It's OK to spank when.... - Page 5

[Brigianna]

Originally Posted by Titus2WannaBe

I'm sorry for the confusion about the fencing; there was a study done with elementary school children on their playground. The fence had been removed (to be replaced with a new one) and while the fence was obsolete the children huddled in the center of the playground; they were afraid of the busy cars on the street, strangers, etc...and rightfully so! However, once the fence was rebuilt the children ran and played, in the yard of the playground as well as on the equiptment, in what they considered a safe environment because of the protective boundary provided by the fence.

In relation to children, boundaries provide freedom...contrary to popular thought. Much like you and I can sleep better (although not completely free from fear) at night because we know that our society has "boundaries" intact for those who would prefer your items of choice over their own. Not everyone stays in these boundaries and cause those of us who do to suffer the pain of their poor choices.

Children who are trained to remain in the boundaries set for them can "color" from a huge box of crayons (choices) on the palate of freedom. Children can be peaceful and delightful when we realize the following:

1. They are indeed children

2. Set realistic expectations for their ages ~ many times a mother's frustrations heighten when she sets the bar too high. Example ~ A mother forgets that a toddler may be excited to visit the street and resolves to hysterics when the wee one toddles over to see what there is to see. Reasonable expectations would tell her that a toddler has very little abstract reasoning skills and that she is the only one who has the passion of a mother to protect him from harm and in turn must train him.

3. We are indeed parents and not absolved from the responsibility of training and teaching their little hearts.


It is a rare occasion to meet humble, kind hearted children who are ready to serve and love others with a happy heart. Fortunately, my husband and I are honored to raise three people who live, laugh and love in our home. We make many mistakes, but with deligence, consistency and plenty of asking for forgiveness, we have found them to be a joy.

As I was with my daughter at a function recently, with over 100 other little preteen girls, I was amazed when she asked me to come and sit with her and her friends to eat pizza and talk. I hesitantly sat down and listened. What I heard was , "Where is your mom?", "Oh, I don't know...that's the best part of this whole thing...you can lose your mom.", "Yeah, no moms." replied the little girl who started the conversation. Turning to look at my daughter I saw that she was near to tears. She whispered, "Oh mommy, I WANT you here with me. Why don't they want their moms? You're my friend."

My only conclusion is that I have tried to develop relationship with this little woman twirling around my livingroom and to train her to love others (even her momma) ...and that more than likely many of these little girl's moms have chosen to let them focus on themselves and what a group of preteens thinks is "cool". I much prefer her to have relationship (and a few good friends) with me and seek me for advice than that of a group of prepubescent girls.

In closing, I can say from the heart that I have seen the sweetness that comes from children who are trained, with love, to be a blessing to those around them and not self-focused and absorbed with their own desires. Selfishness is a common thread in today's youth, and adults, and one that will break the hearts of the parents more so when the child is full grown. Lifting their little heads in childhood to see that we are better people when we are "trained" and "taught" to think of others above ourselves produces amazing little people who grow into amazing adults.

This will be my last post, as I am pretty sure that I've gotten off subject! And I still have the pleasure of children in my home and I can already tell that as a woman, I would much prefer to sit here and spout off my supposed "wisdom" only to waste the fleeting time that I enjoy spending with my children and husband. )

Good luck everyone!

Okay it is a little off topic, but if you get a chance I would love to discuss this issue with you on a separate thread. I am a little skeptical of extrapolating from the fence story--in that specific case I can see why they would have reacted that way because they were used to the fence being there and then one day it wasn't. But I suspect that if there had never been a fence there, they would have learned the boundaries of the playground and would have run and played the same as the fence kids. And I would ask, what was the purpose of the fence, to keep the kids in or to keep strangers out? Was it a *fence* fence that they couldn't cross or was it more of a symbolic fence to show where the playground boundaries were? Even if it's not significant to that actual case I think it's relevant in the symbolic sense that you're meaning.

Now I agree with you about selfishness being a common problem, but I'm not sure we can teach/train people not to be selfish. We have to model it and let it influence our daily lives.

And I agree that boundaries provide freedom, not for us but for other people. If I'm not misremembering it I think this is called positive freedom and negative freedom--positive freedom being the right to make our own choices and do what we want, and negative freedom being the right to be protected from violence and harm. And of course without negative freedom, positive freedom is meaningless.

Where I think I would disagree with you--and please correct me if I'm wrong--is that it seems like you're conflating arbitrary boundaries of authority with the boundaries relating to the natural order and other people's negative freedom. The reason I say that is because there would seem to be a sort of "because I said so" element to the training you're advocating, which is not based on any natural order. Which is why I support training of infants and toddlers but not older children capable of understanding rational thought and learning about the natural order on their own. Because as I understand it one of the purposes of early training is to improve the chances of living harmoniously and consentually later on. So there should be an end goal to all of this training, not just for the sake of doing so. Am I making any sense?

That is a beautiful story about sitting with your dd and the other girls.

[heartmama]

It is a rare occasion to meet humble, kind hearted children who are ready to serve and love others with a happy heart.

I would like to ask if you spank or use other methods of physical punishment?

[heartmama]

Which is why I support training of infants and toddlers but not older children capable of understanding rational thought and learning about the natural order on their own. Because as I understand it one of the purposes of early training is to improve the chances of living harmoniously and consentually later on.

Training infants so they are conditioned to be "harmonious" later on is aggressively promoted by the No Greater Joy and Growing Kids Gods Way groups. It might not be intentional, but you are saying things here that echo the underlying philosophy of Gary Ezzo and Michael Pearl so strongly, I honestly feel bad that you may not realize how controversial your statement reads. Even if you have found a "gentle" way to use the concept of infant training and conditioning, the above statement is incompatible with attachment parenting and gentle discipline. I can't imagine Peggy O' Mara agreeing with this, let alone Sears, Kohn, Holt, or anyone else who has defined ap and gd?

[Brigianna]

Originally Posted by heartmama

Training infants so they are conditioned to be "harmonious" later on is aggressively promoted by the No Greater Joy and Growing Kids Gods Way groups. It might not be intentional, but you are saying things here that echo the underlying philosophy of Gary Ezzo and Michael Pearl so strongly, I honestly feel bad that you may not realize how controversial your statement reads. Even if you have found a "gentle" way to use the concept of infant training and conditioning, the above statement is incompatible with attachment parenting and gentle discipline. I can't imagine Peggy O' Mara agreeing with this, let alone Sears, Kohn, Holt, or anyone else who has defined ap and gd?

I don't follow the child-torture fetishists. If they say things like that then they're lying. They're using Orwellian language to make child torture seem harmonious. There is nothing harmonious about beating infants with plumbing pipes. That is not their underlying philosophy. Their underlying philosophy is to cause pain for young children because they hate them. What little of their "philosophy" I read made it clear to me that they are simply an anti-child hate group, the same as any ethnic hate group or anything else.

I have never punished my children. Not ever. Not once in their little lives. In the case of my 6 yr old it has literally been months since I have corrected or disciplined her with anything other than a verbal reminder or request. I have to be a little more proactive with my 3 yr old since he has a shorter attention span. But I have never ever punished them. Training is *not* the same as punishment. And it is certainly not the same as lunatic fringe sociopathic child-torture-loving totalitarian Dominionists.

And you can not "condition" people to be harmonious. It is a state of mind. It can only be taught in a gentle environment with loving examples. People can be beaten into submission but they can't be beaten into harmony or love.

I'm sorry and I'm sure you didn't mean it this way but honestly your post really offended me. I have worked so hard not only to be good to my own children but to advocate for all children. I have preached in word and in deed the benefits of ap at our church and cpc. I have written every elected representative I have to try to ban corporal punishment in schools. I have lobbied and marched for a cleaner environment and safer food for our children. I have written articles and letters about how treatment of children is the greatest moral issue of our time. I have constantly advocated a permanent revolution in the way we think of children and child-rearing. There is *nothing* inconsistent about ap and teaching children to live harmoniously. Nothing at all.

[heartmama]

I am not criticizing you as a parent or citizen. I am pointing out that the terminology you have used in this forum is controversial at least and offensive at worst. I realize this is unintentional. However, it has been pointed out repeatedly. I am sorry you feel misunderstood.

[Brigianna]

Child-torture fetishists do not have a monopoly on wanting to teach children to live harmoniously. You said that this was "incompatible with attachment parenting and gentle discipline." I have never read anything from any ap source indicating that teaching children to live harmoniously was incompatible with ap. I did not advocate any kind of "conditioning." It is only controversial if you are reading into it something that isn't there.

You may not have intended to criticize me as a parent or citizen but you were saying that my teaching my children to live harmoniously was echoing the philosophy of child-torture fetishists. I believe that that is an unfair characterization compared to what I was actually saying.

[heartmama]

If I use terminology offensive to a group, I can either accept it and find more agreeable ways to express my ideas, or I can continue, and possibly risk the kind of personalization of the controversy which you are doing now. It isn't about you. However you have repeatedly used terminology here that is offensive. "Infant Training" and "Blanket Training" in particular. Some phrases are too controversial for us to sit back and claim for our own personal self expression without accepting the reality of how those words are commonly intended and used. I don't know you, and I assume you have invented your own philosophy around these phrases with the best of intentions. What that philosophy might be has been difficult to pin down, although many have tried, including yourself, to make sense of it here. An obvious reason for the repeated misunderstanding is that every time you use these phrases, the context shifts enough to make it sound alarming or confusing all over again.

[Brigianna]

I am not trying to use misleading language. But if the child-torture types are describing beating babies as "training them to be harmonious" then honestly they are the ones misusing language, not me. Unless someone were familiar in advance with child-torture code words I don't see why they would interpret "one of the purposes of early training is to improve the chances of living harmoniously and consentually later on" as talking about conditioning or something negative or anti-ap.

I'm sorry I overreacted to your post. But it just reminded me of so many other discussions where I've tried to say something I thought was reasonable and gotten responses of "that sounds somewhat similar to something these other people might say and they advocate something that's bad therefore you're wrong." This line of argument makes no sense to me.

I am sorry but I do think you really have to be stretching and looking for something to interpret wanting to live "harmoniously and consensually" as having anything to do with whatever Ezzo and company are advocating.

[heartmama]

If reclaiming phrases like "infant training" and "blanket training" from the Ezzo-ites and the Pearls is your mission, then it is. It might be possible you have misunderstood the history and intensity over these phrases in the board culture here. These are very loaded statements. You couldn't do much worse if you stepped into a racial discussion and used a term that was deeply controversial, insisting you were "reclaiming it's original meaning back from the racists". Objectively it might be a noble goal, but the reality is that you are going to confuse and offend a whole lot of people in the process.

Please do not underestimate the widespread understanding of terms like "Blanket training" and "Infant Training". When you use them casually, it actually appears that you are promoting the very things you oppose. *I* realize you do not mean it this way. However the last paragraph written by you that I quoted, when read without any prior knowledge of your idea's, reads almost verbatim like a public relations blurb for Babywise. "Train your infant now, so that he is a joy to you later!". This is a giant board with a huge public readership. If you want to use these phrases, is there a way to do it without causing controversy? I don't see it, but maybe you do.

[Brigianna]

I'm not trying to reclaim the terms. I don't know what terms are used by these people. I don't read their stuff. I read part of "Babywise," saw it was evil hateful child-torturing crap and didn't investigate further. I knew about No Greater Joy from their non-parenting, semi-resonable pieces and while I knew they advocated spanking I only recently learned how evil they were. I only learned last week that blanket-training was advocated by Ezzo and that his version involved beating. Nobody I know irl uses these fringe child-torture things, even the strict punitive mainstream people.

Also I agree that saying "train your infant now so that he is a joy to you later" sounds creepy because it's not babies' job to bring joy to adults. But what I said was training children to live consensually and harmoniously, which I think is quite different.

I am pretty sensitive to language but honestly if you hadn't said so I would never have known that training a child to live harmoniously was associated with child-torture fetishists because it sounds like the complete opposite of what they really advocate.

In fact it's sort of funny to me that you used the word "misunderestimate" which has a certain negative connotation to me and a lot of people. But I wouldn't assume that just because you used that word that you share the opinions of the politician I associate it with.

[heartmama]

Double post

[heartmama]

(It was a typo, sorry, I went back and fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out!)

I feel like you are trying to convince me these words are not controversial, or that if they are, they shouldn't be. I'm not sure what I can say to you. You have a lot of other people to convince.

[lilylove]

Please try to keep off-topic posting to a minimum

Thanks

[vermonttaylors]

My in-laws have one of those fake gas "wood stoves" and my ds put his hand on the glass and suddenly started screaming. There were no flames, but it was still hot (I felt so horrible, we were both crying). Anyway, his hand blistered, but it healed quickly and he is really careful around woodstoves now. He gets it. His little sister also understands that the stove is HOT, and she can't touch it, mostly by the panicked look on my face when she toddles toward it.

Kids are not stupid. They don't want to get hurt. They don't need to be hit in order to understand something is dangerous. I will NEVER understand why people think they do.

[TinkerBelle]

As someone else mentioned, if spanking "worked", then it would only need to be done once and the child would have 'learned their lesson'

Not defending spanking, of course, but couldn't the same thing be said for people who use full-on GD? Or any other discipline method?

[snugg_bug]

While visiting Japan last year, where my SIL has resided for the past 12 years as a teacher - I was fascinated to learn that the Japanese do not discipline their children till they reach the age when they start schooling. The believe that the children should be allowed to be children. It may sound impossible to never discipline and they suddenly start at age 3 or 4, but there, it works.

[snugg_bug]

Originally Posted by TinkerBelle

Not defending spanking, of course, but couldn't the same thing be said for people who use full-on GD? Or any other discipline method?

Actually, I think that is the point. If any form of discipline is going to have to be repeated over and over again until the child finally gets it, then why go the route of using violence, when in fact, it could have some very negative long-term effects? Using GD, although it may not be effective in the immediate, will not have a potentially negative outcome.

[The4OfUs]

Originally Posted by snugg_bug

Actually, I think that is the point. If any form of discipline is going to have to be repeated over and over again until the child finally gets it, then why go the route of using violence, when in fact, it could have some very negative long-term effects? Using GD, although it may not be effective in the immediate, will not have a potentially negative outcome.

:.

[Brigianna]

Originally Posted by heartmama

(It was a typo, sorry, I went back and fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out!)

I feel like you are trying to convince me these words are not controversial, or that if they are, they shouldn't be. I'm not sure what I can say to you. You have a lot of other people to convince.

I'm not saying they aren't or shouldn't be controversial. But anything can be controversial to someone. You seem to be acting on the assumption that the established meaning of these terms and concepts is the meaning in the context of the child-torture people; am I right? I do not believe that that is the established meaning based on the fact that I have never met even one person who uses those terms that way. And I am very sensitive to language issues but I wouldn't hold someone else accountable for saying something that could look bad if taken out of context.

I also think it's very unfair to say that gently training children to live harmoniously is incompatible with ap. I think it's part of the foundation of ap.

[Brigianna]

Originally Posted by vermonttaylors

My in-laws have one of those fake gas "wood stoves" and my ds put his hand on the glass and suddenly started screaming. There were no flames, but it was still hot (I felt so horrible, we were both crying). Anyway, his hand blistered, but it healed quickly and he is really careful around woodstoves now. He gets it. His little sister also understands that the stove is HOT, and she can't touch it, mostly by the panicked look on my face when she toddles toward it.

Kids are not stupid. They don't want to get hurt. They don't need to be hit in order to understand something is dangerous. I will NEVER understand why people think they do.

I don't think this is universally true. Some kids don't really mind getting hurt--not seriously hurt of course, but moderately. I didn't mind much, and I would do fun stuff even if it meant getting hurt.