Boston Globe had a wonderful article on how modern parents trying to raise "perfect children" drive themselves up the wall and end up raising utter brats. Just yesterday I watched a four-year old in a restaurant (and I am not talking McDonald here) throw food, scream, and kick her mother. The latter (I am not making this up) was saying in the calm tone "You are making mommy very unhappy. Please stop kicking mommy, she is very unhappy". Like the child cared. My own children, who know perfectly well the notions of behavior and consequences, were flabbergasted. It prompted me to post the article: http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/3-26/featurestory1.shtml Boston Globe takes its articles off the Web fairly quickly, so here is full text: ------------------------------------------- Lauren Rubin, a West Newton mother of two young children, won't soon forget the day she watched one of their playmates gather a mouthful of saliva and spit it at his dad. It was an indelible scene. The boy, enraged to hear that it was time to head home, aimed from the balcony level of Rubin's staircase and hit a bull's-eye, smack on his father's head. When the father protested only mildly and persisted in suggesting it was time to leave, the boy cursed vehemently and then punched and kicked his dad. He was 4 years old. Before the outburst, Rubin had told the father that his son hadn't eaten any of the dinner she had made. Now, witnessing the struggle, she wondered what would come next. What came next was the father offering to take the son to Burger King. "Come on, quick, let's get your coat and boots on, so you can at least get some French fries." Rubin doesn't hold herself up as a paragon of parental virtue; she jokes that she'll be happy if she's not the sole reason her kids eventually seek therapy. But this was making her skin crawl, so although noting mentally that it was none of her business, she spoke up. "I said, 'If my child spit and swore and punched me, I would not be rewarding that behavior with his favorite foods.' But the father's attitude was that if he didn't give this kid something to eat, he'd starve. He felt he was being a good parent and feeding this child." The spitting incident, naturally, stands out in Rubin's mind. "But that kind of thing happens a lot," she says, referring to the baffling parental permissiveness. There's always been disagreement about the best way to "feed" children what they need, she knows. But she wonders, as many parents do, if parenting might be particularly off-kilter now. Rubin's oldest is only 6, but you don't have to be a parent long these days to see your share of well-educated, well-intentioned moms and dads who go at child-raising with great intensity and wind up acting strange. Some turn into yes-men, and some act like children themselves. Some behave like servants, others like talent agents the behavior takes many forms, but there's always an anxious edge to it. Rubin guesses that it boils down to some brand of fear: "It seems to me that people are afraid of their children." A chorus of psychologists and parenting educators concurs: Parents are scared, yes. They're scared of their children sometimes, certainly, but they're even more afraid of what kids have come to represent to them: living barometers of whether they're parenting correctly. This peaceful, relatively prosperous period at the border of two centuries is in many respects the best time ever to be an American parent. But it's also, the experts say, a time of enormous pressure for parent and kid alike. Parents hear that it takes a village to raise a child. But they don't live in a village, or even near their extended families. So they grit their teeth and vow to become the whole village themselves. Become the village and patrol it assiduously, making sure everything is just right. It's a goal fashioned with the best intentions, by loving hearts. Unfortunately, it has led them down some twisted paths. Debbie LeeKeenan, director of the Eliot-Pearson Children's School at Tufts University in Medford, for children ages 3 to 8, is one witness to the fervent parental vigilance. She is fielding an increasing number of requests to have children held back a year. "The parents say, 'I want my child to repeat, but I'm not sure when is the best time to repeat.' And these are not children who have remedial issues. I'm hearing that question from parents of children who are ready to move on. But the parents want them to be the older ones in the class, to have a competitive edge." Tufts professor David Elkind, author of 1981's The Hurried Child - a book that alerted the country to the dangerously increasing academic and social pressure on children sits on the board of Eliot-Pearson. People associate his work with the school, says LeeKeenan. "Yet even we are attracting parents who are so anxious they ask, `What kind of reading program do you do with 3-year-olds?'" LeeKeenan has been at Tufts for seven years and believes that this anxiety is a fairly recent development. "There's a lot of angst and a lot of anxiety, and I feel that it's around doing parenting in the perfect way," she explains. "There's this idea now that you can't make any mistakes, that there's only one way to parent and you only have one chance to do it. 'When's the perfect time for toileting? When's the perfect time to have a second child?' We're getting these questions more than ever. When parents talk about school, they say, `I have to find the perfect teacher. I have to find the perfect classroom. What is the perfect school?'" In the push for perfection, many parents take extreme approaches, says LeeKennan. "I see a lot of parents on either one end or the other: They're either overprotective or overpermissive." Here, here, says Jodi Wilinsky Hill, cofounder of Parenting Resource Associates, a Lexington-based nonprofit counseling and support group. She has noticed plenty of the permissiveness LeeKeenan refers to. Recently, Hill watched a 2-year-old take sugar and cinnamon from the shelves of a kitchen he was visiting and run around sprinkling it everywhere. She was astonished to see his parents, both in their 40s, cleaning up but not objecting to the behavior. "They didn't want to say no, or thwart him, or restrict him, or harm his self-esteem," she surmises. But with similar amazement, Hill, who holds a master's degree in education with counseling psychology from Harvard, has heard parent after parent profess devotion to a discipline book called 1-2-3 Magic, which lobbies for less discussion and more consequences. Hill recognizes the techniques it advocates as ones developed decades ago for significantly developmentally impaired adults and children. "It would be really fabulous training for my golden retriever," she says. Books like that - along with magazines and Web sites galore - merely amplify the quest for parenting perfection. ``I'm overwhelmed with parenting advice," says Alice Kelly of Newton. ``I read all about how I'm supposed to be providing my children with enriching play experiences. I'm supposed to do lots of physical activity with them so I can instill in them a physical fitness habit so they'll grow up to be healthy, fit adults. And I'm supposed to do all kinds of intellectual play so they'll grow up smart. Also, there are all kinds of play, and I'm supposed to do each - clay for finger dexterity, word games for reading success, large-motor play, small-motor play. I feel like I could devote my life to figuring out what to play with my kids. "My mother didn't stand there with a clipboard checking off all the different kinds of play. When I wanted to play, I was told to go outside, where I would find dozens of neighborhood children. We basically did what we wanted to do, and we all basically came out fine." But knowing that doesn't completely ease Kelly's mind. Those dozens of neighborhood children aren't outside to play with anymore. They're at lessons or sports matches or tutoring sessions. Thanks mainly to peer pressure among parents, the kids are all busy getting enriched and entertained. "I hate to put it this way, but parents have just become pathetically overanxious about their kids, and overprotective," says John Friel, a Minnesota-based psychologist whose book, The 7 Worst Things Parents Do, was featured on Oprah a week before the shootings at Columbine High School. "There's a lot of guilt that parents are feeling," says Friel because of divorce, busy lives, or a feeling that other parents are providing their children with more resources and enrichment "and because of that guilt, parents are doing a real odd combination of spoiling their kids and neglecting them at the same time. They think, `I'm going to make sure my children have a perfect childhood.' And then they overshoot the mark." Striving for perfection might not sound like such a sin. But it is "a horrible trend, a really terrible trend," says Linda Braun, director of Families First, a parenting counseling service in Cambridge, and one of the coordinators of the Parenting Education and Family Support Program at Wheelock College Graduate School. Still, she says, given the evolution of American parenting, it's easy to see how things got so confused. During the 1940's and '50s, Braun explains, a common child-raising style was what might now be termed authoritarian: I'm the parent, you're the child, and I'll tell you what to do because I know better, and you'll do it. "There were societal expectations for how people should behave," she says, "and they were sort of set from the top, and children complied. But a lot of children grew up fearful, or angry, or humiliated, or resentful. And they said, `I'm not going to do that to my children.'" In the late '60s and throughout the '70s, with the erosion of blind respect for authority, the civil disobedience movement "slipped into parenting," Braun says, and parents became very understanding and lax, wanting to let their kids act on their feelings. "So it got to the point where people stand in a coffee shop, and they see these parents saying to their kids, `So what would you like, the raspberry Danish or the cherry?' And the kid whines, `Oh ... I don't know ... I don't want anything.' And there's a line of 12 people, and they're all thinking, `What is the matter with parents today? This is crazy!'" Many permissive parents realized the craziness of catering to a child's every whim, so they swung back in the authoritarian direction, studying books with such titles as Because I Said So! and Spoiled Rotten: Today's Kids and How to Change Them. This took place in the late '80s and throughout the '90s, but it wasn't an effective correction, in part because parents still feel guilt about how little time they have with their kids. ``Working parents have a really hard time setting limits and boundaries," Braun says sympathetically. ``And children need limits and boundaries as much as they need love and understanding." Our society accommodates a great variety of parenting styles. Permissiveness, of course, never took over completely, nor did the authoritarian style - nor the more moderate, kind-but-firm blend, the authoritative. What did take over toward the end of the 20th century, says Braun, was parental nervousness and uncertainty. Betsy Kessler feels that nervousness, raising her two children in Wellesley. She grew up with a mother whose parenting mantra was, "It's much easier to say yes than to say no, but it's much better to say no than to say yes." But while Kessler marvels at the permissiveness of some parents she knows "the kids decide when they're going to eat dinner, where they're going to eat dinner, and when they're going to bed" - she also wonders if her difficulty making decisions stems from her mother's constant barrage of nos. Elizabeth Ward, a Stoneham dietician, has been puzzling over why parents are so "willing to be short-order cooks, preparing two or three meals at a time" in order to please the kids. Parents do this for many reasons, she knows, but one of them is a belief that forcing a kid to choose between eating what's presented or skipping a meal will lead to eating disorders - a thought that probably never occurred to parents in earlier decades. It's healthy to question whether strictness creates indecisive adults with eating disorders. But the conviction that today's parents are more psychologically aware than previous generations of parents is no asset, argues Anne Cassidy, a mother and journalist. She wrote for parenting magazines until she became so alarmed at what she calls the "intellectualizing" of child raising that she stopped writing for and reading those magazines, abandoned her many parenting books, and wrote a book of her own called Parents Who Think Too Much. Cassidy describes a kind of advice-junkie trap for parents, one that beckons as soon as they set down the home pregnancy test and head out to buy What to Expect When You're Expecting, first published in 1984. Within its pages a woman learns how to graduate from pregnancy summa cum laude, following a regimented "Best-Odds" diet to "significantly" improve the odds that the baby "will be born healthy." Next: What to Expect the First Year and What to Expect the Toddler Years. Soon, parents are standing in the kid-raising section of the bookstore or newsstand, surrounded by screaming titles, thinking that they know very little, that their parents knew very little, and that they desperately need help. True, admits Cassidy, previous generations sought child-raising advice. "The difference is, there might have been a book, or maybe two books, per generation, with one method of child-rearing in vogue. In 1975, there were 500 books on child-rearing topics; 20 years later, it's a couple of thousand per year." With so much often conflicting information about the ramifications of parenting, and scarce time to digest it, every decision becomes weighted with implications: when to take away the pacifier; whether to use a stroller or a Snugli; what preschool to choose. "These things are huge deals now," Cassidy says, citing the existence of baby-sling instructors and books like Bottlefeeding Without Guilt as symptoms of the obsession. "We want to be perfect parents from the start." Braun believes this compulsion hits mothers hardest: ``My own personal theory is that the pressure to be a perfect parent grew out of the women's going-to-work movement. When you make a choice to do something, you need the validation for that choice. So if I have chosen to be in the work force, I need to know that my children are not suffering for that choice. Therefore, my children need to be perfect little products. And likewise, if you've chosen to stay at home, it's `I need to know that was a worthwhile choice.' And how do I know that? My child is a perfect little product." Cassidy agrees: "If we don't stay home with our children, we feel we have a knowledge gap about kids, so we're reading the books to catch up. But if we do stay home after having been used to being in an office and being very organized, we're going to do parenting like it's work. I know women who say, `I never used to have a Filofax until I had kids.' They're used to being out of the house all day long, so they go out to the playground or Gymboree classes, and they schedule the kids for all kinds of activities, and it becomes like their work project." Like other critics of modern parenting, Cassidy is careful to point out that this drive for perfection primarily afflicts thoughtful, well-educated, intelligent people. "It's like they're going to run child-raising like every other part of their lives. And it's not going to work, because there are other people involved. You never know what kind of child you're going to get." John Rosemond, the parenting author, columnist, and speaker, believes that in our secular and materialist culture, parents are trying to turn out perfect little products, largely to gratify their own egos: "We no longer emphasize character development in how we raise children, we emphasize talent development. The parent with the child with the greatest achievement wins." Rosemond gained a national reputation for toughness with his books Because I Said So, Parent Power!, and others, plus a slew of similarly themed books and newspaper articles. But he worries that parents take a "sound bite approach" to his message, heeding the advice about taking the upper hand piecemeal, forgetting that discipline, or any approach to straightening out kids, has to occur in a context and has to be consistent. "By the time a child was 4 years old," he says, "the typical parent of 50 years ago had put that child to work in the family and was teaching that child obligation, a service ethic, and to be aware that he was not an independent operator but part of a social grouping." But while some parents today might be commanding with a kid about individual problems - finishing homework or interrupting adults - they also "put the child on what I call family welfare at birth, and keep him there for 18 years. The child is required to do absolutely nothing - in many cases not even keep his room clean - and nonetheless gets pretty much whatever he wants." Even within such a context, Rosemond asserts, it's a mistake to think that following any parenting strategy will allow us to program an Uberkid. "You can control your child's access to you, you can control what you will and will not do for him, but you sure as heck can't control him. And the attempt to do so is going to be very frustrating." But Rosemond notes that he sees such attempts constantly. "I was talking to a journalist in Missouri, and she was relating a conversation she had with a parent who's a proponent of attachment parenting, and this parent said, `I will do anything I can to raise a perfect child.' I made sure I heard that correctly and that that was a direct quote. `I am a perfectionist, and I will do anything I can to raise a perfect child.'" "There's a sense that if there's so much information out there about parenting, there must be a right way to parent," says Jodi Wilinsky Hill of Parenting Resource Associates. "Parents go off in search of how to do a better job and find there's so much information that it can't be managed effectively, so they latch on to one piece of advice and adopt that as their parenting philosophy, for lack of having a bigger picture." Parents hear that it's good to give kids choices rather than telling them what to do, for instance, so they follow that advice in isolation, overwhelming children with choices that they are not developmentally capable of making, while creating in them the impression that they are the bosses. "Not just `Do you want to wear your red socks or your blue socks?' but `Do you want to wear socks?' and `Do you want to get dressed?'" says Hill. In addition to driving everyone bananas, this backfires when parents have to pull rank. Or parents hear that it's important to help a child develop good self-esteem. But instead of giving children honest reactions reflecting their strengths and weaknesses, their parents tell them that everything they do is fantastic and rescue them from situations that threaten to dent their self-image, a strategy that causes anger and disillusionment when the children realize that the world doesn't embrace them unconditionally. One person with a unique perspective on this is nature writer Gary Ferguson. To research his book Shouting at the Sky, he spent three months in one of the country's most successful wilderness therapy programs for very troubled teenagers. The participants were 14 to 17 years old, middle to upper-middle class, and of well above average intelligence and creativity. Other types of programs had failed for them, including psychiatric wards and rehab facilities. "For those kids to be comfortable in the wilderness, they had to take a certain amount of responsibility for themselves," says Ferguson. "If you don't put up your tarp in the wilderness, for instance, you will get wet if it rains. For a lot of them, it was the first time they had gotten the sense that action A leads to result B. There was often a certain, I think, resentment when they started to realize that by having been protected from all consequences, they had really become dependent on other people to determine what was going to happen to their lives." Topsfield mother Mary DeRoo notices a similar erosion of coping skills springing from overscheduling kids in extracurricular activities. ``The kids don't know how to start their own neighborhood game of kickball. They don't know how to make allowances for the smaller kids, because they're used to everything being equal, because that's how their parents treat them. They're so used to the instructor telling them the rules that they don't know how to make them up themselves." In school, too, kids are no longer encouraged to find their own way, so great is the impulse to speed their achievement. Maryann Fitzgerald, who has taught first grade in Hudson for the past 30 years, is the first to say she sees parents doing their best to help their kids. But she wonders about the conviction that everything now, including school learning, needs to be fun and engaging. "We also have an obligation to teach children how to deal with failure," she says. "If you teach them to work extremely hard at something that isn't fun, whether it's math or reading, and they have to keep struggling with it, maybe when they come to a social situation that they can't seem to handle, this discipline of working hard at getting by a difficult situation may help them. I think we're not doing them any favors by letting everything be hunky-dory." ''If parents would just ask, `What are the long-range results of what I'm doing?'" says Jane Nelsen, a family counselor in Sacramento and author of a series of "Positive Discipline" books. In a former job as an elementary school counselor, when she saw kids having difficulty, she would ask them who dressed them that day. "Most of the time," she says, "the parents were still dressing the kids, even though they can do it for themselves by the time they're 2 years old. Parents do it because it's easier, faster, and the kids look better. Here's a great example of where the parents are in total control, and yet they're robbing their children of the opportunity to develop the belief that `I am capable and I can contribute in meaningful ways.'" Carol Maxym, a psychotherapist specializing in troubled teenagers, and author of Teens in Turmoil, finds it a deep shame that we've turned parenting into something we feel must be done to perfection, with perfect vigilance, and for perfect results. Prying parents' fingers from their children's lives is a central part of her work. "One of the things I tell parents all the time is to go back to when you were whatever age your child is now and remember your feelings as they were then. `Did you want your parents to save you from everything?'" Another question that serves Maxym well in talking to parents: "How's your sex life?" It's not Freudian curiosity on her part. She doesn't want details. But she has found the question to be a litmus test for determining whether parents have maintained their own lives or have simply become parenting machines, absorbed in the task of living their children's lives for them. Because in addition to being hard on kids, perfectionist parenting is awfully wearying for adults. Jess Brallier, a father of two who lives in Reading, sees many of his peers spending every spare moment serving the children - focusing on them at home, ferrying them to various lessons and games on weekends - leaving no room for themselves and feeling guilty if they miss a single soccer match or meeting. "I watch older couples sitting quietly, not talking, at turnpike restaurants," he says. "And I realize there's no longer any `they' there. They so elevated their children that they innocently wrecked their marriage in the process. Parenting is more like a lease than ownership. I love the kids, but my real duty is to prepare them for when I'm not here. They're not my life, they are a stage in my life, maybe 20 years. Whereas my marriage ... maybe, if I'm blessed, I'll have it for 60." It takes courage to say such a thing, says Maxym. "I think we've got the idea of a grading scale out there, and every parent is worried about failing on that grading scale. We have a lot of people saying, `You're a bad parent if you do this, or if you don't do that.'" But from Maxym's seat, talking to the kids of mothers and fathers who overparent, it's critically important that parents pay less attention to providing happy childhoods for their kids and more attention to having happy adulthoods themselves. Even when they don't mean to, parents teach children. And growing up is challenging enough without having to fear you're on the road to one day becoming an adult enslaved to the shaping of perfect children. "I can remember in particular one teen telling me almost that," Maxym says. "'Why do I want to grow up? Doesn't look too good to me.'" "We have to let being an adult be something that looks at least reasonably attractive. You have to have a certain level of comfort with yourself. `I try my best, and I can accept my mistakes.' Your child will get those feelings. It doesn't mean that you're perfect. Maybe you don't make it to every soccer game. It means that you do your best - and that you know there are limitations on that."
Most parents forget that we have butts for a reason. While some children are genuine problem cases, most are easily disciplined with a good spanking. It doesn't have to be cruel. It doesn't have to hurt like hell. The child doesn't even have to cry. All that is necessary is that the child knows that he or she is being disciplined and why. Unfortunately, child-abuse laws have gotten so twisted that a lot of parents are afraid to even threaten a child with a spanking. I do not condone child-beating. There is no reason to slap a child, punch a child, or kick a child, ever. Mental punishment is inhumane. Just a few swats on the rump should keep most of them in line.
Spare the rod and spoil the child. As far as abuse goes, intentions mean everything. If your true intention is the WELFARE of your child, then abuse should never be an issue. If your intentions are not examined closely, anger, embarrassment, and ego can take over, and abuse may be an issue. Intentions are key. Why, what does the Bible say about that? Hmmm........correctamundo as usual. What do you know? I'm so shocked. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.
<img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif"> I resist the temptation to spank my children. My parents would use a belt on me and my brothers, and I never gained respect for them because of that abuse. My problem with this kind of motivation is that, in truth, it is barbaric. It is the application of pain and fear in order to obtain co-operation from a child. As an adult, I find this resolve unsettling. I've always felt that when we cause our children to cower under our authority, we are causing harm to their identities. We are not creating a relationship of love. I feel that we are better parents if we can build within our children a foundation of faith and trust in our authority, but this requires more effort from the parents. Spanking is easier, for sure. I am not above it, but I will work with my heart to avoid it. I want my children to grow larger than myself. ------------------ It's all very large.
Rambler, Don't tell me that you're one of those parents who tries in futility to "reason" with a five year old child. Children are not adults, and they NEED rules, and they NEED consequences for breaking rules. You can not expect a small child to understand the things that an adult can understand. That's why they rely on their parents to understand things for them until they are old enough to understand themselves. Physically hurting a child IS barbaric. No one said a spanking has to leave "marks". No one said there had to be "weapons" involved. Giving a child a swat on the butt is a great way of getting their attention, and humbling them, and showing them who is boss, not hurting them. As a matter of fact, my father usually only had to give me a look and I started crying. It depends on the child, and the situation, but it should never be about physical pain. Many times it's about making them think, even out of embarrassment. One time I hit my mom when I got lost in a store. I thought it was her fault, and I was only about 5 or 6. She swatted my butt right in front of everyone. That was embarrassing for me, and I never forgot it. Hmmm....must have been embarrassing for her for me to hit her in front of everyone. She didn't hurt my body, just slapped a little humility into me is all. There's a big difference. Too many parents nowadays let their children run their lives, and it's absolutely insane. ------------------ You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.
<img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif"> I think you were talking to me--BOWSER <img src = "http://www.exosci.com/ubb/icons/icon7.gif"> I feel that the method, no matter how it was applied, is still physical. I know that it is nearly impossible to reason with a very young child, but there are other methods to reaching an understanding, and we should remember that young kids are just that, young kids. Their minds are still growing, and we are contributors to that growth. A note of truth: I'm living with a two-year-old at the moment. It's a tough job, but we deal with the fact that she is just that, a two-year-old. ------------------ It's all very large. [This message has been edited by Bowser (edited April 06, 2000).]
Oops! Good luck Bowser. Just please keep in mind that you can not reason with a two year old. Their entire purpose in life is to test you to see how much they can push the envelope and get away with. The discipline that a child is given when they are very young, and the knowledge that SHOULD be instilled, that what the parents say goes, PERIOD, will be the foundation for their whole lives. Some people say, "Oh isn't that cute?" when a two year old acts up. The problem is that it's not so cute when that same 2 year old gets to be 15 and still doesn't have a grip on the fact that a parent lays down the law. It's dangerous for the child. Just be careful, and realize that there is nothing wrong with doing what it takes to make a small child mind you, and mind you to a tee. It may be easy to say "Well, it's just a two year old, I'll give in, or give them a break regarding their behavior." But the whole point is that you need to teach them right from wrong. Do you think you teach them anything by taking it easy on them and letting it slide? Ok then, who is going to teach them and when? The "window" is small, as most foundational learning in children is either achieved, or unfortunately not achieved, at a VERY young age. So tell me then, how is it that you punish a two year old, if not a swat on the butt? What else exactly does a two year old's mind respond to? ------------------ You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.
Lori, <img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif">The message that we ingrain in our childrens' minds is more important, yes. However, they need to know that authority is earned by good judgement, not by inflicting pain. My eight-year-old son questions my authority almost daily, and sometimes he is right--I don't always make the right call or I make the call without considering all of the facts. Adults are sometimes wrong, you know. I want my children to look me in the eye while I am talking with them, that way I know that I have created an individual, and I know that they are listening, and I will know that they are thinking. ------------------ It's all very large. [This message has been edited by Bowser (edited April 06, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Bowser (edited April 06, 2000).]
I do not have children; for those reasons, I will attempt to keep my comments short. But, I do not have children, and, barring lapses of attention, failures of birth control, or other circumstances unintended, I more than likely will not. Spanking is part of the issue, but not the whole thing. I think it embodies the nature of the problem. My own parents were given to resort to the whack every now and then. Retrospect tells me that I was getting off easy by comparison. But even that little bit of violence, committed by two people who really weren't ready for that part of the job, did have a profound effect. For starters, I rarely refer to it as spanking, swatting, or otherwise. It is striking, hitting, or assaulting a child, imho. Given the number of times the whacks came when even retrospect tells me my folks were wrong, I've come to despise the sight of a parent hitting their child in public; it seems like a shortcut, a convenience in lieu of "better" (I use that word very, very carefully) parenting. That convenience is similar, by my observation, to the convenience parents invoke when they lie to their children about God, other people, or common decency. Without intending to start a religious fight, what is, in essence, better: to behave out of fear of something (Hell, for instance); or to behave because propriety exists within a balance and that misbehavior can escape one's control and backlash (Threefold Law, for instance). Is it better, by that example, to tell a child to behave because of coming punishment, or because of the benefits of behavior? To remove religion: I would assert that some parents, wittingly or unwittingly, teach their children racism because it's easier for the parent to continue being racist than to explain the whole mess to a mind not fully developed. It becomes a question, in teen years, of whether one should not do this wrong thing (a prank or some such) because A) it's against the law, and the child fears punishment, or B) because it really is going to suck when everyone is doing this, and even the perpetrator cannot escape the chaos of his/her own making? I admit this is highly idealistic. To make such ideas work involves a fundamental restructuring of individual priorities within the collective, and thus a reorganization of collective priorities. If we excuse a parent's continued harshness because Dad works ten hours a day, six days a week, and gets no respect at work ... well, what are really the issues? Is the child being spanked because they truly deserve it, or because Dad's just plain pissy about life? My biggest impressions of being spanked were that never did the reasons why make complete sense; in order to justify themselves, my parents had to either leave out details in their perception of the issue, or invent new ones. This is something I saw among my friends' families as a boy, too, so I know it's not unique. So much for short. But that's my impressions of spanking. A quick tie-in to why this goes toward my not fathering children ... if the issue of spanking is this difficult to resolve without violating my own principles, what of the more important, necessary aspects of parenting that are beyond my control? I won't lie to my kids about drugs, but I won't tell them it's a grand idea to smoke as much pot as you can on the weekends, no matter how fun it is. But if I make my destiny to raise another spiritually-neutered human shell to perpetuate what I think is wrong with society, I will do the world a favor and blow my nuts off with a shotgun. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! thanx for putting up with it .... Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)
tiassa, <img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif"> That was a fun post. Thank you. I think that by not having children, you are depriving the world of an individual whose shell would be filled with the time and love that you give. BTW: My son says that he is against spanking <img src = "http://www.exosci.com/ubb/icons/icon7.gif"> ------------------ It's all very large. [This message has been edited by Bowser (edited April 06, 2000).]
I agree with your decision, tiassa. Whenever I run into my old friends from school, they are shocked that I am not married and raising a gaggle of children by now (I'm 32). I tell them the truth, that I am having a hard enough time with keeping a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and gas in the tank to take on the responsibility of raising another human being. My reasons for not having a child are more economic than moral. I can barely afford to feed myself and my dog. How could I hope to afford to feed a kid? I can't give a child any life worth having at this moment, so I mind myself and stay careful. ------------------ I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight, kill, and die for your right to say it.
Oxygen, <img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif"> Hmm. It takes two bread winners these days. It certainly is a team effort. I can't imagine doing this job on my own. ------------------ It's all very large. [This message has been edited by Bowser (edited April 06, 2000).]
Bowser, I did NOT say that I was talking about pain infliction? A swatt on the butt startles, but does not inflict pain, unless you are beating a child in order to inflict pain. This is not what I'm talking about. And also, I would like to know how it is that a child say under the age of five years could even discern what good judgement is????? They can't. Kids aren't born being able to recognize or even give a crap about good judgement, hence the parenting. Some kids are easy (like me of course) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. My brother on the other hand, when just a baby or small child, used to throw tantrums over anything and everything. I'm talking spitting, screaming, punching, and banging his head repeatedly on the floor. The more you told him no, the more he yelled and kicked. If you swatted him "a little" on the butt, he laughed in your face, and screamed some more. My dad had to literally intimidate the shit out of him in order to get him to listen AT ALL. Now, I'm not talking about beating a child. My dad NEVER left a mark, and NEVER used a weapon for crying out loud (I totally don't understand that whole impliment thing), but he did get his undivided attention, and I'm telling you, because I remember, it was the ONLY way. And I'm really glad he did intimidate the hell out of him to make him listen when he was young. Otherwise, instead of being a successful musician and anthropologist, and a well-adjusted nice person, he'd probably be dead or in jail. ------------------ You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe. [This message has been edited by Lori (edited April 07, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Lori (edited April 07, 2000).]
Tiassa, Duuuuuuuuude. Take it easy on yourself would ya? Dag, man. Life isn't THAT hard. What makes you think that you wouldn't make a great parent anyway? Oh, must be cause you're not perfect (same reason you won't get to know Jesus). What's with the perfection hangup man? Think about it....it's so ironic (don't cha think) that the mature, considerate, and responsible people in this world are too afraid to have children, and the stupid, inbreed, redneck morons out there, who couldn't give a ratt's butt are popping out kids like f'ing vending machines. Figures. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hey wait, that reminds me of a song.....how does it go? "Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding, the creatons cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV" Oh yea, I'm not sick, but I'm not well. That pretty much sums it all up now doesn't it? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe. [This message has been edited by Lori (edited April 07, 2000).]
Lori-- I wouldn't call it a perfection hangup. After all, I'm more of a poster boy for how not to get along with the world around oneself. But that might be the point. If I choose to be critical of the actions, words, or principles of a parent, what, then, when I am faced with a similar dilemma? On a base-level, I am confident in my principles, even the dubious ones, such as drugs. However my child would, necessarily, be raised among society, and the divisions I draw between what is acceptable for me as compared to what is acceptable for others would alienate the child from certain common experiences. And there is a new dimension: What if I don't want my child to be part of common society? If I dislike common trends in voting, commerce, media, or moral method, will I not set my child apart? In all my years, my parents never told me I couldn't watch a TV show because the writing sucked. It was about violence, sex, language, &c. But I don't care about that in the sense that if it's well-written, it's more than simply acceptable to include such demonized material; if it's badly written, I'm of the opinion that no amount of sex, violence, or bad language can redeem it. So I might let my child watch Hellraiser or Last House on the Left, despite the sex and violence, and forbid them The Mod Squad on the grounds that I don't think there's a story there, so the actors are just poseurs whose only purpose is to encourage some sense of imitation. Does not every parent hope to spare their child certain unique tortures the parent has endured in life? The most frustrating thing in life is when I can't communicate with "normal" persons because they're stupid, obstinate, or whatever. I am not entirely inclined to wish the sense of alienation I know onto my child; I'm kind of a fan of it, but it took the most part of my life thus far to adjust to it as I have. In the ideal, my own morals might actually pull off the feat of raising a "proper" child. But my sense of mercy tells me that a day of pure, unadulterated happiness is a greater prize than a lifetime of mundane hurt. For instance: What are the two things I'll tell my kid when I catch them smoking pot? 1) Be extremely careful about the who, where, and when you choose to do it, and 2) Get the stuff from me because it's better than what high-schoolers (or junior-high kids) get, and I'd rather my child not have to put up with the dealers; sure, they're my kind of people, but that's because I drink and smoke with them, not because I want them to babysit, as such. Where would a child with a lifetime's acceptance of the benefits of drugs stand when their peers were jumping onto the anti-drug propaganda bandwagon? Sex? Well, sex too early with a guy can kill you in twenty years ... but if you're a dyke, go for it? How out of place would a child feel among contemporaries? Violence? That's tough. I despise real violence; I appreciate artistic violence. But the reason I despise real violence is because I know how I fight when it comes up; I don't fight for machismo. If I'm brought to the degree of being violent, I'm now fighting to destroy my opponent. Should I teach my child to avoid fights, and then strike for the kill when it's unavoidable? The violence question is a tougher one for me, because it's a constantly evolving idea whereas I've fixed my opinions about sex & drugs. Ummm ... I'm rambling, obviously. But I'm hoping to convey that certain ideas have to be resolved before I would assign them to another person. I recall the way ideas fixed in my brain when I was a child, and how I eventually resolved some of the conflicts; there must necessarily be a way to cheat that whole process. Most of it, I know, one must experience for themselves, but certain pains of experience are entirely unnecessary, and only seem to exist because we, as a collective, seem to wish them upon ourselves for reasons that escape me. Okay, I'm late ... still actually have stupid stuff to do at work before the weekend. Ciao, latros-latros-golly, and other strange fare-thee-wells. peace-out (what does that mean?) Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)
I have three daughters, 14, 16, and 18. When one of them was much younger, about 8 I think, I slapped her firmly on the wrist as a punishment for something. She simply looked at me in complete confusion, and I stood there feeling confused as well. I had never struck any of them before and have never struck any of them since. I guess I am a natural pacifist, and if I am ever angry (incredibly rare) then I never show it. To use force of any kind feels quite abhorrent. My parents never struck me. However, one of my early schools subscribed to corporal punishment and there was an incident when I was 9 where I was wrongly accused of breaking one of the school rules. My rump was severely thumped by the headmaster. From that moment onward I completely lost any respect for anyone in authority. I suddenly realized that those in control could be totally wrong. This was an invaluable lesson and helped make me very independent. Even to this day (I am now 47) I will react poorly if someone tries to give me a command. I could never survive the military. I cannot remember any incidents when my children required punishment. I think that is because I never see events in life as being right or wrong, just simply events from which we learn. So called ‘bad’ actions have an associated cost, e.g. something doesn’t work, or there are feelings of discomfort or guilt. For my family at least, bad choices lead to self correcting solutions. For the cases where the children were young, around 2, the technique used seems to have been to not react when they sought attention. This I remember took infinite patience. The tendency for a parent to react or to become angry simply reinforces the power the child has to make you respond, this then encourages them to try again. When there is no response then the unwanted action simply stops (eventually, again patience is required). The other technique for the very young was denial of the offending implement. If an implement is being used to make a noise or is being thrown etc, then simply removing the object stopped the action. They would then find something else. Again patience was required by the parents to continue the approach until the unwanted action could not be fulfilled. Reasoned arguments were always used even before they could understand them. I remember trying to use anger once or twice, but that simply had no noticeable affect, and I was never comfortable in that role anyway. I also expected them to look after themselves, e.g. they clean their own rooms, they do their own laundry (as soon as they were able to operate the machines), and cook their own food (again as soon as they were capable). I never became their servant as I see happening with many other parents. As soon as they could respond adequately to reason then I treated them as if they were adults on an equal footing (age 13/14 seemed to work best). The concept of a punishment in this light simply doesn’t make sense. My 18 year old complains often that one or more of her friends cannot attend some event or other because they have been grounded. I didn’t even comprehend the concept of this when I came to the USA 4 years ago. It remains an alien concept to me.
My parents spanked. It usually took just three good swats on the butt to get the message across that we were out of line. If there was ever any question of guilt (we found it easier in the long run to not lie and swear we didn't do something that we did), there would be no spanking, but all available suspect parties would be sent to their rooms, which back then was no picnic until I learned to hide entertainment. (Spank your dirty minds! It was comic books and hand-held electronic games I was hiding! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) When it came to school authorities, my parents gave our school written permission to spank us if we got out of line. This went all fine and dandy, we never got spanked at school, until the day my brother told my father that he was being kept in detention for a fight he didn't start. The other kid, it turns out, was let off because "he had things he had to do after school". (We found out later that this kid's mother was the teacher's best friend.) This being 5th grade, I didn't imagine it was a job, but seeing the potential for injustice, my father revoked the permission to spank, and then told us that if any teacher struck us we were to hit back with whatever we could lay our hands on. This is not as violence-inducing as it sounds. What it taught us was that nobody had the right to touch us without our permission and that our parent's rules overrode any policy. We had stern but supportive parents who neither contradicted nor compromised on the subject of child discipline. I never received a punishment that was undeserved but one, and that is an issue that was apologized for after the evidence was finally produced and then left tied to a stake out in the Arizona desert. [This message has been edited by Oxygen (edited April 07, 2000).]
<img src = "http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/BBoard_member_gifs/bowser_anim.gif"> <hr> Lori, <font color = "red">"I did NOT say that I was talking about pain infliction? A swatt on the butt startles, but does not inflict pain, unless you are beating a child in order to inflict pain. This is not what I'm talking about." </font> You're still hitting a child, Lori. The lesson there is that hitting is Mom's way of resolving problems. <font color = "red">"And also, I would like to know how it is that a child say under the age of five years could even discern what good judgement is????? They can't. Kids aren't born being able to recognize or even give a crap about good judgement, hence the parenting." </font> You're right there. They learn their judgement skills from their parent's actions, Lori. Give those youngsters some credit. You're the teacher. My two-year-old knows when she's being bad. It's a tool for getting my attention when I'm spending too much time on the computer. One day she grabbed my digital camera off my desk --while it was still connected to my computer--and took off running with it. She knew that that would get my attention, and it did. But I didn't swatt her; I spent some time playing with her. Concerning the problem with your brother, have you ever talked with him about that time in his life? I would like to see his reaction to this thread. Tell him to get online. It would be interesting to hear his opinion on this subject. <hr> tiassa, <font color = "green">"But I'm hoping to convey that certain ideas have to be resolved before I would assign them to another person."</font> I suppose that we all want to give what we feel is our best. <hr> Cris, <font color = "blue">"I also expected them to look after themselves, e.g. they clean their own rooms, they do their own laundry (as soon as they were able to operate the machines), and cook their own food (again as soon as they were capable). I never became their servant as I see happening with many other parents."</font> That's great. I've been working with my boy, trying to get him to make his own lunch. He was resisting, but both of us knew he was capable of making a sandwich. He now seams to be enjoying the effort, now that he's done for himself several times. <hr> Oxygen, That's an important thing for a child to know, that nobody has the right to touch them without their permission. I've been telling my son that very same thing. ------------------ It's all very large.
Hi all, Wow, I love this discussion, it`s almost more passionate than the Religion board. But, you know, it is so difficult to comprehend the thing about corporal punishment of ones own kids without having kids of ones own! Parenthood unleashes an incredible resource of dormant love and emotion. I grew up in a home of extreme physical and, mainly, mental abuse. I have never given my son a smack, as the memories of my childhood, have taught me the absolute nightmare this type of behaviour wreaks on the mental realm of a child. My ex wife and myself, instilled from day 1, our (mature) moral values into our son. Just by reinforcing love, respect and honesty. This in my experience, was a lot of effort and dedication,(I had to let go of a lot of reading time) but has resulted in a situation where discussion and dialogue need never overflow into a physical solution. And today I need not even raise my voice in any situation of dicipline. Pure logical reasoning (not manipulitave) guarantees an amicable outcome. The secret is to to start the reinforcing of morality and honesty from day 1. Even if you haven`t slept in 48 hours, due to the rigours of a very young baby! A very important and to me extremely obvious result of corporal punishment (or verbal abuse), is the humiliation it invokes in the child(victim), and it can take a lifetime to reassert ones own self esteem and confidence. Take care,
This is something I learnt before our first was born. A common punishment seems to be 'send the child to their room'. Their room then becomes associated with a prison cell. This establishes an internal mental conflict. Their room should be associated with safety, a refuge, somewhere pleasant, peaceful and restfull, a place for concentration and study. But if perceived as a prison then the overwhelming desire is to escape. I'm sure you can imagine many other conflicts that this confusion creates.
