Smasharoo wrote:
IMO, that's the correct way to do it
There is no "correct way" to physically assault a small child.
But psychological assaults are perfectly fine? As physical creatures living in a physical world, we're already somewhat hardwired to avoid pain, so corporal punishment is a very straightforward method of punishment. The child associates bad behavior with something he's already hardwired to avoid. Done properly, there are no side effects, or secondary psychological associations that occur.
The bewildering array of alternatives are vastly more likely to ***** the hell with your child IMO. Once you get away from physical punishments, you get into the realm of punishments that act very differently based on the child and his own psychological makeup. When used during the early formation of said psychological makeup, you stand a very high probability of affecting that child's development in ways you cannot really predict. The result is screwed up kids.
I just think that the mantra of "physical is bad" is arbitrary, has very little actual evidence to support it, and is less about results and more about some kind of mass parenting psychosis caused almost certainly by "experts" who want to sell more parenting books. We assume corporal punishment is bad, condemn those who use it, but never stop to actually assess whether these assumptions are correct. And even when we do question them, it really does seem as though those who engaged in various studies of the issue have a strong starting position that spanking is bad, and tend to skew their data to show this. They'll make claims that their study accounted for how spanking was administered, but in their results, they'll include facts like this (from a study of violence and criminality among university students and spanking as a child):
"In most of the 15 nations, two-thirds of university students said they were hit when they were age 10, and among those who were hit, they said it typically was between once and twice a week. If university students were hit by only one parent, more often than not the mother was the parent carrying out the punishment."
Note, the use of the word "hit" rather than "spanked" (shows the authors bias, which is not the first time it shows up in just the abstract). Note also, that he's including data from kids who were spanked "typically between once and twice a week". Um... There's no way in hell any child is acting up so much that this level of spanking is required or desired. As I said earlier, I think I was spanked maybe 3 or 4 times in my entire childhood. If you're spanking your child multiple times a week, you're doing it wrong. Spanking only works if it's "rare". It should be the last resort punishment, but always available. When done this way (ie: "properly"), then the child learns to avoid escalating any thing they're doing to that point. It makes other forms of punishment or warnings work. If you're unwilling to spank, and the child knows it, they'll push the boundaries. If you go right to spanking every time, it will cease to be an effective punishment and just make the child hate their parents.
So, studies like this are basically "duh!", but fail to address the core point because they're looking only at the extreme. The question isn't whether you should spank your child every time they do something wrong (you shouldn't), but whether spanking should be in your toolbox of punishments you can and will administer to your child if/when it's needed. I believe that you have to ultimately have some form of physical punishment at the end of your punishment options list, specifically because it's something the child will seek to avoid and thus will make those farther up the list more effective. My position is not so much pro-spanking as anti-"no spanking ever".