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Your Prompt For the Day — Is Physical Discipline Bad for Children?
The editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times is out with a piece today praising the fact that the Minnesota Vikings have decided to bench star running back Adrian Peterson until his child abuse case is resolved. In the course of doing so, they take an immoderate stance on the topic at hand:
We’re hoping … that the most important reason for Peterson’s benching doesn’t get lost in the shuffle: It’s never okay to hit a child — even if your parents did it to you and you turned out all right. Not only can it be harmful to kids, but it doesn’t change children’s behavior for the better. In other words, it doesn’t work. That includes a well-intended swat here and there.
Emphasis mine.
What say you, parents of Ricochet? Is physical discipline — even a mild swat — always inappropriate? If not, how do you approach the issue? And what of the Sun-Times’ empirical claim? Does it really never work?
(As an aside, I originally intended to include an illustration in this post of a parent giving a child a gentle spanking. Searching through our stock art database, however, only yielded menacing pictures of terrified children, sometimes with a parent’s hand holding a belt in the foreground. That seems fairly instructive about where elite opinion is on this).
Published in General
Cause -> effect. We have to teach it somehow. Or, as I’ve seen a few times recently in social media: you are free to choose your actions; you are not free to choose the consequences of your actions.
Kids need feedback, to learn what is right and wrong, what is acceptable, and what is not.
I swat my kids as warranted. It is effective and much less damaging than any of the stupid emotional punishment games liberals prefer. Of COURSE it works!
Because I am very quick and consistent, from a very young age my kids know to listen when I tell them something – even something as seemingly-irrelevant to a child as paying attention in parking lots.
Swats on the behind are fine. The kid who runs toward the street needs immediate information that it isn’t OK.
Do those sentences not contradict each other?
I’ve spanked my children. In the moment a spanking usually escalates the situation and makes children angry and hysterical, which doesn’t necessarily make the immediate problem better. However, subsequent situations where bad behavior starts to occur can often be nipped in the bud with a credible threat of a spanking. That’s where it becomes effective.
I also have only used spankings when time outs aren’t a practical option or aren’t working, and when reasoning or other lesser punishment threats fail to cut through the defiance. There is a place for spanking IMO, but by the time kids are kindergarten or first grade age, I think you should be able to reason or use other punishments to affect a child’s behavior.
Best correction of my life came from one of the few times I pushed my mother so far that I earned a physical punishment. I assure you it works.
I don’t hit as punishment but there have been one or two occasions where a sudden physical connection was required to interrupt an immediate danger. Sometimes there isn’t time to explain or the words are going unheeded. This is a very different thing than taking your anger out on a child.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
I don’t follow football, and I don’t watch the sort of news where this has been covered, but what little’s filtered into my bubble does make me think Peterson may have gone too far.
Having been spanked, and being a spanker, if I drew blood I’d consider myself to have gone too far.
Why the NFL feels they need to micromanage the lives of their players and their viewers is beyond me. (Oh, that’s right, the NFL seems to be run by liberals now.)
“For the second consecutive season, the NFL, that behemoth of the television business that sucks the air out of everybody else’s ratings whenever one of its games takes place, is seeing a slight drop in the number of people who are tuning into its games.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324481204578177632263547280
Maybe they should fire the liberals and see if their ratings come back up.
Yeah, if you’re taking your anger out on a child, you’re not disciplining or punishing. It’s vengeance, or something else.
Here’s the full quote (in 96 different iterations):
“Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.”
http://biblehub.com/proverbs/13-24.htm
Which adds an important nuance.
The worst behaved children I’ve encountered are those raised by parents who don’t discipline. The single worst-behaved child was the daughter of a child psychologist. Watching her attempt to speak reason to that little savage made me feel bad for the poor kid.
I was wildly rebellious and in some way I totally drove my Dad crazy. One memorable time I complained about things being ‘unfair’ and was told in no uncertain terms that ‘life wasn’t fair’ and it was about time I learned it. Another favorite phrase was ‘cry and I’ll hit you again!’ One of five children within seven years, the middle one, only I drove parents nuts. I have to admit that this was needed for me. Eventually I appreciated that their discipline was another way of showing love and they didn’t like it any more than I. Eventually I learned enough self-discipline (from them and the nuns) to excel in a big public high school and get through college (Math / Physics) in four years on scholarship. What they taught me was to focus my energies in a positive manner. Who knows what I’d have ended up as had they not the courage, love, and strength to provide discipline as needed.
A young child lives in the moment and has the attention span of a gnat. Spanking is an immediate punishment and therefore connects the child’s error with the consequence well. Timing is an important element in behavioral conditioning, even when conditioning adults.
Different kids respond best to different punishments, but physical pain is a fairly universal message.
It is also worth noting that the manner of a spanking matters. It must be clear to the child that the spanking is done for justice and moral correction, rather than an angry parent merely lashing out.
The movement against physical punishments — which, properly administered, cause pain but not injury — is symptomatic of the rise of materialistic worldviews. Physical pain is fleeting. Memories of it are vague and benign. In fact, people often laugh about past pains and injuries. So the insistence that we restrict punishments to psychological discomforts and emotional hardships reflects not so much a softening of civilization as an idolization of the body.
This is part of a cultural slide. First, we rejected physical punishment of convicted criminals, pretending that locking someone away in a concrete cage for years on end is more humane than simply hurting him and sending him on his way. Next, we turned against bruising fist fights, so now a man can make lewd remarks to a lady (for example) and suffer no significant reprisal. And today even spanking horrifies metropolitan sensibilities.
I started being a parent with the philosophy no corporal punishment ever. I found that a swat on the behind will bring a child to attention. Sometimes you need to get that child to pay attention and obey. But a swat is not anything that truely hurts or has a lasting impact. I don’t know what Peterson did, but it sounds like he went beyond that.
Quilter and I used corporal punishment on our three on occasion. Generally we limited it to occasions when a child’s actions could have led to someone (including the child) getting hurt. A swat for attempting to dart out into traffic, maliciously striking someone else, that sort of thing.
Oh — and lying. If you were asked “did you do such and such?” and the answer was no, the truth had better be no. I remember one time I caught the three of them doing something wrong, and asked them “were you doing that?” Two said yes, immediately, one said no. It wasn’t even that serious. I planned to let the three off with a warning. I asked that one again, and he said “no” again. Then the other two blurted out, “you are in worse trouble if you lie.” But he stuck to no.
Gave the other two minor punishment (had to), and hammered the other one. Not physically, but I did give him a swat. Privileges gone, and really dirty chores assigned.
Oddly, I don’t remember having to use any physical punishment after age 10 or so. “The Dad Look” seemed to work fine.
Seawriter
I was one of five children. Spanking was common enough in our house that my mom kept one of these without the ball. What did your parents use, if not just a hand?
[I love the new in-comment image resizer, Yeti!]
Is physical discipline bad for children? No.
This issues inflames me for a couple of reasons. First, it’s an area that shows how much values and experience impact judgement–“I was spanked and I turned out fine.” is judged to be worthless data while “I’ve seen kids who were abused, thus spanking is wrong” is deemed to be insightful, wise, and progressive. Neither option is based in science, but rather experience–which is fine, we make lots of decision every day that way.
Second, from my experience, spanking worked differently on different kids at different times. But corporal punishment critics have no tolerance for nuance in this area – it’s all wrong, all the time.
It’s the old Psych 101 statement: Correlation does not imply Causality. Kids who consistently misbehave are spanked more. Kids who are serious behavior problems are spanked more. Those statement are descriptive, not predictive.
I will now step down off my soapbox.
Also, from science end of things, in February of 2013 one set of researcher posited that without accounting for genetic influences, researchers are likely to mis-specify models looking at effects of spanking and corporal punishment (CP). Also, in December of 2013 a meta-analytic review of studies of corporal punishment was done which concluded:
It’s not that I think science is the answer to everything, but if advocates of abolishing spanking are going to act like they have science on their side, then they should at least acknowledge that it isn’t a unidirectional, all conclusions point in the same direction, type of statement.
Ok, I’m really done this time.
Dear CPS agents who are monitoring Ricochet: I think spanking is wrong and you should never hit your child. Kick your dog, yes. But never hit your child.
Dear Animal Control agents, I was only kidding. About the dog I mean.
Spanking is on the rise because… climate change!
Scientific and statistical research should always be balanced with anecdotes from common experience, because anecdotes can be infinitely more appreciative of context and nuances.
Would mounting a cricket bat with “BOARD OF EDUCATION” stenciled on it to the wall of the living room suffice in most situations?
When we were growing up, our dad always presented spanking as a choice. “If you do X, I will have to spank you.” We, in general, quickly learned that doing X would indeed produce predicted results.
In my opinion, it’s a tool in the tool box.
Declaring a refusal to one or more tools would be as ridiculous as broadcasting certain military operations as off the table in certain tense international affairs.
If the parent is highly consistent, the child learns very quickly that not paying attention to a direct command has consequences. As a result corporal punishment becomes extremely rare. My 14 year old can be devastated by a dirty look. My 12 year old cannot remember the last time. My 9 year earns a whack every few weeks, usually for lying. The 3 year old has probably only been spanked once or twice in his life. The 19 month-old cries on command (the word “NO” does it beautifully – a quite handy source of sadistic pleasure for me).
A spank is guaranteed when they lie, or when they violate one of the 3 cardinal fighting rules: no weapons, marks, or head shots.
I have no idea why people think physical pain is worse than mental pain. It makes no sense to me.
My sister and I both had daughters 4 weeks apart.
When my niece darted into the street, my sister swatted her and niece NEVER did it again.
You could have beat my daughter bloody and she still would have darted into the street at the next opportunity.
So my daughter, who was more of a handful than her three brothers and all her cousins combined, rarely got spanked. It simply didn’t work. But it worked on all the rest of them.
Their early behavior was a very accurate indication of their personalities that have carried through to adulthood. My niece learns from mistakes and the mistakes of others. My daughter? Not so much. She has to learn everything the hard way and even then isn’t that quick on the uptake.
I have no problem with the proper application of the board of education to the seat of learning. I was spanked, not often but often enough, including with a switch. That was my grandfather’s personal favorite. He’d pull out his pocket knife, cut a twig and presto. Yes Charles Barkley white people do use switches. Switches leave welts. I don’t remember them being quite as bad as the Petersen pictures (they may have been) but the welts do last for a couple of days. I’ve never spanked my child, but we give her nice things so we can take them away.
That is the key. My sister hardly ever got spanked, but that was just the difference in our personalities. She knew just as much as my brother and I what the stakes were. My brother and I were just more willing to test those limits – sometimes farther than we should have.
Completely with Seawriter on this one.
We use 5 criteria for spanking.
1. Lying
2. Attempting to hurt someone else
3. Hurting someone else
4. Attempting to hurt themselves
5. Any other behavior that is unable to be remedied by other means may temporarily become a ‘spanking offense.’
The spanking process matters too – the kid needs to be able to keep count and answer the ‘why are you getting a spanking?” question.
Being without kids, obviously I can only speculate about what I will do, but my rules are pretty similar to those listed above.
Children should know why they are getting spanked.
A spanking is for serious offenses.
The parent shouldn’t spank in anger. (i.e., “you’re being spanked because you lied/hit your brother/directly disobeyed an order,” not “you’re being spanked because I had a bad day at work and you pissed me off.”)
And if a parent finds oneself spanking a child more than once a month, the parent should probably reevaluate their parenting practices. They might be too strict, or they may not be applying rules consistently enough for the operant conditioning to be effective, or they may need to find something that “hurts” more than swats on the bottom. (e.g. Have to run laps for 20 minutes or lose a valued privilege/toy)
My wife sent me this a while back