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

snip

And
when there is a gray area, children should generally be given the benefit
of reasonable doubts - although there can be exceptions when one child's
benefit of the doubt risks becoming a license to harm another.

And that is the time to spank them? Even little kids get the hypocrisy in
that.

When kids understand the concept of justice, they don't see it as hypocrisy.
Or do you consider it hypocritical to put someone in jail for kidnapping?

snip

For **** sakes, did you NOT look at a single developmental reference I
posted links to?

There is a huge difference between posting links to specific references
and posting links to Google searches.

Mmmm...the links to the specific references pop up if you go to the link
that did the searching. That's how that works.

I know how Google works. I've used it zillions of times - which is
precisely why I'm significantly more reluctant to wade through Google search
results than I would be to look at specific links. That's not to say that I
won't do it, but I haven't been in a mood to thus far.

snip

Believe it or not, children have other motives besides learning. A lot
of the time, their most immediate motive is to have fun or to get
something they want.

That's what I said. "Learning."

What makes you think the process of 'getting something they want,' or
'having fun' isn't about learning?

Let's see. That's a hard one. Maybe, BECAUSE I WAS A CHILD MYSELF?

I'll grant that children can learn from most of their activities, but with
most of the things children do for fun, learning is only a minor side
effect. The side effect adds up, so that if parents close off entire
avenues of exploration, the result can be a serious loss. But there is so
much redundancy in children's opportunities to learn through play and such
that the loss of a few individual opportunities here and there is highly
unlikely to make any real difference. Further, the opportunities that
children find the most fun are not always the ones they will be able to
learn the most from.

Also note that the times when children aren't allowed to get what they want
or do what they want can themselves be valuable learning opportunities.
Granted, if the reasons the children aren't allowed are bad ones, the only
thing they learn might be that Mommy or Daddy is an unreasonable tyrant.
But if children understand the reasons - even if they don't fully understand
them until later - the lessons they learn can be useful.

You wallop a kid for making mistakes and there is no telling what you
just trained that child NOT to do that could have benefited him or her,
or humankind, or even YOU in your old age, when they decide that YOU
are being deliberately mistaken.

That's why it is important for children to have a clear understanding of
what is expected, and to keep the expectations reasonable.

That's why it's important to understand that you argued for spanking
children because they are too young to be reasoned with. Now we are going
to expect them to have a "clear understanding?" In the toddler to 5 years?

You're putting words in my mouth here. The words you are using here are
dangerously close to the, "spank them because that's all they understand,"
mindset, which I find highly distasteful.

You're also misinterpreting what I said about "clear understanding." The
important thing, if children are to feel safe as long as they are trying to
behave, is that they have a clear understanding of how they need to behave
if they want to stay out of trouble, coupled with some willingness to
forgive them if they aren't always perfect in staying within those
boundaries. It is not necessary that they have a complete understanding of
exactly why the boundaries are defined the way they are.

Since you keep carping on the age toddler to five issue, I'll point out that
I have very little to say about spanking children younger than age four,
other than that I'm sure it's done a whole lot more often than it ought to
be. Almost all of my experience with children is with children age four and
over, and I don't recall ever being in a situation where I was in charge of
a child younger than that and had a serious enough behavior problem that I
even considered resorting to punishment.

If children
understand what the rules are and why they are being punished, the risk
of accidental side effects of scaring them away from other types of
behavior is reduced enormously.

Thus is demonstrated the very thing that makes me urge you to study more,
think more, let go of some of those trite and worn out beliefs about what
kids are doing and what purpose spanking is supposed to serve.

You use the word "understand" yet you earlier used the reasoning that
children can't "understand" and we would be wasting our time when a spank
would get the job done.

I think I need to clarify an important point. Once children are old enough
to understand verbal explanations, when spanking is used properly, children
understand how they need to behave in order to avoid being spanked. Because
of that, all that should be needed most of the time is the threat - the
understanding that the child will get spanked if his behavior crosses
certain lines (preferably with a little bit of allowance for occasional
unintentional lapses).

Thus, the situation is NOT, "when a spank would get the job done." Rather,
most of the time, the job is done without things reaching the point of an
actual spank. And if actual spankings are more than just rare over an
extended period of time, that's a pretty good indication that there is
probably a problem of either insufficiently clear explanations or
unrealistic expectations. (And at any given age, there are limits to how
complex an explanations a child can reasonably be expected to understand.)

Unfortunately, this concept only works after children understand enough for
the relevant concepts to be communicated through words (although it might be
possible to design storybooks that would use a combination of words and
pictures to get the point across at slightly younger ages). As a result, I
find the idea of spanking toddlers a lot more distasteful than I do the idea
of spanking children who are old enough that they can avoid getting spanked
if they make a reasonable effort to behave. But that still leaves the
problem of how else you get across to a toddler that a behavior needs to
stop if the toddler doesn't respond to "No!" or to efforts at redirection.
At present, I have a lot more questions than I do answers in regard to
dealing with such situations.

Do you understand yourself how many times I've have seen this incongruous
argument from spankers?

Obviously you've seen it enough that you've read it into what I wrote even
though it wasn't an argument I was making.

snip

I agree that children deserve to be cut a reasonable amount of slack,
usually more than adults would expect to receive in similar situations
(and for the youngest children, often a whole lot more). But there are
limits to how much slack I think it is fair or reasonable to expect
parents to cut their children, and to how much slack I think it is good
for the children to have cut for them.

Compare those two long sentences to each other.
Notice you had to link them with 'but?'

But, is a way to slid away from the truth.

But, is a way to recognize a complex truth with two sides to it. But, is a
way to find middle ground instead of having to rush to one extreme or the
other.