The uproar over a California assemblywoman's announcement that she wants to make it illegal for parents to spank their own toddlers
I was spanked when it was needed as a kid. I've spanked my daughter when it was needed.
Someone trying to force a law on how I raise my kid can come and live in my house. Then I'd spank her too.
This chick should concentrate her concern on the thousands of homeless kids in this country who don't even have food, family or shelter. How about fixing the foster care system.
I'm sure it's necessary for some parents to use corporal punishment in order to raise their children right. But, I can't help but think it's somewhat amusing that I managed to make it to my teen years as an honor roll student who basically never got into trouble without ever needing a spanking. When I screwed up, I got grounded, but that's all it took.
Of course, once I hit puberty, rules and grades took a backseat to just about everything, and I paid heavily with a good all-around beating every now and then.
But, when I hear parents say their kids won't listen sometimes without a spanking, I just have to wonder why some kids do and some don't. Are the ones who don't need a spanking more intuitive?
I know this is going to sound ultra-crazy, but I think spankings are for the poor and middle class. Of course, there are going to be exceptions, but I'm talking about the norm.
I had the unusual experience of growing up in both poor and extremely well-to-do neighborhoods. So, half of my childhood was spent around hanging the lower class kids, and the other half hanging around the filthy stinking rich.
I honestly don't think it's my imagination when I say that there is an incredibly obvious difference between the way the different classes raise their kids. For one, physical punishment is so much more commonplace amongst the poor. It's almost unheard of amongst the rich.
Of course, I didn't go around taking surveys, but you could just tell. It was just plain to see that most of my rich friends had never had a finger laid on them in their entire life.
And these kids grow up to be normal human beings. They do well in school and do well in life. A guy I've known for 15 yrs was never spanked and he is now very financially secure to say the least. He's never laid a finger on his kids and probably never will. It just isn't in his wife's or his nature. I've never seen the two of them get angry about anything.
The whole, "If you don't spank your kids, then they will never learn discipline," is just a total and complete myth. I do acknowledge that there are some pretty screwed up kids out there who never received anything even resembling a spanking, but I am convinced it's because those kids are also being neglected.
I heard a guy call into a radio station one day and say, "If parents are going to stop spanking their kids, then we had better start building more prisons and juvenile detention facilities." I take it that this person had never stepped foot in either in his entire life. To say that spankings are what is keeping our incarcerated population to a minimum is absurd. Most of those kids have tales of beatings and severe neglect to tell, and most of those adults have childhoods that fall under those same circumstances.
I correlate corporal punishment to income because I believe that a person's ability to succeed in life is dependant on his/her ability to persevere, which requires patience and plenty of self-confidence.
By using physical punishment to reinforce behavior, the assumption is made that the child is not capable of following directions without the threat of physical force and that patience isn't the virtue that we'd like to observe it to be. And so it grows up thinking that it really "needed" to be spanked and that it wasn't "deserving" of patience. And while the symptoms of these beliefs may not be obvious, they might just serve as that subtle difference between a person who is successful and a person who just "respects authority."
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I was spanked when it was needed as a kid. I've spanked my daughter when it was needed.
Someone trying to force a law on how I raise my kid can come and live in my house. Then I'd spank her too.
This chick should concentrate her concern on the thousands of homeless kids in this country who don't even have food, family or shelter. How about fixing the foster care system.
IMO it's all a PR ploy.
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Of course, once I hit puberty, rules and grades took a backseat to just about everything, and I paid heavily with a good all-around beating every now and then.
But, when I hear parents say their kids won't listen sometimes without a spanking, I just have to wonder why some kids do and some don't. Are the ones who don't need a spanking more intuitive?
I know this is going to sound ultra-crazy, but I think spankings are for the poor and middle class. Of course, there are going to be exceptions, but I'm talking about the norm.
I had the unusual experience of growing up in both poor and extremely well-to-do neighborhoods. So, half of my childhood was spent around hanging the lower class kids, and the other half hanging around the filthy stinking rich.
I honestly don't think it's my imagination when I say that there is an incredibly obvious difference between the way the different classes raise their kids. For one, physical punishment is so much more commonplace amongst the poor. It's almost unheard of amongst the rich.
Of course, I didn't go around taking surveys, but you could just tell. It was just plain to see that most of my rich friends had never had a finger laid on them in their entire life.
And these kids grow up to be normal human beings. They do well in school and do well in life. A guy I've known for 15 yrs was never spanked and he is now very financially secure to say the least. He's never laid a finger on his kids and probably never will. It just isn't in his wife's or his nature. I've never seen the two of them get angry about anything.
The whole, "If you don't spank your kids, then they will never learn discipline," is just a total and complete myth. I do acknowledge that there are some pretty screwed up kids out there who never received anything even resembling a spanking, but I am convinced it's because those kids are also being neglected.
I heard a guy call into a radio station one day and say, "If parents are going to stop spanking their kids, then we had better start building more prisons and juvenile detention facilities." I take it that this person had never stepped foot in either in his entire life. To say that spankings are what is keeping our incarcerated population to a minimum is absurd. Most of those kids have tales of beatings and severe neglect to tell, and most of those adults have childhoods that fall under those same circumstances.
I correlate corporal punishment to income because I believe that a person's ability to succeed in life is dependant on his/her ability to persevere, which requires patience and plenty of self-confidence.
By using physical punishment to reinforce behavior, the assumption is made that the child is not capable of following directions without the threat of physical force and that patience isn't the virtue that we'd like to observe it to be. And so it grows up thinking that it really "needed" to be spanked and that it wasn't "deserving" of patience. And while the symptoms of these beliefs may not be obvious, they might just serve as that subtle difference between a person who is successful and a person who just "respects authority."
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