"Parenting Without Punishing"

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

You can bully such teachers by arranging appointments with them and
haranguing them, they are late getting home a number of times and
they learn not to **** with your kid. Also, you let the kid leave
school at 14 or 15 or home-school them and dummy the reports to the
state. If you're a great parent your kid will learn more on their own
anyway.

Yet another example of, "Coercion is terrible. Let's use coercion to get
rid of it." (And note, by the way, that this is an example of coercion used
when the person being targeted is NOT violating the law.)

And this is a perfect example of the anti-spanking zealotS' logic! :-)

Doan

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Lesa wrote:


"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues, followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what are the results of this philosophy? Do the students learned
more? Do the schools no longer need cops nor metal detectors?

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

What if the children don't want to clean it up?

Doan

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:36:58 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

And teachers are told not to use rewards because it "ruins intrinsic
motivation".

So there are no grades then? No report cards?

Grades are sent out to parents, but nothing graded is to be posted and in
general, grades are ignored. A poor grade costs the child nothing-unless the
parent chooses to make it so. I don't give grades in my elective classes-I
do narrative reports.

Grades are nothing unless they are made to be. The goal is to get the child
to improve and learn.

Frankly, whenever anyone says a method works with 1000+ children, I'm
skeptical. Because, even a parent of 2-3 children will tell you that the
same things don't work for all of them. I have had students who honestly
seem to have come out of the womb intrinsically motivated to behave. I have
had students who have come out completely the opposite.

I have heard parents tell me to "just whack him one"-and parents who claim
that requiring a child to pick up a mess he/she made is too punitive and
degrading. I have seen parents who, when their child is in trouble at school
take their child to McDonald's for lunch to "talk about it"-and are
surprised when their child gets into trouble every few weeks.



--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

So while at least from a theoretical perspective, an excellent case
could
be made for requiring parents to make an effort at using positive
methods to guide their children's behavior before they are allowed to
resort to threats and punishment, it is not possible to use our
society's
normal operating principles as a basis for arguing that parents should
never be allowed to punish no matter how much trouble their children's
behavior is causing them.
----------------------------
The parents "trouble" is irrelevant, unless trhe child causes it by
actions regarded as criminal if they were an adult, and with no
dishonest attempts by you to side-step this issue, if you please!!!

The view that children should have the same rights as adults makes sense as
a matter of basic principle ONLY IF children are also given the same
responsibilities as adults. If children are NOT given the same
responsibilities as adults, then society obviously does not view children as
being ready to be treated like adults. Under those conditions, a rational
argument can be made that the same differences between children and adults
that justify differences in their responsibilities also justify differences
in their rights.

If positive methods are not working, or are requiring an unreasonable
amount of time and effort from the parents before the child finally
decides to cooperate, punishment is not clearly unreasonable.
-----------------
If the child is within their Rights, is IS INHERENTLY UNREASONABLE!!

If. At present, society views children as having both fewer rights and
fewer responsibilities than adults.

(And whatever one wants
to argue about long-term effects, there are very clearly situations
where spanking can produce useful results in regard to children's
short-term behavior - especially in situations where there is no
possibility that the children won't get caught.)
-------------------------------------
Nonsense. Abuse only causes hatred and deception, not obedience.

Please stop repeating that lie over and over as if telling it often enough
somehow made it true. You can make a case that "abuse" as you call it
sometimes does cause those things. You can NOT make a case that those are
the ONLY things it causes, nor can you support a claim that it never causes
children to obey. Your position is patently false, and only your insistence
on rejecting any real-world facts that intrude on your theoretical model
gets in the way of your seeing that.

*IF* they had done something criminal, their conscience would tell
them they've done wrong. Then a punishment of detention might be
appropriate.

You are missing a critical difference. In the adult world, there are many
things that we don't NEED laws agaisnt because they can be dealt with
through the voluntary nature of adult relationships. An adult who is
annoyed by a roommate's behavior can kick the roommate out or leave,
depending on who is the owner or primary tenant. A worker who is annoyed by
a co-worker can quit, or can threaten to quit if the boss doesn't either get
the annoying co-worker to stop or fire him. A bar patron can ask the
bartender to evict another patron who is being obnoxious. And so on. The
combination of adult privileges and adult responsibilities deals with the
problems without the need to decide the exact point at which an annoying
behavior becomes a criminal offense.

But with children, many of the relationships are not nearly so voluntary.
Parents can't evict or leave their children, and allowing them to would open
children up to a threat far more dangerous than that of a spanking.
Siblings' ability to get away from each other if one behaves obnoxiously
toward another is very limited, especially if they have to share a room.
Children at school have only a very limited ability to get away from a child
who is deliberately trying to annoy them. And so forth.

So trying to take laws designed for one context and say that any behavior
that is not illegal under those laws should be allowed in another, very
different context poses some pretty significant problems.

But if that isn't true and they were only availing themselves of their
Rights, they will experience merely raw hatred and vengeance formation,
and progressive resistance to punishment so that they
WILL finally attack you.

Huh? Let me get this straight. If children are punished for something that
does not violate adult law, they will "experience merely raw hatred and
vengeance formation," but if what they are doing violates adult law, they
won't?

News flash: children's sense of right and wrong is sophisticated enough to
recognize that a behavior can be wrong without being illegal in an adult
context. What is important is not whether what they are punished for
violates adult law, but rather whether the children accept that the action
they were punished for was wrong. If someone (adult or child) is punished
for violating a law, but believes that the law was wrong, it can lead to a
great deal of resentment. And being punished for something that a person
didn't even know was considered wrong is likely to lead to resentment. But
if a child accepts that what he did was wrong, the fact that the "law" came
from a parent rather than from the government doesn't make all that much
difference in the child's perception of how he is being treated.

Further, the idea that spanking is somehow inherently more cruel than
other forms of punishment is easily refuted by the existence of
situations
where children PREFER a spanking over an alternative form of
punishment that would not be considered excessively cruel.
----------------
Absolute nonsense, abused kids do that merely to avoid worse parental
beatings. It is still abuse and entails vengeance formation and
antisocial fixation.

LOL. If your theoretical model and reality collide, you invariably think
that it must be reality that's wrong. News flash: the world didn't change
from round to flat just because people tried to deny that it was round.
Another news flash: I'm speaking from personal experience, so I know just
how full of bovine excrement you really are.

On the other hand, your incredulity may actually be explainable. Later, you
say, "every parental abuse I ever witnessed the hatred and abusive ideation
was fully involved, and the beating vicious." I can see why you would not
believe that a child would choose that over any even remotely reasonable
non-physical alternative. But in my view (and I developed this view as a
child) what makes one punishment less undesirable than another is an issue
of overall severity, not one of what form the punishment takes.

I'm curious: suppose you broke a law and were given a choice of either a
month in jail or three licks with a paddle that wouldn't be hard enough to
leave any bruising. Which would you choose?

But in general, there is no logically
sound moral reason why spanking should be rejected in favor of other
forms of punishment in situations where punishment can be defended
as legitimate.
--------------------------
Absolute abusive lie by an obvious chronic abuser who should be
prosecuted or killed.

You make that claim, but I don't see you accepting the challenge implicit in
what I wrote.

I've said all this to lay the following foundation:

(1) Under the views of
the majority of society, there is no logically sound reason for viewing
it as automatically immoral for parents to punish, and (2) there is no
logically sound reason for rejecting spanking as inherently more cruel
than other forms of punishment.
----------------
Except that all the evidence points to it causing a vast increase
in crime and antisocial behavior where it was attempted. It was once
tried in prisons in England in the 16th century, but it made prisons
so dangerous they couldn't hire enough guards!! When they restricted
prison to incarceration as punishment, the prisons became staffable
again and inmates who had been in solitary for years because of them
trying to kill anyone near them became social and even friendly again.

This is not a sufficiently detailed explanation to establish relevance to
anything that I would consider a reasonable use of corporal punishment by
parents. For all I know from what you wrote, the guards were often sadistic
scum looking for any excuse to beat their prisoners harshly.

Therefore, if one wants to build a case that
parents must not spank using a philosophical basis acceptable to
most Americans, that case has to be built on scientific evidence
showing that spanking causes sufficient long-term harm to
outweigh its short-term benefits.
-----------------
The burden is on the criminal, not their victims.

Nice try, but under current law, parents who spank are not criminals.

Otherwise, if parents cannot obtain acceptable behavior within
a reasonable amount of time using positive methods, they are
justified in using the threat of spanking (and, if necessary, actual
spanking) for the short-term benefits it produces WHETHER
OR NOT spanking produces long-term benefits compared with
if they spent a lot more time and effort trying to resolve the issue
using purely non-punitive techniques.
------------------------------------
Nope, that causes worse outcomes and no reasonable results,

You're ignoring reality again, or else playing a word game in which you can
say "no reasonable results" because you arbitrarily define the results as
unreasonable without regard to whether spanking has the desired effect on
the child's behavior.

So what does the evidence say? Straus and Mouradian's 1998 study shows
a truly enormous distinction between the effects parents can expect if
they
spank only when they have themselves firmly under control and those they
can expect if they spank as a result of losing their tempers.
----------------------------------
You're lying, misquoting and mischaracterizing.

Nice trick. If someone cites evidence that damages your position, level
accusations against him but offer no specifics that would allow him to prove
that your accusations are wrong.

And nobody *I* know have ever SEEN this imaginary reported "controlled
spanking" bull**** among parents, every parental abuse I ever witnessed
the hatred and abusive ideation was fully involved, and the beating
vicious.

Then you're working from a position of ignorance, either from not having
seen the full spectrum of how spanking is used or from having misinterpreted
what you were seeing.

And as for the supposed controlled "paddling" in schools, I
observed it caused the teachers to be assaulted, threatened, their
families endangered, so much so that the only ones who tried it either
retired early from teaching or were fired. It was a major cause of
kids winding up in prison, and two teachers I knew were severely
harmed.

"A major cause of kids winding up in prison"? On what do you base that
claim? There probably is a pretty significant correlation in places where
corporal punishment is used in school, because the same factors that cause
kids to grow up to be criminals seem likely to get them in trouble at
school, and hence possibly get them paddled, along the way. But it's hard
to imagine any significant number of cases (at least compared with the
overall prison population) where paddlings at school played a significant
role.

As for the rest, I wish I knew how objective you were being. Thinking about
the issue a little, it's not hard to see how kids who are abused (in the
legal sense) or close to it at home and who have a lot of pent-up anger and
hostility might redirect it toward a teacher who paddles them. And there
are teachers who are arbitrary enough and unfair enough in their use of
punishment to earn more than a little hostility in their own right. Even
so, I find your description of the scale of the issue a bit surprising.

If there are any teachers in the audience who work in areas where corporal
punishment either is or used to be used, do you have any comments on this
issue?

In the process,
it pretty much blows all of the other studies out of the water insofar
as
parents who always do a self-diagnostic to make absolutely sure they
have themselves under control before they spank are concerned.
---------------------
More of your self-reported dog**** and abusive wish=fulfillment.

Again you ignore evidence if it goes against your preconceptions.

In
essence, as best I can tell, that one study puts the anti-spanking side
pretty much back to square one in regard to the question of whether
parents should never spank or whether they can expect equally good
results if they merely are very careful that they spank only for the
right reasons.
-----------------
I'm tired of your unbelievably blatant lying about the results of
research, I've never seen such a degree of intentional distortion,
even out of Doan, you should be ashamed of yourself.

If A C and B C, which is greater, A or B? Straus and Mouradian clearly
showed that "never lost it" spanking mothers had vastly better results than
the average of all spankers. Other studies show that non-spanking parents
have better results than the average of all spankers. So how do "never lost
it" spankers and non-spankers compare? Straus and Mouradian's results
indicated very similar outcomes, and if other studies did not account for
the "lost it" factor, they provide no evidence at all on how those two
groups compare. That is the basis for my saying "pretty much back to square
one."

If you have any evidence that would contradict my belief about the current
state of research, please present it. Otherwise, you have no basis for
calling my presentation a "distortion." And your charges of "lying" and
that I had an intent to distort are wrong in any case, because I am working
from my best effort to analyze the information that I am aware of.

Nathan

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink
at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.


Only if you're allowed to do it.

As I've stated, a teacher recieved a formal reprimand for requiring a group
of students clean up a mess (after they decided to shoot spitballs in the
library)-because that was degrading. So much for a logical conseqence.

As far as grades go, grades are considered punitive by some parents too-so
much so that schools in some districts aren't supposed to post graded work,
honor rolls and the like. And sending homework home is asking to have
parents down your throat complaining that it's interfering with family time.
Requiring a child to complete unfinished homework at recess will have
parents complaining that it is unfair to require their child to miss recess
because he/she needs the physical activity. Assigning only incomplete work
as homework? Still unfair-after all, why should this poor child who works
slowly be penalized because of that (never mind that this poor child who
works slowly spent the whole period talking to his friends)

I teach music-the most common logical consequence is the "use it correctly
or lose it" rule-which works great, until PARENTS started complaining that
it was unfair for their poor baby to be unable to use an instrument just
because he/she decided to play the drum with their feet instead of their
hands-after all, I was stifling the poor child's creativity.

And believe me, it isn't the parents who advocate more punitive discipline
who refuse to allow logical consequences-it's the ones who believe in NO
punishment, and apparently, NO consequenses. I believe strongly in logical
conseqences-because I KNOW they work if I'm allowed to use them. But all it
takes is one parent complaining for any reason, and they're not allowed.

And, what happens when minor consequences are not allowed is that only the
major ones are left-so the teacher or principal ends up calling the parent
for every trivial thing (because the parent has tied their hands) and then
the parent is even more convinced that the school is out to get their child.

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life. If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be
consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what happens if bad grades are not a sufficiently serious consequence
for the child to correct the failure to do his or her homework? As long as
the child is making good grades on tests, it may not be an issue. But if
the child starts to fall behind, and bad grades aren't motivating the child
to keep up, isn't something more serious needed?

Keep in mind that in the adult world, the consequence of refusing to do
one's job on an ongoing basis is getting fired. So it's not as if imposing
something more serious than a bad grade on a child would be out of line with
the consequences adults face for similar behavior.

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:20:39 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"toto" wrote in message
.. .

Grades are merely a measurement device. Thus, the reward
of a good grade is the reward of doing something
successfully, much as winning a game because one
played it well is a reward or playing a song on the piano
well is a reward.

I disagree.
Grades are often an *incorrect* measurement of the learning
that is going on.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Offhand, the three issues I can think
of are (1) differences in test-taking skills, (2) tests don't tell whether
the child has particular answers "down cold" or is just guessing, and (3)
especially, how much the child knows above and beyond what was on the test.
Did you have other things in mind?

And, children who are motivated internally
want to learn, not to be graded by some outside source.
When you play a game, you can win despite playing poorly
if your team plays well or if your opponent makes mistakes.
YOU know whether or not you played well. And, you can play
well and lose because your opponent played better. When
you play a song well on the piano, you know that you did it
well. No audience or prize is needed to motivate you or to
*make* you practice until you do play it well.

In academic subjects, without some kind of testing (even if it's just the
child checking his answers against the back of the book), there is a very
real possibility that the child will think he knows the material better than
he really does.

And by the way, it is by no means rare for sports coaches to catch flaws in
players' techniques that the players are not aware of.

Conversely, bad grades "punish" in the same sense that
losing a game as a result of making mistakes is a "punishment"
or making mistakes while playing the piano is a "punishment."

Nope. The problem with grades is they are someone else judging
your learning, not your own judgement of whether or not you learned.
With the piano, *I* make the judgement because *I* can hear what
went wrong. This is true of learning anything *if* we use tests and
evaluations as learning tools instead of as judgements. Grades,
however, are not used this way. They are used to determine whether
or not a child fails in the judgement of the teachers and parents.

I very strongly agree that tests should be learning tools. The whole point
of schools is for children to learn, and what use is there in identifying a
problem if no effort is made to correct it?

Granted, if parents or teachers express approval or disapproval of a child's
grades, that provides an extrinsic reward or punishment. But the grade
itself is merely a summary of how well the child did overall. It is how it
is used that can make it an extrinsic reward or punishment.

The "reward" or "punishment" inherent in grades is intrinsic to the
child's knowing that he is doing something well or poorly. It is not
something extrinsic intended solely for the purpose of manipulation.
Indeed, the only way children WON'T feel the reward of being
highly successful in their studies or the "punishment" of being
less successful is if adults refuse to provide the children with
accurate information about how well they are doing.

Providing accurate information is not the same as *grading* the
child's progress.

True. A grade provides no more than a summary, and the summary itself is
not really necessary when the specific errors are pointed out. On the other
hand, a child just might want to calculate the percentage of wrong answers
even if a teacher didn't. And if a teacher adjusts the grades upward to
reflect the difficulty of a test, that sends the message, "This test may
have been a bit on the hard side, so missing a certain percentage isn't
necessarily as big an issue as it would be on an easier test." Thus, the
information is not useless.

Personally, I view hiding information from children out of fear that
knowing the truth might hurt their "self-esteem" as reprehensible.
True self-esteem comes from recognizing one's abilities and
limitations and regarding it as success to do one's best even if
other people's best is better, not from ignorance. And false
self-esteem founded on ignorance is doomed to failure in the long
term because once children see the truth, their old sense of self-
esteem collapses and they have no foundation on which to build a
new sense of self-esteem to replace it.

I don't think you should *hide* the evidence of limitations, nor
should you try to raise self-esteem by false pretences. OTOH,
grades don't actually evaluate objectively and they give no feedback
to tell the child what he needs to do to learn the subject matter.

Grades don't give an indication of exactly what the child needs to do, but
they do give an indication of how much the child might want or need to do.
An "F" indicates that the child needs to work a lot harder to keep up with
other children. A "C" was originally supposed to mean that a child was
doing about average, which would raise the question of whether the child
wants to settle for doing about average or to push harder to do better. (Of
course from some of the things I've read about grade inflation, I get the
impression that the average grade is higher than "C" these days.) So I view
the information as useful from a student's perspective.

Keep in mind that when children grow up, they will be competing with each
other for jobs. For example, if a child wants to get into medical school
and become a doctor, he needs to learn enough to compete with others who
have a similar desire. That kind of thing can make knowledge of how a child
measures up against other children very important - to the child, not just
to the teacher and parents.

Nathan

In article ,
says...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences. You
dont show up to work and you get fired, you slack off at your work you get
fired. You make a mess in your home eventualy you or your spouse will have
to clean it up. You cheat on your spouse they will most likely leave you.
While it would be wonderful to live in a world without punishment in general
it is just not the case. To raise a child to not have cause and effect
other then the "natural consequenses" (IE sticking a fork in the outlet will
get the child shocked) is just as bad IMO then to over punish a child.

I have been lurking on this thread and wanted to pipe in that IMO people
are confusing natural consequences with punishment. A detention is a
punishment, a bad grade resulting from not studying or cutting class is
a natural consequence. As a teacher for years I have seen parents too
often try their best to protect children from the natural consequences
of bad behavior, and this usually leads to children who make poor
choices. I teach in an alternative school for at-risk youth, and have
seen first hand the benefits of structured expectations and
consequences.

-kim

In article ,
says...

"Tori M." wrote
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues, followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

I am just curious - do you see getting suspended or expelled from school
as a punishment or natural consequence? And what type of consequence
would you suggest for children in schools who sexually molest another
student, bring weapons or drugs to school, assault other students or
teachers?

-kim



In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

"Doan" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Lesa wrote:


"Tori M." wrote in message
...
This whole thing is unrealistic and will set a child to fail later in
life.
If you do something bad 90% of the time there will be consequences.

What you don't seem to realize is that eliminating punishment is not
eliminating consequences. In a school setting if a child does not do
their
homework, they get a poor-- this is consequences. What is not necessary
are
lectures, remaining after school, notes home to parents, meetings about
what
a terrible child this is, etc. A simple statement from the teacher that
this child *WILL* receive a poor grade if this behavior continues,
followed
by a poor grade is all that is necessary.

And what are the results of this philosophy? Do the students learned
more? Do the schools no longer need cops nor metal detectors?

In the home setting there are also consequences. If you spill your
drink at
diner, you clean it up-- again, no lectures, or spankings or time in the
corner or restrictions are needed.

What if the children don't want to clean it up?

Doan

Quite honeslty this in not something I've encountered on more than a very
very infrequent basis. It is understood that taking responsiblity for one's
actions is expected, and I've found that children will what you expect of
them. If you expect that a child will act in a cooperative manner, they do
so. If you expect that a child will constantly rebel and refuse to do what
is required, they do this as well. On those rare occasions where a child
would not want to clean up, all that is necessary is disussing with the
child that you understand that they don't want to do this now, but that it
needs to be done and you would appreciate their taking care of it -- neve
rhad a problem beyond that.