First - from the feel of assorted posts here - I think this discussion has appeared to single out Imrahil, both from the tone of his responses, and that he is the most vocal person on the side of spanking 'not being that bad'. I just want to be clear that I am NOT singling him out, I am using what was shared by many, with his phrasing simply being the clearest global argument on the side of spanking not being that bad (others gave more specific examples). From what has been shared I do
not feel he (or anyone who has spoken up here) would be/is a 'bad parent'. Do I agree with everything anyone has said here? No, including some things said on the 'anti-spank' side [but I have been near tears from mental exhaustion for the last five days and cannot afford to address everything, probably should not have done this much].
With that in mind...
So you don't want to hit your kid; ok. That doesn't make it "abuse" if someone else chooses to discipline differently, any more than it's "abuse" if someone else lets their kid watch 10 hours of TV a day.
I don't understand your point. Two wrongs don't make two rights.
My point is that calling it "abuse" is an abuse of the term. There are legitimate cases of child abuse that happen. Occasional spankings are not even remotely in the same category, and this hyperbole is ridiculous.
It is true: a swat on the rump to get a kid's attention is quite different than hitting a kid until it bleeds or breaking a bone. But a good rule of thumb is that any time a parent uses a 'weapon' (anything other than it's open hand on a kid's clothed butt, alternatives being a switch, a ping-pong paddle, or stripping its clothes off to swat it's butt, whatever) it falls in the category of abuse.
The swat on the rump never has the exact desired effect (research in learning shows this). Of all the ways to alter behavior, physical punishment is the least likely to get the desired result, with the largest chance of getting unwanted 'side' results. [Retrospective studies show that the pain involved associates to whatever the child is
thinking at a given time, FAR more than what it is physically
doing. With a child whose attention is not specifically on what the parent wants to change, then the pain/punishment results in unwanted effects, because the child associates it with its thought.]
A key issue as far as how damaging different types of punishment work is the temperament of the child which varies tremendously. The exact same punishment (say: spanking) can be responded to in many ways by the child. They can become timid, afraid to deal with the world or stand up for themselves even when they are right ('learned helplessness', possibly the most common response); they can spend their lives depressed without being able to figure out why; they can develop fears that can express as anything from obsessive compulsive behavior, to perfectionism, to anxiety disorders with or without panic attacks with no 'source' they can figure out; they can become hardened to the world, where what is done to them is ignored &/or they are indifferent to the suffering of others (because they had to be indifferent to their own); they can become generally angry and cynical and doubt whether empathy is a reasonable response to anything; they can become domineering and want to control everything in their environment, including others' behavior (lot of this with extreme religious or political types); they can become passive-aggressive because this was the only way to 'get back' at the person who hit them without being hit again; or they can become bullies, who transfer their own being hit into hitting others. For pain/punishment to result in any of those (or others) it qualifies as abuse. There is probably a very, very tiny group who respond to being hit by a parent (swatted on the butt on up) where that treatment had minimal effect on their overall thoughts and reaction to life. But I've actually never met anyone where that was true, in - or out - of doing therapy.
Part of what Variety of Cells said, is also what Imrahil was saying (though he was focused more on the legal or Psychological use of the term),
Spankings fit the definition of abuse, but probably not the definition of child abuse, depending on the severity. The point of a spanking is to inflict pain, sometimes more psychological pain than physical, which seems to match nicely with: "to treat in a harmful, injurious, or offensive way". I wouldn't even consider it a stretch. But again, child abuse means something different.
the strict dictionary definition of 'abuse' fits spanking. But what Imrahil was saying is that it does not fit the legal or Psychological definition.
Effectively, for me, anything that ended up with someone in my office seeking therapy for either actions or feelings they could not understand constituted abuse. Didn't matter the severity of the treatment objectively, but how their temperament as a child reacted to it. Since a majority of parents seem to not be tuned in enough to their child to determine what effects such things as spanking will have on their child, and since punishment (especially yelling or hitting) is the least effective method for behavior change (with the highest rate of unwanted side-effects of any of them), and because of all that I saw while practicing, I am basically against it.
But based on the law, there are only upper limits on what a parent can do to their child while raising it. So I just try to share what I know, and parents - knowing that - can do as they please, hopefully armed with a little more information so that they can make a more informed decision than they might have otherwise, on how the way they treat their child may affect its personality.
Topic: Completely Random Thoughts (Read 2032338 times)
