Discipline and children

[Sencha]

Actually I have, my saying my parents tapping me on the head was COMPLETELY unlike my boss doing it. *sigh*

And why is it completely different? Why is it okay to hit children, but not okay to hit adults?

[illion]

I think it is important to remember that we, the parents, are our children's biggest role models. They do as we do, not as we say.

I think it is important to learn my son to use his words when he gets into conflicts, and that he should never be physical unless in self defense. I can't do that by hitting him or tapping him every now and then. That would be a great contradiction. I can't tell him not to hit others, to be gentle with other children and use a physical form of punishment as a discipline form at the same time.

To me gentle swats have no meaning, because it is a physical punishment that doesn't hurt. Isn't the point with physical punishment that it should hurt so that the child fear to get hurt again and avoid the bad behaviour? Aren't we actually telling the child that they can swat other children when they are in a conflict instead of using their words?

I think that if we want peace in the world, we will have to start with our children. They are the future. Learn them to use their words instead of their fists and we have a better chance that in the future there will be more talking than bombing.

Illion
With hopes for the future

[Sencha]

I agree...there is no 'grey area' to physical violence. The only difference between a 'swat' and a 'punch' is the amount of force behind it. It's like being 'a little bit pregnant' or 'a little bit dead.' It's not about the amount of pain or the amount of force used...it's about resorting to violence in the first place.
For example, if you plan to commit murder, but never actually do it because your car breaks down on the way to the scence, you can't argue before the judge that, 'Well, I didn't actually go through with it because I had car trouble, so I'm not really guilty.' What matters in a court of law, and in a child's mind, is the INTENT behind the actions.

[wilde]

For example, if you plan to commit murder, but never actually do it because your car breaks down on the way to the scence

I think perhaps comparing giving a child a smack on the hand for, say, hitting or teasing the dog to intention to commit murder is inappropriate. The hitting-of-the-hand is not intent to cause pain or death. It is a way of gently (and without actual harm to the child - as opposed to the dog biting her for teasing it) creating an unpleasant sensory reaction. Like knowing not to touch a cooker because you got burned - it is how children, and indeed all humans, learn - using their senses. I see no physical or emotional harm in the slap-of-the-hand, but an effective way of teaching a child that they shouldn't do that (of course I don't smack her hand for any old thing - but I draw the line at letting her keep messing about with dogs until they bite her hand - or worse).

What matters in a court of law, and in a child's mind, is the INTENT behind the actions.

Exactly my point. Was my intention to hurt her? No. *edit* I explain afterwards why I hit her, what would have happened if she had kept going on like she was. And she knows I love her, so I'd say the intent was pure.

[Sencha]

Ask yourself this: Why are you trying so hard to justify physical violence against a child, when there are other, better, and much more effective methods of parenting?

[wolfsbane]

My 3 Girls came to live with me in November 08 after being taken into care due to domestic violence and alcohol abuse in the home. I have been to several Parenting Classes and also became a facilitator of aforementioned courses. How ever when my 12yr old fronts up to me with her fists clenched screaming in my face you bet your butt my hand will conect with hers.

[Merlyn]

How ever when my 12yr old fronts up to me with her fists clenched screaming in my face you bet your butt my hand will connect with hers.

We can be example all we want, then face real problems when our children mix with others.
The feelings translate and our kid comes home with a "need to be punished" trying to exact the anger other kids get.

We could isolate our kids, but then as adults they fail.
We can also find ourselves acting on our own experience, not even really knowing the roots of our actions.

And we can also be far to gentile.
Parents get just as defeated by treating their kids like little adults.

Discipline is a difficult road for many reasons.
Discipline then must take another form, not just positive or negative.
To do this is very hard for parents who work, not having the time to invest in creative or constructive discipline.
Day-care is most often a poor environment, school often as bad.

My brother often could not sleep without a swat on the butt. My parents failed often.
The problem is blame.
And to know where blame belongs is a very effective key.
I didn't blame my dad, but rather at a young age, confronted him in his anger. My simple words defused it for good.
I asked him to stop finding fault in me, and I would do the same for him. He immediately calmed, and our relationship was far different from that of my brother and sister to my parents.
Though I made the chain break, they never did. This took forgiveness, from both of us to do.



Merlyn

[Sencha]

How ever when my 12yr old fronts up to me with her fists clenched screaming in my face you bet your butt my hand will conect with hers.

Congratulations...you've just been outstmarted by a 12-year-old.

[Matt3223]

Sencha, now that you have pointed out where everyone is wrong, might you provide the appropriate alternative so that those of us who may not know will have something to consider next time?

[Sencha]

When teaching parenting, I use the 4 C method:
Control
Choices
Consequences
Consistency
Control: Everyone, even children, wants to be in control of their own lives. A good parenting system will allow children to feel some sense of control over their own lives.
Choices: The way to give children some sense of control is to give them choices. How can a child ever learn how to make good choices if not given the opportunity to practice making choices? By giving them choices, they have some control, but the parents have some control as well. For example, you might give a young child a choice between a peanut butter sandwich and a tuna sandwich for lunch. They get to decide, thereby feeling that they've been given some control. What they don't see is that you've eliminated choices like Twinkies and cookies. They get some control, and you get some control. At the same time, they get practice in making good choices.
Consequences: Teach the child that consequences stem from their choices. Also teach them that it's THEIR choices that lead to the consequences. If punishment is a consequence, then it's a result of THEIR choice. Likewise, if a reward is a consequence, then let them know that the reward is a result of their choice as well.
Consistency: Rewards and punishments should ideally always follow choices. The average parent has to tell a child four times before the child acts. If you're a gambler, would you take a bet that you had a 3 out of 4 chance of winning? The consequences...good or bad...should immediately follow the choices as often as possible. And the consequences should be conistent.

[Merlyn]

I'll add a bit here, especially for those who have kids at the very potent age of 17.

What works for an 8 year old will not work for an 18 year old.
We as parents must evolve as our children do, and not find ourselves enabling bad behavior.

In this, comes what most parents face.
The kid learns the "system" and uses it against progress in life.
The result is a 30 year old dysfunctional kid living in the basement content with frustrated parents. This "comfort zone" of being a failure will cause serious problems for all in the family and community.

[Sencha]

In this, comes what most parents face.
The kid learns the "system" and uses it against progress in life.

That's the popular wisdom, but as a health care professional, I can tell you that in all my years of practice, I've never seen a real example of that. What I see, far too often, is children who should be taken away from abusive parents, but the state lacks the resources...or even the will...to intervene.

[SidheAingeal]

In this, comes what most parents face.
The kid learns the "system" and uses it against progress in life.

That's the popular wisdom, but as a health care professional, I can tell you that in all my years of practice, I've never seen a real example of that. What I see, far too often, is children who should be taken away from abusive parents, but the state lacks the resources...or even the will...to intervene.

I used to work in Child Protection and then in Family Counselling and had the same experience. I ended up leaving that line of work because I just couldn't handle seeing kids being abused anymore.

From my experience in the field, though, I did see quite clearly that children do as their parents do, not as they are told. One family I will never forget used to scream at and hit their daughter, then complain to me that she was always yelling at and hitting them and others. Another kid was kicked out of his family home for being depressed, told he was a horrible person, kicked out of both his aunts and uncles, treated like Hell. Then the family wonder what made him so out of control he ended up behind bars!

The way I see it, you teach children how to behave by how you behave toward them. Yes, it is much easier to do so with a younger child than it is with a teenager. I'll be honest and say I'm terrified of when my son hits puberty. But I am determined that my son should grow up to be a loving, respectful, non-violent person and I can't see how he could do that if I used physical punishment.

it is how children, and indeed all humans, learn - using their senses

Wilde, I do not learn through my senses, not now or as a kid. In fact, I remember being smacked as a child and learning nothing from it other than Mum and Dad hated me. I didn't even connect that the smacking was punishment for this, that or the other. Mum and Dad were just hitting me because they hated me.

Not all children, or humans, learn in the same way. We must treat our children as individuals and respect that individuality. In other words, we need to discipline in a language that they understand and in which they receive the message we were trying to send. Clearly, smacking me was not disciplining me in a language I understood.

I guess for me, discipline comes down to making sure your kid understands the message you're trying to send and the behaviour you're trying to teach and that they connect the discipline with the behaviour.

[Sencha]

Wilde, I do not learn through my senses, not now or as a kid. In fact, I remember being smacked as a child and learning nothing from it other than Mum and Dad hated me. I didn't even connect that the smacking was punishment for this, that or the other. Mum and Dad were just hitting me because they hated me.

Yes, and that is how the majority of the children I've worked with view being hit as punishment. They rarely connect the physical pain with a specific behavior. Instead, they learn that Mom and Dad hate them.
I wonder how Druids who spank reconcile their behavior with their Druidic beliefs? A recurrent theme in this board is that the individual is free to determine their own relationship with the divine and with nature. How can that be reconciled with the need to hit children?

[Merlyn]

That's the problem.
The parent must progress.
Hitting kids results in kids who hate. They sometimes don't really know why, and the expression becomes "hate everything" even them self.

If hitting is the system, then yelling isn't any better.

The kid will be stunned, but the scar is even worse from expressed anger. However, if the parent expresses the hurt, the kid will better understand.
This fails however, if we don't take into account the rest of the world. What kids see and learn from society is often just as hurtful to them.

So they play "kill the enemy games" and the parents just don't understand...

Long ago I came in from work and my (now) ex-wife in a fit exclaimed that I must "beat my kid". I asked "why?" Her reply was "How dare you ask that". And I said, "no".
I did explain to her that I must know all reasons before any discipline. She insisted that I must just trust her judgement.
After three months of marriage I divorced her.

If a parent cannot progress, and the married couple cannot communicate, the kid will simply suffer....

Now the boy is 17, and this is a very critical age. I am now married to a much more insightful and mature woman, who understands abuse very well and become frustrated and will express why and tell me to deal with my son. So I do.

First I check my own state of "feeling". If angry then I must calm and clear all thoughts. No one thinks when angry, they react.
Kids will use this, and some are truly demon seeds. But even so, the parent will fail if prodded to anger by the kid.

Normally the "bad" actions of the kid are a sign, one of a need for change. That change can be many at one time.
The most critical is for the parent to change. What worked before becomes a trap.

So I progress, but this takes direct feedback from my son.
Normally the defenses only drop if we converse calmly for some time, more if he is nervous. After all I am a very strong, 230lb man. So he needs to feel he isn't going to strike an angry reaction.

But then we are all human. If we always react like a flower child to our kids we are not human. They do need to see we have feelings, become hurt, happy, angry, stressed, and all.
I find those who try to fake it, fail.

So I am honest with my son. If he really angers me, he sees that. But that is absolutely NOT the time to discipline or solve the problem.
At that moment of anger, I tell him I will deal with the problem later.

This shows a control he should learn. He will no doubt become angry at his future kids too.

I had to make this happen, as my father was a hit and ask later type. He was seriously abused, not just by parents, but hit and "smacked" at school.
I too faced this, as they "spanked" in my elementary school. The kids at that school were often hateful and violent. It was very hard to get through any given day without some kind of fight, anger or name calling.

So often the parents had to deal with a kid who was abused from school by the school and all the other kids.
It's is not easy to break that chain.

It can and did destroy the relationship of my brother and sister to my father.
That never changed, right to the day of his death.

In my case, however, I broke the chain of abuse with him, and he and I had a good relationship, even though he didn't approve of my life choices often.
I did so by calm spoken words at the very young age of 15. He was a skeptical man, so much so we feared sitting down for dinner each night.

We can be trapped by our past, and that of others. It is our choice to stop it. I can say that in my 40's much of my study was devoted to ensuring religious abuse would never enter my life again, or that of my son. This has proved to be an interesting thing, as my son wanders through each step of his spiritual evolution.

His resentment of historical wrongs is very strong, and his need to fully understand is just as real.

To grasp all that must be done, and to really take a responsible role in challenging abuse, in all it's forms is a life long, day by day, all encompassing task.
It is in every part of our life, some times obvious and other times not.

Honesty is the foundation to this task. compassion must be for all and the self.

And now and then we must simply face it and say "F#@k NO! I WILL find a better way." Once we get committed enough and challenge abuse, saying this gets easy.
It does surprise people at times.

[DJ Droood]

I agree with what is being said, but I think it is good not too be too judgemental, especially of young parents. Being a parent any time is stressful, but when you are in your 20's, you are still developing as an adult yourself, and there are usually a boatload of concerns in your life...money, getting established, transitioning from "me me me" to "kid kid kid"...I know I matured and improved as a parent as I got older, and try to remember what it was like being a green 25 year old dad. I think hitting and yelling is bad parenting, but most kids can survive getting a smack on the bum once in awhile without needing therapy later.

[Merlyn]

I am not at all a perfect parent, and we have to understand that not many if any are.
The first thing to realize is how we are and have been abused. We must seek friends and speak to this and learn. Disclosure of past abuse can be very difficult.
We most often have suppressed it, gotten past it or adapted. Rarely have we truly faced it or resolved it. Then we must recognize it is still going on.
Eventually we can learn. And when we do, we find it in just about everything. It is truly a sad thing in today's evolved society.

Our parents were not perfect, learned as they went.
Dad was too harsh, mom too easy and the trouble that caused resulted in my sis living with them until just a few months before they passed, having to be forcibly removed because she was bullying them and they were in their 70s & 80s. She never attended either parent's burial. I had to bury them both, keeping their ashes on my mantle until the time came.
Neither my brother or sister would. Only after many discussions was I able to get help from my brother. He has progressed since, very well. But this took a lot of effort.

I had to do an intervention on my sister. This abuse was all being hidden from me, but as I came to care for my parents in their last years they could no longer hide it. As my father was struggling through his last few years, my brother was sending hate mail, and calling him anything but father.

This was indeed one of the most difficult times of my life..

Being the youngest, it all fell to me to resolve. And I can say I still struggle with it to this day. And as I face my son, I must be honest. I know no other way.
And I have to trust he will understand. I need his help. He needs mine. We are what matters, and he needs to know this, every day.

[SidheAingeal]

I agree with what is being said, but I think it is good not too be too judgemental, especially of young parents. Being a parent any time is stressful, but when you are in your 20's, you are still developing as an adult yourself, and there are usually a boatload of concerns in your life...money, getting established, transitioning from "me me me" to "kid kid kid"...I know I matured and improved as a parent as I got older, and try to remember what it was like being a green 25 year old dad. I think hitting and yelling is bad parenting, but most kids can survive getting a smack on the bum once in awhile without needing therapy later.

I do agree that it's important to keep this in mind. I am one of those young parents and I have discovered that it's only when you have a kid that you realise how selfish you were before. It's a difficult transition from being able to, say, have a shower whenever you feel like, and having to attend to your child first before you do anything else. You also realise how infuriating kids can be just by being kids!

I think it's also important to remember that ALL parents, regardless of age and experience, make mistakes. Good parents, in my opinion, recognise their mistakes and use the lessons learned from them to improve their parenting.

[Sencha]

I think it's also important to remember that ALL parents, regardless of age and experience, make mistakes. Good parents, in my opinion, recognise their mistakes and use the lessons learned from them to improve their parenting.

I think it's important to remember that all children make mistakes too. That doesn't justify using violence against them.

[SidheAingeal]

I think it's also important to remember that ALL parents, regardless of age and experience, make mistakes. Good parents, in my opinion, recognise their mistakes and use the lessons learned from them to improve their parenting.

I think it's important to remember that all children make mistakes too. That doesn't justify using violence against them.

Nothing justifies violence against anyone.