Do you believe spanking is an appropriate discipline for a child?

[Homburg]

I think you're seriously creating a strawman

I don't think there's a faction/viewpoint in this discussion that hasn't played the straw man card at least once, and some have done the exact same version you mentioned with different objects switched out.

 

[ownedsubgal]

Kids need consequences. The alternative to a whack on the bum is not the absence of consequences.

didn't say that at all, just trying to make a point about how easy a parent can go too far over the other end, particularly when they've had an abusive childhood themselves.

i don't recall anyone stating that physical correction is the one and only way to handle things, but it seems that some don't want to acknowledge that physical correction, appropriately doled out, can be and has been very effective for many children, and for particular children MORE effective than most or all other methods.

 

[ownedsubgal]

Kids need consequences. The alternative to a whack on the bum is not the absence of consequences.

oh and btw, my Dad did believe in "consequences," just no scary ones. i personally need scary consequences.

 

[Netzach]

oh and btw, my Dad did believe in "consequences," just no scary ones. i personally need scary consequences.

I'd often wish someone would hit me rather than listen to the B- psychodrama yet again. Whatever the mental judo was, it worked well on me, though, at least if "she got good grades" is your measure of success in life, and it's part of a healthy standard, at least.

If I'd been hit for reasons other than not having an adult attention span, or being 8 or 12 or whatever age, or my mother was taking too much shit from her parents again and I happened to pile on some trivial amount of child-shit I would probably say it had positive effect on me all said and done. I found myself envious of people who had anything approaching that positive 'wow I feel good there are boundaries" experience at home - there were boundaries, but figuring out what they were on any given day was my chief art form. I found that experience of regimentation and logic at school, and I'm glad I was able to. I'm sure I would be considerably worse off had I not.

Obviously it didn't involve CP in that context. But it was much more effective discipline than anything that came out of my own house.

 

[satindesire]

Late to things here, and don't really want to stir up a ginormous fight or anything... but seriously?

A child that young (under 3, for example) understands they've been hit. Period. By someone who (hopefully) loves and snuggles and kisses them. [which, lets be honest - can be somewhat confusing] There is no correlation of "I did X therefore...", because developmentally their brains are not complex enough to process the information [spanking] that directly yet.

Pushing buttons, or reaching for electrical outlets, or pushing limits is a game called learning. Will a flick on the hand damage a child, and lead to massive therapy later in life? Probably not. Will it inhibit their natural curiosity/willingness to get in "trouble" in order to learn something new (necessary in the learning process)? Pretty much. My primary job as a mother was to create a safe enough environment for them to learn [especially when very young].

The punishment should fit the rule broken. I would not smack my baby for pushing a button over and over again, are you KIDDING ME to even suggest that?!

Spankings are NOT THE ONLY PUNISHMENT I WOULD USE. When appropriate, when necessary, then yes. Obviously. When not appropriate and when not necessary, why LOGICALLY would I do that?

I find the people in this thread who are seeming to try and put words in our (the people who are willing to spank) mouths almost stubbornly ignoring the fact that we (the willing spankers...good name for a band, off topic there...) would not abuse our child in anger and maliciousness, and we only spank when necessary and when appropriate. Yet no matter how many times I myself or others have said "ONLY WHEN NECESSARY", still it's like they view us as saying spanking is the ONLY punishment we see fit to mete out on our children, for the smallest infraction.

Ridiculous!

 

[ataxia.girl]

I'd often wish someone would hit me rather than listen to the B- psychodrama yet again. Whatever the mental judo was, it worked well on me, though, at least if "she got good grades" is your measure of success in life, and it's part of a healthy standard, at least.

If I'd been hit for reasons other than not having an adult attention span, or being 8 or 12 or whatever age, or my mother was taking too much shit from her parents again and I happened to pile on some trivial amount of child-shit I would probably say it had positive effect on me all said and done. I found myself envious of people who had anything approaching that positive 'wow I feel good there are boundaries" experience at home - there were boundaries, but figuring out what they were on any given day was my chief art form. I found that experience of regimentation and logic at school, and I'm glad I was able to. I'm sure I would be considerably worse off had I not.

Obviously it didn't involve CP in that context. But it was much more effective discipline than anything that came out of my own house.

If she had screamed at you or made you stay in your room for hours on end to get you out of her way it likely would have had a similar effect. Capricious "punishment" is capricious punishment regardless of the delivery.

i know because i can see it in my children's eyes when i have yelled (screamed) at them when they didn't deserve it, when it had nothing to do with teaching them or parenting them in any way. They aren't afraid of being spanked but they are still afraid of mommy's temper. i don't happen to hit when i get angry, irrationally angry, but it still hurts my family and i know it feels very random and unpredictable to my children. Its like i can see what is happening but cannot figure out how to stop it. The two oldest especially try to make me feel better. They try to take care of me when that isn't their job. i'm supposed to take care of them. They are only 6 and 8.

i just don't live in some ideal world where i'm some kind of perfect parent who only does things the "right" way. i'm me with all my problems and all my baggage and i have 4 children who need me and count on me. i do the best that i can. i take my meds and see my therapist and try to deal with my shit but i know my children are going to suffer some consequences from mommy's instability. i'm terrified the oldest will grow up only to seek out unstable women to "save." The 6 year old i'm worried for just because i see so much of me in her and i know that pretty much no matter how her life goes she is going to struggle.

my husband and i go back and forth on how much to shelter the kids from mommy's problems. On the one hand we don't want to hide it and shelter them from it because in many ways i think this does them a disservice. Life isn't perfect. People are flawed and children will always suffer some consequences from that. To believe otherwise is, i think, very naive. A small fraction of people are going to grow up thinking their childhood was great. The rest of us grow up wounded and damaged in some way to varying degrees and we carry those wounds with us into our own parenting.

my kids know there's something not quite right about mommy. We don't really hide it from them. i think i am *mostly* successful at making sure they don't bear the brunt of my hostility\resentment\whatever. i have an irrational hatred and anger towards the mormon church in large part because i am terrified of what would happen if all that rage was somehow directed closer to home. i work on it and its getting better. i have the intelligence, perspective, means and support that enable me to do what is necessary to get better enough to mitigate the capriciousness they might otherwise suffer.

my anger\bi-polar\PTSD\BPD\whatever has basically nothing to do with my philosophy on spanking. Nothing.

i don't hit in anger. That doesn't mean my anger doesn't hurt them.

 

[ataxia.girl]

Because Net talked about her own mother and her problems i am going to relate something. 3 months ago i attempted suicide, and i mean really attempted it. The nanny had not shown up AGAIN. i was dealing with my boss and her unreasonable expectations of perfection and dealing with the kids. We had all just had swine flu and no one was really themselves but we weren't really still sick (that fucking thing lingers). i had dealt with the unreliable nanny for months, my boss had told me i had to fix my nanny situation so i let the one i had, whom i was very attached to, go and got another one. When she didn't show up and we were only into the second week i just had a meltdown. It wasn't any one thing. It was this expectation that i take care of all these kids and make six figures working from home and navigate all the corporate politics and those fucking mormons basically get away with stealing my life without suffering any consequences.

So... with my two little ones watching blues clues i downed a shit ton of vodka, 30 ativan and about as many tylenol. i just wanted there to be consequences for what they did even if the consequence was me. i wasn't thinking clearly at all. i needed someone to pay for their lies and deceit and i didn't care who it was. i basically when postal on myself. i didn't want to die but i needed someone to. While swallowing was extremely satisfying once the pills were down i immediately understood just what i had done to my family, to my husband, to my children and i called my husband who told me to hang up and dial 911 which i did. The paramedics took me out screaming about mormons and consequences and i continued screaming until i went unconscious in the ER. i woke up in the ICU on a ventilator.

What does this story have to do with this thread? A lot of people here want to make what are basically my own issues about hitting children when they are two very separate things. my baggage is going to hurt my children no matter what i do, all i can do is try to mitigate the damage because i am not naive enough to think they aren't going to be affected, they are.

We spank our kids, together, as parents, because it works for our kids in certain envelope pushing situations. Those are just the kids i have. To me they are quite unique and quite special but oh my fucking god do they like to test boundaries and don't they just know how to do it in the utter most aggravating way. i'm in awe of their talent and equally exasperated as to what to do sometimes. In our home a swiftly delivered spanking is often simply the best route back to peace with the least amount of drama and campaigning.

my children are not afraid of being hit. It doesn't mean there aren't things that make them feel insecure and cautious and its those looks in their eyes that haunt me, not the tears from a swiftly delivered spanking.

The other part of this is my husband comes from a country where CP is the norm. Everyone gets a fair amount of "hidings" growing up. He got them at school. He HATES spanking his kids and he's really terrible at it (hence the giggling). It still works, they still feel loved and they are still far more afraid of mommy's temper than Daddy's strictness. They still come to me for comfort but they know when mommy is in a mood and i know they know. It bothers me, hence the meds and the therapist, but it kind of just is what it is. They don't get perfect childhoods and that is life. We do the best we can by them.

 

[ataxia.girl]

Oh and i find being Santa keeps me up on Christmas eve as much as waiting to see what Santa brought ever did. Hence the 4am Christmas morning post. Oh the joys of mania.

i can't wait to see their faces when they see what Santa brought this year

 

[intothewoods]

For the record, I have said several times in this thread that I believe spanking is a tool that can be used appropriately.

didn't say that at all, just trying to make a point about how easy a parent can go too far over the other end, particularly when they've had an abusive childhood themselves.

i don't recall anyone stating that physical correction is the one and only way to handle things, but it seems that some don't want to acknowledge that physical correction, appropriately doled out, can be and has been very effective for many children, and for particular children MORE effective than most or all other methods.

You were not the first to say that sometimes a kid just needs a spanking, and the need part is what I was and am disagreeing with.

ataxia - I am sorry for your struggles.

 

[satindesire]

*snip*
i don't hit in anger. That doesn't mean my anger doesn't hurt them.

This is totally off topic, but I'm curious, does your therapist know you're in a BDSM relationship? If it's too personal, feel free to not answer.

 

[CutieMouse]

The punishment should fit the rule broken. I would not smack my baby for pushing a button over and over again, are you KIDDING ME to even suggest that?!

I mentioned button pushing in my comment, because "tapping hands" for pushing electronic buttons was mentioned in this very thread. Is that how *I* would deal with a toddler pushing every button on the planet? Nope. do I think a parent who does is a monster? Nope.

Spankings are NOT THE ONLY PUNISHMENT I WOULD USE. When appropriate, when necessary, then yes. Obviously. When not appropriate and when not necessary, why LOGICALLY would I do that?

We're specifically discussing spanking as a discipline tool, because the thread is about spanking.

I find the people in this thread who are seeming to try and put words in our (the people who are willing to spank) mouths almost stubbornly ignoring the fact that we (the willing spankers...good name for a band, off topic there...) would not abuse our child in anger and maliciousness, and we only spank when necessary and when appropriate.

I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth. I can pull quotes if you like. Honestly, I do not loose sleep over the idea of a child being disciplined in a (society approved) manner I personally would not choose. I simply wanted to point out that tapping/smacking (lightly) hands at certain ages may have a different impact on the child than the adult involved intends.

Yet no matter how many times I myself or others have said "ONLY WHEN NECESSARY", still it's like they view us as saying spanking is the ONLY punishment we see fit to mete out on our children, for the smallest infraction.

Ridiculous!

Yet no matter how many times myself or others say it isn't an issue of spank or let a child run wild all over the parent, it's still like they view us as people who roll over for fear of actually parenting.

 

[intothewoods]

<snip>Yet no matter how many times myself or others say it isn't an issue of spank or let a child run wild all over the parent, it's still like they view us as people who roll over for fear of actually parenting.

This is sort of how I feel.

 

[Homburg]

Yet no matter how many times myself or others say it isn't an issue of spank or let a child run wild all over the parent, it's still like they view us as people who roll over for fear of actually parenting.

Were I to hazard a guess, those that are willing to spank might just be feeling like they're being viewed as heavy-handed, incautious, and controlled by their anger, depending on who you're asking.

The core matter is that the whole discussion is impossibly inflammatory as, no matter what side you take, you're core judgements are being challenged, and there is almost no way in which disagreement can be handled that does not challenge those core judgements in a personal way.

 

[CutieMouse]

Were I to hazard a guess, those that are willing to spank might just be feeling like they're being viewed as heavy-handed, incautious, and controlled by their anger, depending on who you're asking.

The core matter is that the whole discussion is impossibly inflammatory as, no matter what side you take, you're core judgments are being challenged, and there is almost no way in which disagreement can be handled that does not challenge those core judgments in a personal way.

Exactly... which is why I tried to be careful and make my rebuttal as closely phrased to Satin's as possible.

I presume every single person in the debate has the same goal in mind - to see children raised to be as responsible, happy and healthy as possible. The only difference is the methodology used. As I said earlier in the thread - spanking is an absolute last resort tool [for me], so one would think non-spankers would be okay with my parenting/discipline, right? Wrong. LOL

No matter how hard you try, or how right you feel you are, someone's going to disagree with how you parent.

 

[FurryFury]

I don't believe anyone is trying to attack anyone in this thread. Some people seem to be taking other people's opinions about this topic as personally directed at them. I haven't seen that be the case.

In my personal experiences will say that some of the worst parents are some of the nicest people I know. They don't tell their kids no and mean it. They don't provide and enforce limits and consequences because they are so darn nice. Their kids are terrible messes and generally unpleasant to be around. I feel this sort of "parenting" is failing the kids, it's neglect.

Ataxia.girl your post about your attempted suicide was pretty horrifying to me as the adult child of a woman who has attempted suicide more times than I can keep track of. I do hope you have a therapist and are working on those issues on an ongoing basis.

*hugs*

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday morning!

 

[caela]

I've taken licks rather than consequences too when given the choice. That should be a clue that licks aren't as effective right there.

lol...Actually the licks were quite effective. I never pulled the same stunt twice with my grandfather. I also think having an active role in my own punishment was part of it's effectiveness however because I'd know that I could have had a punishment that didn't leave my butt hurting but had been the one to choose the spanking over something that wouldn't hurt so that I could go back outside to play much faster.

A lot of it I think just has to do with the individual kid. Some kids learn from a spanking...some just get more stubborn.

 

[caela]

If a "no" is devastating (which seems off to me), that's all the more reason they should hear it. Kids need to learn that sometimes the answer is no.

As I have said before, I know of one parent who has used a quick hand smack with success. I believe it's possible. I have seen no reason to spank, and while I think it's possible for it to be an appropriate tool, I do not believe it is ever necessary or required.

As I mentioned before, my kid was also quite active. I scheduled activities accordingly. I stayed one step ahead of him so he always had something to do and have his hands in. I also found time outs to be quite effective for 15 month olds. To each his own.

Devastating was probably being a bit melodramatic. My point was just that some kids will respond to a "No" right off the bat and some kids won't.

Really it just comes down to what works for the child and the parent. If time outs, explanations, and a firm "No" are all it takes for your child that's wonderful and I'm truly envious. My own daughter doesn't do well with time outs (she will scream like someone is trying to kill her when you try to give her one) but responds quite well to one quick finger smack followed by cuddles and an explanation. All I get with the finger smack is this little scowl that usually cracks me up whereas the time out, typically, has her screaming her lungs out.

Since the finger smack works and is less stressful on both of us, it's what I go with. Is that a bit lazy? Yes but I'm a single mom and after having to deal with whiny, demanding surgeons all day I don't always have the energy to come home and listen to P scream in a time out when a smack to her fingers is much quicker, just as effective, and doesn't bring about the screaming.

 

[JMohegan]

Corporal punishment is a choice made by some parents. It is not necessary. Setting limits and enforcing consequences are necessary; corporal punishment itself is not. It's just one type of negative consequence, chosen, by some, for varying reasons.

Spankers may or may not be abusive parents. Non-spankers may or may not be weak-willed parents, incapable of devising and following through on consequences that deter bad behavior and teach appropriate values.

Can we all agree on the paragraphs above?

 

[FurryFury]

I'd HOPE so!

 

[ataxia.girl]

This is totally off topic, but I'm curious, does your therapist know you're in a BDSM relationship? If it's too personal, feel free to not answer.

i don't know if she knows or not but i think she surmises based on other things i have told her. She refers to Daddy as my affair and i have never referred to him as Daddy to her. At first she assumed the relationship was a bad thing but she's since changed her tune since i have elaborated on some of the more risky behaviors i was engaging in before my relationship with Daddy. Being expected to spend every night that i travel for work with Daddy keeps me out of trouble.

 

[ataxia.girl]

Ataxia.girl your post about your attempted suicide was pretty horrifying to me as the adult child of a woman who has attempted suicide more times than I can keep track of. I do hope you have a therapist and are working on those issues on an ongoing basis.

Once is enough for me and i am. i basically don't ever plan on not being medicated and not seeing a therapist at this point. At least not while we're still raising the kids.

 

[ataxia.girl]

You were not the first to say that sometimes a kid just needs a spanking, and the need part is what I was and am disagreeing with.

i have one for whom this was definitely the case for awhile. She just has a very hard time with impulse control and its not that the spanking really helped her control herself it was more about ending an escalation and her knowing we would go to that level to end it. It honestly made her feel safer knowing that a spanking could and would happen if she pushed things to a certain point. We weren't really trying to teach her by spanking her it was basically about trying to snap her out of an out of control mode she used to get in very frequently. i've seen other parents with very intense children try to talk the kid out of it or send them to their rooms (where they refuse to stay) and all it really does is ruin the entire evening for everyone in the house. Do that every night and pretty soon the whole family is totally dysfunctional because all the energy is focused on one kid all the time. i would talk with her at length and she was upset herself that she was basically unable to stop escalating and bouncing off the walls and physically bothering the other kids once she got into that mode. The last thing i wanted was for her to feel guilty about it.

We questioned whether or not we were doing the right thing but one night after i had spanked her quite on her own she hugged me and said "thank you mama." She knew we weren't really punishing her. We were healthily uncomfortable spanking her but we also knew without a doubt it was better than dragging it out and sucking the whole family into a hellish evening of trying to get her into control by reasoning with her or isolating her. We tried to prevent it from happening in the first place but it was very difficult. She just revs up at night. We would end up spanking her a couple of times a month. For a week or so afterward she was much calmer.

Eventually we figured out that she has a sensitivity to certain food colorings and we eliminated all Red #40 and Yellow #5 from her diet. The difference was astounding and it took literally a day to see the effect but you have to eliminate absolutely all of it. Its not that she couldn't have very much, she couldn't have ANY. It was hard for awhile that she couldn't have candy and basically any colored drinks and even kraft macaroni and cheese has Yellow 5 in it but cheetos don't and other brands of mac and cheese but anyway.... It was difficult for her and she felt left out sometimes but even she recognized she was more in control of herself when she did not ingest those dyes and would make the choice not to consume them. It didn't make the problem disappear but it made it much more manageable.

Before we figured this out and until we figured something else out we basically felt we had 3 options. Medicate her, spank her occasionally or continue to try to deal with it which to be honest was really hard on the other kids. She was getting a lot more attention and accommodation than the other kids did. In the end because we figured out the dye thing and my parents moved closer and would take her one night a week to give our household a break from her intensity things improved but up to that point a spanking was simply more humane for her than anything else. She couldn't handle being sent to her room and talking with her constantly about it just made her feel guilty for something she could not control and did not nothing to end the behavior. We knew she couldn't control it but we also didn't know what to do about it. The summers were okay because she got a lot more exercise swimming and playing outside. Winters were hell and are still challenging. When i heard convincing information (British Food Agency) about eliminating dyes from the diets of hyper active children we made a decision to remove anything with those ingredients from our home and we all went dye free.

As she has gotten older she is less and less sensitive to their effects and these days we can just tell her she needs to go run on the treadmill for awhile and she has enough self control and self awareness to actually go do it. She also has more things to stimulate her like full time school and extra curricular activities. We are also fortunate in that we can afford to send our kids to a school where the average class size is 11 kids. i'm pretty sure she is going to continue to struggle. We basically already plan on her talking to a counselor\therapist regularly as she gets into her teens because it isn't just hyperactivity it is emotional as well.

i remember watching a TV show once where they video taped this family with this out of control kid. There was a massive battle to get him to eat anything but pizza for dinner and go to bed anywhere but in front of the TV every night. It would turn into the parents putting him in his room and the Dad actually having to hold the door closed while the kid kicked and screamed against it. The solution of the "professionals" who viewed the tape and were counseling the parents was to let him eat pizza and fall asleep in front of the television because the battle was simply too destructive for the rest of the kids. They never got any attention. These were not bad parents. Their other kids were well behaved.

When i watched i of course just thought, dude just spank the kid and be done with it already. What they were doing fighting with him ad museum every night seemed seriously fucked up to me.

We do let our daughter go to sleep in front of the TV. She actually falls asleep earlier that way. No way in hell was i going to let her eat a hot dog for dinner every night. i had a brother for whom my mother would make something separate for him for dinner every night and you can just imagine how well this went over with the rest of us not to mention the guy still only has a very few things he will eat.

Now they just get a rock for trying at least one bite of everything that is served without complaining or trying to get out of it and i always try to make part of the dinner kid friendly which they are expected to eat a reasonable amount of before they can expect to have any snacks\treats that evening.

Dinner time and bed time is a real challenge with 4 kids and we will, on rare occasions, dole out spankings to keep it semi orderly when they have escalated to a certain point. There probably are other ways we could go about it but honestly we really only have so much energy to expend every night after we both finish a full day of work. In addition we just don't see spanking as inherently bad nor have we seen any ill effects in the way we have used it.

Honestly i think it depends on the kids\family. i know plenty of families that don't spank at all and their households run just fine. Is it because they have naturally more well behaved children or because they simply know something we don't? Its hard for me to agree on the latter. i do enough research and reading and contemplating and discussing with others about parenting that i just don't buy that. Both of us were spanked as kids and neither of us feels like it hurt us emotionally or otherwise. We also knew our parents loved us and that a spanking didn't mean they didn't. Perhaps that is the difference right there.

i don't think we should do things to our children which we feel were abusive to us as children. i don't think someone who was capriciously dealt CP as a child and has lasting wounds\scars over it should use CP on their kids and had i suffered those kinds of effects from CP i would likely be willing to go to much greater lengths to avoid using it.

The thing is if i even suspected spanking was screwing up one of my kids i would eliminate it but until i see that i'm probably not going to be convinced that spanking is an unhealthy thing in our family.

What bothers me are attitudes that no one should ever spank any child for any reason. i don't go around saying that every child should be spanked for doing X because it makes no sense. i understand the attitude is an attempt to control even the possibility of physical child abuse of any child. Well i'm sorry but emotional abuse is also extremely damaging and i question the logic that removing spanking from the repertoire of ALL parents of ANY child for ANY reason is really going to mitigate abuse.

Until someone else successfully raises my children and they are happier, better behaved, and more well adjusted than they are now i'm probably not going to be convinced that spanking is bad for them.

 

[Netzach]

I think "no" can be interpreted as "I stand in judgement of all parents everywhere" if you want it to be, but it can also mean "in general, no, and as the usual knee jerk emotional first line response to everything normal in childhood, no."

If you come up to me and ask me "should women be beaten?" Of course I'm going to say fuck, no. Fully cognizant that for SOME people it's a lifestyle choice in which case, I feel they're entitled, and for some people it's the ONLY appropriate path to happiness blah blah, but in the open ended general arena, it's still a no-shit "no" that most people can get behind, even a large percentage of women who are happy to be beaten in the context of the consent of their relationships.

For some kids it may be appropriate and a good choice of the smorgasboard of parental response options. I think it's overbroad, overapplied, *rarely* thought out, and generally detrimental, but I've also heard from adults who experienced it in an organized, positive fashion. I'd say MOST CP is probably not beneficial to MOST children enduring it. MOST CP is not applied with the forethought and care that would permit it to be beneficial.

But you're also right about this - misapplied CP is the symptom of the problem, it's never the problem in itself. And there are myriad other problems and faces the problem can take.

In my casual going about the supermarket observation of the world, the usual look on the face of most parents with children that I see is one of abject, active hatred. Across classes, races, regions. Something is out of whack in a serious way. The fact that people do not hesitate to inappropriately hit their children in front of other adults, knowing that no one is going to say anything, is more of an issue to me than everyone feeling perfectly validated by a statement like "children should not be hit." Just like I realize that some women may not feel fully validated by the statement "women should not be beaten."

 

[JMohegan]

For the record, my "no" meant: "No, I do not consider spanking to be an appropriate discipline for a child." Literally, exactly that.

Anyone taking umbrage should note that "inappropriate" and "abusive" are not synonyms.

As an aside - not that I expect spankers to give a fuck what I think about their disciplinary habits, but you really don't do your image any favors when you proclaim that spanking is "necessary." (To someone who was raised well without spanking, and has observed countless others - of all personality types - raised well without spanking, that assertion just comes off as flatly absurd.)

Nor does it help when you state that the only three disciplinary options you can think of are spanking, lecturing, and time outs. That statement reflects an appalling lack of consideration of alternatives to corporal punishment.

 

[rosco rathbone]

For the record, my "no" meant: "No, I do not consider spanking to be an appropriate discipline for a child." Literally, exactly that.

Anyone taking umbrage should note that "inappropriate" and "abusive" are not synonyms.

As an aside - not that I expect spankers to give a fuck what I think about their disciplinary habits, but you really don't do your image any favors when you proclaim that spanking is "necessary." (To someone who was raised well without spanking, and has observed countless others - of all personality types - raised well without spanking, that assertion just comes off as flatly absurd.)

Nor does it help when you state that the only three disciplinary options you can think of are spanking, lecturing, and time outs. That statement reflects an appalling lack of consideration of alternatives to corporal punishment.

Of course it's necessary. How are we going to raise the next generation of pervwads?

[/kidding]