Originally posted by MosMom
I would still love to see someone answer my question about why it is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE to hit anyone else in society except our children. Your boss can't hit you for making mistakes. Why is it okay to hit our children? I don't get it. Where is the distinction?
I guess I can take a stab at this. The reason boils down to the fact that children are CHILDREN and not LITTLE ADULTS. By the time a child becomes an adult, they had better well realize that every action they have will have consequences. No, they will not get spanked if they make a mistake at their job... instead they may be fired for incompetency and left with a spouse and 2 kids to feed without a job. Some children have difficulty making that connection (and it seems like lately more and more young adults do as well). For those children, a swat on the behind can send a strong, basic message that is not subject to interpretation based on their age and maturity level and ability to understand abstract concepts.
Positive reinforcement is a wonderful tool for working with kids, but without an understanding that if you screw up there are going to be negative consequences, you wind up with an obnoxious teen/young adult who is stunned when they don't get positive reinforcement every step of the way and even more stunned when they have to face negative consequences for their actions. I don't believe that children who grow up understanding that there are negative consequences for poor behavior grow up with their spirit squashed, although a little healthy respect and fear for what an authority figure might do if you screw up is not a bad thing.
Some kids are easy. I was that kind of a kid. If my parents said to me "we are very disappointed in your behavior" it was worse than if they took away any privileges. My sister, on the other hand, was stubborn as all heck and when she was little the only thing she responded to was a spanking. When she got older, privileges were taken away.
I can't speak for others but I'm not saying that every kid needs to be spanked in order to be a good kid or even that MOST kids should be spanked. I'm not saying that every parent who doesn't spank isn't doing their job. I have seen a couple of kids who definitely seem like they could do with a swat now and again, and not for doing normal kid things or being naturally curious, but rather for behaviors that are completely unacceptable (my aforementioned biting example for one thing.)
I'm not saying that positive reinforcement should not be used. In fact, I think positive reinforcement is a great tool to use as long as you don't overuse it to the point where you basically have to bribe your kids to behave. If taking away privileges does the trick and your kid behaves well, wonderful! If putting your kid in a time out works, bravo! I don't mean to sound flippant but you should consider yourself lucky that your kid has the type of personality where these things have meaning to them. I really hope that these methods will work with my own kids someday.
Some kids can't or won't respond well to those kinds of things and for those kids, an alternate form of discipline needs to be used. I don't think parents who use a method by which their child will understand very quickly that what they just did has serious consequences (ie spanking) are bad or abusive parents for it.
Like I said before, a friend of mine was very anti-spanking before she had her first little boy. She can talk to him until she is blue in the face but what stopped him from yanking on the dog's tail was a swat for it. What stopped him from throwing his entire body against the windows in their house when he was having a temper tantrum was a swat for it. She is NOT a bad parent for spanking her child (who, btw, does not have any issues with beating up other kids in preschool). If she had let him pull the dog's tail until the dog turned around and bit him, she would be a bad parent. If she let him throw himself into the windows until he went crashing through, she would be a bad parent. Raising a safe and happy child through methods that work for her does not makes her a good parent.
For them, simply telling them NO and redirecting their scratching from the couch to the cat trees didn't work. So I started shooting their backsides with a water gun - if they could talk, I'd bet they claim it as spanking. That worked. Now I use positive reinforcement whenever I see them using their cat posts, and I haven't had to even pick up the water gun in a year.
