Jeremy James wrote:
Yes of course you are welcome to join the discussion. It is unfortionate
that people confuse these two issues. There is no "fine line" between
spanking and abuse, there is a broad valley.

It's the easiest thing in the world to define the difference by using
two extremes. There is a fine line, Jeremy. And those that claim they
know where it is are unable to describe it except in the morally
questionable terms you just did.

But more important, the line is variable. It moves. According to
circumstances. The child, the parent, the relationship. Health. The
events. The desired outcomes. The mental state of both parties. The
culture. Each of these have some variation in theselves, for each
involved individual.

Of course parents who spank, such as yourself, can claim they don't
abuse, but we know, but interviewing grownups that were "spanked" that
this is simply rationalization.

Spanking is a loving and
effective form of disclipline.

Then why do you not use it on your wife when she needs to learn
something? How is it that teachers have successfully given it up in the
discipline of learning and teaching?

Abuse is cruel and a criminal act.

Yes, it certainly is. Is it abusive to hit anyone not a child? Is it
abusive to hit and animal? Is it criminal to hit anyone not a child, an
animal?

WE don't really need to debate you on this, Jeremy. For YOU have the
answers yourself if you use logic, and facts.

Hitting
a child with an impliment such as a cat-of-nine-tails is definetely abuse.
If you are leaving bruises, welts or anything like that it is abusive.

I see every day arguments to the contrary, even legal ones, where
judges have decided that leaving marks is perfectly okay. That is why
we need laws, Jeremey; because even judges can't judge.

You have such strong opinions for someone so rigorously ignorant. I
think the capacity to delude one's self may one day be traced right
back to childhood trauma, like having the person who holds your life in
their hands, that you are so vulnerable to, that you love and who says
loves you, hits you.

The paradox doesn't escape the child the first time or two, but too
retain one's life, the love of and for the parent, the child then must
somehow detach from the reality of love equating with pain.

You are deluded, Jeremey. And I'm sorry your parents "loved" you in
this way, and that you are perpetuating this on your chidlren.

Ask yourself this. If you saw a man hitting his wife and asked why and
he said he was doing it out of love for her, would you not wonder if
he was deluded?

You have to live with this, Jeremey and to preserve your delusion that
hitting=love, you should have never come here. Or is it that you are
looking to actually love your children and want to be talked out of
this delusion of yours? Stop hitting them Jeremey.

However, since you never read anything that LaVonne or I post you'll
never see this and our children will continue to have the strange
delusion that hitting euals love delivered to them and then to their
children. And along the way humans will suffer because you could not
break the cycle as so many others have.

Kane