Parent-Child Negotiations

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: "Chris" wrote in message
: ...
: In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
:
: : But by and large, the system works. And throwing it out before we're
: : positive that we have something that will work better in the real world,
: : with real parents and real children, would be foolish.
:
: Once again, Nathan, you appear to be talking about win/win cooperative
: nonpunitive discipline as if it were some sort of new untested concept
: rather than a set of approaches to dealing with conflict in the
: parent/child relationship developed decades ago and used successfully in

: Chris, this is anecdotal evidence. If I argued that there are thousands of
: parents who spank and get good results, you would correctly counter that
: just because there are thousands of parents who spank and get good results,
: that most definitely does not mean that all parents who spank get good
: results. So why should I accept the same kind of reasoning from you
: regarding non-punitive techniques?

: As I keep saying, how well strictly non-punitive techniques work depends on
: children's willingness to cooperate.

And as I keep saying, you miss the central driving force behind the
success of nonpunitive win/win discipline, which is every child's desire
for an harmonious relationship with the key adults in their lives
(provided the child's needs are being met in the process). You invoke
hypothetical children who are completely indifferent to the quality of
their relationships with their parents and then you use these hypothetical
children to reason that punishment is essential and the lack of it would
be a "disaster." But I have never met a child like that and I doubt if
you have. True, you have probably seen children who don't seem to care
about their parents' feelings, but show me a child like that and I will
show you a child whose parent's blow off the child's feelings. Children
give back what they get.

Chris

On 10 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: "R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
: ...

: No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed to
: abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned about
: abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against it,
: but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others more
: accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family among
: a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
: totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little playmates
: who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these abusive
: cretins!!

: If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of your "little
: playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking. Would you take the
: kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward me?

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris

LOL! He was NEVER-SPANKED!

Doan

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, toto wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004 18:21:52 GMT, Chris wrote:

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

According to Steve, he was never spanked or punished at all.

I do, however, doubt that his parents used win-win techniques, but
since we don't have his parents posting here, we cannot know
what they really did.

Chris

But we know that Chris & LaVonne were spanked! Chris has an M.A in
Biology and LaVonne has a Ph.d. Their parents weren't stupid afterall!
:-)

Doan

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:40:17 -0700, Doan wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay
wrote:

: "R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
: ...

: No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed
to
: abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned
about
: abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against
it,
: but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others
more
: accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family
among
: a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
: totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little
playmates
: who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these
abusive
: cretins!!

: If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of
your "little
: playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking. Would you
take the
: kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward
me?

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child
discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris

LOL! He was NEVER-SPANKED!

Chris lied then?

Usually you call people liars when they err.

Reforming?

You? A spanked child?

Wonders never cease.

I do notice though that you laugh at other people's honest mistakes.

Why is that Doan?

Still a little boy waiting fearing that when you go home you may get
spanked so you cover up your old inner fear by laughing at other
people? Did you laugh at your parents waiting to spank you?

Or were you afraid?

I guess that's why Chris, so often in addressing you, laughed at
yo........oh wait. I can't count all the times you have him and he
hasn't at you. Well, I could do it far faster with him. I don't think
he has. Ever.

Chris has treated you quite civily, and yet you claim you only give
what you get. Do you really think that is a true statement, or could
you be deceiving both us and yourself Doan?

Why is that Doan?

Could THAT be a lie, Doan, along with your claim you just tell parents
to make up their own mind about spanking. And that's really all you
do? R R R R

Years of peddling the spanking compulsive's agenda and you still can't
see it.

My, I'm not Chris. I laugh. At you.

Doan

Kane

"Chris" wrote in message
...


And as I keep saying, you miss the central driving force behind the
success of nonpunitive win/win discipline, which is every child's desire
for an harmonious relationship with the key adults in their lives
(provided the child's needs are being met in the process). You invoke
hypothetical children who are completely indifferent to the quality of
their relationships with their parents and then you use these hypothetical
children to reason that punishment is essential and the lack of it would
be a "disaster."



My hypothesis does not require the existence of children who are "completely
indifferent." It requires only the existence of children whose desire to
engage in certain actions that their parents consider unacceptable outweighs
whatever damage to harmony those particular actions will cause. (By
"unacceptable," I am referring to matters serious enough that the parents
believe they ought to be non-negotiable or negotiable only within certain
boundaries, not just to actions parents would prefer not to accept.)



Further, children are not the only ones with a desire for harmony. One of
the things that can happen in any relationship where needs and desires are
not entirely compatible is for there to be quiet power struggles in which
who wins and who loses depends on which side is willing to give in in the
interest of harmony first. (In an ideal relationship, both sides will love
each other enough and care enough about each other's desires that a middle
ground can be found without such a power struggle, but I don't view it as
realistic to expect all relationships to consistently measure up to that
ideal.) If the parents generally give in first, the result is in the
direction of the stereotypical spoiled brat who knows that if he or she
doesn't cooperate, harmony will still probably come when the parents give
up. In most cases, the results will not be to nearly the extreme of the
"spoiled brat" stereotype, but situations in which children win and cause
their parents to lose because the children are willing to outlast their
parents in accepting disharmony will exist.



On the other hand, consider situations in which a child is reluctant to give
up doing what he or she wants to do in the interest of whatever amount of
harmony is at stake regarding that particular issue, and in which the
parents decide that they cannot afford to give up in the interest of harmony
because they view the issue as too important. In such cases, the parents
are in effect using the ongoing disharmony as a form of punishment to try to
modify the child's behavior. As long as that approach works quickly,
results can be good and it is entirely possible that neither the parents nor
the child will even realize (at least on a conscious level) that a sort of
punishment is being used at all. But if that approach does not work, it
degenerates into a situation in which an ineffective form of punishment is
being used over and over, harming the relationship while accomplishing
nothing useful in return. And if parents cannot persuade the child to
change his or her mind and are not willing to accept that ongoing harm, a
purely non-punitive approach leaves the parents with no choice but to give
up, accept defeat, and let the child win no matter how concerned they are
about the possible consequences of the behavior.



But I have never met a child like that and I doubt if
you have. True, you have probably seen children who don't seem to care
about their parents' feelings, but show me a child like that and I will
show you a child whose parent's blow off the child's feelings. Children
give back what they get.



You're fighting a straw man here. Children can care about their parents'
feelings but still not always care enough to behave in a way their parents
consider acceptable. Further, except maybe in families you are very, very
close to (or whose handling of behavioral issues you've studied in depth, if
you've done that sort of thing), I doubt that you know a whole lot about how
many conflicts are resolved by children's deciding to behave better in the
interest of harmony and how many are resolved by parents' lowering their
standards of what kind of behavior they are willing to accept in the
interest of harmony.



Also, how sure can you be that you aren't falling into the "The parents must
not be trying hard enough" trap? Keep in mind that there is a
self-selection process involved in whether or not parents stick to entirely
non-punitive methods. Thus, if children do not care enough about their
parents' feelings to behave acceptably on a reasonably consistent basis, and
the parents respond by giving up on a non-punitive approach as a result, you
can dismiss those cases as ones in which the parents' lack of commitment to
non-punitive techniques is to blame. Couple that with other cases in which
parents respond by substantially lowering their standards of what
constitutes acceptable behavior and the illusion that children always care
enough about harmony to behave acceptably becomes even more complete.



And at a deeper level, as I said before, your view hinges on a
religious/philosophical view that human beings are automatons controlled
entirely by heredity and environment, with no free will to make choices for
ourselves, and that as long as parents do everything right, it is impossible
for children to do wrong (except maybe once in a very rare while) once they
understand how their actions impact others. To those of us who believe in
free will, and who thus believe that children can choose to do good no
matter how bad their parents are and that children can choose to do bad no
matter how good their parents are, your underlying religious/philosophical
assumption is not valid.



If you want to convince me that purely non-punitive techniques work so
reliably that punishment is never needed, and especially if you want to
convince me that that is true in the real world with real parents with all
their human flaws rather than only in an idealized world in which all
parents are fairly close to perfect, you'll need a whole lot more than just
claims based on anecdotal evidence.



Nathan

"Kane" wrote in message
m...

(responding to Doan)

I do notice though that you laugh at other people's honest mistakes.

I think what Doan found humorous was not the fact that Chris made a
"mistake" in and of itself, but rather the irony of how that mistake (if it
was one) turns around and has Chris criticizing parenting techniques that
Steve characterizes as non-punitive.

But did Chris actually make a mistake? Or was he laying the blame for
Steve's behavior on the way Steve saw other children being treated, and thus
in effect saying that spanking caused Steve's behavior even though Steve
himself was not spanked? I'm afraid Chris will have to answer that one
himself, if he wants us to know.

The way I look at it, Steve's vitriol comes from a combination of two
factors. One is that his parents obviously did not do a particularly
effective job of teaching him the importance of expressing disagreement in a
civil manner. But that raises the question of whether his parents tried to
do so and failed, or whether his parents were similarly intolerant of other
points of view and therefore never even tried to teach him civility toward
those who disagree with him (at least regarding certain types of issues).
Did Steve's parents' methods fail in that regard, or were they simply not
used?

The other factor involved in Steve's attitude is that from what he's said,
it sounds like he has seen a lot of behavior from spanking parents that I
would agree was excessive, and in at least some cases (and quite possibly a
lot more than just some) completely reprehensible. (For example, the idea
of a father's being mean to his children just to show off his control over
them is disgusting, and has.absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
legitimate discipline.) Unfortunately, Steve seems inclined to take out his
anger on everyone who believes that spanking can be useful even if we agree
that a lot of what he saw was wrong. That kind of response is less than
entirely rational, but not impossible to understand on an emotional level.

By the way, Steve said that the people he saw were "fundy rural
hillbillies." Unfortunately, they appear to have been a sort who get so
caught up in some passages of scripture that they ignore others. Paul's
words, "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," (Ephesians 6:4) are wholly
incompatible with exerting parental power for its own sake or to show it off
to others. "Because I said so" parenting styles are incompatible with the
Bible's passages about the importance of teaching children. It is tragic
when Christian parents (or at least parents who regard themselves as
Christians) get so caught up in the idea that children are supposed to obey
their parents that they largely ignore the responsibilities the Bible places
on them toward their children.

Nathan

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"Doan" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

Simple answer - Steve is a "never-spanked" kid! :-)

Why in the world would you think that?

Because he said so! :-0

I'm still puzzled as to the reasons for your saying, "Simple answer - Steve
is a 'never-spanked' kid! :-)" How do you view it as an answer at all? Or
was that meant purely as some sort of "inside joke" that I didn't have the
background to get?
-----------------
No, he just thinks it is some useful epithet to yell, and nobody
really knows why. It's true that my parents didn't punish me, but
why he gets such delight from shouting it in his posts is a total
mystery. I'd think that it would gall him to know that. I just
write it off to being a manifestation of his deep engrained
delusion because of his own childhood abuse.
Steve

Doan wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

Simple answer - Steve is a "never-spanked" kid! :-)

Why in the world would you think that?

Because he said so! :-0

I'm still puzzled as to the reasons for your saying, "Simple answer - Steve
is a 'never-spanked' kid! :-)" How do you view it as an answer at all? Or
was that meant purely as some sort of "inside joke" that I didn't have the
background to get?

You got it!

Doan
--------------
It's SO "inside" that nobody gets it but him.
Steve

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...

No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed to
abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned about
abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against it,
but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others more
accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family among
a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little playmates
who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these abusive
cretins!!

If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of your "little
playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking.
------------------
That *IS* the classic effect of cognitive dissonance.
They agree with their abuser because of their desperate need to feel
they are loved, even if perversely so by their abusers.


Would you take the
kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward me?
-------------------
Sure, they are like heroin addicts, they need a kick in the ass.


Or are
you just doing it toward me because I'm someone you don't know, and are
therefore more free to assume the worst about:?
----------------
We are before an audience, I talk, then you talk, the issues are
extremely serious beyond our two lives, if you can't handle it,
then stop. If you want a private appointment, call my nurse.


And why would you
expect such a tone to be any more successful with adults than it would
be with your children?
---------------------------
Because those who abuse need to be harmed to stop them,
they are beyond remediation. In future societies we will
need work-camps for such assholes.

"They need to be harmed to stop them" sounds an awful lot like the attitude
that "those who abuse" take toward children, doesn't it?
------------------------
No, the child isn't abusing anyone, the abuser is.


And if it is impossible to persuade people who believe that spanking is
useful that it isn't, how do you expect us to get to the kind of "future
societies" you speak of?
---------------------------
Why, kill them all, of course, they're criminals!

Or institute surveillance and public torture for such crimes
till they're so terrified of being caught or their angry kid
turning them in, that they desist. If terrifying them into
behaving is sufficient, maybe we won't need to torture too
many of them to death at halftime shows.
Steve

Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: "R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
: ...

: No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed to
: abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned about
: abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against it,
: but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others more
: accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family among
: a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
: totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little playmates
: who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these abusive
: cretins!!

: If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of your "little
: playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking. Would you take the
: kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward me?

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris
-----------------
If you look at my post above, I would hardly call that
"verbally abusive".

As to being a "product of (abusive) child discipline":
Nope.
More complicated than that:

I witnessed OTHERS being severely abused and dishonored, while
I was not, so I was "abused" indirectly by witness of that abuse
to others, but was NOT abused, so I have both that AND survivor
guilt as MY motivations.
Steve