Poll: Physical Punishment Towards Children, Yay or Nay?

Andothul

New member
Feb 11, 2010
294
0
0
I think it honestly depends on the child.

Some children, like myself back then, don't care if they get a time out but do care if they get a hand across the ass because its immediate pain.

As long as it is done as punishment/disciplinary tool i see no problem with it.
 

conflictofinterests

New member
Apr 6, 2010
1,098
0
0
Jordi said:
I think physical punishment is fine, but only as an educational/disciplinary tool. If the physical punishment is doled out because the parent is mad, that is just wrong. I also think it should definitely not be too severe and should always be a last resort, because there are often better ways to discipline a child.
My parents used hands and wooden spoons on my brother and I, and they promised one another that neither of them would EVER dole out corporal punishment when they were angry. Not even if it could be justified as educational. It doesn't seem like many people get that distinction to say that there is no way that physical punishment is EVER a good thing. I hardly ever earned spankings, sending me to my room was quite effective, but my brother was much more easily entertained, so the only way he WOULDN'T do the thing they were trying to teach him not to do would be to spank him.

(Fast forward, now he's the star of the High School soccer team, he has a job reffing kid's games, he's going to college to be a sports caster, and I graduated with honors, transferred from community college and am currently working on an anthropology degree. Neither of us turned out bad. Spanking doesn't ruin everything)
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
14,334
0
0
I support Physical Punishment. However I want to make it clear that there is a distinct difference between physical discipline or punishment and child abuse. Child abuse is when the parent comes home from a hard day at work and, because s/he is frustrated his his/her boss, beats up his/her kid. Physical discipline or punishment is when the child misbehaves and gets a good solid smack on the ass.
I got spankings when I was growing up and at the time I thought it was the most horrible thing ever and thought "I would never do that to my kids." But now, upon reflection, I look back and I have to admit it was pretty damn effective. After getting a smack on the ass you'd better believe I didn't want to do whatever it was that caused me to get the spank again.
All that being said, no one would spank my kids, but me and possibly my wife if I had one. Of course I have neither a wife nor kids so it's a non issue at this point.
 

marginal

New member
Mar 21, 2009
85
0
0
No, just no. I don't know what kind of punishment you guys got, but when I was a kid I was whipped with a belt or smacked in the face. The fact that I "turned out fine" isn't the issue. The issue is that I have no relationship with my father because of what he did to me. I consider it cruel, not loving.
 
Aug 25, 2009
4,611
0
0
Bad and wrong in every single way. Largely because it ignores simple child psychology that a one month Introduction to Psychology I took when I was 17 showed.

If you strike a child, they don't learn that whatever they did was wrong. They learn that when they did a certain action they were struck. Conditioning sets in and they realise that they don't like being struck so they stop doing the activity. Fair enough, if a little simplistic.

BUT

What the child has also learned, that so many people seem to forget, is that the solution to someone doing something wrong is to strike them, as they were struck. For one thing this can lead to such obvious developmental problems you'd think a retarded monkey could figure them out but I'll spell it out for the moron brigade.

Child A hits Child B because the Child B did something Child A thought was 'wrong.' Their parents have taught them that wrong acts must be met with physical force, so they struck Child B, where's the problem? Then, Child A's parents hit them because they hit Child B. What's Child A to think? Hitting people is obviously what you do to someone who's been naughty, because otherwise why would mummy and daddy hit him when he did something wrong? But why is him then hitting another child also wrong?

Children have been proven to have significant mental problems based on far less than that. My mother works as a teacher and has done for thirty two years now, and in all those years she believes that the real problem children are the ones whose parents hit them. A child who is disciplined in other ways, by the removing of toys, or being shouted at, or a more reasonable child who it can actually be explained to why they were wrong, a teacher can deal with much easier. A child who only understands force can only be met with force.

No problem say the hitters, just bring back corporal punishment in schools. Fine, except that Corporal Punishment at home will be different to corporal punishment at school because there is no way to regulate it.

'A child does something wrong, their toy is removed.' This is simple to understand, easy to implement, and most importantly consistent between home and school.

'A child does something wrong, and is hit.' How hard is the child hit? Open palm? Implement? Belt, slipper, shoe? Exact degree of punishment which requires hitting and at what level of hitting? Impossible to even keep straight within on class, let alone taking the student's home lives into account.

Now for my personal experience:

I was not struck, neither was my sister, we are both grade a students, have been all our lives, and the one things all of our teachers have commented on is our level of maturtity. This was based on my mother, as noted above, having recognised that corporal punishment in schools didn't work, and refused to use it on us.

Several of my classmates were struck. They were unmanagable in class even to the age of 18, and they were often violent, and any situation they didn't like would be met with violence. This wasn't at some East End of London public school either but an incredibly Middle Class boarding school.

Second and my most enjoyed account. A young boy was beaten by his father on a regular basis for wrongdoing. He grew up hard, loves knives and guns and other manly things, and when he reached the age when he could take on his father? His father tried to hit him for something and he fought back. Because his father had taught him through the beatings that it was okay to match wrongdoing with violence, and since clearly hitting him was violent, he was allowed to match it. His father ended up with a broken jaw, the boy now lives mostly with his mother. Also, again, this is not some benefit-scraping by to live family, the father is a Conservative Party member and a literal millionaire in British Pounds.

And you want to know the really fucked up part? Both of them think he did the right thing by fighting back. I'd like to live in a world where we don't raise our children to believe that violence met with violence is the only answer to all life's problems.
 

Alar

The Stormbringer
Dec 1, 2009
1,356
0
0
dyre said:
Definitely not as simple as the "yes or no" your poll implies.

It's not the most effective tool, since it gives kids the impression that violence is the answer, plus it's either overused, which is obviously bad, or underused, which renders it ineffective (you get beat, 5 minutes later you forget about it).

Taking away privileges like the ability to go out or play video games or w/e is more effective.

But corporal discipline is absolutely better than no discipline.
You've obviously never dealt with problem children (those that don't care about things being taken away), or seen what a parent can do with a combination of words and a spanking. When I was a kid, I might actively remember the spanking all day. It rarely happened to me, but that was because the experiences stood out in my mind and gave me a clear 'WARNING' sign every time I approached the cause again.

Not to mention the fact that it's practically impossible to take everything away from a child these days. Books, video games, consoles, computers, toys, dolls, coloring books... you'd have to clear out their entire room and lock up the contents somewhere they couldn't get to.
 

sms_117b

Keeper of Brannigan's Law
Oct 4, 2007
2,880
0
0
I got open palmed as a child, so I think it's fine, and probably will do the same to mine (if I ever have any)
 

Thaius

New member
Mar 5, 2008
3,862
0
0
All the time, no, and not too intensely. You don't go punching your child in the face for being too loud or something. But no one does that except people who are genuinely abusive, so let's just exclude drunks and psychopaths from this conversation and talk about painful but harmless physical punishment in situations where other punishments aren't enough. Like this conversation should always be about.

In which case, yes, absolutely. Not as a first response, but as a last resort. Physical violence is the base form of human communication, in a way; if a kid does something bad over and over again, despite sending to their room, taking away a toy, whatever other forms of punishment there may be, it may just be that physical pain is the only thing that will communicate to them, "That is bad, and you should not do it." Some kids simply don't get it until then, and for that matter, even the best kids, even all of us, had at least one or two specific areas in which parental punishment just didn't work very well to teach us.

I think people don't give kids enough credit. I was spanked as a child, and I never thought my parents hated me because of it. I'm sure I had a tantrum or something along those lines now and again, but we all know how that goes; we've all accused our parents of hating us for far more petty reasons. Kids are smart enough to understand that their parents are punishing them for something they did wrong, not hitting them because they hate them.
 

Dalek Caan

Pro-Dalek, Anti-You
Feb 12, 2011
2,871
0
0
When I was small my father would lightly slap me on the hand if I did something wrong. I turned out OK. Besides the OCD, Paranoia and lack of sleep. I would be against parents that really hit their children. Does anyone else think that in today's world where going after people who lightly slap there children instead of going after those who physically abuse there children?
 

Radelaide

New member
May 15, 2008
2,503
0
0
I'm all in favour of it. Kids these days do whatever the hell they want because they know they can get away with it. If I messed up, I would get a wooden spoon across the butt and I wouldn't do it again.

Hell, one day when I was a little girl (like 4, and this was a few months after my father was killed), I threw an enormous tantrum. I stormed up to my room, crawled into my built in wardrobe and kicked out the mirror. My mother, calm as she was, hauled my ass up, put me across her knee and spanked the crap out of me.

I never did it again.

Parents need to be firmer with their kids so they don't get out of control as teens.
 

Kirke

New member
Apr 3, 2011
10,790
0
0
No. If I ever se my parents hit/spank my little brother I will punch them.
 

Kiju

New member
Apr 20, 2009
832
0
0
It really depends on what you're punishing the child for. Being noisy in a restaurant or a movie theater isn't really any cause for being hit. It's just grounds for being taken out and forced to go home without finishing one's dinner. Hunger and thirst is also a great teacher for children.

But if a child is being a spoiled brat and breaking things on purpose rather than on accident or out of not knowing it would break, then yes a smack is required. Punishment has gotten too light over the past few years, and it's starting to show in how today's teenagers are acting. They go too long without learning who is who in the world and it's going to start having an impact on them as adults. Was I struck as a child? Yes, many times until I learned what was right and what was wrong.
 

TiefBlau

New member
Apr 16, 2009
904
0
0
Why is there a "maybe" option?

What could you possibly carry across about this question to which a simple "yes" or "no" would not to justice?
 

mrdude2010

New member
Aug 6, 2009
1,315
0
0
some kids really do need to be smacked to learn their fucking lesson. don't believe me walk around the hallways of any high school and listen to the idiots
 

Ancientgamer

New member
Jan 16, 2009
1,346
0
0
Treaos Serrare said:
vivaldiscool said:
I just can't stand the arrogance of people who are proud that they hit their kids. Like "He was mouthing off to me so I smacked him, and ya know what? He never did it again." You fucking think? Kids aren't damn products, you don't just smack 'em until they start working properly. It's like unplugging your fridge cause it was making a buzzing noise, and declaring "Hey, I got it to stop buzzing!" Yeah, but now everything's rotten inside. Seriously, what kind of idiot just hits their kid?
time outs and "talking to them" Doesn't work and never will, at least pre 16, then it has the chance to work because the kid can reason, anytime before that you need to act on the baser instincts of the human animal such as pain= don't do that.
Oh, that's just ass gravy. Of course you don't sit down and "reason it out" with out young child, but you sure as hell don't just start hitting them. You're in control of their lives, there's a litany of more effective, and less brutish methods of discipline other than "kick 'em till they start ostensibly doing what you want".
 

TheLoneBeet

New member
Feb 15, 2011
536
0
0
Yes but it depends on the circumstances. If your child spills something or does something accidentally, then no I don't think it's appropriate to use physical force as punishment. However if your child deliberately breaks something or does something they know will irritate you, then I don't see the harm in a quick smack (obviously not as hard as you possibly can, but enough to get them to knock it off)

The reason I feel this way is that every kid will eventually get hit, and if they've learned to deal with it as a child they won't be so traumatized and cry about it when some kid at school socks them for whatever reason.

Also, my parents used this sort of mentality on me and I turned out great. My sister on the other hand was raised without violence as a punishment (several years between us). My parents can shout at her all day and she never learns her lesson, never cares what she's in trouble for, and doesn't respect them (talks back in ways I wouldn't dream of) and those are the sort of kids that grow up into people nobody likes.
 

Booze Zombie

New member
Dec 8, 2007
7,416
0
0
Each child is different, whilst physical discipline may work for some, it will not work for others. When my dad attempted to discipline me as a child, I merely got more angry and responded further with misbehaviour, for example.
 

xdom125x

New member
Dec 14, 2010
671
0
0
I fall in the "no" camp. Mostly because using violence as punishment doesn't stop children from behaving badly, it just makes them do it sneakily. Also, it teaches children that violence is the proper way to correct people who have gone out of line.

Also, I am just a bit curious here but why do the people that say "I was hit as a child and look how good I turned out" seem to think that them being hit was the only factor that played into their success? Maybe they turned out good despite being hit.