Hachiro said:
When I was a child my father used to not only spank my brothers and I but would make us drop our pants grab our ankles and then nail us with the closest inanimate object that was close by, a bicycle tire, 2x4 whatever, all my brothers and I have had the experience of getting literally nailed in the arse with a board with a nail sticking out of it. He used to give us the line....."This is going to hurt me more than you, and if you cry you are going to get double"....I feared my father more than I loved him and could not get out of the house fast enough when I turned 18. Anyway one thing he always said to us that stuck in my mind was..."My Dad did this to me so I am going to do it with you..."
My father was born in the early 1900's, lived through seeing his family's fortune die along with the depression, he had a difficult life until after WWII but never changed in the way he disciplined his children. I hated him for the longest time, particularly for the line "This is going to hurt me ............
Now I speed forward to 1986, my first child was born, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to continue the abuse that my father laid on to me. I swore I would not spank my child (now children) out of fear that I would end up saying and doing the same things to my kids.
I have spanked my children, with my bare hand, and bare hand ONLY, and the most that they have gotten was 3 or 4 wacks on the butt, with their clothes on of course. My point is that my kids know very well that it is very easy for me as their father to spank them when they have done something wrong to deserve it, but I rarely have to do it because they know that if they are honest with me and admit that they have done something wrong I am more willing to discuss it with them and dish out some other type of punishment besides a spanking.
I trust my children and try very hard to treat each of them as an idividual and not as a group, each of them has their own personality and different needs, coming from a large family I often felt like punishment was dished out according to the whim of my father, not for the severity, or not, of the transgression.
I have no need to spank my children, if they warrant it, they know it will happen but they do not fear me as I once feared my father. What I am trying to say is that parents need to let their children know what lines can and can not be crossed, spanking when justified can reinforce that to the child. Children will attempt to push that line every chance they get, and many parents, for whatever reason, allow that to happen.
In many instances it is not the child's fault for the problems they have but the parents unwillingness to punish their children for what they do wrong. Just talking to a child does not always work, once the child gets it into their head that no matter what they do, the only conscequences are a "talking to" and if they can put up with that, then they are scott free, they will do much that is wrong and cause many problems.
I think that there is a saying something like "The burned finger teaches best." and in many ways that is what a spanking is. Yet parents, imo, need to know that spanking a child when the parent is angry is just using that child as an outlet for their anger and frustration, I have NEVER spanked my children when I was angry, and I never will.
So in effect I have broken the generations trend, at least in my family, of using spankings as a way to make a child fear their parent(s). I do not suggest that everyone follow this, as each and every situation is different, I am just sharing what I experienced and how I choose to live with my children.
My kids know that I love them, I tell them often, and they also know what I expect from them as well. They are good kids and I am truly blessed.
Spankings are not violence as such as they are a tool for teaching, just talking, particularly to a young child that does not understand the conscequences of their actions is not enough. Parents tend to treat their children as adults when talking about discipline, but not so in other matters. I understand talking to a teenager, at least they can understand what you are saying, but can one honestly say that just talking to a child about a transgression will stick in the child's mind for any amount of time outside of the time it takes you to talk to them? Think about that, kids have short memories, but they will remember a well placed spanking and cause them to think twice the next time they choose to do something wrong, they have learned to think first. I suggest that people/parents learn to make the distinction between adults and children when talking about discipline.
To the OP GoldCoinLover, my opinion is this, spanking, not abuse, are two very different things, when you separate the two, one becomes a tool the other a crime. It took me many years to forgive my father in my heart for what he did to me and my brothers, if it was today and not back in the 60's and early 70's, he would be in jail, what he did was abusive not just spanking.
Sorry about getting long winded here.......:sorry:
I agree with you Hachiro on the large part, but spanking can be such a grey area and I think the large part of it as far as concerning when it is justified or not, apart from how hard and often you do it and why you do it, you need to take into consideration more factors like wether the child has any behavioural problems like ADD(or ADHD or whatever you wanna call it) or other things like wether the child continues to commit the acts it got punished for over and over again etc etc?c
I can relate to your story between you and your father?fs family relationship with each other, because as far as I know my father experienced a very similar situation with his father(my grandfather) as to what you experienced with yours.
My grandfather also used to beat my father a lot, usually it consisted of a serious belting- my grandparents also used to apparently humiliate my father as well when he was a boy, for example, his older sister used to beat him up and they used to make fun of him for not being able to physically defend himself against a girl etc?c
Anyways, I always gathered that my father also made an effort not to repeat his actions with me and my brother, but things certainly weren?ft very straightforward or black and white a lot of the time.
It started long before my brother way born(he is 2yrs older than me by the way), my father always apparently wanted to have loads of kids, while my mother didn?ft want any at all.
Eventually, 8yrs after he married my mother, my mother got pregnant with my brother. One of the things my mum told me about my father once, was that the thing he feared the most was having a spasticated/brain damaged child.
My mother had a very difficult labour, it took days, and during her exertions both her and my brother died numerous times while she was trying to give birth. She tried giving birth naturally, but what the doctors at the time didn?ft know, was that her hips were fused together, making a natural birth impossible. Eventually, they cut her open at the last minute and she had a cizarian(honestly cant spell that) birth to get my brother out.
To say the least, my brother looked quite ?gsquished?h when he was born, and my dad feared that he was brain damaged because he had died a couple of times while my mum had been trying to give birth to him- my dad never grew very attached to my brother partly because of this.
Raising my brother was relatively easy for my parents until I was born 2yrs later- because the doctors knew about my mums hip issues they could cut me out straight away and thus I never went through the ordeal my brother went through.
Unlike me, my brother was born with ADHD, and he was a nightmare to look after as soon as he realised he had a little sister, he made it his mission to quite literally kill me- this didn?ft actually stop until he went to full time boarding school at 9yrs old, even after that we fought very viciously for years after that.
My brother was constantly having temper tantrums, he was very violent towards me and he was ALWAYS getting into trouble- on top of that, he was a pyromaniac as a child and didn?ft seem to have any fear of pain or death, or for the large part, the consequences of his dangerous actions.
I was brought up on a farm quite literally in the middle of nowhere, my father did the large part of running the farm and spent as many as 16hrs a day working at times- my mum seemed to avoid me and my brother when we kids, although she preferred my brother on average and spent a lot more time with him- I don?ft actually really have any memories of her up until the age of 5, while I have memories of almost every one else as far back as 2yrs old.
My mum never disciplined my brother for anything, and soon my dad started finding it very difficult keeping control of my brother while he was at work, so he started spanking him a lot when he was at home- I was very easy for my parents as a child, I rarely did anything wrong and just kept myself to myself, I was apparently a very quiet child.
For the large part, my dads discipline worked ok, but only for short periods of time, but he started spanking my brother more and more and locking him up in his room for hours on end. My brother, well, I think it was partly because of his ADHD(which he didn?ft find out he had until he was 20yrs old), the spankings never seemed to do anything for the large part in the long run and because he continued to be a terror for most of his life, they just got worse.
My father was killed shortly before I turned 6, and my mother became very ill and fell into manic depression (which she is still recovering from to this day)- for the next couple of years she just stayed in bed while I looked after her, the house and my brother, and my brother just ran wild. My brother had no one to hold him back and so he just got more uncontrollable, and eventually my mum sent him to full time boarding school (a dyslexic one because he was also dyslexic) at 9yrs old because she just couldn?ft cope with him. I was just expected to cope.
Over the years my relationship grew really bad with my mum, while my brothers prospered (even though he was difficult to deal with, she was always attached to him, I think it was partly due to the fact that she and my dad had to spend so much time with him as a child)- I think it was partly due to her depression, and although she only went through a short phase of spanking me(most of the time I hadn?ft done anything wrong, but it was usually because my brother had stolen my food and we started arguing about it, and she just spanked us both because she got tired of trying to find out who started the fight, even though it was always my brother), she started to blame me from an early age for everything that had gone wrong in her life. She has/had?ca lot of mental issues?cshe has done a huge amount of things that were really awful to me, I could try and explain them to you although you probably wouldn?ft understand, because she just did them because she was ill, and not for any logical reasons.
I don?ft want to go too much into my life, I will probably bore you to bits with a 10ft long post anyways, so I?fm just going to say this was the jist of things until I left home at 16 and started my own life(went to college, got a job, etc).
Things are much, much better now, although all that has happened has left many scars in my family relationships that I think are going to take years to heal.
Anyhoo?c
My point in all this, is yes, I agree with your form of punishment/justice Hachiro for the large part, but you need to take into consideration certain things like wether your child might have learning disabilities, even if very small, as you could be punishing your children, and not giving them the desired psychological effects- for example, although I got spanked very little times as a child in pretty much exactly the same way you go about spanking your children, the spanking worked very well for me and I was very well behaved just for the sake of being well behaved as a child- my childhood with my father was very good. My brother on the other hand, had the opposite effect, and the spankings never did anything positive for him no matter how many times he got the same spanking for the same wrong act, he just did it again over and over again. You could have spanked your child numerous times for them doing the same sort of wrong act without even realising that it isn?ft actually taking effect in their minds.
I also agree though with you that spanking should always be a last resort after plenty of warnings that not only should you be in a good state of mind when you go about the act, but also in a good place.
For example I think its wrong to punish children in their bedroom or playroom or whatever, because it?fs a place they associate with positive feelings and memories, and not a place that should be associated with negative feelings or memories- I think you should always punish the child where they committed the wrong act if possible, also taking into consideration the child?fs associated feelings with that place.
I don?ft think taking away toys and things that belong to them that they love is good either, rather than taking something away from the child that is theirs, I think its far better to make them do or go through something they don?ft like, like being made to sit on the stairs for half and hour to reflect their actions, or being made to vacuum hoover a room etc.
At the same time, I think parents can often don?ft do enough rewards for their children when they do something right- for example, how often do you express how happy you are when they made their bed, draw a picture for you or get good grades etc?
If you tell them they are going to get a reward for something before they do it, it sort of defeats the point of working really hard at it as far as they are concerned- its far better to give them ?gsurprise rewards?h when they are doing something good, as it will really motivate them to keep on doing the good work/actions.
Spending family time with your kids, is also very important- I think a lot of the bad things kids do are actually for a call for attention more than anything else. I think its excellent for parents to try and aim to go out with their kids somewhere at least once a week- I also think its good for you to spend quality time with your partner away from the kids at least once a week, even if only for an hour, as I think it helps create positive bonds between you and your partner and this will inevitably effect your kids.
I think part of why my parents had so many difficulties, was because they didn?ft spend enough time with each other to just relax and be happy, and thus they were always stressed, and this inevitably led them to snap a lot more when things went amiss etc.
What do you think?
(sorry about the long post :bluush: !)