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"Parenting Without Punishing"



 
 
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  #21  
Old June 17th 04, 04:29 PM
Nathan A. Barclay
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


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


I have very little idea of how reliably purely non-punitive parenting
techniques really work, and while people like Chris, Steve, and the
article's author would LIKE to believe that such techniques would
always work, they do not seem to be able to provide any solid
evidence.

-------------------
Just because we're WHOLLY UN-interested in the idiotic "cite-wars"
that happen, when neurotic religiously-tortured morally-offended
Right-wingnuts try to deluge this thread with their phony X-spurt
website cut-n-pasties in response to our voluminous peer-reviewed
journals that anyone CAN read if they want to,


Steve, I find it insulting that you simply assume I would do that sort of
thing. I know the difference between opinion and evidence, and I have no
interest in quoting opinions as if they were evidence. Doing so would only
hurt my credibility, which I place a high value on.

does NOT support
YOUR moronic accusation that "they do not seem to be able to provide
any solid evidence." In fact the reverse is true, by factors of ten
to one or MORE!! Go ask all the child development authorities you
want, and write down their opinions, and then let those stand as
a vote for which is the Truth, if you're stupid enough to need that!


Scientific truth is not determined by majority vote. It is determined by
the proper use of scientific methodologies and ONLY by the proper use of
scientific methodologies. If scientists express opinions that go beyond
what the methodologies they use can support, those opinions are merely
PERSONAL opinions, not science.

In the past, Chris suggested a few studies for me to read. However, from
what I recall, those studies were always in terms of whether or not childen
were spanked (or, in some cases, whether or not they were spanked within a
prticular timeframe). As best I recall, none of them separated out a group
in which no punishment of any kind was used, or in which punishment was used
only in regard to situations in which the children's behavior would be a
crime for adults. Therefore, the results of those studies provide no
scientific basis for evaluating the results parents get from using purely
non-punitive techniques.

If you are aware of any studies that looked specifically at parents who
never punished at all, or who never punished except when the children's
behavior would be considered a crime in adults, or some such, I would
probably find it interesting to look at. (Although in order to constitute
legitimate science, the study would also have to deal with the issue of
parents who started off using purely non-punitive techniques, did not like
their results, and started punishing at least occasionally. Showing that
parents who like a technique's results well enough to stick with it tend to
have good results is great for showing that it can work, but does not give a
clear indication of how reliably it works.) If you do not have such
evidence, then you can say only that the opinions of some number of
scientists support your views, not that science supports them.

If you refuse to provide any such evidence, I must make at least a tentative
assumption that you do not have any. Certainly, I will not accept claims
that you have valid scientific evidence as legitimate if you refuse to
present the evidence or indicate what it is.

My own view is that parents should try to make non-punitive techniques

work
as much as they reasonably can, because to whatever extent they do work,
they help children think like adults who do what is right because it is
right instead of like children who do what is right only because they

are
afraid of getting in trouble if they don't. At worst, the number of
situations where the parents will feel a need to punish is likely to be

a
lot smaller than if they relied primarily on punishment to correct their
children's behavior. And at best, they might always be able to get

their
children to behave well enough that the parents can live with their
children's occasional imperfections without feeling a need to resort to
punishment.

--------------
anyone can see that you tried to excuse some amount of punishment:


Good. Then I made myself reasonably clear.


  #22  
Old June 17th 04, 04:57 PM
Nathan A. Barclay
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


In fairness to non-punitive parenting techniques, public schools are
probably a pretty lousy laboratory from which to see how good their results
are. Suppose you take a child who is used to finding cooperative win-win
solutions at home, and you put him in a school where the teacher keeps
telling him what to do all the time. Suddenly, the child goes from having
parents who bend over backward to cooperate to having an adult in charge
whose job description doesn't allow much room for cooperation. Worse, where
the child's love for and relationship with his parents provides a motivation
for cooperating with their desires, the child does not have similar love for
or a similar relationship with the teacher.

Ultimately, what a purely non-punitive parenting style needs is either home
schooling or a kind of school that is more oriented toward cooperating with
the child's desires. And in a voucher system, parents who want to could
experiment with such schools without imposing their preferences (or their
children) onto others. Personally, I would expect mixed results from such
schools, with some bending over too far backwards catering to children's
whims but others finding ways to interest children in learning.

But if parents who use non-punitive techniques at home do want to send their
children to a school that is not prepared to cater sufficiently to their
children's desires, I think they should have two choices: either the parents
accept responsibility for finding non-punitive solutions that deal with the
issue to the school's satisfaction in a timely manner, or they allow the
school to punish. Anything else is grossly unfair to the other children in
the class, and also to the teacher whose hands are tied by both the school
administration and the parents.

Nathan

"Donna Metler" wrote in message
. ..

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"jitney" wrote in message
om...
The very title of this thread indicates a the kind of egghead
academianistic theorizing that is so full of **** that such people
need colostomy bags hooked up to their ears. If you raise a child
without punishing bad behavior, you are inflicting a criminal on
society and should yourself be held accountable. People that advocate
mindless theories like this would be far more useful to society if
they removed the grafitti that their hellion brats put up on the walls
in the first place.-Jitney


If one praises "good" behavior and treats a chid with repsect, talking

to
said child when "bad" things occur, there is no need for punishment.


With all children? With non-neurotypical children? With children adopted

at
the age of 3 from foreign countries? With children in foster care?

You see, "teaching without punishing" has been pushed down the throats of
the educational system for more than a decade (I've been teaching that
long). ANd while it works with some children-the naturally compliant kids
who will burst into tears at the thought that they've failed an adult,

there
are others who definitely take advantage of the situation.

The result is what you see in many public schools today (probably private
ones, too)-a bunch of kids who are very sure that nothing you can do will
affect them. They don't care about the relationship, or about pleasing the
teacher. They don't care about pleasing their parents. They don't care

about
long-term results.

And the results is that no child in the same classroom gets a good
education.

And, it has been my impression that the "don't you DARE punish my child
because I don't believe in punitive parenting" parents are the ones who
generally have the WORST behaved children, and who stand up for their

child,
shielding them from even natural consequenses the most-rather than the

other
way around. Those parents who do use consequences at home generally don't
have to use many. They're not shrieking lunatics beating their child with

an
extention cord (actually, those are more likely to be the parent who has
never before punished their child and then snaps-the worst cases of abuse
we've had in the school were exactly that). Rather, they've learned that
saying "NO" and enforcing that "When I say NO, and you don't listen, there
are consequenses" works. Punishment doesn't always mean spanking. It

doesn't
have to ever mean spanking. But there needs to be some way of showing that
the child doesn't always have complete control of all situations.








  #23  
Old June 17th 04, 09:35 PM
Doan
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, toto wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 09:43:12 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

You see, "teaching without punishing" has been pushed down the throats of
the educational system for more than a decade (I've been teaching that
long).


No, actually, what has been pushed is *not* teaching without
punishing, though teaching without corporal punishment has been
pushed in 27 states for more than a decade.

Using different punishments like detentions and bad grades is still
punitive. And what has been pushed is using material rewards like
stickers and bribes which is the other side of the control coin. It
works just as poorly.

Actually, they are pushing the "no-punishment" agenda. They are calling
it "consequences" now. :-)

Doan

  #24  
Old June 17th 04, 09:36 PM
Donna Metler
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


"toto" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 09:43:12 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

You see, "teaching without punishing" has been pushed down the throats of
the educational system for more than a decade (I've been teaching that
long).


No, actually, what has been pushed is *not* teaching without
punishing, though teaching without corporal punishment has been
pushed in 27 states for more than a decade.

Using different punishments like detentions and bad grades is still
punitive. And what has been pushed is using material rewards like
stickers and bribes which is the other side of the control coin. It
works just as poorly.

Detention isn't allowed in my school-too many parents don't want it. IN
general, just about everything which could be deemed "punitive" has been
disallowed. A teacher in my school was given a formal reprimand just for
requiring that students clean up a mess that they had made-because it was
"humiliating" for the students.

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




--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits



  #25  
Old June 17th 04, 10:04 PM
Chris
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
: "R. Steve Walz" wrote:

: All you're doing is trying to make any "success" look FUZZY as to
: cause, so that you can retain your favorite little sick compulsion!

: What I am trying to do is draw a distinction between evidence that meets
: scientific criteria and evidence that does not.

This brings us right back to our aborted, unfinished debate of 2001,
Nathan; aborted because you disappeared and days later said you "didn't
have time" to debate about the scientific studies on spanking.

You did your best to discredit the available evidence linking spanking
to a wide variety of negative long term effects on children. When you
disappeared was after I invited you to now produce evidence of equal rigor
in support of your own position, adding that I would of course expect your
evidence to meet all of the same standards you had recently demanded of
evidence cited by me.

Three years later, I ask you again: where is your scientific evidence
of measurable long term benefit to children from spanking? If you have
none, please signify by ignoring this question, or perhaps by vanishing
again.

Chris
  #26  
Old June 17th 04, 10:56 PM
Lesa
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


"Donna Metler" wrote in message
. ..

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

"jitney" wrote in message
om...
The very title of this thread indicates a the kind of egghead
academianistic theorizing that is so full of **** that such people
need colostomy bags hooked up to their ears. If you raise a child
without punishing bad behavior, you are inflicting a criminal on
society and should yourself be held accountable. People that advocate
mindless theories like this would be far more useful to society if
they removed the grafitti that their hellion brats put up on the walls
in the first place.-Jitney


If one praises "good" behavior and treats a chid with repsect, talking

to
said child when "bad" things occur, there is no need for punishment.


With all children? With non-neurotypical children? With children adopted

at
the age of 3 from foreign countries? With children in foster care?


With any of the 1000+ children I've had the joy to be involved with --
either my own children or children I've taught (special needs included)

You see, "teaching without punishing" has been pushed down the throats of
the educational system for more than a decade (I've been teaching that
long). ANd while it works with some children-the naturally compliant kids
who will burst into tears at the thought that they've failed an adult,

there
are others who definitely take advantage of the situation.

To the contrary, I've also been teaching for more than a decade and have had
no difficulties whatsoever with "teaching without punishing"


The result is what you see in many public schools today (probably private
ones, too)-a bunch of kids who are very sure that nothing you can do will
affect them.


If there is no cause/effect relationship, then you are not discussing
actions & consequences with these children. If a child does not complete an
assignment they will get a poor grade -- no punishment or punitive action
needed, simply the consequnces of their actions. If a young child does not
bring winter outdoor clothing to school she/he will not be able to play
outside at recess -- again, no punitive actions, lectures, etc are needed,
simply the consequences to their actions.

They don't care about the relationship, or about pleasing the
teacher. They don't care about pleasing their parents. They don't care

about
long-term results.


They shouldn't have to care about pleasing the teacher, or their parents or
anyone but themselves. They should be focued on doing the best they are
able, period.

And the results is that no child in the same classroom gets a good
education.


Not the result in any of my classes.


And, it has been my impression that the "don't you DARE punish my child
because I don't believe in punitive parenting" parents are the ones who
generally have the WORST behaved children, and who stand up for their

child,
shielding them from even natural consequenses the most-rather than the

other
way around.


Again, I have seen exactly the opposite of this.

Those parents who do use consequences at home generally don't
have to use many. They're not shrieking lunatics beating their child with

an
extention cord (actually, those are more likely to be the parent who has
never before punished their child and then snaps-the worst cases of abuse
we've had in the school were exactly that). Rather, they've learned that
saying "NO" and enforcing that "When I say NO, and you don't listen, there
are consequenses" works. Punishment doesn't always mean spanking. It

doesn't
have to ever mean spanking. But there needs to be some way of showing that
the child doesn't always have complete control of all situations.








  #27  
Old June 17th 04, 11:15 PM
Doan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default "Parenting Without Punishing"

On 17 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
: "R. Steve Walz" wrote:

: All you're doing is trying to make any "success" look FUZZY as to
: cause, so that you can retain your favorite little sick compulsion!

: What I am trying to do is draw a distinction between evidence that meets
: scientific criteria and evidence that does not.

This brings us right back to our aborted, unfinished debate of 2001,
Nathan; aborted because you disappeared and days later said you "didn't
have time" to debate about the scientific studies on spanking.

You did your best to discredit the available evidence linking spanking
to a wide variety of negative long term effects on children. When you
disappeared was after I invited you to now produce evidence of equal rigor
in support of your own position, adding that I would of course expect your
evidence to meet all of the same standards you had recently demanded of
evidence cited by me.

Three years later, I ask you again: where is your scientific evidence
of measurable long term benefit to children from spanking? If you have
none, please signify by ignoring this question, or perhaps by vanishing
again.

Chris

LOL! The burden of proof is on you, Chris! Where is your scientific
evidence of measureable long term benefit from non-cp alternatives?
Nathan was trying to discuss the Straus & Mouradian (1998) just a
couple of days ago. I DID NOT SEE any response from you!

Doan

  #28  
Old June 17th 04, 11:51 PM
Doan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default "Parenting Without Punishing"



On 17 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

This brings us right back to our aborted, unfinished debate of 2001,
Nathan; aborted because you disappeared and days later said you "didn't
have time" to debate about the scientific studies on spanking.

You did your best to discredit the available evidence linking spanking
to a wide variety of negative long term effects on children. When you
disappeared was after I invited you to now produce evidence of equal rigor
in support of your own position, adding that I would of course expect your
evidence to meet all of the same standards you had recently demanded of
evidence cited by me.

Three years later, I ask you again: where is your scientific evidence
of measurable long term benefit to children from spanking? If you have
none, please signify by ignoring this question, or perhaps by vanishing
again.

Chris

Here is what Chris said about Straus & Mouradina (1998) study in the past:

However, there is evidence that this connection exists,
however it may work. Gunnoe & Mariner (1997) and Straus et al. (1997)
both found that the more children were spanked at the beginning of each
study, the more their behavior had deteriorated years later in

comparison
with other children the same age, despite controlling for a variety of
other variables such as maternal warmth/involvement, family

socioeconomic
status, race, sex, etc. Since neither of these studies had a "never
spanked" group, they cannot rule out the possibility that low levels of
spanking had positive effects. However, another study did look at
children who had never been spanked by their mothers versus children who
were spanked very infrequently and the difference in age adjusted
antisocial behavior scores was quite pronounced. The children in the
never-spanked group were markedly more well-behaved than even the most
rarely-spanked children.


And my response:

"Chris is now admitting that there are evidence of beneficial effects
of low-level spanking. Good, but he went on to misrepresent the
Straus & Mouradin (1998) study. As I have pointed out early, and
Chris cannot dispute this, the study only asked the mothers thus
there is no true "never-spanked" group to speak of. Furthermore,
this study included children as old as 14 years and by asking
only about spankings in the last 6-months, there is a period
of up to 13.5 years where spankings were not even accounted for.
In short, the study just don't support what Chris claimed above."

Let's see if Chris "disappear" again! :-)

Doan



  #29  
Old June 18th 04, 03:42 AM
Tori M.
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Default "Parenting Without Punishing"

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.

Tori

--
Bonnie 3/20/02
Anna or Xavier due 10/17/04
"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?


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits



  #30  
Old June 18th 04, 03:56 AM
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default "Parenting Without Punishing"


"Chris" wrote in message
...

Three years later, I ask you again: where is your scientific evidence
of measurable long term benefit to children from spanking? If you have
none, please signify by ignoring this question, or perhaps by vanishing
again.


In a free society, it is not up to a person who wants to do something to
prove that what he wants to do will be beneficial. Rather, it is up to a
person who wants to regulate another's actions to prove that the action will
be harmful.

It can be argued that the fact that punishment is unpleasant to the person
who is being punished is, in and of itself, sufficient reason to view
punishment as harmful. However, if we adopted that view as a matter of
blind principle, we could not punish robbers, rapists, and murderers. Our
laws recognize that when one person's actions harm another, whether
physically or in some other way, punishment can be used to try to stop (or
at least slow down) the actions.

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.
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. (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.)

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. I've seen few things more irrational
than the idea that it is abusive to paddle a child at school instead of
suspending the child even if the child would rather be paddled than
suspended. I imagine there are children who have what might be called an
"allergic" reaction to spanking, that is, a reaction that is much more
strongly negative than is normal. 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.

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. 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. 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.

(Obviously, this argument does not work if one accepts Steve's view that
parents owe it to their children to do whatever it takes to solve problems
through purely non-punitive techniques. But the majority does not believe
that children's interests should outweigh those of parents to that degree.)

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. 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. (And if parents
have the self-control to avoid spanking at all, they also presumably have
the self-control to avoid spanking without thinking carefully first.) 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.

Therefore, I view a parenting style that focuses on using positive
techniques most of the time but in which parents are willing to spank or
otherwise punish in situations where positive techniques are not working
well as a reasonable choice. It produces the short-term benefit of
resolving certain types of situations in which parents feel like a child is
being unreasonable more quickly and, in the process, teaches the child that
there are limits to how much his preferences will be allowed to interfere
with the lives of others. And to the best of my knowledge (and please
correct me if I'm wrong), there is no evidence demonstrating long-term harm
of "never lost it" spanking sufficient to outweigh the short-term benefits.
If you want to change my mind, you need to provide evidence that
demonstrates such harm, and the evidence needs to be specific to "never lost
it" spanking in the context of an overall parenting style that is primarily
positive.

Nathan


 




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