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Child Discipline

Viki said:
Wait, what? I'm confused now.
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I think what Light's saying is that you never know how someone's going to respond to discipline, and that if it's either no discipline at all (in the case that nothing else works prior ie grounding or something to that end) or spanking it's better to have been spanked and risk it then never to have any sort of discipline work at all.

Which makes a little sense, sick as it is.
 
Mohacastle said:
I've been trying to convey that the entire time! Should've used an analogy.
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Yes, but this 'Pascal's Wager' idea of better to have been spanked or never disciplined at all is not the best idea.

I get it. But instead of spanking, which is a 'now' punishment, there are alternatives. You need to solve the underlying problem when you are disciplining someone, which a lot of the time, (especially younger children) spanking has no effect. If you get spanked regularly from a young age not only is your relationship with your parents going to go to shit, but it could lead to the theory of violence being a solution to problems. Which is bad.

It could also lead to kids thinking, "Well if I do this, I'll just get spanked, so I'll do it and get it over with." Instead of something else, like say grounding or taking away something important.

My parents did that. They'd take something away I'd been looking forward to. They'd threaten things like not letting me go to camp that year, or something like that.
 
Seriously, I think everyone should have a crash course in Parental Psychology if they're going to have a kid. It should be a requirement.
 
Light said:
Seriously, I think everyone should have a crash course in Parental Psychology if they're going to have a kid. It should be a requirement.
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Aah, I know you're being sarcastic but I'm obliged to say that this is the worst idea in the history of forever! The tiny bit of libertarian in me screams at this in terror.
 
Scyther said:
Aah, I know you're being sarcastic but I'm obliged to say that this is the worst idea in the history of forever! The tiny bit of libertarian in me screams at this in terror.
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Actually, I'm being completely serious.

What's so different about it than requiring you take english or biology?
 
The bit where you're presumably requiring parenting licenses.

How about making that sort of thing a high school requirement class?
 
A class that's required to graduate from high school? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Perhaps there could be a free government class you could take in order to get reduced costs on certain goods once the child is born.

But as far as requiring it in order to actually have a child? That's really, really scary to me.
 
Light said:
Seriously, I think everyone should have a crash course in Parental Psychology if they're going to have a kid. It should be a requirement.
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it's not like everybody plans to have kids, though!
 
it's also not like only parents are involved in raising kids. and really, if you tried going down the requiring a parenting license, how would this be enforced ...
 
In my state you can drop out of high school in 10th grade. And it seems like it would be most effective at a time when it actually felt applicable, like when you're wanting kids.

As far as enforcement goes, I mean, the gov't is gonna know about the child obviously so I don't see people being able to cheat the system. I don't think anyone would want someone without a "parenting license" to have their children taken away from them until they took the class (or whatever), but there could be meaningful consequences, like tax penalties.
 
Ooh, good idea, driving families into poverty if they don't agree with you on parental psychology.

Since there are people who feel that children should be beat if their parent considers it a 'last resort', then wow nope I hope a 'crash course' or parental license are not things that ever happen. What if the people telling parents to beat their kids are the ones who decide on licenses!

A 'how to not be an awful parent' class would be good, except again I'd want the syllabus to follow "never purposefully hurt your child" lines, so how exactly do you feel about that!
 
Just so you guys know, some schools already have theses classes, though they are elective... It's called Child Development.
 
They also exist here, but are actually about, like, actual child development. Presumably everyone's talking about a mandatory "how to not drop your child on its head and other fables" sort of affair.
 
Cirrus said:
Ooh, good idea, driving families into poverty if they don't agree with you on parental psychology.
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You don't have to agree with what you're being taught to learn it?

A 'how to not be an awful parent' class would be good, except again I'd want the syllabus to follow "never purposefully hurt your child" lines, so how exactly do you feel about that!
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If you had taken the time to understand my views you would know that that is the kind of syllabus I'd support.

Cirrus said:
Since there are people who feel that children should be beat if their parent considers it a 'last resort', then wow nope I hope a 'crash course' or parental license are not things that ever happen.
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Way to completely misrepresent everything I said. I am done talking to you.

And actually, I mean like a real psychology class, put together by academics, with some rigor. They have parental psychology at my college; that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. If it's based in real psychology and devised by leaders in the field, that's pretty objective.
 
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I don't really understand anything about child psychology or anything, nor do I fully understand most of what is being said about emotional scarring. I'm going to post my opinion anyway, though, because I feel the need.

I used to spanked. My mom even had a bright red paddle with little flowers she painted on it. My dad never actually spanked me, but if I was being "bad," he'd make snapping noises with his belt, which usually scared me straight.

I was scared to be spanked, and the worst part wasn't the actual paddling, it was usually when I was forced to sit on my bed and wait for her to get the paddle. Well, my mom is a small woman, and when I was about 11, my brother and I got in trouble for fighting. So we got a couple spanks with the paddle. And we looked at each other and said, "Well, that didn't hurt at all!"

Turns out my mom had never really swung that hard at us. She depended on us to make it worse than it was. And once we realized it didn't hurt, the paddle was in the trash and we just got grounded. I figure my dad never spanked us because it would have actually hurt if he did it.

I don't know, I'm not that opposed to "discipline." I certainly am opposed to it being in schools. Parents should deal with kids themselves. The only thing I'm opposed to is "time out," because I have never once witnessed that work. It's like grounding a kid for five minutes.

Anyway, make what you will of my little story. That's just me.
 
Okay. I have been trying not to go in this thrad and post my opinions, but I must say that I'm annoyed.

I am against spanking. Because, to me, it seems like it isn't right to smack anybody for any reason. If an adult were to smack another adult, there would be a police report filed for domestic violence, assault, or something of the like. But, if you were to do it to your chid, it's "discipline". I don't think it's fair in any way whatsoever. And, some children won't learn from a spank, but instead getting something taken away, or being grounded. I'm very appalled at how it is "never okay to hit a woman", but you can hit a child? If someone can explain this logic to me, perhaps I'll understand.

And I hope I didn't annoy anyone just now. I'm sorry if I did. I respect everyone's opinions, so I hope you guys will respect mine.
 
Spanking is for parents who can't control their emotions and have no authority over their kids and thus resort to force to keep them in line. If you have to resort to spanking, you're doing something else wrong first in the parenting.

And parental psychology classes would be ignored like English and biology class are now. There are just a lot of people who cannot be good parents out there and their environment should somehow discourage them from having children for their own sake. They should never outlaw it - just softly discourage them and ask "do you think you can handle this?" And then there will always be problem cases but at least we can minimize both the damage to our population and we can also combat overpopulation at the same time.

The real problem is you can't stop people from having sex, and you can't stop bad parents from wanting children because it's their right. You can outlaw spanking but the problem is you can't really enforce it unless it's a public institute. But I guess you can try and ban it the same way rape is outlawed, but my guess is most of it will go unreported.
 
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