Discipline what works what doesn't

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Ok a few days ago I ended up in a conversation about discipline and being in the south many parents still feel the need to spank their kids on their butts and/or bare butt now for the record I can recall being spanked bare butt twice when I was young this was the early to mid 80's and before anybody knew I indeed had Autism (the results didn't fare well talk about a massive meltdown oy) so I started to think does spanking one's children on their butts (or bare) really accomplish anything other then embarrassment of the child and an out for the parent's anger also does it "help" when one disciplines a child in such a way whom is on the spectrum?!

I'm more of a "progressive" person hence originally from New Jersey I feel a time out and/or the reduction of privileges is more effective then getting hands on with a child I know my parents did the latter (taking away privileges/time outs) later on in my childhood years and for me it worked and feel that forcing a young child to pull his or her paints down or parent(s) pulling their kids paints to spank them borders on sexual abuse again most parents (that I've talked to) go with spare the rod spoil the child or spank for "religous" reasons.

I'd like to get some opinions on how you guys feel about the subject and if helped or made things worse off

Last edited by JoelFan on 31 May 2014, 2:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I was both spanked (although we call it smacked here usually), and beaten as a child. I'm not completely against smacking as a form of discipline, but I find there two main problems with how it's used.

1. It being the only discipline tool, which is just not at all helpful, everyone needs multiple ways of discipling a child I think because situations are different.
2. It being done out of anger and frustration and a loss of control on part of the carer.

For me, that has always been the most upsetting and scary part of it. Seeing that the person in charge has lost control. (But I'm very under-sensitive to physical pain from injury so that might have an impact on my answer)

Beatings I wouldn't recommend under any circumstances.

But being smacked never helped improve my behaviour because it wasn't a thing I understood the message of. Also I was generally punished for something I couldn't help doing (like stimming or ticcing).

here's what the science says: kids who are spanked are more anxious and angry and more likely to become delinquent. they are also more likely to grow up to be obese and have heart attacks and arthritis.

All physical punishment is child abuse in my opinion. Furthermore, it does not achieve the (hopefully) intended effect of instilling the child with the knowledge and values necessary for them to eventually regulate their own behavior. At best, the child learns to fear being caught, and may repeat the unwanted behavior when it seems that there is little risk of being caught.

I have seen someone right here on WP justify corporal punishment of (small, I assume) children by reasoning that they are incapable of understanding why they should not do certain things. My response to that is, if they are so lacking in intellectual skills, how is one justified in assuming that they understand the spanking as a deterrent? Perhaps they feel that they are being abused and embarrassed for no reason, resent the parent/guardian, and suffer anxiety because the punishment seems random and therefore apt to re-occur in a way they cannot predict. They have therefore been abused.

It seems a lazy way to raise a child, and I don't understand how such a situation would come about at all. If the kid is too immature to understand, then she is too young to be unsupervised or under-supervised, and so how did she get into the trouble in the first place? If one sees a small child getting into something objectionable, one ought to lead the child away with age-appropriate verbal cues. Older children get warnings, explanations, and non-physical discipline that is specific to the wrongdoing (to reinforce the lesson). At what point is a child "too young to understand, but old enough to hit"?

WOW. Arthritis? Some serious correlation vs. causation issues there. Differential rates of obesity and heart attacks can easily be explained by socioeconomic class differences.

But that is often challenged by those whom are old fashioned/conservative in nature and have the mentality of "oh I was spanked and I turned out ok" I've also read that those whom spank rather then use more non violent "liberal" alternatives are from a "low(er) social-economical" background however I don't know exactly how accurate that would be.


what's funny is that an adult can strike a child out of anger and it be called "punishment" but yet if an adult strikes another adult out of anger it's assault

http://www.nospank.net/

Every new parent, and parent to be, ought to read Alice Miller...

Every smack is a humiliation>> http://www.naturalchild.org/alice_miller/manifesto.html

Last edited by tall-p on 01 Jun 2014, 8:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.

WOW. Arthritis? Some serious correlation vs. causation issues there. Differential rates of obesity and heart attacks can easily be explained by socioeconomic class differences.[/quo


who says people in lower socioeconomic classes spank more?

I live in the south as well so I see kids get spanked in public more than I care to remember. I may just be over-sensitive but every time it never fails to make me feel really anxious like I'm about to be the one in trouble. The only time I can really remember getting spanked myself was also the first time I can consciously remember being overwhelmed and didn't know what was going on so I was crying and couldn't explain why. Let's just say it snapped me out of it enough to stop but had a much longer lasting effect since I didn't know why I got spanked it I never knew what I did wrong to several years in the future. So I thought my crying was what I did wrong so I tried to stop showing emotions all together after that.

That makes me wonder how many other kids have had simuliar experiences and determined not to do the same thing to my kids if I ever have any of my own. I've seen for myself that it doesn't help if anything it just makes it worse and some kids even start to see it as a challenge to not react when they get spanked.

I remember being spanked and I always knew what I did wrong. Mom always told me and I would also be doing something and I remember my dad grabbing me and pulling my pants down and hitting my bare butt. I remember how much it would hurt but I realize now as an adult, they never hit me that hard but for a child, the hit feels harder. I never got humiliated by her nor ever felt embarrassed. To me it was normal, same as being yelled at. It never left any affect on me. I am not damaged or traumatized. Mom also used to ask me if I wanted a spanking when I wouldn't listen. I don't even remember what consequence didn't work with me. Every one I remember receiving worked. I had privileges taken, my Babies taken, got grounded, not allowed to leave the yard, grounded to my room, no dessert, sent to my room or to the stairs. My mom said as I got older time outs quit working and so did sending me to my room and taking away my Barbies. I would just find other things to do and when in time out, I would day dream, in my room, I would entertain myself because I had Barbies, books, coloring, games, Polly Pockets, cassettes, workbooks and worksheets. My mom quit spanking when I got to around six years of age and she only rarely did it after that. A spanking only lasts a couple seconds so yeah it quits working because how many kids would rather receive one than be grounded for three days or have something get taken for a few days? When spanked, it's over and done with.

I don't see any spankings around here so I know it must be a cultural thing because down south, parents seem to make it more public while in the Pacific Northwest, I don't ever see anyone hit their kid. I did once in 2008 and I couldn't remember the last time I had seen it. People are either afraid of social services or believe it's done in private because it humiliates the child if they did it in front of everyone. My husband believes it's a private thing or else it will embarrass the kid if done in public, not that he is afraid of social services. My mom spanked my brother once on the sledding hill for disobeying her and he was so humiliated because she did it in front of other kids who were there. Then she felt bad when she realized he was embarrassed and she shouldn't have hit him there on the hill and she should have called him over and talk to him privately than screaming at him and hitting him and having everyone know he disobeyed his mom. I often see parents calling their kids and then talking to them and I don't even hear what they are saying. They do that to avoid embarrassing them. I had no clue kids got embarrassed when everyone sees them getting punished. That tells me how different I really was as a child because it never occurred to me to be embarrassed by it. Same as when kids would say "Ooo Beth is in trouble" if a teacher called on me and have me come with them or another staff or if the bus driver asked me to stay on the bus after everyone gets off and I never knew what that was about, now I know it was a taunt and them making fun of me for being in trouble. I never understood why they were making a big deal about it if other kids get in trouble too and it was a normal thing. But yeah I am different and I was also put in the bathroom as a time out by someone at five years old and no damage left on me either from that, no trauma, nothing. I am not messed up from it either. I always wonder why didn't that leave affect on me like it would on other kids. I did lock my brother in the bathroom for a while, especially with no light on but then I stopped doing it. It could be luck or because I was five so I knew what was going on and I was never left in there all day long. Plus I knew how to turn on the light so I wouldn't be in the dark. I never knew that was a wrong thing to do until I was 11 when mom told me that was mean and wrong and you don't put kids in there for a time out when I finally told that story. But it did explain why my brother was afraid of the dark because I said she did it to him too and would also not turn the light on so he was in the dark as she held the door closed with him screaming in there. My uncle knew about it too and never said anything about it because he also didn't know it was wrong. My dad, knew nothing about it because he was busy working in his office and I never said anything because I couldn't talk and it never occurred to me to say anything about it.

Physical attacks on children by their main caregiver, someone much bigger than them and with significantly greater reasoning capabilities is taboo in enlightened societies; that brings me joy. It is a significant intellectual step forward. Unfortunately we took this step without planning and developing alternatives that were equally as effective as fear. Psychological abuse is now what concerns me, there aren't any outward bruises with it.

As a child in a rural part of Ireland I did not understand why I got into so much trouble(it was excessive) I was a quiet, well mannered girl, I learned to behave out of fear without understanding why I should behave the desired way. For example Sunday was the wild card day, after mass i would not get in trouble if I had controlled my fidgeting, it was awful, real hit and miss I learned to sit still in public, and got in less trouble for it as i grew to understand, that I must behave as my peers do. School was no different to home. Corporal punishment was abolished in educational establishments in '79 I think. It was still widely acceptable in the 80s though because I 'got it' with the side of a ruler more than I want to think about.

Smacking teaches the child fear and behaviour is regulated by this fear, not by an inner motivation/regulation to do the right thing. For anxious children I consider this to have a compounding negative effect on overall wellbeing.
The alternatives to smacking require time, energy and dialogue(individually tailored); with a developing human being, a life that is equal in their right to dignity as any adult.

I actually read a book about class in the U.S. that indicated that they do. And this seemed to be the case where I grew up. My post, however, referenced "different" socioeconomic classes, not "lower" socioeconomic classes.

My feeling is that it is quite cruel and I wish parents used a more positive form of discipline designed around positive reinforcement and building life skills or positive strategies for behavior or emotional regulation. Just being present in their lives establishing strong connections with them gets rid of a hell of a lot of disciplinary problems.

But if you don't have the time to spare from other activities to raise your child spanking does accomplish the primary objective quite quickly it regulates the child?s behavior very effectively you just have to make sure you inflict enough pain if you stop prematurely of course it?s going to fail. Inflicting pain is a technique that has seen an age of success in regulating people?s behavior. Good for slavery, brain washing etc you just have to remember to inflict enough draw some blood get some screams going.

Of course in child development the side affects are sometimes undesirable even unpredictable given the developing nature of the mind. I was spanked as a child and as expected it did regulate my behavior. So in that regard it was quite helpful I learned self control, I learned to hide, I learned to suppress myself and I learned to lie. I also learned people were threats, things to avoid as they were going to hurt you and I never connected with my parents or anyone. That?s probably more autistic but it helped push me in that direction I could spend years and never talk to my parents even when we lived together. Naturally this led to other problems in my ability to manage emotions, stress and pain not to mention worsening my social development. So worse or better? Better for them as my behavior stopped but worse for me as it turned my development to a negative path.

Hitting and spanking did not help me much. When I was a kid my parents hit, slapped, spanked, and shook me. My father also liked yelling loudly, getting furious and intimidating, using threats, and violently throwing things around the house.

I am a person with intense sensory issues. Spanking, hitting, and slapping me can be sensory overwhelming, and very very distracting. My father used to slap me in the face for what he thought was 'not listening' because I am a non verbal learner and also I learn in a very unusual way. His hitting me for looking inattentive when I was trying to understand his lessons was totally distracting from the lessons. It was also traumatizing, intimidating and discouraging because the hitting was overloading to the senses, and that he felt the need to hit me made me very confused, and the fact that he would often hit me when I am trying to listen caused me to develop anxiety over being taught lessons by him because of the risk of him getting angry and wanting to punish me and developing negative opinions of me. I ended up trying to avoid getting any instruction or lessons from him as much as possible because of how badly he misunderstood my learning problems and mistook them for bad attitude, rebellion and discipline problems.

Like in CuddleHug's post above, I learned to not trust anyone, and never became close to my parents. Their intimidating teaching style and attitude that children should be seen and not heard intensified my social development difficulties which was already hindered more than enough by my autism. I still hardly talk to my dad at all, even if I am around him all day.

I agree spanking borders on sexual abuse, actually I think it IS sexual abuse though I'm sure most parents who do it don't have that in mind when they do it. The buttocks are an erogenous zone. Touching the buttocks stimulates the genitals because the nerve endings are so closely connected. In my opinion spanking is a sex act that should only happen between two consenting adults.

Spanking a child on the butt (clothed or unclothed) can confuse the sensations of pleasure and pain in a way that can make it difficult to have sexual relationships later on as an adult. And pulling the clothes down to do it leaves a person with the feeling that nudity is somehow shameful and connected to punishment. Spanking is a very psychologically damaging form of physical punishment. People who say they were spanked and turned out okay are in deep denial.

I live in the south and yes it is common here. I see parents spank their children in public and do it almost with a sort of pride that they are showing everyone what great parents they are. It is disgusting.

Such a wise group of people here! So let me ask where is the line between "punishment" and possible sexual abuse?

Last edited by JoelFan on 03 Jun 2014, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.