Corporal punishment - For or against?

[CrimsonKing]

Awesome, I have attended training camps alongside randy, Uria, quinten, trig and some others. Got pictures with them and everything. Uria and Randy are awesom guys. I have a wherehouse gym next to a large lake complete with running trails, levys, and hills. Best life ever!!!!

Nice!I have trained with Maurice Smith,Marcus Brimmage,Keith Hackney and a few others got pics of us goofing off aswell lol.Almost got to train with wanderlei silva once went to his gym but he had left back for brazil 2 days before.kinda sucked but probably good i still have my head on my shoulders

[Frank Merton]

Now here is a wonderful example of how we do something wrong -- haul of and slug someone -- in a context where the wrong is way offset by the good of participating in the sport.

I'm harping on something that maybe I should relax about -- the idea that when something is wrong then it necessarily is sinful. Maybe I should say that things are sinful only when the wrong exceeds the good. Even this though is complicated. Some wrongs are trivial, others are serious, and there is no point dumping them all in the same bucket. We get bad points for wrongs and good points for goods, and we never know quite how many points, but we can make good guesses, and we try to accumulate good points.

(These "points" are really changes to the nature of our being. In a boxing match, the harm to our being comes from the hitting of someone, the improvement to our being comes from learning sportsmanship, how to take getting beaten, and so on).

[CrimsonKing]

Now here is a wonderful example of how we do something wrong -- haul of and slug someone -- in a context where the wrong is way offset by the good of participating in the sport.

I'm harping on something that maybe I should relax about -- the idea that when something is wrong then it necessarily is sinful. Maybe I should say that things are sinful only when the wrong exceeds the good. Even this though is complicated. Some wrongs are trivial, others are serious, and there is no point dumping them all in the same bucket. We get bad points for wrongs and good points for goods, and we never know quite how many points, but we can make good guesses, and we try to accumulate good points.

(These "points" are really changes to the nature of our being. In a boxing match, the harm to our being comes from the hitting of someone, the improvement to our being comes from learning sportsmanship, how to take getting beaten, and so on).

I somewhat understood where you are/were going with that thought frank,but think i came away from it almost as confused as you were trying to make it

[Frank Merton]

Yea cultural barriers; I don't dare say "karma." The Western view is God judges you and if you are an eensy-weensy bit on the bad side you go to Hell but if you are just an eensy-weensy bit on the good side you go to Heaven. Eternal punishment for a minute difference in the sum of your life.

The response of course is that all sin, no matter how minor, is infinitely bad compared to an infinitely good deity, therefore all sin should condemn you. I keep harping that some sins are worse than others -- we need to use a different yardstick. Now have I confused the issue even more?

[+Sherapy]

Please, explain to us, Sheri, how to reason with a toddler, that has no command of the English language, that what they are doing could kill or severely injure them.

Language development is a process starting early in human life. Infants start without language, yet by 4 months of age, babies can discriminate speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice.

Usually, productive language is considered to begin with a stage of preverbal communication in which infants use gestures and vocalizations to make their intents known to others. According to a general principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that children learn words to express the same communicative functions which they had already expressed by preverbal means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_development

From shortly after birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around two months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around four months, cooing turns into babbling which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to say.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Sherapy

[CrimsonKing]

Yea cultural barriers; I don't dare say "karma." The Western view is God judges you and if you are an eensy-weensy bit on the bad side you go to Hell but if you are just an eensy-weensy bit on the good side you go to Heaven. Eternal punishment for a minute difference in the sum of your life.

The response of course is that all sin, no matter how minor, is infinitely bad compared to an infinitely good deity, therefore all sin should condemn you. I keep harping that some sins are worse than others -- we need to use a different yardstick. Now have I confused the issue even more?

No frank kind of cleared it up there haha.Not being religious i do not see things as right or wrong,i view them more as good or bad.Certain things as you have posted before are not as simple as this though as there are different extremes of good or bad.Though a supreme deity would most likely view any of his broken laws or rules equally i would think.I dont know, not really sure religion confuses the hell out of me because 20 people can be of the same religion and all 20 interpret what it is and consists of differently.

This topic has gone all over the place today

[+Sherapy]

Indeed, especially since he's not a child psychologist. That's why I'm not asking him his opinion, but instead asking him if he can point me towards the current consensus. Last time I did, it seemed virtually 50/50.

I recall you mentioning these things. You know I also work with children, right? Not young kids, but High School students. I've also had my share of observation (even though I have no kids of my own).

Granted, I agree with you in part. That's why my first post questioned about corporal punishment in the house towards children vs corporal punishment in the Justice System. I don't agree that corporal punishment towards children (ie, intended to cause pain) is ever warranted. I could be wrong, but I daresay that most people advocating spanking children would agree that it isn't meant to cause pain. If that means our usage of the term "corporal punishment" is technically incorrect, then so be it.

But yes, I was talking of spankings and swats, but no, I wasn't ever intending them in terms of the child being physically hurt by them. Oh, as I said, they may get a shock by the action, but not pain, and certainly not lingering pain.

Your own examples explain it. My father never grabbed me by the shirt and physically pulled me somewhere. I'd find that highly intimidating if someone did it to me, especially as a child. But it would get the point across. Physical punishment can work. Not on its own, and certainly not in excess. Other ways to deal with problems are also valid -

One time I was out with a former girlfriend, her child was about to climb the outside of a playground fort in our local shopping centre (what you would call Malls, I suppose). There was a sign saying "do not climb on the outside of the play set", but as kids do, he ignored it. His mother yelled out "Don't climb up there, do you want a smack"? The kid ignored her. I left her for a moment, walked to the kid, calmly asked him to come down for a moment. I asked him to read the sign to me. He read it. I asked him if he understood why. He couldn't think of anything. I asked him to stamp his foot down on the ground. He did. I asked him how it felt. he said the ground was hard. I asked him if he felt like punching the ground with his fist, or headbutting it as hard as he could. He said "no, it would hurt". So I asked him how he thought it might feel if he accidentally fell from the top of the castle, compared to falling inside the castle, which had spongy ground, and how his mum might feel if she had to see him hurt or worse. He got the message. He not only stopped climbing on the outside of the castle, he started telling the other kids from other parents that what they were doing was bad, that their mum's would cry if they were hurt (sadly, about six kids were playing on the outside of the castle and their parents didn't seem to care - on the scale of child abuse, I'd say that would be worse than a parent who disciplines their child with a spanking, at least it shows they care). In this case, explaining the issue taught the child something and fixed it far easier than a "do you want a smack" threat could ever do.

But not all situations are like this. Sometimes smacks are the best way to deal with a situation. But as I said, no one is advocating physical smacks to the point that the child is physically crying from the pain, or still smarting from it after it has happened. A "love tap" on the rear isn't exactly what I'm referring to, since the child is being punished with a spanking, but it's not one that's going to leave welts and sores and worse lying behind.

Pa, Here are some ideas to consider.

Physical discipline has even been negatively correlated with levels of cognitive ability. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire (Strauss, M) found that children of non-spanking parents scored significantly higher on tests of cognitive ability than children whose parents spanked them frequently. It is possible that non-spanking parents spend more time reasoning with their children (explaining to their children why certain behaviors are wrong) than parents who chose to discipline their children physically. These types of verbal parent-child interactions, in fact, are believed to play an important role in promoting cognitive development.

• Corporal punishment communicates to children that violence is an acceptable method of solving problems and dealing with interpersonal conflicts.
  
• One reason that many children engage in undesirable behaviors ("acting out") is that they have never been taught alternative ways to behave. Corporal punishment alone does not teach children alternative, appropriate behaviors. In other words, although children may learn what not to do in various situations, they may never have been taught what to do.
  
• The effects of corporal punishment (suppression of the undesirable behavior) are not likely to generalize to other contexts or situations; neither do they appear to be maintained over time.
  
• Other methods of discipline are available which are not only extremely effective, but which are also not associated with injurious consequences.
  
• http://alpha.fdu.edu..._punishment.htm
  

For me, the biggest problem with spanking is it doesn't teach the child what to do instead, nor does it lend to applying it to other situations. Only reasoning does this. I stared young teaching my kids how to look at mistakes and learn from them(age appropriate process taking into account each stage of development. ) In the long run we are responsible to teach our kids how to behave, how to be self disciplined. I raised three boys without hitting or spanking them. In the bigger picture as we mature we will use reason, we will have learned how to think about things, we will learn that we are accountable for our own actions, that this is our responsibility as adults and as parents we teach this in childhood. We teach this by being self disciplined ourselves, by being consistent in our parenting. What we model for our kids is in large part who they become. Fast forward to school when a kid is bullying another kid because maybe they came out of a home that taught them violence is love ( that name calling is okay, that isolating them is okay.) Not only does this put burdens on our educational system, but it puts other kids in danger.

In the US we are trying to pass federal legislation to keep our kids safe in school from bullying from other kids. We can do a lot for society by applying ways of parenting that see the bigger picture/that contribute to prevention of things such as bullying. I suggest taking the time to reason, take the time to use communication as the staple of parenting, in the long run it goes along way in keeping parents and children bonded and keeps communication open so that a child will come to the adult when they really need too.and they will need too. I know you are a teacher, right? As a teacher you know that learning is a process and along the way we need adults who really get this, (especially as parents.)

Thank you for reading this.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Sherapy

[Frank Merton]

I raised six children and at present have four more under my roof, all adopted from relatives, of either me or my wife, who died.

We never applied what you might call "discipline" of any sort if corporeal punishment or deprival of something is discipline. We did often use certain Vietnamese words that translate "you" (the language is rich in pronouns that express all sorts of things about relationships) that got their attention, and then expressed how what they had just done was not to be done around here, or something along those lines.

A few times when things were getting hot we stopped what we were doing and went to temple and had a Monk do some ritual things (kinda like driving out the aspect of the child's spirit that is causing this).

They turned out okay, although one died in an accident and a couple have had personal problems.

[+Sherapy]

I raised six children and at present have four more under my roof, all adopted from relatives, of either me or my wife, who died.

We never applied what you might call "discipline" of any sort if corporeal punishment or deprival of something is discipline. We did often use certain Vietnamese words that translate "you" (the language is rich in pronouns that express all sorts of things about relationships) that got their attention, and then expressed how what they had just done was not to be done around here, or something along those lines.

A few times when things were getting hot we stopped what we were doing and went to temple and had a Monk do some ritual things (kinda like driving out the aspect of the child's spirit that is causing this).

They turned out okay, although one died in an accident and a couple have had personal problems.

I didn't/don't use grounding or deprivation either. The standard is one is expected to have integrity, to have standards and if a mistake is made it needs to have a plan for correction instituted. I applied the ideas/theories of psychology/child development right from the womb. (I tend to take a mechanistic view at this point.)

I am very strategy oriented myself, so a lot of planning, education, learning, and refining has gone into the parenting process. Each child taught me different things.

My boys are 15, 20, 23. I just do not have serious issues, kids have strong sense of self, clear boundaries, are productive, goal oriented, compassionate, civil human beings. I maintain very close relationships with my sons, if the truth be told-- I adore the ground my boys walk on.

Your point is well taken there are many ways to parent that do not involve spanking and in your case a very unique parenting style.

By the way I enjoy reading your posts, you bring a unique perspective to UM.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Sherapy

[CrimsonKing]

By the way I enjoy reading your posts, you bring a unique perspective to UM.

Be careful when discussing topics with frank sherapy,the man is a word magician.He says one thing and you think he is agreeing with you then you go back realize he wasnt,but has already made a reasonable explanation of why you should

[White Crane Feather]

Nice!I have trained with Maurice Smith,Marcus Brimmage,Keith Hackney and a few others got pics of us goofing off aswell lol.Almost got to train with wanderlei silva once went to his gym but he had left back for brazil 2 days before.kinda sucked but probably good i still have my head on my shoulders

I think my days of rolling with 25 year old athletes are done. Torn acl and mcl, rotater cuff, slipped discs and hip flexor problems. I let the younger guys go for the glory now, and I'm not even that old. But I had a good run, I'm off to more peaceful pastures these days while enjoying training others.

[CrimsonKing]

I think my days of rolling with 25 year old athletes are done. Torn acl and mcl, rotater cuff, slipped discs and hip flexor problems. I let the younger guys go for the glory now, and I'm not even that old. But I had a good run, I'm off to more peaceful pastures these days while enjoying training others.

Yeah same here man im only 29 have had 2 surgeries on my right shoulder,partially tore my lcl and damaged my acl about 2 weeks back luckily wasnt bad enough for surgery,and neck problems aswell.I used to fight about 4 or 5 times a year now i just fight once or twice a year.Having more fun training others now days much easier on my body,plus no need to cut weight.Hard going from 200 lbs to 170 more than twice in 12 months haha.

[White Crane Feather]

Yeah same here man im only 29 have had 2 surgeries on my right shoulder,partially tore my lcl and damaged my acl about 2 weeks back luckily wasnt bad enough for surgery,and neck problems aswell.I used to fight about 4 or 5 times a year now i just fight once or twice a year.Having more fun training others now days much easier on my body,plus no need to cut weight.Hard going from 200 lbs to 170 more than twice in 12 months haha.

Yeah screw that. I hate cutting weight. Worse part about all of it, I dont even mind getting hit, but cutting weight is torture and unhealthy. Any keep rolling with those punches my friend and take care of those knees like a new born baby.

[+Sherapy]

Be careful when discussing topics with frank sherapy,the man is a word magician.He says one thing and you think he is agreeing with you then you go back realize he wasnt,but has already made a reasonable explanation of why you should

Thank you for your input CK.

He doesn't have to agree with me though.

I just think based on his posts (on various threads) he brings in a different way to look at things. Food for thought, for me..

[Frank Merton]

I didn't/don't use grounding or deprivation either. The standard is one is expected to have integrity, to have standards and if a mistake is made it needs to have a plan for correction instituted. I applied the ideas/theories of psychology/child development right from the womb. (I tend to take a mechanistic view at this point.)

I am very strategy oriented myself, so a lot of planning, education, learning, and refining has gone into the parenting process. Each child taught me different things.

My boys are 15, 20, 23. I just do not have serious issues, kids have strong sense of self, clear boundaries, are productive, goal oriented, compassionate, civil human beings. I maintain very close relationships with my sons, if the truth be told-- I adore the ground my boys walk on.

Your point is well taken there are many ways to parent that do not involve spanking and in your case a very unique parenting style.

By the way I enjoy reading your posts, you bring a unique perspective to UM.

I think you have some very fortunate sons.

[Frank Merton]

Be careful when discussing topics with frank sherapy,the man is a word magician.He says one thing and you think he is agreeing with you then you go back realize he wasnt,but has already made a reasonable explanation of why you should

Man you know how to make someone feel good. I think I have a different cultural outlook but at the same time have a better understanding of Western culture than many in my country, if for no reason than having studied English and visited the States for so long.

By the way, I think we are on the same page on almost everything. I have a slightly more "spiritual" approach to things but I am no theist.

I think I have made mistakes while posting here. One is that I was too aggressive about gun control; I reacted emotionally and without thinking hard about ways to avoid stirring anger. The other is with Christians where I have perhaps been too anti-theist without good evidence. Also of course there is the homosexuality debate, where I reacted much as I did in the gun control debate. I need to remember that people who are prejudiced against homosexuals generally have this indoctrinated into them as children, so that their feelings are not going to be changed by just telling them they are bigots. They aren't bigots but only products of their culture.

[CrimsonKing]

Man you know how to make someone feel good. I think I have a different cultural outlook but at the same time have a better understanding of Western culture than many in my country, if for no reason than having studied English and visited the States for so long.

By the way, I think we are on the same page on almost everything. I have a slightly more "spiritual" approach to things but I am no theist.

I think I have made mistakes while posting here. One is that I was too aggressive about gun control; I reacted emotionally and without thinking hard about ways to avoid stirring anger. The other is with Christians where I have perhaps been too anti-theist without good evidence. Also of course there is the homosexuality debate, where I reacted much as I did in the gun control debate. I need to remember that people who are prejudiced against homosexuals generally have this indoctrinated into them as children, so that their feelings are not going to be changed by just telling them they are bigots. They aren't bigots but only products of their culture.

Was meant as a compliment frank,i have disagreed with some things you have said but having a different outlook is what makes your post different.Sometimes they are so different it makes one think.Thinking is a good thing because if you have a set way of mind,when one starts really thinking it can be the first step to changing thoughts.

One instance a few weeks back we were debating something cant really remember the topic,but by the end of it i almost started arguing why you were right and i was wrong hahaha

[+Sherapy]

I think you have some very fortunate sons.

Thank you for your kind words.

[+Sherapy]

Man you know how to make someone feel good. I think I have a different cultural outlook but at the same time have a better understanding of Western culture than many in my country, if for no reason than having studied English and visited the States for so long.

By the way, I think we are on the same page on almost everything. I have a slightly more "spiritual" approach to things but I am no theist.

I think I have made mistakes while posting here. One is that I was too aggressive about gun control; I reacted emotionally and without thinking hard about ways to avoid stirring anger. The other is with Christians where I have perhaps been too anti-theist without good evidence. Also of course there is the homosexuality debate, where I reacted much as I did in the gun control debate. I need to remember that people who are prejudiced against homosexuals generally have this indoctrinated into them as children, so that their feelings are not going to be changed by just telling them they are bigots. They aren't bigots but only products of their culture.

Frank, that is what discussion and debate is for to challenge our positions and come away richer, more understanding, ( more inclusive) for the experience.

Your so called mistakes have lead you to great personal wisdom's.

IMO, they have served you well.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. ~Oscar Wilde

[+Sherapy]

Was meant as a compliment frank,i have disagreed with some things you have said but having a different outlook is what makes your post different.Sometimes they are so different it makes one think.Thinking is a good thing because if you have a set way of mind,when one starts really thinking it can be the first step to changing thoughts.

One instance a few weeks back we were debating something cant really remember the topic,but by the end of it i almost started arguing why you were right and i was wrong hahaha

i agree, I have read quite few of his posts and he does offer a unique(fresh) perspective.

Edited March 6, 2013 by Sherapy