<p>@Billy Pilgram</p>
<p>I forget which comic said, “Never raise your hand to a child–because it leaves your midsection unprotected.”</p>
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<p>I missed your post earlier. You’re right, what’s the deal? Is the OP just stirring the pot or what? If so, not all that successful as most posting here seem to agree that spanking, with or without a hand-held object, is not the best strategy for eliciting compliance with rules.</p>
<p>Every state makes their own laws, so there is no singular “spanking is a felony” law.</p>
<p>Probably a response to this story:</p>
<p>[Woman</a> charged with felony for belt spanking](<a href=“Chicago News - Chicago Tribune - Chicago Tribune”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-beltspankingcharg,0,1286857.story)</p>
<p>(Google already has this thread indexed. Wow, that’s fast.)</p>
<p>Completely agree with the LaCrosse police action. So sad that a child is treated in this manner due to misplaced anger. Exactly what lesson are parents trying to teach?</p>
<p>Thanks nightchef. It’s always nice to provide a link when referencing a news story.</p>
<p>Like Hunt moderate spanking was SOP in my area growing up. It was usually reserved for the worst violations like inflicting severe harm to siblings, breaking expensive stuff due to bad intentions, etc. It was quick and not severe and seemd to serve the intended purpose. I was not a big fan of those milder forms like timeouts which back then meant being sent to your room for a period. Soap was quite effective in teaching the nonuse of bad words at home. I don’t think I ever swore in front of my parents-ever after one treatment with Ivory.<br>
What I remember as far worse were the psychological punishments. I think words are far more harmful weapons than a timely spanking with or without the belt.</p>
<p>There are a few private schools in my area, mostly bible-based Christian, who use corporal punishment. This is clearly spelled out in their Parent Handbook. I can’t believe it is legal, but the parents know what they’re getting into when they sign the agreement.</p>
<p>My mom kept a yard stick leaning against the dining table during the dinner hour…just in case. Maybe that’s why I have digestive problems as an adult?</p>
<p>I was spanked probably five to eight times total as a young child, and I am currently eighteen. I can’t say anything about the parent’s perspective, but I don’t have any complaints as a recipient. It was never about inflicting pain, and all a big theatrical event to convey to me the absolute abhorrence of whatever I did. One time I think I was spanked because I started to run across a busy Boston street and ignored my parents’ shouting at me to stop. To me, spanking in the sense that I described seems entirely acceptable. I’m sure, though, that there are other ways to convey seriousness.</p>
<p>A lot of people in this topic immediately associate spanking with anger and the desire to inflict pain. It’s my belief that spanking need not be considered abuse if it lacks those two vital components of abuse.</p>
<p>Also the “spanking only taught me to lie and be sneaky” argument is pretty invalid; the same could be said for any punishment. Any punishment is meant to be avoided, the key is causing the child to avoid it by not committing the behavior in the first place. This is not specific to spanking.</p>
<p>Back in elementary school, boys were routinely “paddled” by coaches or administrators if they really acted up. They would come and get the kid, take him into the hallway, and you could hear the paddle making contact. As a child who had never been spanked or even patted hard on the behind, that scene always horrified me, and I always made sure to behave. The boys would come back into the classroom either redfaced, teary-eyed, or attempting to portray a false bravado. Considering today’s climate, my daughters hear these stories and can hardly believe this occurred in the public schools and that some parents even supported the practice.</p>
<p>What I don’t remember is whether any girls ever got paddled. Surely at some point it happened, but I guess I’ve blocked it from memory.</p>
<p>So if there was no pain involved, how did it convey “absolute abhorrence”? Was it fear?</p>
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To me, this idea is nonsensical. Where I grew up, parents spanked children. They didn’t “hit” them or “beat” them. Everybody understood the difference. And everybody knew which parents were mean, and which weren’t, and it didn’t primarily have to do with corporal punishment.</p>
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<p>Yes, but I always combined whatever punishment I gave to my child with a review and/or discussion of what was wrong about the behavior, what different choices could be made, etc. For example, when my oldest son was about 10, he kept picking on his younger brother. I gave him a time-out and then made him write out a list of how he would like an older brother to act, if he had one. It made him think about things from his younger brother and his behavior improved after that. </p>
<p>When a parent is hitting a child with a belt or a hand, the child is screaming/crying and there isn’t a lot of room for dialogue and/or learning. It makes the child feel helpless and overpowered. Believe me, the biggest concern was to avoid having my dad find out what I had done.</p>
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There’s a difference between threatening a child with an undesirable consequence and threatening him/her with physical violence. If you can’t feel that difference, you’re differently made than I am. Spanking also makes a child fear the physical touch and/or approach of the parent, which is a sad thing. I remember feeling this vividly at times as a child, even though the spankings I endured were not terribly severe. I don’t think our son has ever felt it, which I am happy and proud about.</p>
<p>More subtly, corporal punishment encourages the child to view defiance as courageous resistance to tyranny. Perhaps that’s true of all punishments to some degree, but the peculiarly intense interpersonal dynamic of spanking facilitates it, I think. Going back to that scene from Good Will Hunting I mentioned before:
I think this is very true to life. Corporal punishment makes children flip the bird to their parents in their secret hearts while showing outward respect. I don’t think this is a good thing.</p>
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This also assumes that this kind of punishment is typically a sudden, angry response. That’s not how it was in my family, and also not (as I recall) in lots of other families. It was more ritualized than that (sometimes “when your father gets home”), and there was plenty of talking involved. Again, I’m not really defending this practice, but the rhetoric about “hitting” and “beating” bothers me, because it’s a fantasy version of much of real-life corporal punishment. I’m OK with doing away with all corporal punishment to eliminate the abusive end of the spectrum…I just think it’s unfair to a lot of people to suggest that the entire spectrum is anger-fueled cruelty and sadism.</p>
<p>Spanking is hitting, only not hard? Or is it only on the bottom or legs? Only bare handed? On bare skin? </p>
<p>Sorry, it’s all hitting to me and it only makes sense to do it if it hurts. I don’t see much difference between angrily hurting you kid and planning to hurt your kid. I had friends who spent all day worrying about their dad getting home because they were promised a spanking. Or they spent all day begging their mom not to tell their dad something so they wouldn’t get spanked. Of they spent all day expecting a spanking and then dad was too tired to bother with it. All horrible parenting in my opinion.</p>
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This was how it was normally done in my family too, though not always. However, I think it may be too simple to say that because the spanking was ritualized and not immediate, it therefore had no component of “anger-fueled cruelty and sadism.” I think the whole point of spanking as it was practiced by my parents and others of their generation was to give parents a controlled, measured way to release the bad feelings that their children’s misbehavior caused. It was carefully rationalized as for the kid’s good, but it was really first and foremost a socially permissible outlet for pent-up anger.</snip></p>
<p>Well we got “licks” in school from a wooden paddle, circa 1960s. In junior high a couple of guys and one girl got in trouble for the same prank. The boys were told by the assistant principal that they would get 3 licks. The girl was told that she would have to serve a 4 hour Saturday detention. She complained loudly that she wanted the licks to get it over with. They wouldn’t do it. She had to serve detention.</p>
<p>Given the choice, would you rather be grounded for a weekend or take the belt? For those who think “the belt” is worse, seems it might be the bigger deterent for you, right? And vis versa. </p>
<p>My dad saved spanking for the very, very biggest offenses. And, by the way, when I got those few spankings I had been warned (plenty) and thought then and still think now that I had it coming. Yes it hurt,</p>
<p>I never used it with my S.</p>
<p>A point I think many of you are missing is that for some it is not fear of pain that is controlling behavior, but fear of aggression. The pain may be minimal but the act of putting your hands on someone with the idea in mind to punish them is aggression no matter what way you spin it, and a kid understands that probably better than you do. As adults we have the ability to create shades of gray where they may or may not exist. I was spanked pretty regularly growing up until maybe age 7 or 8 when my parents started using time outs and grounding. It very rarely hurt, but it scared the hell out of me. We are talking deep, uncontrollable terror. To me it just seemed like once we crossed the threshold of them actually putting their hands on me, I had no idea what else they would do. For me, there was no “well it’s not like I was beaten, it only hurt a little.” If they were willing to hurt me a little, how does child-TK know where the line is drawn? Though I do have a good relationship with my mom, I do resent her for her methods of discipline. My sister and I would be playing in the next room and if it sounded like we were fighting, she’d call my dad downstairs to come spank us without even bothering to get up to see what we were doing, and my dad just assumed my mom was right and we were fighting. They were incredibly lazy about parenting, and we were pretty damn good kids to begin with. It wouldn’t have taken much effort with us.</p>
<p>To this day, I flinch if my parents come toward me quickly when I know they are upset. They haven’t touched me probably since elementary school, and as I said the spankings never hurt, but they were still shows of aggression and the aggression scared me. Now as an older child/young adult, if I say something way over the line my mom will run up to me and tell me off, and I get scared when she runs up to me-- even though she has never actually hurt me and has not even put a hand on me in over 10 years. I have gone running up the stairs away from her. I have run out of the house from my dad. When I know I’ve upset them, they are terrifying. And it’s not just my parents. Really, when anybody starts to get angry it scares me. It’s like I can feel myself shrinking into helplessness until panic sets in and I am wild out of my mind with fear.</p>
<p>Though, I think being yelled at may have been worse. If you yell at my sister she literally doesn’t hear you. We had to explain to our riding coach that, even in an emergency, she could not yell instructions to sister because she would not hear her. She has to be spoken to in a calm, normal volume voice or she shuts down. I just immediately cry, though only when men raise their voice. I am lucky that I have found a boyfriend that understands no matter how bad we fight or how frustrated he gets, he cannot yell at me. It’s been two years and he has yet to slip. I’m lucky.</p>
<p>And as far as how effective it was, it really wasn’t. We may have not repeated an egregious behavior (though we probably did), but we never learned anything except to be angry and fearful. We were smart, honest kids. Me especially, even from a young age. They probably could have just talked to me and I wouldn’t have repeated the behavior, if they really wanted to punish me probably anything else would have worked, I just needed to be reminded that X action merited punishment and I understood. Adding in the fear just distracted me from the point of the punishment, I was too busy worrying about the punishment to think about what I did. I really don’t think the spanking did anything positive for us. I would only consider using it in a situation where a small child is SUPPOSED to be fearful and doesn’t know that-- like running out into the street. Creating fear just because I left my play doh out again is overkill.</p>
<p>Wow, I’d forgotten the whole, wait until your father gets home spankings. Must have been fun for him after a long day of work.</p>
<p>I dreaded my dad coming home from work more often than not. How sad. I never, ever pulled this one on my kids. I punished them when the offense occurred whenever possible, although I might tell their dad when he came home. I never wanted them to think of him coming home as a bad thing.</p>
<p>The worst I ever remember getting from either parent (other than the occasional empty but operatic “I’ll beat you with the washing machine strap” threats from my mother) was a few spur of the moment, comparatively mild swats on the rear end while standing up. Which neither hurt me nor scared me, to be honest. I think the kind of scheduled, calculated, over the knee “spanking” that people often seem to mean when they use that word would have terrified me. It just seems so cold-blooded.</p>