tools that actually do teach the
lesson desire.

Well, unless one is a fascist and wishes to create more fascists.

No law, no statute, by the way, defines where the line is between safe
CP and abusive hitting.

The ONLY way you can tell from the law is after the fact. You know you
have crossed the line if you draw blood, or break bones, etc. And even
if you do it enough that it becomes psychologically injurious to the
child.

But why can't the law state clearly how hard, how often, with what, at
what stroke frequency, a parent can spank, based on the child's age,
and physical and psychological condition?

We don't put professional athletes on the field without a great deal of
monitoring by medical personnel to determine if they are fit to take
the rigors of their sport.

Yet we expect parents to be experts in gauging this condition readying
them to safely receive Corporal Punishment....and we see those parents
fail again and again injurying their child when they claim they only
meant to "discipline."

The catch is that good parents are the world's foremost experts on their own
children.

Not even according to them. Not even according to them. It's a self
delusion that they learn, if they can listen objectively to their adult
children, was not true.

As a result, people who regard themselves as good parents are
extremely reluctant to surrender their authority to strangers.

I hope you wouldn't argue that "bad parents" are any less willing to
surrender authority to anyone.

And it's
hard to design laws that stop bad parents without threatening the freedom of
good parents - especially when there are horror stories about overzealous
social workers and prosecutors who deliberately stretch their authority a
lot farther than it was intended to go.

Similar arguments can be presented for laws that deal with bigotry and
misogynation.

I've seen them. The civil rights movement being a case in point.

In theory, it might be possible to design limits that are loose enough and
flexible enough that a broad consensus could form around them. But in order
to get a consensus, people who want greater restrictions on spankiing would
have to lead the way (since they are the ones who tend to want change), yet
those people would have to support a proposal that accepts much looser
limits than they really want.

Your concept falls in on itself by the use of a requirement for
'consensus.'

We certainly didn't have concensus about an end to slavery and to
prohibitions concerning women's rights.

Also, the idea of widespread psychological evaluations would probably be a
deal-breaker.

I've not argued for that. Nor would I.

When and if I have kids, I would consider it completely
outrageous for a law to presume that a psychologist or psychiatrist can
spend a couple hours with my kids and magically know what is best for them
better than I do. And I'm sure a lot of other people would feel the same
way.

The model I suggested has no requirement for psychological evaluations.


Strauss remarked on this. I'll have to paraphrase, but basically he
pointed out that we have other effective methods of teaching and even
if spanking were as effect spanking still has a built in risk factor
the other methods don't.

What does work?

Well, it's well known that negative attention to unwanted behavior can
and does reinforce that behavior especially in the age range that is
spanked most often, the toddler to five.

The way you word this makes it sound like the problem is almost inevitable,

It is. As a parent. What happens when you tell a small child to stop
jumping on the furniture?

rather than something that may or may not occur with any given child. Is
that your intent? And if so, how do you justify such a broad
characterization?

Because children are, the younger they are, more alike in fundamental
ways developmentally.

They all need pretty much the same access to the invironment and to do
the same experiments.

Take the one where they repeat a particular movement, over and over
again, like gently banging their heels on the couch while sitting
watching TV, or reading a book.

Even the most careful non-punitive method of intervention is unlikely
to succeed in stopping such behavior at a certain age. Nature is
driving it.

The child needs to keep moving. The building of their circulatory
system demands it.

Positive attention to unwanted behavior by way of showing the child the
desired replacement behavior is the key. And this is not brain surgery.
It's really very simple if we let go of our "control" issues.

Are you sure this characterization is accurate?

Having done it thousands of times? Yes, I'd say so.

If the problem is a child's
not understanding negatives like "don't," I can see how this could work very
well.

In fact you have presented the perfect example of just when such
replacement WILL work.

The response would be, 'honey, don't do that, do this.' But I wouldn't
say it that way, on the off chance my momentary mention of the unwanted
behavior might be heard more clearly than my offer of the replacement
behavior.

I'd simply tell a child, say that was badgering me for a snack, "you
can eat anything you wish on your section of the bottom shelf of the
refridgerator."

And of course I'd have anticipated this, as I did when my children were
growing, and have those finger foods available for them that I felt
most would meet their need.

Occasionally I'd try new foods there, and because there was no
pressure, and THEY could make a choice between things, they try out new
foods.

My son got hooked on string beans. But eventually got over that
addiction when he discovered cut up potato chunks. Then it was...well,
you get the idea.

But if the problem is a child's misbehaving to get attention, is what
you describe sufficient to stop the child from engaging in the unwanted
behavior in order to get attention?

And you can't see that child handing you a tool for teaching?

Dear me. I'm stumped.

If YOU don't get it from your own example you have to be blocked from
seeing my explanation.

Should I give up now?

Oh ****, I can't resist.

The need for attention is the tool built in by nature for strong
learning experiences.

You will either give that child NEGATIVE attention (which can include
ignoring as well as spanking) or you can give them positive attention
in the form of teaching wanted behavior.

Now, have I oversimplified, or do you see the light coming on over your
head?

Hell, you yourself claim that other tools beside spanking need to take
precedence.

Certainly this is one of those.

This depiction of children as little bundles of contrary wilfully
disobedient creatures seems to be a constant theme in the spanking
crowd.

Dobson made a bundle writing books about it and how to torture the
child into submission.

I guess he knew his audience.

Kane