Corporal Punishment

PreachersWife2004 said:

well, mling, since I'm not going to argue with you, I don't see where you have a choice.

What're going to do? Call CPS on me because I spank my children?

IF y'all really thought that it was abuse, and this just wasn't the anonymity of the internet speaking, I would imagine you would be doing your darndest to make sure the abuse stopped.

Right?

Good luck with that.

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As I have repeatedly said, I put a mild spanking in the category of "nobody is perfect." You spank your kids; my parents taught me bad eating habits; my friend's father throws temper tantrums if he doesn't get his way. All of those *actions* could be called abusive, in that they harm their kids. *Everybody* screws up and hurts their kids somehow, but not every act of abuse warrants an extreme reaction.

But no, I refuse to agree to disagree on this topic. You can walk away and not talk to me, fine, but I will never believe that a person with power over others has the right to choose for himself whether or not to hurt those people without their consent.

This is not about whether to teach your children your religious beliefs...or the family trade, or to have sex or not. This is about violating their right to protect themselves from an attack on their person. I will never respect that a person has a right to do that to their subordinates.

(though, I'm interested by your assumption that disapproving with somebody's behavior means I would try to make their life miserable)

rambot said:

I don't think he's comparing them so much as simply putting them on the same side of a spectrum.


As for abuse by parents, it can take many forms. Abuse is really defined more as an outcome than a process. You can say something that you think is funny that they think is really cutting. If that kind of thing happens often enough to hurt someone, I would consider it abuse.
It depends on how the child takes it (unless, of course it's physical).

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Pretty much, yeah. In my mind, the spectrum of sexual assault has rape on one extreme, and speaking crudely to somebody who is uncomfortable with that, on the other end. Any non-consensual touching (other than things like fistfights) falls somewhere on that scale.

PreachersWife2004 said:

But again, that can apply to ANY punishment. By your logic, what right do I have to ground my children? Or is the 'abuse' only physical?



You're using buzzwords again, mling. Attack? My child knows the things that will lead him to get a spanking. He knows full well that if he runs into the street, he's going to get spanked for it. He could "protect" himself from the "attack" by staying out of the street.

You're using doublespeak. In one breath you say "Everyone abuses their kids somehow" but yet you turn around and say that you have no respect for someone who spanks (Because you view it as an attack that a child cannot defend himself from). So which is it? A parent who grounds their children is okay with you? Even though the psychological effects of grounding could be much worse than the momentary pain of a spank?



Well, I don't know about you but if I think a child is being abused I don't stand by and just let it happen. I report people who are abusing their children. If you honestly think spanking is so bad, is an attack, and is abuse, then why aren't you reporting it? If you really believe it's abuse but you're just sitting back and complaining about those doing the spanking, you're as guilty as they are of "abuse" and I would hold you personally responsible for all these children's lives that are getting so screwed up by being spanked.

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Because, as I have repeatedly said, not every act of abuse warrants that extreme a reaction--that is because, as I have repeatedly said, the effects of a relatively minor screw-up can be tempered or mitigated by an overall loving environment.

Mostly because, as I've repeatedly said, I'm using the word abuse *not* as a political buzzword, but to define any act that harms another person. If all parents who *ever* abused their kids weren't allowed to have them, nobody would ever be allowed to raise children.

I've found that the older I get, the more appalled I am that some parents feed their children fast food on a regular basis, or force them to play sports or instruments that they have no interest in. But I'm sure as "heck" not about to say that only absolutely perfect parents are allowed to *be* parents. I'm going to say that those things are wrong, and people who do them should think long and hard about *not* doing them.

As for grounding, it *can* be abusive, if used to the extreme, but it isn't inherently so, the way that spanking is.

Grounding, if used well, is a completely logical consequence for an action. It's basic cause and effect, and taking responsibility for your actions in a way that makes sense. That is, if somebody doesn't stay safe when they're alone, they can't be allowed out without supervision. If they can't be trusted to come back home at curfew, then they need to stay home until they've earned that trust back.

Those things just inherently make sense. In a young child, it *teaches* cause and effect, and in an older child it appeals to the same.

There is nothing in the world that naturally leads to "Well, the only option here is to make you drop trou and slap you where the bathing suit covers. Clearly you can see why this needs to be done, right?"

I think it actually interferes with the child's moral and cognitive growth, by turning their world into someplace where "consequences" are artificially constructed by an authority figure, and "taking responsibility" means nothing more than tolerating what another person does to you.

In the real world, a consequence follows from an action organically, and you do your children no favors by cluttering up their most basic view of the world with artificial consequences that have nothing to do with true cause and effect.

So, yes, I support grounding (when used appropriately) because it is a logical consequence that helps develop, in the child, a realistic understanding of consequences and responsibility. Spanking does the opposite.

PreachersWife2004 said:

Oh I get it. It's abuse, but not abuse enough to warrant you doing anything against it, even though you've called it "attacking" a child, and compared it to rape.

Gotcha.

So either it's really not abuse at all and you just think it's a bad way for people to punish their kids and you use buzzwords to make them feel bad...or you're failing these poor children who are being spanked by not reporting their parents.

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Dictionary.com said:

a⋅buse 
–verb (used with object)
1. to use wrongly or improperly; misuse: to abuse one's authority.
2. to treat in a harmful, injurious, or offensive way: to abuse a horse; to abuse one's eyesight.
3. to speak insultingly, harshly, and unjustly to or about; revile; malign.
4. to commit sexual assault upon.
5. Obsolete. to deceive or mislead.
–noun
6. wrong or improper use; misuse: the abuse of privileges.
7. harshly or coarsely insulting language: The officer heaped abuse on his men.
8. bad or improper treatment; maltreatment: The child was subjected to cruel abuse.
9. a corrupt or improper practice or custom: the abuses of a totalitarian regime.
10. rape or sexual assault.

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I use the word "abuse" because that is the word that means what I am trying to say. It is the word that means "harmful, poor treatment."

And, in order to make it clear that I'm *not* saying all spankers should have their kids taken away, or that the harm is always terribly, irrevocably damaging, I clarify that point. Repeatedly.

PreachersWife2004 said:

When it comes to children, you can't have it both ways, mling. Either something is abusive and harmful and shouldn't be done and the parents should get in trouble for it, or it's okay and the parents are doing their job raising their kids.

You haven't clarified your point. You've made it worse. You compared to rape, for pete's sake. How can something that is akin to rape ever be okay for a parent to do to their kid? This is what I don't understand. You've called spanking abuse, an attack, it's like rape, there's something sexual about it, yet when you're called out as to why you're not reporting these people, you say "well, not all spanking is bad and the damage probably isn't permanent"...

I'm not even sure what to believe anymore.

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Ok, take me at my word when I say that I mean something, and don't try to weave an entire worldview around one word.
What I have said is that it is abusive, but that it is not *necessarily* so abusive that every single case should result in the removal of the child from the home, based on that point alone.
That's only contradictory if you assume "The kid should be removed from the home" just based on the word abuse. And since that's a fairly natural assumption, I have made a point to explain that that's *not* what I mean.

A degree of poor treatment--abuse--is an inherent part of *any* relationship. People aren't perfect and don't always act in the healthiest possible way. Friends sometimes abuse each other, as do co-workers. A few discrete acts of poor treatment do not completely overwhelm the rest of who the person is, or what the relationship is like.
But the flip side of that is that being a 'good person' or a 'good parent' does not justify treating somebody badly in those moments. A *truly* good person recognizes when they are causing harm and works to improve himself and cause as little as possible. They don't try to defend the harm they do.

The parent-child relationship is unique. Children are wired to love their parents, so, assuming a mentally healthy child, they can forgive their parents of a *lot.* Also, it means that being separated from their parents is very traumatic. Even adults accept maltreatment and exploitation from their parents that they would never tolerate from anybody else. The closeness of the relationship mitigates the harm caused.

That does not make it ok to exploit or mistreat your own children.

What it means is that a parent has to *SERIOUSLY* screw up before the trauma the child experiences at their hands (or tongues) is worse than the trauma they'd experience from being taken away and raised in foster care.

That does *not* mean it's ok to harm your kid, as long as you're harming them just slightly less than foster care would.

It means that I am opposed to harming children. All children are harmed by their parents to some degree, and all children would be harmed by foster care to some degree.

The question, for any given family, is which would harm them more?

If the harm being inflicted by their family is worse than being in foster care--put the kid in foster care!

If the harm being inflicted by their family is less, then leave them there, but work to lessen it.

How do you work to lessen it? Mainly, by trying to get their parents to hurt them less.

As it happens, I don't know many parents, so I have to use the internet.

PreachersWife2004 said:

Say no more. This pretty much explains it all.

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Not sure exactly *how* you mean that, but yeah, pretty much. At least, with regard to the "So what am I doing about it?" question.

PreachersWife2004 said:

Ack...didn't mean it the way it sounded, that's for sure.

I think that if you knew me in real life and we talked in real life and not on an internet message board, you'd probably have a much different opinion of my actions as a parent, especially if you watched me with my kids. And I think if you saw more responsible parents with their kids, you might not feel as though all parents abuse their kids at some point in time or another. Or maybe you would and you'd hate me as a parent, I guess I just don't know.

I'm a good egg. And I owe most of that to my parents and the way they raised me. So to hear that I was abused as a kid, well...you can see why that would bother me. I know kids who WERE abused - and there's really no comparison.

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Well see, that's sort of what I'm saying. We were all abused to some degree, just because nobody's perfect. It's not because I've only seen horrible examples of parents...it's because I know enough people to know that we all have flaws, and that most people's flaws end up hurting somebody, at some point. My mother, especially, is a perfectly responsible, loving woman and I was lucky to have her as a mother. But she was't a perfect person--while I was growing up, she had very poor eating habits, and I picked up from her that candy is a medice used to treat anxiety. She has little understanding of ADHD, and didn't do a particularly good job of handling mine. I am a less functional person today, than I had the potential to be, because my parents weren't absolutely perfect. I don't think it's insulting to say that--nobody is absolutely perfect, and *everybody* is a less functional person than they might have been if they'd been raised in ideal circumstances.

Still, when I think about what that actually means...cutting a person down, stunting them so that they cannot be what they might have been...it still seems like, even though it's universally true, of absolutely everybody on the planet...it still strikes me as being a horrifying offense against that person. A violation of their very personhood.

If you run a machine too fast, or in a bad environment, we use the word 'abuse,' to describe it. You abuse your car by driving it over deep pits, because afterwards, the car doesn't work as well. It's partially broken, even though it still sort of works. If you use a statuette as a hammer, you've abused it, because that's not what statuettes are for, and it will be worse off for the experience.

And that's exactly what almost everybody does with their kids--place expectations on them based on what the parents wants them to be, flubb something that seems incredibly minor at the time, without realizing that it would end up having a profound effect on the kid down the line.

My friend with the dad who always has to be right described a scene from her childhood once...a completely normal, everyday situation. Her dad loves mango. She hates it. He has to be right. So he made her sit and eat slice after slice of mango, insisting that it simply *is* good, and she *should* like it, because it is good. Who would ever imagine that giving your kid fruit would be traumatizing?
But that's the scene she remembers when she thinks of how horribly self-centered he can be--that he could not accept a person being different than him, even down to the tastebuds. And that deeply influenced her view of who he is as a person.

She also respects him in many other ways, and describes herself as being her father's daughter.

Like every other person in the world, she is a less functional person than she might have been, because her father is a less functional person than *he* might have been.

And even while I realize that that's true of every single person in the world, I can't help but be struck by ....this deep sense of sadness, that as loving and confident and kind and anything else a person might be, people are still flawed deeply enough that we cannot recover from it--one person's flaw is the weapon that hurts another, and causes theirs. And that it's inevitable that I will do something that will leave somebody worse for having known me...likely, I already have, though I think that person's own immaturity is a big part of the harm that came out of that situation. Best friends for 18 years--destroyed because neither of us could be good enough to give the other what they needed.

Want to know where my family's bad eating habits came from? Back in the 1930's, the stock market crashed. My grandfather was raised dirt poor until he was 15, and then his father died (his father, incidently, died of a heart attack while trying to murder his brother in law, who, out of simple carelessness, destroyed the one piece of machinery that my great-grandfather was relying on to pull him out of poverty). My grandfather joined the army at 15, yadda yadda....married, had kids. As food was so limitted during his childhood, it was a point of pride for him to be able to put food on his family's table. Enormous amounts of it, which his kids were required to finish.
My mother and her sister are both diabetic now, my aunt's near death because of it. One of my uncles has straigtened himself out now, learned better habits. The other has embraced food as a source of joy and learned gourmet cooking. I try to combine both tacts--good cooking with healthy foods. Like my mom, it comes in waves.

Now, my grandfather was an incredibly good person--but that was a major mistake on his part, using his children's ability to eat as his medal of honor. It's screwed up the whole family for a few generations, and may very well continue to.

It was a worse mistake on the part of the people who crashed the stock market, though.

It terrifies me to think that if, say, I end up with a daughter who's best suited to being a pink-skirted ballet dancer, I don't know if I could do right by her.

But I know I never will if I set my categories as "either I'm beating them, or I'm a good parent and I'm all set." None of this will ever improve, if something has to be horrific to need improvement. Nobody will ever better themselves if they have to be evil to need to be better.

Christians, more than anybody, should understand the idea of trying to work, one step at a time, towards an unachievable goal.

My EMT professor used to say, "If you're comfortable with the status quo, you scare me. Examine everything. Question everything. If something doesn't need improving, great, you hit the gold standard."

Something I didn't realize I was arguing, until I already was, is that improving the way kids are raised requires us to stop categorizing kids as "abused" and "raised well," as if they're too different universes.

I've worked for social services, and seen some horrendous examples of abuse...but not committed by monsters. One day, I found myself trying to entertain 4 kids, because an agent walked into their house, looked around, took them and walked out. No foster home lined up--it didn't matter. They needed to be *out.* They were starving and eating garbage off the feces-strewn floor.

The mother...was not a bad woman. She wasn't an *ABU-U-U-U-U-USIVE PA-A-A-A-A-ARRRRR-E-E-E-ENT!!!* She was a single mom with no money and no understanding of kids, who was completely overwhelmed with this parenting thing and sank deeper and deeper into ...being overwhelmed, until the situation was so out of control, she had no idea what to do.

My point is that, if a person who is no more evil than being immature and ignorant can inflict *that* level of horror on her kids, then it seems just...a given that a mostly good parent can still inadvertently do harm.

I really *don't* think my opinion of you would change all that much, in this regard, because I don't think you're a monster who's viciously torturing her kids, now. I don't need the actor to be evil to think that the action is wrong.

And, if it's not completely obvious...I'm writing at 2:00 in the morning, and need sleep.
Later.

PreachersWife2004 said:

But that's the thing. It IS at stake. If someone says spanking is abuse, and I spank my children, they are in fact saying I abuse my kids.



Good, because that's not what I was doing. I was making a point that ANY form of punishment could be construed as abuse with the logic that was being used, whether that form of punishment was being administered "correctly" or not.



As I said to mling, if you really feel spanking is an abuse, then you need to report it. Simply complaining about it isn't good enough. That's why I tend to believe that you guys don't really think it's abuse.



Um, making a mistake in how we raise our children from day to day =/= abuse, but you guys equate spanking with abuse. Of course I make mistakes...I'll be the first to admit it. But you guys aren't simply pointing out 'mistakes'. You're outright accusing anyone who spanks of abusing their kids. And we're not supposed to get up in arms about that?

I take it personally because it IS personal. You say "spanking is abuse". I spank, ergo, I abuse my kids.

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Are you reading what I'm writing at all? I'm defining 'abuse' as the natural harm that inevitably occurs whenever a flaw in one person hurts another enough to flaw *them*. A major point of what I've said is that we need to *stop* classifying children as "abused" and "not abused," as if it was just a matter of going down a checklist. That sort of thinking only creates more problems.

PreachersWife2004 said:

CPS doesn't care how you personally categorize abuse. If you call them up and say "I believe so-and-so is abusing their children because I see her spank them", they are legally bound to follow up the story. This is when the trouble can start. I have two friends who are on 'lists' and the police have to be contacted whenever their children visit the ER because someone reported them for spanking. Their children, who are in the age range of 4-8, were all interviewed separately. They had no clue what was going on. The eight year old said she asked repeatedly if her mommy hit her. While they were asking this, they were demonstrating 'hitting' by spanking a dolly. Confused, she answered yes. This family spent a week apart from their kids (they were put in foster care while the charges were sorted out) and without the help of an excellent family attorney may very well have lost custody of their children. And why? All because one nosy neighbor thought that spanking was abuse.

So be careful how you throw the word abuse around. It's an incendiary term.

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Don't worry. I'm not in the habit of calling CPS just to discuss personal philosophy. That's what the internet is for.