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Teenagers faced with spankings



 
 
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  #81  
Old December 11th 06, 05:46 AM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
0:->
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,968
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

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

The distrust of teachers has been carefully cultivated as part of the
campaign to educationally disenfranchise children of all but the elite.
The wealthy and powerful.


In any profession, some of the people who enter it are very good, some are
incompetent, and most are somewhere in between. And in any profession, it
is possible for people who start off good to become lazy or complacent, or
to get burned out.


Yep. So? Standardized testing will compensate?

In most professions, the free market sorts out such differences, with
workers who aren't measuring up getting replaced by people who do better.


Not in large organizations. People get jobs through patronage there just
as in government. People can go for years without being productive.

And they have unions.

But because our public education system is a government monopoly (or, more
precisely, made up of a bunch of local monopolies), and because teachers'
unions do such a good job of resisting attempts to judge how good a job
individual teachers are doing, a relative handful of bad teachers are able
to drag the entire profession's reputation through the mud. And the harder
the unions try to protect the substandard teachers, the more of the mud gets
splattered across the entire profession.


Can you explain how standardized testing will compensate for this?

What I want - and am writing a book to promote - is a well-funded voucher
system.


The "everything is screwed up" approach applies to all schemes. Your's
might go the same way.

That wouldn't ensure equality in the communist sense of
deliberately limiting people's opportunities in order to keep anyone from
having more than anyone else. But it would guarantee that government power
couldn't be used to artificially and unnecessarily limit families'
opportunities to get good education for their children.


You'd have to show me how such a voucher system (I'm more than passing
familiar) would not be tagged with limitations that once again line the
pockets of the fat cats.

But then, you may have a scheme I haven't heard of.

HAVE YOU READ THE DAMN TEST QUESTIONS? Why did you NOT answer that
question?


No, I haven't read the questions. And I resent your tone of acting like you
have some kind of magical right to demand that I waste my time answering
every question you care to write.


You just go right ahead and resent then. And ask yourself, while you are
all caught up in your indignation if I asked you to answer every
question I write. That's ONE question. Notice?

Standardized tests do have some value as long as we don't place too much
emphasis on them.

You just paraphrased my comment as though YOU created it, thus
attempting to argue against my argument with my own argument.

" Nothing wrong with testing. The problem is now they are teaching to
the test, and these tests are predetermined, NOT created by teachers
to fit the setting and children he or she is in."


The fact that you did not include the word "standardized" in your first
sentence, coupled with your later emphasis on the idea that tests should be
created by teachers, led me to interpret your position as being inherently
against standardized testing. Thanks for clarifying your position. As for
what I wrote, I've felt that way for several years. It's more or less my
standard response when the issue comes up.

That is the same thing. TOO much emphasis on the test, instead of the
teachers judgement...the part YOU left out and then fall into the
"don't trust the teacher" trap and bull****.


Let me clue you in on something. I'm the son of a former teacher and a
college professor. Two of my aunts are retired schoolteachers. One of my
cousins is a schoolteacher, and another is a teacher's aide studying to
become a teacher. So I am NOT the sort of person who has any kind of
sweeping distrust for the entire teaching profession.


The question here is about the new testing nonsense...with not only the
strangely tailored social class specific questions that lower the scores
in the ... ahem "other" schools.

There is, however, a difference between reasonable trust and blind faith.
There is NO profession that I have so much faith in that I'd be satisfied
with having government assign me a professional more or less at random, and
trust that the person government picks will necessarily make the best
choices. Nor, as a professional myself, would I expect a person I work for
to put blind faith in me to always make the best choices without paying any
attention to how good a job I am doing.


That's not a good argument for the kind of testing scheme we are
currently caught up in.

Standardized testing used to make some sense. It was badly class
specific but not this blatantly. And MONEY, federal monies, did not
depend on test scores.

Too much trust can be just as dangerous as too little, and sometimes even
more dangerous. Professionals need enough trust that they can get on with
their work without being continually second-guessed or micromanaged. But
there needs to be enough oversight to make sure they are doing a good job,
and to replace them if they aren't.


Yep...and the current standardized testing with heavy penalties for the
schools do NOT serve in this way.

Unfortunately, my impression is that our current public education system has
too much micromanagement where it isn't necessary, while at the same time
often not having nearly as much capacity as it should to actually replace
teachers who are doing a substandard job. Thus, to a large extent, we get
the worst of both worlds.


Yep. And standardized testing will fix this how?

But it would be nice if we could come up with an
information-gathering process that goes beyond the limits of the kinds of
standardized testing we currently use.

We can, could, and did. They are called "teachers."

Are you so young you don't remember that? I'd say if you are 45 or
younger you are victim of the scam to take education away from
teachers.


In any profession, some workers are able to do an excellent job with very
little supervision and oversight, while others are more prone to make
mistakes and therefore need greater supervision and oversight.
Unfortunately, our current system seems to be so geared toward trying to
make sure the worst teachers don't make mistakes that it doesn't give good
teachers anywhere near the autonomy they need and deserve.


That's never been much different over time. The problem is the federal
government and the trick testing they have worked out to steer money TO
the people in power, and money away from the schools that so badly need it.

There is a huge difference between spanking children for all kinds of
mistakes,

Really?

and spanking them only when their "mistakes" are either clearly
deliberate or a result of gross negligence in trying to control their
behavior.

Now how, that didn't believe that children are born evil, and are in
battle for control with the parents, could possibly argue with you on
that.

I mean, there are so many grossly negligent toddlers, after all...and
that is the most spanked population, so surely we have uncovered the
enemy, we beliguered parents, poor souls.

And those damn grossly negligent 9 year olds. Let me tell you, their
constant yammering things like "it's not fair," certainly doesn't have
anything to do with Mother Nature plonking them on the head to become
little classification engines (WHICH IS THE BUSINESS OF THIS AGE
RANGE).

So they whine. And they are seen as being "clearly deliberate." You
might as well kick a pot of flowers for not blooming in December.


Nice examples of how dangerous it can be when parents' expectations are
unrealistic relative to their children's ages.


Yep. And there is a lot of that going around.

Parents need to recognize that there are limits to how long and how reliably
toddlers can be expected to remember what they aren't supposed to do, and to
understand that expecting toddlers to control their behavior more reliably
than those limits allow is unfair and unrealistic.


And spanking is a fix for this how?

Parents need to
recognize the difference between children's disagreeing with them about
whether something is fair, and children's deliberately defying them.


There you go with that "deliberately defying," again. Kids raised with
non-punitive methods rarely ARE defiant. No need. And on those rare
occasions when they are, it's usually organic. Tired, cold, afraid, etc.
like other human beings.

Or, if not, if they are just making a decision to defy, they have the
valuable relationship with their parent to consider. Something spanked
kids routinely demonstrate they don't give a **** about and it will get
worse as they age into teens.

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.

But the fact that you can give examples where children's behavior is beyond
their reasonable ability to control doesn't mean that there are not also
situations where children do have the ability to control their behavior if
they make a reasonable effort to do so.


Why should they do so?

And do you understand how very rare that might be, except in children
that have learned to power struggle with parents?

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.

With a link to a specific reference, I
could take a few minutes to read it and know I'm looking at something that
you regard as offering good quality information. Google searches are more
of a hit-or-miss proposition in terms of how quickly good-quality
information can be found, and thus far, I haven't been in a mood to mess
with them.


Naw, there were easily recognizable links on development there. I gave a
selection, that's all. It's a matter of a second or two to click a link.

Children are "grossly negligent," or make mistakes that are "clearly
deliberate."

Those are properly called ignorance, and the drive to DO IT to learn.


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?

Right AT the age when children are spanked most often...toddler to 5.


Even make mistakes.

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?

Gimmee a break.

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.

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

Were do YOU get off claiming children are deliberatly ANYTHING. They
are happening, and most of the time totally unconscious to their
actions and to cause and effect.

Hell, half the time we adults aren't either.

And as adults we cut each other slack for that..unless we are a raving
maniac.


Here, again, I think you're takiing a very reasonable concept to an
unreasonable extreme.


That is because the "reasonable concept" you think you are arguing is
jargon from out of the annals of "spanking advocacy." They have hair a
foot long on them.

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.

You either give them the slack or you don't. NO BUTTS about it, (pun
intended).

There is no "limit" involved in the real world. Parents that raise
children without pain and humiliation don't have these crises that you
seem to think is normal.

The challenges from children take on a completely different light for us.

Those become, are, an opportunity for learning. Doing it even for a few
months provides fast, easy, sure methods and results.

The 'struggle' just melts away. And your blood pressure goes down too.
Honest.

Try it, you'll like it.

Really.

Let go of the fight.

Kane
  #82  
Old December 11th 06, 10:54 AM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 34
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

The real root of our education system's problems is that there is no way to
get genuine accountability in a monopoly - at least certainly not when the
"product" involved is something as complex and multidimensional as education
and the monopoly has to serve more kids than the people in charge can
possibly keep track of as individuals. You're quite right that our current
standardized testing mess doesn't do the job. But giving schools money
without any accountability for producing results doesn't do the job either.
Creating big bureaucracies to make sure teachers do their job "right"
doesn't work. But letting teachers do whatever they want without any
accountability doesn't work either. When customers can't quit accepting an
inferior product or service and go somewhere else, no mechanism can work
truly well.

As for the possibility that a voucher system could get screwed up the same
way the current system is, that can't happen in a genuine free market
because if existing suppliers get screwed up (or even just don't keep
improving quickly enough), new competitors come along and force them to
either get better or wither and eventually die. The catch is that to have a
genuine free market, the voucher amount has to be high enough for the supply
of private schools to grow to exceed the demand so the worst private schools
go in business. The Milwaukee voucher experiment has never been able to
reach that point because the number of students keeps growing and the
voucher amount isn't adequate for the supply of participating private
schools to grow quickly enough to close the gap.

As for your concern that vouchers would line the pockets of fat cats, it
sounds to me like you're buying into the anti-voucher propaganda that
private schools cater almost exclusively to the rich. The reality is that
an awful lot of wealthy families are already gaming the system by sending
their children to public schools in elite suburbs, or in the neighborhoods
that have the best public schools they can find if an elite suburb isn't
available. In order to use vouchers, those families would have to settle
for less tax funding than what we're spending on their children's education
now. As for the supposed wealthiness of families who send their children to
private schools, the average private school teacher makes a LOT less money
than the average public school teacher. The reality is that a lot of
private schools would make even "horribly underfunded" public schools look
downright wealthy. So even to the extent that a voucher system would help
families who can already send their children to private schools, a lot of
the people who are helped would be ordinary people who are currently making
serious sacrifices to send their children to poorly funded private schools.
And to the extent that fat cats who currently send their children to private
schools would benefit, they would still end up with less tax funding for
their children's education than the fat cats who send their children to
public schools already get, so I see no legitimate cause for complaint.


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

The distrust of teachers has been carefully cultivated as part of the
campaign to educationally disenfranchise children of all but the elite.
The wealthy and powerful.


In any profession, some of the people who enter it are very good, some
are incompetent, and most are somewhere in between. And in any
profession, it is possible for people who start off good to become lazy
or complacent, or to get burned out.


Yep. So? Standardized testing will compensate?

In most professions, the free market sorts out such differences, with
workers who aren't measuring up getting replaced by people who do better.


Not in large organizations. People get jobs through patronage there just
as in government. People can go for years without being productive.

And they have unions.

But because our public education system is a government monopoly (or,
more precisely, made up of a bunch of local monopolies), and because
teachers' unions do such a good job of resisting attempts to judge how
good a job individual teachers are doing, a relative handful of bad
teachers are able to drag the entire profession's reputation through the
mud. And the harder the unions try to protect the substandard teachers,
the more of the mud gets splattered across the entire profession.


Can you explain how standardized testing will compensate for this?

What I want - and am writing a book to promote - is a well-funded voucher
system.


The "everything is screwed up" approach applies to all schemes. Your's
might go the same way.

That wouldn't ensure equality in the communist sense of
deliberately limiting people's opportunities in order to keep anyone from
having more than anyone else. But it would guarantee that government
power couldn't be used to artificially and unnecessarily limit families'
opportunities to get good education for their children.


You'd have to show me how such a voucher system (I'm more than passing
familiar) would not be tagged with limitations that once again line the
pockets of the fat cats.

But then, you may have a scheme I haven't heard of.

HAVE YOU READ THE DAMN TEST QUESTIONS? Why did you NOT answer that
question?


No, I haven't read the questions. And I resent your tone of acting like
you have some kind of magical right to demand that I waste my time
answering every question you care to write.


You just go right ahead and resent then. And ask yourself, while you are
all caught up in your indignation if I asked you to answer every question
I write. That's ONE question. Notice?

Standardized tests do have some value as long as we don't place too
much
emphasis on them.
You just paraphrased my comment as though YOU created it, thus
attempting to argue against my argument with my own argument.

" Nothing wrong with testing. The problem is now they are teaching to
the test, and these tests are predetermined, NOT created by teachers
to fit the setting and children he or she is in."


The fact that you did not include the word "standardized" in your first
sentence, coupled with your later emphasis on the idea that tests should
be created by teachers, led me to interpret your position as being
inherently against standardized testing. Thanks for clarifying your
position. As for what I wrote, I've felt that way for several years.
It's more or less my standard response when the issue comes up.

That is the same thing. TOO much emphasis on the test, instead of the
teachers judgement...the part YOU left out and then fall into the
"don't trust the teacher" trap and bull****.


Let me clue you in on something. I'm the son of a former teacher and a
college professor. Two of my aunts are retired schoolteachers. One of
my cousins is a schoolteacher, and another is a teacher's aide studying
to become a teacher. So I am NOT the sort of person who has any kind of
sweeping distrust for the entire teaching profession.


The question here is about the new testing nonsense...with not only the
strangely tailored social class specific questions that lower the scores
in the ... ahem "other" schools.

There is, however, a difference between reasonable trust and blind faith.
There is NO profession that I have so much faith in that I'd be satisfied
with having government assign me a professional more or less at random,
and trust that the person government picks will necessarily make the best
choices. Nor, as a professional myself, would I expect a person I work
for to put blind faith in me to always make the best choices without
paying any attention to how good a job I am doing.


That's not a good argument for the kind of testing scheme we are currently
caught up in.

Standardized testing used to make some sense. It was badly class specific
but not this blatantly. And MONEY, federal monies, did not depend on test
scores.

Too much trust can be just as dangerous as too little, and sometimes even
more dangerous. Professionals need enough trust that they can get on
with their work without being continually second-guessed or micromanaged.
But there needs to be enough oversight to make sure they are doing a good
job, and to replace them if they aren't.


Yep...and the current standardized testing with heavy penalties for the
schools do NOT serve in this way.

Unfortunately, my impression is that our current public education system
has too much micromanagement where it isn't necessary, while at the same
time often not having nearly as much capacity as it should to actually
replace teachers who are doing a substandard job. Thus, to a large
extent, we get the worst of both worlds.


Yep. And standardized testing will fix this how?

But it would be nice if we could come up with an
information-gathering process that goes beyond the limits of the kinds
of
standardized testing we currently use.
We can, could, and did. They are called "teachers."

Are you so young you don't remember that? I'd say if you are 45 or
younger you are victim of the scam to take education away from
teachers.


In any profession, some workers are able to do an excellent job with very
little supervision and oversight, while others are more prone to make
mistakes and therefore need greater supervision and oversight.
Unfortunately, our current system seems to be so geared toward trying to
make sure the worst teachers don't make mistakes that it doesn't give
good teachers anywhere near the autonomy they need and deserve.


That's never been much different over time. The problem is the federal
government and the trick testing they have worked out to steer money TO
the people in power, and money away from the schools that so badly need
it.



  #83  
Old December 11th 06, 12:13 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.parenting.spanking,alt.support.foster-parents
Greegor
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,243
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

Donald L Fisher?

  #84  
Old December 11th 06, 01:57 PM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 34
Default Teenagers faced with spankings


"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.


  #85  
Old December 11th 06, 02:06 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.parenting.spanking,alt.support.foster-parents
0:->
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,968
Default Teenagers faced with spankings


Greegor wrote:
Donald L Fisher?


I don't think he's published. Why not ask him?

  #86  
Old December 11th 06, 02:50 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.parenting.spanking,alt.support.foster-parents
Greegor
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,243
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

Where'd you go to college Kane?

  #87  
Old December 11th 06, 04:33 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.parenting.spanking,alt.support.foster-parents
0:->
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Default Teenagers faced with spankings


Greegor wrote:
Where'd you go to college Kane? Out of state.


And you?

  #88  
Old December 11th 06, 04:54 PM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
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Default Teenagers faced with spankings

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"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?


What an odd afterthought. It's entirely non sequitur to the issue of
little kids doing something we don't want them to do.

As for kids understanding; this flies in the face of what you, along
with other spankers claim. They wish to use spanking on little kids
(and they do to the age range from about 2 to 7 or so, at a highest
rates of all...also the abuse rate is higher..odd coincidence)
precisely because they cannot 'reason' with them.

Their logic, well, I guess they see the logic in it, but I don't. It's
even bad animal training.

Now tell me, are you going to wait until a child is old enough to
"understand the concept of justice" around 6 being the absolute minimum
(and rarely then....kids start getting 'justice,' fairness, around 8 or
9...some a little longer...in fact not until age about 42 snicker),
or do you wish to rethink the "spank them precisely because they can't
be reasoned with," concept?

I'm sometimes confused by spanker's logic, I confess. Possibly I need a
punch in the mouth, since I don't "understand" this logic and you
cannot "reason" with me since it's NOT LOGICAL.


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.


Then stop arguing with me about issues that are so closely tied to
child development.

Unless of course you are already well versed in such issues. I believe
you said you were not for younger children.


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?


Two points. One, that's your experience and hardly can be generalized
to the entire population, and two, everyone thinks they remember their
childhood accurately only to find out from some old timer that was
there as an adult, their memories are not precise, nor accurate at all.


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.


Wrong. It is the exact opposite. Play and "fun" are where the most
learning takes place. Sometimes even the most profitable. My brother is
a fortune 500 exec. Aerospace industry. As a kid he cluttered our
bedroom up with more damned electronics and other mechanical
experiments...pretty near killed us both one time.

I assure you, he played and he had fun with that stuff, and other
science hobbies right into a million dollar paycheck.

The side effect adds up, so that if parents close off entire
avenues of exploration, the result can be a serious loss.


We are a world of geniuses cut off from ourselves by bad parenting
practices.

One of them is the failure to encourage and guide play and instead
power struggle with the child to 'learn' things they either aren't
interested in at the moment, or actually don't need.

Like how to sit an hour at a time for five hours in rows of seats.

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.


You have it exactly backwards. The way we raise our children routinely
denies them such opportunities. Children love to learn. Just not always
what YOU want them to. And failure to integrate reality and encourage
learning what the child wants to learn is the major failing of
education.

I've watched "unschooling" homeschoolers for years prove this. The
general public is sure those kids allowed that much freedom to chose
will never learn much of anything. The exact opposite is true. They run
their parent's ragged (joyfully accepted of course) with major learning
activities, often not unlike my brother did with us in my family. He
went to public school, but it was a joke for him. No challenge at all.

He even tried college. Laughed at that for a year, and went on to his
OWN studies while he started work at the company he owns a large
portion of today.

Further, the opportunities that
children find the most fun are not always the ones they will be able to
learn the most from.


Typical. And wrong.

I watched my wife's kids, when they were little (we were family friends
back then before my first wife died) fall in love with Little House on
The Prairie. Would you believe their mom and dad continued to expand on
that for years to include concepts as "useless" as world history and
calculus?

You can start just about anywhere and study just about anything in the
universe with even a little imagination.

Most parents can't be bothered and shuffle it off to the schools.

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.


Yep. why does it have to be pain based learning? Isn't inconvenience
enough to help guide a child to being sociable?

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.


Illogical. The best you can do is lay down some memory tracks that may
or may not be useful in the future, because YOU can't control
everything recorded, and hope that one day the child understands.

They are incapable of cause and effect abstract reasoning before age
six. All "learning" is linear prior. That's why routine is so important
to little kids. The confuse if there are inconsistencies.

After six they love to explore inconstencies..it's in the nursery
rhymes for the little tots, then later the wonderful stories that defy
reality, for the kids of 6 on up.

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.


Then possibly you would like to review what you did say and get back to
me.

Nathan, Dec 8:

"Children are ready to start making simple choices about simple things
long
before they are capable of making the kinds of vastly more complex
choices,
about vastly more omplex things, that adults have to make. For the
most
part, the need for punishment arises from the need for simple, easily
understood consequences because the child isn't ready yet to live in a
world
with adult consequences. "

So tell us, when are these key points in time and development when they
are ready to start making simple choices, to avoid being spanked?

Nathan again:

"If you've spent much time around children age four or five, and you
don't
think they have will, you are living in a state of denial. There are a
lot
of things they don't have anywhere near as much of as adults -
information,
experience, understanding of complex interrelationships, and such. But
they
very definitely have will - as they can make abundantly clear when
someone
tries to get them to do something they don't want to do or to stop
doing
something they want to do. "

I presume you are arguing that this "will" makes them spankable. Since
when did 'will' become synonumous with capacity to reason? And isn't
"reasoning" and the small child's incapacity one of the reasons to take
the shortcut of spanking to control them?

So which is it. Are we going to spank when they can understand why they
are being spanked, or are we going to spank because they aren't yet
capable of responding to reason?

Nathan, Dec 9:

"Getting a switch could be more problematical, depending on the child's
age,
because it would keep the response from being immediate. If the child
isn't
old enough to understand the concept of delays between causes and
effects,
the lost time would prevent the child from making a connection between
the
original behavior and getting switched. And in any case, for the kind
of
young child we are presumably talking about here, using a switch would
be
serious overkill. "

If I am not mistaken, while your argument isn't directly about this
issue, it presumes spanking is a viable option (sans overkill 'switch')
for children too young to understand why they are being spanked.

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.


A "Clear understanding?" I'm confused.

Teens don't even have a "clear understanding" of cause and effect much
of the time. Their hormones and limitations still extant in their
brains and it's functioning preculde that.

In the end, and I'm about there, the risk when using spanking and other
aversive punishments is not worth it, when other methods work as well.

Or better.


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.


Then you are very much alone and your claim to not being that different
in your experience from others just got shot in the ass. That is the
age range most CP is done to.

I presume by people ... not unlike you.

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).


Then you don't think children should be spanked if a child can't
understand why they are being spanked.

And you claim my methods take longer. R R R R R

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.


Beside the point. That's not what we are discussing, though I'd be
happy to point out to you that if a parent focuses on those areas,
times, and conditions the need to 'spank' need never come.

If it does.....guess who really behaved badly.

Hint: the perp's not the child.

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.)


Well, you are proving my argument nicely.

There ARE no instances when any explanation of why one is spanking a
chid are 'reasonable.'

It is unreasonable to spank, period. We have far too many other
options, even doing NOTHING at all and letting situations develop on
their own.

Waiting for the child to solve the problem is an age old and very
effective teaching tool.

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.


But you have argued, have you not, that spanking should be an option
for pre-reasoning toddlers. Right?

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.


Nope. It's the one YOU are making. That a child that can't reason yet
is excuse enough to use spanking as an aversive stimuli to stop an
unwanted behavior, and yet one shouldn't spank unless a child
"understands" why they are being spanked.

That is EXACTLY what you have argued, sir. Both ends against the
middle.

Where I most comfortably stand simply chosing not to spank and urging
others to give that a chance.

snip


I recall a poster to this ng, Jerry Alborn, who was a spanker. He
changed.

An engineer, quite intelligent, as I recall, and he did not need to
play logic games with himself or anyone else. He saw the risks, he
stopped spanking. He learned rather quickly and with less and less
complexity that non-spanking methods are quicker, surer, and risk free.
Much MORE than spanking.

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.


What the hell is a "complex truth?"

A truth with more 'truthiness?'

0 ; - ]

  #89  
Old December 12th 06, 12:36 AM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
Doan
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Posts: 1,380
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 9 Dec 2006, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


The Safe Playing program has little to do with spanking/non-spanking. It's
about using rewards and punishment. Kane claimed that there was no
punishment is FALSE! Here is an earlier admission on the issue of
punishment:

"One of the conversations between Doan and I concerns his claim that my
comments on Dr. Embry's use of the word "punishment" in regards to a
technique he calls "sit and watch," has to do with my disagreeing that
having the child sit and watch other children at "safe play" for a few
minutes is "punishment," not just that Dr. Embry never mentions the
word. "

Oh, what a tangled web we weaved... ;-)


I've noticed that Kane has an interesting habit of pretending that
punishments are not punishments when it suits his purposes. If "sit and
watch" is what it sounds like - a child who goes out in the street having to
sit and watch other children play instead of being allowed to play - that is
very definitely a punishment.

Yes, That is what study said:
"how many times the Sit and Watch PUNISHMENT was applied for rule
infractions"

Did he made it clear to you that the study said punishment?

The real distinguishing feature as to whether or not something is a
punishment is in whether its intent is that the unpleasant experience deter
the child from doing the same thing again. If that motive plays a
significant role in a parent's choice, the parent is punishing the child.
Trying to deny that fact is fundamentally dishonest, and that dishonesty is
probably a large part of why Kane views "punishment" as such a terrible
thing. He's figured out a way to accept the need for punishment on a
practical level while still denying it on an intellectual level.

Punishment is in the eye of the beholder. If the children have to cry
when force to sit and watch then it is a definite punishment. Don't let
Kane con you on this!

Doan


  #90  
Old December 12th 06, 12:40 AM posted to alt.parenting.spanking
Doan
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Posts: 1,380
Default Teenagers faced with spankings

On 9 Dec 2006, 0:- wrote:


Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
You accuse AF of lying because he omitted important information. By that
standard, you are also a liar because you repeatedly talk about how huge a
proportion of criminals were spanked without bothering to mention how hugely
disproportionate a percentage of those were subject to abuse, not just what
the law considers acceptable spanking. Compared with the seriousness of
your omission, AF's is no big deal.


Double standard then? What makes mine more serious than his, in
argument?

As for criminals, I also included other categories that did not report
"abuse" as such. One study I referred to deliberately screened OUT such
victims, and stuck with CP only.

They experienced more depression, drug use, and suicide attempts.

---

I'm having a hard time pinpointing whether your reference to Dr. Embry's
"study" is to his his letter to Children Magazine, which says nothing about
a study in the scientific sense of the term, or to something else. In
regard to the letter, I see some serious problems. Embry wrote, "Actual
observation of parents and children shows that spanking, scolding,
reprimanding and nagging INCREASES the rate of street entries by children.


Yes. That is correct. He said it, and I have witnessed such
oppositional behavior from chidlren parented as he mentions.

Children use going into the street as a near-perfect way to gain parents'
attention." But observational data collected by watching children would be
guaranteed to give skewed results.


Why?

Children who quickly decided that going
into the street wasn't worth getting spanked would be unlikely to be
observed going out into the street at all, and thus unlikely to be observed
getting spanked for it.


That's not what he observed or what he said.

In contrast, the less successful spanking is in
deterring children from going out in the street, the higher the probability
of their being observed going out into the street and getting spanked.


And his observation was the all CP and scolding was related to higher
incidences of children going into the street.

Why don't you provide the actual data from the study to see if that
statement is true? Come on, Kane. I DARE YOU! I DOUBLE DARE YOU! ;-)

Doan


 




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