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Smacking Children

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13:32 / 21.12.05

Yeah, actually the little one has, in mid-freakout, been asked, "Do you want to go in time out?" and, between screams, answered "Yes!" and resolutely marched in her room. And has been fine two minutes later. Just needed some time doing something other than freaking out over the paper that won't get cut right or the crayon that keeps breaking or whatever. She can get awfully obsessive-compulsive over things.

14:42 / 21.12.05

How did we express contempt for poor people before Little Britain? Haus

%Yes, it's a good job those lads invented derogatory class rhetoric or where would we be?/%
Feel free to rename the antagonist in the story of my mum on the bus Gwendolyn or Beyonce or Natasha, whatever you prefer. Just FYI, 'Gwendolyn' wasn't poor, in fact she's from the same area as me, from the same school, almost certainly from a richer background than I am and was rude to my Mum- I have slender sympathies for her. My derogation comes from her behaviour not her background, but I'll concede using little-britain-ese is a bit tasteless, and will desist.

Quantum, I think your analysis of cause and effect here is just plain wrong Weapons

I think it's very generous to call my mumbled opinion an 'analysis', point taken- especially about the hysterical media stories. "..to brand young people in general as ‘a problem’ would run counter to the evidence and make it harder to respond effectively to the minority whose behaviour does cause problems.”

It turns out (according to The Home Office) the number of young offenders hasn't risen in the past 5 years in the UK, but three-quarters of survey respondents believed it had risen. My bad, I was one of those who unfoundedly thought it had.
I think incidences of violent crime by (and especially between) young people have increased, but it seems it's a few young people committing more serious crimes mostly due to drunkenness, peer pressure, deprivation and troubled home lives. Smacking's clearly not the answer to these problems.
But as a negative reinforcement of important lessons (Don't run into the road!) I think it has it's place. I also don't see what a big deal it is TBH, if you're a loving sensible parent (i.e. not going to beat the kid), how is it more harmful than the naughty step?

wembley can change in 28 days

09:06 / 30.12.05

I always come into these discussions late when they're half-rotted.

But when Jack said The intimidation has nothing to do with the actuial physical force used. It's intimidating because it's shocking—the short, sharp shock.It's a disrupter—a bucket of cold water I was very much in agreement.

I didn't get smacked often as a child, and I remember the two main occasions: one when I got too adventurous near a busy road (quick smack on the bottom from mom) and once when I first (and for the only time thus far) used the f-word in front of my dad (quick smack from dad). I remember with the swearing one that I was really upset - not because it hurt or anything, but I was practically traumatized by the knowledge that now I'd really done something wrong. Basically I was also a pretty good kid, I wasn't asking for it. But the "short, sharp shock" made me remember what I had been doing at the time and the message sunk in - at a time when I was clearly unable to make those judgements for myself.

Here's a thought: to what extent are children more like animals? Whenever my dog did something unacceptable, like try to bite somebody or poo on the rug, she'd get a smack on the nose with a newspaper. Did this work? Well, basically yes - although we didn't have a control k-9 running amok and chewing slippers without punishment. The dog would certainly exhibit behaviour that indicated some level of understanding or recognition. But, as the theory goes, you have to be nearly instantaneous with the newspaper reaction or the dog doesn't get the logic.

But children: they're little people, real people sure enough, but sometimes they lack that extra life experience to judge the rate of an oncoming car. Does this lack of judgement make them a bit more like (other) animals?

(So short answer, yes it is acceptable on very rare occasions, for Pavlovian traffic conditioning.)

17:59 / 30.12.05

Whenever my dog did something unacceptable, like try to bite somebody or poo on the rug, she'd get a smack on the nose with a newspaper. Did this work? Well, basically yes - although we didn't have a control k-9 running amok and chewing slippers without punishment. The dog would certainly exhibit behaviour that indicated some level of understanding or recognition. But, as the theory goes, you have to be nearly instantaneous with the newspaper reaction or the dog doesn't get the logic.

Don't get me starting on hitting dogs, please... whole nother thread.

18:55 / 30.12.05

What is the equivalent of a "Mind Spank"? Joking aside, I'm somewhat vague about what you mean - how would I go about causing pain to someone's mind?

Late to the party here, but I don't think anyone's answered this question yet -since Loomis was talking specifically about mentally hurting a child, I think that this would be done quite easily by something like guilt tripping. The kind of thing that sounds like a rational telling off ("Don't do that bad thing, because a (named) painful consequences, caused entirely by yourself, will ensue") but is in fact full of concepts a child can't (I wouldn't have thought at least) deal with. Something like "when you do that it makes mummy feel sad. Don't you love mummy? Why are you making her sad?". I think that kind of thing can actually make a child perceive the parent / child relationship to be far less stable than it is (should be) -does the fact that I (hypothetical child) have been bad mean I don't, in fact, love mummy? If mummy is made sufficiently sad, will she cease to love me? If mummy makes me sad, does that mean that she loves me less? and so on, and so forth.

This might be because I generally have a dread of this kind of guilt tripping, my parents being so unerringly direct throughout my childhood that my wee pal's parents seemed, by contrast, like something through the Looking Glass (they in their turn, thought me unseemingly rude) -but I do think that kind of thing is fairly damaging and, where it happens, is seen as much less of a last resort than a skelp around the arse.

(The 'last resort' comment obviously purely based on experience -as a child I never saw any of my friends smacked but more than once heard them guilt tripped)

19:29 / 30.12.05

My mom told my little sister all the time "you're going to give me an ulcer" when she was irritating her... and then one day she was in fact hospitalized and had to have surgery on a ruptured ulcer. My sister was completely traumatized (age 9 at the time), had a fit of hysterics for having "caused" my mom's illness. I'd say that was a pretty big Mind Spanking.

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