This is something that I wanted to comment on beforehand, but somehow I hadn’t gotten around to it or not. Personally, I’m on Bruno’s side of this debate. I may not be an expert on parenting, but beating your children with an oar is no way to instill values into them. All it does is promote violence as a solution to problems, and when you look at that idea on a larger scale, that turns out with more negative consequences than good. Spanking your children may make things easier for you in the short run, but is that really any way to raise them?
I never could get past this point when raising my 3 kids—now adults. I never slapped or spanked them. I was never smacked or spanked while I was growing up. After listening to stories of my dh’s childhood, I could never do things like that to my own children. What beating taught my dh was to be more sneaky and hide from his parents most of the time----so they had no idea what he was doing. He eventually escaped to his grandparents, where he truly learned about unconditional love.
I agree things are out of control. My generation did a pathetic job overall raising kids, so when those kids have kids…they don’t have a clue how to deal with it. As with almost all situations, we use fists or smacking when we run out of words. During stressful times, we fall back on what we know. If our parents smacked us, then that’s what we know.
If you’ll notice on shows like ‘The Nanny’, it isn’t the children Nanny Jo works on for change…it’s always the parents. Most of the time because they just don’t know what to do.
What this comes down to, to me, is that the only thing I can truly control is myself–my words and actions. I always thought hitting my kids would leave a dark spot on my soul. I treated them like the amazing potential decent human beings they were/are.
Yesterday in the store, a woman was yelling at her 2 little boys. 
She said, “Don’t hit!”…and smacked one of them…Oh.
I ran…
I think I good punishment would be to your kids do time out, but actualy make them count out 60 minutes or longer while looking at a clock.
well i obviously won’t be able to show you my theory because you seem to just reject it.
but i still don’t think anyone has heard me. when did i say that you need to grab up a weapon and go after a kid? now THAT’S ridiculous. but i think you should show some authority over a kid that refuses to behave, and that may come to a ‘listen here’ slap on the butt.
i also don’t think sarcasim is appropriate in a discussion. it isn’t supporting your point at all and it makes you come off as a dick. and in the world of philosophy, dicks don’t exist… (what??)
I’m still very young and maybe my input could be of value. As a child my family used spankings and other painful methods to train them. And my family was close so we were constantly around 20 other cousins and their respective parents. For me I did NOT want to be spanked by these people. I learned the art of deception, very well too. And throughout my life I never received one spanking and I know I deserved it many times. I’m not sure if I should be thankful for it or look at it in shame. Even if it is a bad skill it has saved me many times throughout my life, mainly when my friends do something dumb and I’m around.
But back to what I was talking about. After learning this I also learned silence is golden, if I dont admit to anything I can’t be caught. So in turn I became very quiet and withdrawn. After soaking in all I could for self-defense I started using my skills for self gain. I can say I’ve made bad choices and I probably owe more apologize’s than I know. So for me I say using force is not necessary. It instills children with a feeling anxiety and fear. My brother was the kid who would always act up when punished and he said its from his temper. I’m not sure whose side says you shouldn’t hit kids but I agree with that.
I’m not attacking you, I’m telling my reasons for my beliefs, something you didn’t do. So far, we know you think “listen here” slaps are ok. But that’s not philosophy, that’s personal opinion. Give us reasons, and perhaps this will be a discussion to which not only can I add to my beliefs, but use logic against yours, otherwise all I can do is make fun of your statements, because you didn’t really make sense out of them for us, you just stated them.
Of course it supports a point. Sarcasm is in fact, one of the most useful rhethoric strategies. Because if you can show to a person that their point makes no sense (“reductio ad absurdum”), they now have to make a new point, or use their intelligence to make their point make sense.
Your point of view still makes no sense to me, and you haven’t even shown me how does my point of you not make sense to you, or how can sense be made out of your point. So I don’t really see a discussion here.
I really think that it depends on the child. I know kids that have been (or still get) beaten, some turn out to be drug abusing jerks, others are very intelligent and sensible. I know kids who are spoiled to hell, some are jerks, others calm and collected. People will naturally tend to hold an affinity for a certain trait (but don’t quote me on that…)
I’ve been spanked, never been beaten, although when my dad gets really mad he threatens to. You can call me cruel, or whatever, but I don’t respect my parents. Yes, they clothe me, put a roof under my head, etc., but it’s just intelligently. I feel as if they don’t know me at all, and I don’t really care. They treat me well, they spoil me to hell. My mom insisted that she get me a flat screen TV for college, which that, and among other things, I really find pointless.
I became who I am through my experiences. I watched other people’s behaviors and actions, and figured out how naive a good portion of the general population is. Yeah, of course my parents had an effect on me, their influence is still in effect whether it be positive or negative, but they’re only changing my perception of the world, not me (you could argue that someone’s perception is who they are…but whatever.)
I also think that peers have a greater or equal influence to that of parents. But that’s a totally different topic.
Nature vs Nurture…
IMO, nature beats nurture (although the environment a child is raised in does play a large role in the development of the child). I don’t have time now, but I will post some more later.
FreeFlowingSalt makes a good point. We shouldn’t be deterministic here, we were trying not to in the beggining of the discussion and it would be nice to have that preserved now: beating, lecturing, spoiling, teaching—none of these strategies is able to determine a child. Nature, as Steve points? I don’t think so. If we start considering people inherently “bad” or “good,” than this whole discussion is useless, we could all move on to another one. No, no, it isn’t that either.
I think there’s a huge, and I mean HUGE deal of influence. Only, it’s not determination, it’s influence. Because there’s also the inherent nature—and it doesn’t determine if you’re going to be a brat or a nice civilized person, but it will set the grounds in which you’ll receive influence. They are what makes some people be spanked and turn out to be nice people, and others be spanked and become psychopaths. And there’s the other stuff to. When it comes to humans, I have deep faith in the Butterfly Effect. Seemingly small stuff can make a huge impact, while seemingly huge stuff can make no big influence in some people.
That said. I think it’s a complex process, that of learning how a child is and brainstorming about how to teach them correctly. Spanking seems to be, to me, the easy way. The one lazy or perhaps desperate parents use. There’s no thought built into it. Sartre says that, when you’re a child, your parents are deities. That’s quite true. So, it’s the easy way. Do it wrong and the gods will hit you. Mess up and the world will be against you. That’s teaching upon fear, it’s poor in meaning, it builds dogmas, it builds blind obedience.
I am one who respects more those who assume the role of the teacher. Not any teacher. The good teacher. The one that sits by their table, at night, look at a student’s composition and wonder—ok, why isn’t he learning? How an I make that clear for him, how does his mind work?
Education by force is no way more powerful than assisted learning, at first just like education, but as time goes by, becoming more of a personal process which is only assisted by the parents, who, already more mature, take the role of people who show the world to their children and tell them how they see it, and how they can develop their own eyes, their own vision. They’re first the storytellers, and as time goes by, they become a photo camera—with which their children will play while they develop their own artistic vision, their own photographer’s eyes.
I don’t know. I think the trickier way of raising a child can be REALLY tough. But I trust it will be way worthier to the person that child is going to become one day.
I agree, Bruno. Like I said in my previous post, the environment you are raised in is a large factor in all of this. This is similar to a discussion we had in my parenting class last year. The following is an example I used in a discussion about nature vs nurture (this relates to the butterfly effect, Bruno).
I’ll try to keep it short. Lets say a very young child is on the way to the store for some candy. He is on his bicycle (or in a car with his parents…it doesn’t matter) and on the way to the store he has to pass the bank. Now, all of a sudden, a group of people in masks run out of the store, with bags of cash, jewellry, etc. Soon after, the child sees a few security guards/ cop cars chasing after the group.
This event could have a huge impact on the child. Just to keep it simple, we will say one of 2 things will happen. 1- witnessing this robbery will motivate the child to become a police officer, and bring justice to the evil 
. 2- the child will be determined to become the leader of organized crime (when (s)he is older, of course, lol) because of this event.
It could go either way, depending on the child. (maybe it makes more sense if there are 2 children who are raised in the same house by the same parents, and one chooses one path, the second chooses the other.)
Only, humans aren’t polar, so there’s also the child for whom this meant nothing at all, and the child who will always be afraid of doing anything wrong because of the cops, and the kid who will grow up and buy a gun, and the one who will feel uncomfortable inside banks etc.
But I get your point. 
That’s what I wanted to say: same situation has different outcomes in different people. So you might be influenced, but that depends not only on the situation itself. It depends on your inherent grounds and the other situations you’ve been through. And you might always not be affected by the situation (or rather, not be blatantly affected by the situation, like the kid who, after that, will always smile at ease in places with cops).
I agree with some points of both sides here. Beating the sh*t out of your kids is no way to raise a child. End of disscussion. DO NOT BEAT YOUR KIDS.
But in more extreme cases of misbehavior, a few spanks(with your hand) gets the point across. A quick slap on the a$s or the arm dosen’t instill fear into a child, or cause bodily damage. It can help instill a sense of athourity. Also, spanking does not help on the first or second time your child has perpetrated a behavior you do not want he or she to. This is the time for words. Make the child understand the logics of why you do not want him to do whatever they may be doing. If after several times of explaining and time outs and whatnot, it is obvious that the child does not view you as a strong athourity figure, and that’s when he needs a little reminder.
“Only, humans aren’t polar, so there’s also the child for whom this meant nothing at all”
LOL. I was going to add a third outcome in my example, where the child buys his candy and then goes home with a good story to tell, but exactly the same as he was the day before. Of course, nobody is affected in a way as large as the child in my example by every situation they are in. But the child who would not be affected at all by witnessing this event would/could be affected by another totally different situation.
LMAO calm down people, eat a cookie 
, you’d think this (mostly dead) thread was about whether or not you should beat the living crap out of your children(I see it hit a nerve). I was using an example to illustrate my point that parents need to take the necessary steps to straighten their children out, I for example was quite the hell raiser at times and the whole fire-side chit chat didn’t break me of my habits (my father is a very loving man I assure you, I just had a problem with authority lol). Sure times have changed (this was around 15 years ago) and I’m positive that some kids are little angels and others didn’t grow up in and around large citys, or even in the U.S. for that matter. The original point was that our youth are being instilled with the wrong messages, setting them up for a slippery slope.
Heh, the funny thing is that I didn’t even plan for this to become a thread so this is my first time seeing it. I have to admit though that I found the responses very amusing (esp. bruno’s reaction, you’d think I’d told him that my old man ‘broke me on the wheel’ or something). 
Ahh, never a dull moment a ld4all… 