Smacking children!

seanoconn

I've never believed in smacking, I set my 4 year old boundaries and he knows how far he can push things and that I will follow through with a punishment after issuing a warning.

I did however inherit a hitting, kicking, spitting, wailing Banshee of a child. We tried everything, time outs were spent throwing every toy in his room while screaming at the top of his voice. Withdrawal of privileges resulted in more tantrums and had little effect. Rewards for good behaviour failed, nothing worked. The slightest thing could set him off, like taking the lid off a yogurt pot for him when he'd decided he wanted to do it himself. His mother would be stressed every time she took him out in case he kicked off in public because she wouldn't/couldn't give in to one of his many demands or he wanted something one of the other children had in the playground. His behaviour was so bad we feared there might be an underlying issue so we booked an appointment to see a specialist.

After a particularly bad day of tantrums (he didn't get his window seat on the bus) and he slapped his mother again. His mother decided enough was enough and she spanked his bottom ( I know what her spanking feels like and it's not very hard) Another incident a week later and he was spanked on the bottom again.

End result.... He's a different child! His behaviour has improved immeasurably! Turns out that there was nothing wrong with him just that he was incredibly spoilt. He know's his boundaries now and is the lovely, happy child he always wanted to be

meanredspider

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Yes smacking is violence but sending a child to their room is solitary confinement and extra chores is hard labour. It's a question of degree isn't it. I'm not convinced a light smack is more cruel or more harmful than some other punishments - we are talking about a smack that doesn't hurt. I know there is an argument it teaches kids that it is OK to resort to violence - but is it OK to teach them to imprison people or humiliate them by making them sit on a "naughty step" ?

A smack that doesn't hurt is a pat isn't it?

Sitting on the naughty step (Ive never used it) has several values: it takes the steam out of a situation (rather than adding to it with a smack) and calms everything down. I don't think it can be equated to imprisonment and all punishments have some degree of humiliation.

Personally, I'm more of a fan of positive reinforcement - reward for good behaviour. "Punishment" then becomes the absence of reward or privaledge and takes away the sense of entitlement.

slowbike

meanredspider wrote:

Personally, I'm more of a fan of positive reinforcement - reward for good behaviour. "Punishment" then becomes the absence of reward or privaledge and takes away the sense of entitlement.

Punishment for deliberate wrong doing needs to be effective - as has been said countless times, this needs to be consistent - ie no good for one parent to punish and the other to console the child straight afterwards. It also needs to have the desired effect on the child - if they've been sent to the naughty step that many times that it isn't taking effect then it's time to review the strategy.

I don't think you can ever rule out physical punishment - it's a natural behaviour (just look at chimp troops where the dominant male keeps control) - but it shouldn't be done in anger and never as a first resort.

This thread is certainly food for thought - one of those thoughts is definitely that every child is different and requires unique handling - however, so long as the handling is consistent then it shouldn't be impossible.

These days of split families makes consistency harder - especially if one parent attempts to buy affection ...

apreading

meanredspider wrote:

Sitting on the naughty step (Ive never used it) has several values: it takes the steam out of a situation (rather than adding to it with a smack) and calms everything down. I don't think it can be equated to imprisonment and all punishments have some degree of humiliation.

But what if they refuse and getting them to sit on the naughty step would require physical force? And keeping them there would require the threat of even worse punishment to come? It CAN take the steam out of a situation but can add to it just as much as a smack, which can also take the steam out of a situation under some circumstances.

meanredspider wrote:

Personally, I'm more of a fan of positive reinforcement - reward for good behaviour. "Punishment" then becomes the absence of reward or privaledge and takes away the sense of entitlement.

There is much in this - you can often turn around the mentality of a situation and rather than "if you dont eat your greens you arent wathcing TV tonight" turn it into "if you eat your greens we will reward you with some TV time". One suggests that TV is a right that you might deny them, the other suggests it is a luxury that you have to earn. Thing is, this only works in pre-emptive mode, not in response mode, generally.

Manc33

meanredspider wrote:

More utter rubbish. If you learned nothing in school then you're unlikely to use it. I use what I learned in school every day. Maybe if you'd learned more in school you'd have learned to differentiate fact from YouTube tosh! :roll:

Right, but school doesn't cater for the more involved stuff which is what I am talking about. Thats what colleges and universities are for.

You're also trying to tell me stuff that goes against what I have personally seen in my real life, not sure where "YouTube tosh" comes into that.

You do realize that YouTube is comprised of thousands of separate channels and it isn't all just one gigantic channel don't you? You do realize all these channels are run by all different people, don't you?

Some are on the ground actually there to tell you what's happening in a certain situation, is that also "tosh" as well?

Its on YouTube so it has to be wrong? How can you think in absolutes like that and just say "oh its YouTube, oh its wrong"? Then there's the fact that you could just verify it outside of YouTube with a lot of stuff. It sounds like you don't even want to process or have to process anything that gets said on there, which is fair enough, no one has the time, even if they did then they have to care enough. You "know" its ALL tosh. Why is it tosh though, what is you answer to that, because it "just is" I suppose? lol. To me that's ridiculous. Try actually assessing what you're watching instead of assuming things.

meanredspider

Slowbike wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Personally, I'm more of a fan of positive reinforcement - reward for good behaviour. "Punishment" then becomes the absence of reward or privaledge and takes away the sense of entitlement.

Punishment for deliberate wrong doing needs to be effective - as has been said countless times, this needs to be consistent - ie no good for one parent to punish and the other to console the child straight afterwards. It also needs to have the desired effect on the child - if they've been sent to the naughty step that many times that it isn't taking effect then it's time to review the strategy.

I don't think you can ever rule out physical punishment - it's a natural behaviour (just look at chimp troops where the dominant male keeps control) - but it shouldn't be done in anger and never as a first resort.

This thread is certainly food for thought - one of those thoughts is definitely that every child is different and requires unique handling - however, so long as the handling is consistent then it shouldn't be impossible.

These days of split families makes consistency harder - especially if one parent attempts to buy affection ...

Yup - and I suppose that's the overall point: it's more often than not the parents that cause the problem through their behaviour.
Just as an aside, relating our behaviour with that of animals is not, I think, a very strong argument. One would hope we set a slightly higher benchmark

meanredspider

Manc33 wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

More utter rubbish. If you learned nothing in school then you're unlikely to use it. I use what I learned in school every day. Maybe if you'd learned more in school you'd have learned to differentiate fact from YouTube tosh! :roll:

Right, but school doesn't cater for the more involved stuff which is what I am talking about. Thats what colleges and universities are for.

You're also trying to tell me stuff that goes against what I have personally seen in my real life, not sure where "YouTube tosh" comes into that.

You do realize that YouTube is comprised of thousands of separate channels and it isn't all just one gigantic channel don't you? You do realize all these channels are run by all different people, don't you?

Some are on the ground actually there to tell you what's happening in a certain situation, is that also "tosh" as well?

Its on YouTube so it has to be wrong? How can you think in absolutes like that and just say oh its YouTube, oh its wrong? That sounds like you don't even want to process or have to process anything that gets said on there. Because hey, you know its tosh. Why is it tosh, because it "just is" lol. Pathetic. Try actually assessing what you're watching instead of assuming things.

What school taught me was to assess what was out in front of me and make reasoned judgements about it - to take information as a whole (including YouTube but a wealth of other sources) and apply critical reasoning to it. That's served me very well in life.

Manc33

Nope, you said its "tosh".

Now you're claiming you do watch stuff on YouTube?

We are animals, so what you said about that doesn't make any sense. Relating to animals? Like there's a choice in the matter! You don't have that choice, you might think you do but thats another story.

"Wisdom is understanding how little we know"
- Socrates, circa 400BC

People thousands of years ago were more in tune with reality than we currently are now in this modern world. Me included, because I was born into it the same as anyone and has had to keep working it out, but at least I am trying to.

Nevermind smacking children, how about teaching them about how world wars get funded on both sides by the same bunch of crooks? How about how a pair of brothers funded both sides of WW1? Is this stuff simply not true?

meanredspider

apreading wrote:

But what if they refuse and getting them to sit on the naughty step would require physical force?

The idea is that you set boundaries much earlier. As I said, I never used the Naughty Stair in the same way as that I've never needed to give someone a written warning at work (let alone fire them). I think it's necessary to have those sorts of responses available: my wife once put my two sons on the naughty stair because they got into a food fight. Things had just got out of hand and, when they were caught, they knew they'd been naughty.

It's all about putting in the effort early I believe.

Manc33

How do you explain away all the cases where parents did nothing but help their son or daughter and they still grew up to rob them blind and be extremely disrespectful? Some kids are just like that. Yes you can try to avoid it I guess but you're only ever going to be trying to avoid it, you're never going to actually change the biological makeup of that person. This is why I don't believe in "rehabilitation" either. "I found god, now you can trust me" and all that horsechit.

veronese68

Manc33 wrote:

Nope, you said its "tosh".

Now you're claiming you do watch stuff on YouTube?

This is where the critical reasoning comes in. He didn't say all of You Tube was tosh. What he said was

Maybe if you'd learned more in school you'd have learned to differentiate fact from YouTube tosh!

As in work out the difference between fact and fiction, You Tube being an oft quoted source of yours. Other sources of fiction are available, some of them are books.

How do you think people would get on in universities and colleges if they hadn't gone to school first to get a good grounding. Of course school is important.

meanredspider

Manc33 wrote:

Nope, you said its "tosh".

Now you're claiming you do watch stuff on YouTube?

We are animals, so what you said about that doesn't make any sense. Relating to animals? Like there's a choice in the matter! You don't have that choice, you might think you do but thats another story.

"Wisdom is understanding how little we know"
- Socrates, circa 400BC

People thousands of years ago were more in tune with reality than we currently are now in this modern world. Me included, because I was born into it the same as anyone and has had to keep working it out, but at least I am trying to.

Nevermind smacking children, how about teaching them about how world wars get funded on both sides by the same bunch of crooks? How about how a pair of brothers funded both sides of WW1? Is this stuff simply not true?

I have my own YouTube channel - but , as V68 kindly pointed out, that doesn't mean I have to believe every nutter on the whole thing.

Yup we're animals and that explains some of our instincts and biology. But, as I said, it's a pretty low hurdle.

Very good - you're beginning to understand why we teach History and Economics and Politics and Psychology....

slowbike

meanredspider wrote:

Just as an aside, relating our behaviour with that of animals is not, I think, a very strong argument. One would hope we set a slightly higher benchmark

We hope we do set a higher benchmark - but it is interesting to see where we've come from.

Incidentally, although my parents (well, my Dad) used to smack me (all of us) on the odd occasion we were really naughty - my grandmother only had to look at us.

apreading

It seems to me that human culture over the last 100 years has been to try and rise above physical punishment but that all we have really done is substitute it for mental/psychological punishment which may be more or less effective and may be better or worse for the individual being punished.

We still have the same basic animal instincts and psyche that learned and was governed by physical lessons, that hasnt changed, we have just tried to make ourselves suppress them and feel more 'humane' as a result. While it may seem like it on the surface and we may do a good job of convincing ourselves, I am not 100% convinced that our current path is any 'better', just different is all.

markhewitt1978

We have a 3 year old daughter. My wife tends to do the method of holding her in place, kneeing down and talking to her in a serious voice method. She seems to respond well to that.

mamba80

apreading wrote:

It seems to me that human culture over the last 100 years has been to try and rise above physical punishment but that all we have really done is substitute it for mental/psychological punishment which may be more or less effective and may be better or worse for the individual being punished.

We still have the same basic animal instincts and psyche that learned and was governed by physical lessons, that hasnt changed, we have just tried to make ourselves suppress them and feel more 'humane' as a result. While it may seem like it on the surface and we may do a good job of convincing ourselves, I am not 100% convinced that our current path is any 'better', just different is all.

Well, we should try and improve shouldnt we? the cane, the belt, cat o nine tails, the birch all where common a 100 years ago.
i was smacked/hit as a kid (and i can look back and see that no doubt i deserved it but it doesnt work!) and it did absolutely nothing for me, it didnt instil respect for others, maybe a hatred for authority that was very strong in my teenage years, which changed when i went to college and met a fantastic teacher who was a great roll model for the class and never once raised his voice, let alone alluded to any violence or threats.
In any child there is a strong genetic component with a childs behavior, so what will work for one, wont for another but with the right handling from an early age, smacking is pointless, however, if this isnt the case, then as i said before, a smack might shock the child into a change.
Physical punishment has a strong psychological element to it

pblakeney

meanredspider wrote:

Just as an aside, relating our behaviour with that of animals is not, I think, a very strong argument. One would hope we set a slightly higher benchmark

The longer I live, the more I experience of human nature, or witness it Worldwide from afar, the more I realise that we are deluding ourselves.
Witness Yugoslavia, Central Africa, and quite possibly the Ukraine to name but a few.

Manc33

Asking people not to behave like animals is like asking a rock to stop being a rock. The fact that we like to pretend we are above animals only shows how insecure we are. They seem to be "above" us in terms of morality, from where I am standing. There isn't anything abnormal in nature, can't say the same about humans, unfortunately.

"The only animal on Earth that causes harm for no reason, is humans" (words to that effect) - Michael Tsarion

meanredspider

Manc33 wrote:

"The only animal on Earth that causes harm for no reason, is humans" (words to that effect) - Michael Tsarion

Well, he's wrong. You only have to see the footage of orcas playing with baby seals to know that's wrong or, closer to home, cats killing birds and mice.

Just because we're animals, that doesn't mean we shouldn't set ourselves higher aspirations for better behaviour. We can damn the species for being evil but what percentage of humans ever purposefully kill another human? I think you'll find that the number is vanishingly small. Conversely, how many acts of altruism are there? Who in this country thinks the concept of the NHS is wrong? We've outlawed hate of all sorts. It's easy to point to all the bad stuff and it would be easy to excuse ourselves our worst traits by saying we're animals.

mamba80

Manc33 wrote:

Asking people not to behave like animals is like asking a rock to stop being a rock. The fact that we like to pretend we are above animals only shows how insecure we are. They seem to be "above" us in terms of morality, from where I am standing. There isn't anything abnormal in nature, can't say the same about humans, unfortunately.

"The only animal on Earth that causes harm for no reason, is humans" (words to that effect) - Michael Tsarion

Yes people can behave like animals and are capable of great cruelty but it is out of choice/freewill (in most cases) the animal is governed by instinct, so a badger in a chicken run will kill them all, it will feel no remorse or later any regret.

A ferret with little or no reason will eat all its young, that seems pretty abnormal and not very moral, nature is full of these sort of things, you dont appear to know much about the countryside.

human beings can be capable of great compasion and bravery, witness the American Kayla Mueller killed by ISIS recently or the MSF Doctors (and all the local health workers, many of whom have died ) in West africa treating Ebola patients at great risk to themsleves.

what exactly this has to do with smacking children... :?:

ben@31

Manc33 wrote:

Asking people not to behave like animals is like asking a rock to stop being a rock. The fact that we like to pretend we are above animals only shows how insecure we are.

I went out not the town last night, for something to eat and a couple of drinks on the way back home. Did I act like an animal? No.

I know how to behave.

Am I insecure? No, I know I have nothing to worry about. But I do think acting polite and considerate makes a better person while an absolute scum bag lowers themselves by acting anti-social.

Manc33

meanredspider wrote:

....what percentage of humans ever purposefully kill another human?

That depends on when, but if it ever happened it would be a bad thing. From 1914-1918 and from 1939-1945 I should think one hell of a big percentage.

Taking the world over is quite easy - simply fund both sides of a war, sit back while they bring each other to their knees, then come in afterwards and buy it all up super cheap. If you need another world war after that, no problem. In fact kicking one off now would be easier than it was back then.

Anytime people get on the international bankers backs, thats it. Jesus did that in the bible and look what happened to him. Saddam Hussein did that "dumping the dollar" and look what happened to him. Come on, its no use denying this when it just repeats throughout history! Why do you think North Korea is a "rogue nation". Because they don't allow the international banking system to take over, no other reason. Its all smoke and mirrors.

After WW1 they failed with the "League of Nations" (the entire point to the war) and so we then got WW2. After WW2 they didn't fail, they setup the "United Nations".

You know they are all working together because of Operation Paperclip where ex-Nazi Werner Von Braun helped to setup NASA and ex-Nazi Reinhard Gehlen helped to setup the CIA. Nice.

No one ever explains any of this stuff despite it being true, which is another alarm bell. I don't want any of this to be true either.

meanredspider

Manc33 wrote:

No one ever explains any of this stuff despite it being true, which is another alarm bell. I don't want any of this to be true either.

What do you mean? Why don't you read some history books on it and educate yourself? You make it sound as though you're the only person to have seen this. What, for instance, do you think should have happened to von Braun? Should he have been hanged? Or learn from him? There's plenty of stuff written on all of this.

16 million people were killed in WW1. Deadliest conflict in human history. Even if everybody in that war had been killed by British adult males spread out evenly, that would have been less than one death each. Taking a world population at the time, that would be less than 1%. Of course, it's nothing like evenly spread so you could guess, even then, that it was more like 1 in 10,000.

Manc33

More than 1,500 ex-Nazi's were shipped in though, not just this guy or that guy.

I don't know what they should have done with them, but hiring them? Hell no! That just makes a big mockery of all the people that had only just been killed in the war, surely. Well at least it does to me. Hence it was an "operation" and again people have to dig to find it out, as per usual. No transparency, no asking the public if it is OK, no teaching this in schools, nothing.

Most of their time seems to involve all the back-pedalling they need to do to keep the lies going. You can't hire Nazi's immediately after you were just fighting Nazis! You can but people are going to point it out and say hey, smoking gun over here.

meanredspider

How long do you need to wait - a year, two years? What about Nazi developed technology - should we ignore that too? What do you think the Soviets were going to do? Time to get real.

Manc33

So we can have an evil enemy... but if they can do science, everything changes then and we should take them under our wing?

It was them taking us under their wing in reality.

Ever seen those fasci symbols in the US House of Representatives? The symbol goes back to the Romans, but the Nazi's used it, so why would it be there? http://i.imgur.com/RZoSjhL.png

Just a "decoration", moving right along.

chris_bass

One of my new favorite things to do is look at a title of a thread that manc33 has posted on and is over 2 pages long, skip to the end and see where it ends up!

meanredspider

Chris Bass wrote:

One of my new favorite things to do is look at a title of a thread that manc33 has posted on and is over 2 pages long, skip to the end and see where it ends up!

I know. It's partly my fault because I engage with it...

bondurant

I never used to go on cake stop until he started posting.

chris_bass

meanredspider wrote:

Chris Bass wrote:

One of my new favorite things to do is look at a title of a thread that manc33 has posted on and is over 2 pages long, skip to the end and see where it ends up!

I know. It's partly my fault because I engage with it...

I bet you have been funding wars as well haven't you!