Oh? Really?

There's quite a leap between the two? And it makes distinguishing one from the other obvious? Sort of like a natural divider line? I was under the impression that--just like every other subjective topic in the universe--it was completely fogged with ambiguity. Could you perhpas pinpoint the divider for those us who don't know it? You know, the one where spanking spontaneously "leaps" from good discipline to this hideous monster "abuse" that surely nobody here at UM endorses!! Or better yet, maybe one of those who support "non-abusive hitting" could tell us when it becomes abuse... because clearly there is some discrepancy between my definition of abuse and yours.



Tell me Seraphina, you claim that some kids could do without it...
Were you one of them?




All your information is farely accurate Seraphina. Youth crime rates are higher than they used to be, for the most part, and violence in raising youth has definitely gone downhill since the mid 1900s. Your claim is that these two are tightly correlated; however, lets not forget the inifinite amount of other factors that influence both of these trends. In reality, we have to admit, its near impossible to tell which is effecting which, because these kind of systems are far too complicated for any of us to claim proper understanding. And personaly, I completely disagree with the correlations you claim to be "easy enough to see."

If my mumbling about correlations does not convince you of anything, and you think I'm just doing this due to lack of better argument... then you are completely right!!

Just joking ofc, I wouldnt let you off the hook that easily ;p

For those who dislike theory, here is a more concrete example that illustrates the same point:

In Norway child abuse is illegal and generally frowned upon (yes, even a gentle spanking is frowed upon). In norway, crime rates are extremely low.

Based on this, I could use the same logic you did, and claim that it is "easy enough to see" that crime rates will be lower if we learn to respect children's buttox. Am I going to claim this? No. Because frankly, I don't know, and I know I would need to do a lot of research in order to claim anything the least bit meaningful on this subject, using statistics.

---



So anyways, unless there is a flaw in my logic (which anybody should feel free to point out ^^), I'm pretty sure we are now back to square one. In this case, I'll just restate my lovely little thesis:

Gogo raising children with love! ftwww! weeeeeeeee!


And ppl, dont argue by confusing this with "letting your child do whatever he likes." Because if you do, then you are not listening to what I'm saying, you are silly and you don't deserve to have a child... sry

Hahaha, don't mind me plz! I'm just being mean. I can get aggressive when I argue sometimes. But not in a stone-aged physical way ofc. I use my mouth words. They go a long way. Idd they do.

Is that a challenge? I can just see one of your eyebrows rising there? Hmm...let's begin then...



Common sense.

Telling the difference between child abuse, and child discipline is more than simply a matter of interpretation. Spanking is, frankly, not child abuse...I can understand being against it, but actually labeling it child abuse is an example of the politically correct, bleeding heart speil that has this country in the horrific state that it's in.

Beating your child around the head with a stick is child abuse...swatting them on the backside for misbehaving is not. The cry of 'child abuse' is so ridiculously paper thin that I should even have to address it. If you think being spanked is child abuse, than I'm not even sure I should go as far as discussing corporal punishment in schools with you.



Children do not think or act the same way adults do...that's simply a fact. They don't always act the way they should, and sometimes they act in ways that they know they most certainly shouldn't. When I was spanked, it was done because I deserved it. I don't begrudge it, I don't judge it, and I certainly don't call it 'child abuse'.

As a child, I was polite, well behaved, didn't get into trouble at school, and had respect for adults...and I still occassionaly did things that earned me a spanking. The result? I stopped doing the things that earned me said spanking It's a natural learning curve.



You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you're the predator and I'm the prey in this encounter...might I direct your attention to my sharp teeth, curved claws, and foul temperment?



There's that 'child abuse' thing again...*sighs and shakes her head*...anyway, yes, you could draw that conclusion if I had actually said that not spanking children was what was leading to the yob culture; which I didn't.

I did, however, state that spanking children was only one of the contributing factors. There are a variety of cultural influences as well that are breeding the yob culture; I cited the powerlessness and inability to act of the police force, the lack of discpline in schools and so on.

My suggestion was that the objection to spanking a child was a symptom of the bleeding heart politics that are screwing up this country, not so much that the yob culture was a symptom of lack of spanking....however, I have little doubt that undisciplined children are far more likely to grow up from yoblets into yobs in later years, and I think they could do with having some sense smacked into them early.



That was aggressive? Son, debating is a part of UM...a big part...one that I've been knee deep in for a very long time. I've recieved worse than someone simply disagreeing with my point of veiw....I've given a hell of a lot worse too.

Its 6am, and I havnt gone to bed yet. But I write you this short meaningless post as a sign that I have read your post and promise a reply tomorow.

lol hahahaahahaha! you got me all excited now
I will be dreaming of arguments

I see now that all my little sidenotes on aggressiveness were utterly useless, glad to see you're enjoying it aswell

My comments are directed more towards the people that post things like hitting the kid with a shovel and 'go ahead and beat that behind'. I have been trying to point out situations where using spanking as a punishment can go awry, such as the points I brought up earlier that the kid is not always guilty and how people can actually set the kid up to be punished. Also parents can use disapline as an excuse to be abusive towards a child. Once parents get in the habit of spanking or physical punishment, they start to resort more and more to this form of teaching their kids rather than other modes of teaching their kids lessons. In other words, they don't bother explaining, instead they give the kid a good whack. Also, when parents get angry and give the kid a slap or a spanking, they also in a way enjoy it as it relieves them of anger, whether they admitt it or not. And a child will pick up on that, children can be pretty sharp. In my earlier posts, I suggested spanking the child as a last resort when there is no doubt that the kid did something wrong. I hate to say it but, there are times when the child will learn no other way and in which case I don't think that a spanking is wrong. I say that reluctently. But as others have posted, children are not all the same and so it can depend on the type of child you're dealing with. And spare us the bleeding hearts are ruining this country BS. If you don't discuss problems and try to correct what you think is wrong, and if you don't have empathy towards others, nothing in this world will change. Where do you draw a line between caring for others and having a bleeding heart? Does it depend only the issues that you support? If it wasn't for bleeding hearts kids would still be working in factories and being exploited.

Very well said Seraphina

I thought it would only be a matter of time before the PC brigade arrived yes lets screw up the majorty because the minority can't be trusted or because the minority aren't happy. Sorry but the PC brigrade is a pet hate of mine and it's not an exaggeration that they are to blame for the way UK society is going. This may turn into a long rant.

Children in the UK are untouchable, responsibilty and control has been lost in schools and it's becoming same for parents as well, it's creating a very denfensive and blameless culture and it is becoming a real problem. Not just a talked about problem but a real consequence.

Take this for example. Children can not be touched in any form, say a child falls in the playground, a teacher can not help them back up or comfort them. Child has to get up and sort themselves out. If a child gets injured during a playground game, that game becomes instantly banned.

I remember reading about a council region in england that decided to cut down all trees in every playground because of 'conker' season. Conkers are nuts from chessnut trees - a popular game for children to thread the nuts with string and have games with them. One child got hurt by a conker, so what does the good ole PC brigade do? They cut down every single tree, oh yes climbing trees could also pose a danger. It's SOOOO much easier to remove the problem than risk getting sued or inforceing the dam rules!!! (oh yes wait... schools have no right to disipline anymore, so perhaps they have no choice but to remove and limit things)

Children have nothing to think about. If something can be removed to avoid having to inforce rules or disipline then it's the easiest solution in todays climate.

Ok so trees may not be a great example, but I'm in my mid-late 20's and was of generation before the PC brigade and sue you culture. We had millions of rules at school, or it so it seemed. Rules are a good thing, it's disipline and filling a childs day up at school with X amount of rules is a good way of keeping control and teaching boundries. However rules don't work if there's no consequences. There has to be something known or feared that will happen if you cross the line. There has to be boundries and a price pay. I do think it's something that children absolutely have to learn to survive in this world as an adult.

The only reason the million rules at aschool had any affect was because the price to pay was a smacking from home. Parents took the schools word on disipline, didn't question it. Parents and schools were united. Not like today where parents are almost forced into corners in defence of themselves. For example, while schools now give up on disipline, the gov cracks down on parents who can't control their children. In scotland parents aren't really allowed to smack now.

There is even a free toll crime number you can ring if you witness a child being smacked in public. Yay lets grass our fellow citzens up for every wrong doing and save the PC brigrade the effort

The gov concludes that displine is the job of the parent, if a child refuses to apply at school it's the parents fault. Yep lets by pass punnishing the child and just punnish the parent instead!! excellent!! It can result in prision for the parent, some genius thinks that guilt to the child in losing a parent to prison is the way to disipline ( although I don't think that has actually happened yet)

So I may have got a little lost and carried away in my PC rant, but the bottom line is taking away the right to smack is contributing to an ugly ugly problem of child behaviour. It's my thought that the ones that cry out in the name of child abuse are aggrivating the whole PC thing on disipline how schools manage it and nowparents. Don't you see the snowball effect in all this?

I feel that where child abuse really does happen ie not controlled smacking for disipline but where a child is getting belted to a pulp for no good reason then this will happen regardless of the laws or regardless of what is accepted or not. People who physically abuse others will keep doing so anyway untill they are put away or get help for there problems. It's always been illegal to physically abuse others, so I don't really see how making it not PC to smack children helps abused children anymore? I just don't......All it's done is open a can of worms. I really feel that parents and schools should be allowed to disipline as they see fit and have full control back again without being made to feel criminalised. The power needs to be given back to the adults, children are not capable or able to reason or understand. We need to return to the old days where children were seen and not heard lol, throw them down a few chimneys and get them back into the cotton factories It's just rediculas that children hold the power now.

But you are talking about abusive parents here, It's not fair to compare absuive parents to non abusive parents. A parent can still smack without being abusive.

I really don't believe for a min that parents who responsibily smack for disipline can become abusers because they get into a habbit of it?

Oh yes, the brow has risen, flown off, penetrated the roof tilings, and is now soaring high above the clouds, as free as can be! lol...

Accepted



According to most dictionnaries and like any other word, abuse can mean many things. One of which is the "wrong or improper use" of something. If some of us think a gentle spanking is wrongly or improperly used, we have every right to call it abuse. So... I'm gonna continue doing so.

If I were you, I would never use the words "common sense" in an argument, because if there is anything that has been beaten up, tossed about, and recreated over and over throughout history, it is common sense. What you perceive as common sense today is only a result of your up bringing, and will most likely not be exactly the same as the common sense for the next generation.



I'm sure you were a clever girl, and would have learned just as quickly with words. And who knows? Maybe your claws and teeth would be a tad bit duller and friendlier if you had?



Personally, I think the yob culture (well the one described by anvil anyways) is probably more due to the large budget cuts on the UK police force in the past few years. As for the rest of the world, I've said it before and I'll say it again. We cannot put all countries under any 1 satisfactory roof. Some have extremely low youth crime rates, some not so much, and a whole wack of them dead in the middle. There is no definite pattern that can explain all--or even a few for that matter--of the observed trends. So, this brings no insight into wether rear smacking raises better or worse children, let alone better societies. If there was any concrete statistical evidence on this matter... then spanking would not be a contreversial subject anymore.



"That was aggressive?"
What can I say, I'm a big pansy.
"Son,"
Son? You are a bit less than 3 years older than me, don't get carried away now
"debating is a part of UM...a big part...one that I've been knee deep in for a very long time."
Same goes for all forums ever created anywheres on the internet ( dont cite me on that one plz lol)... But I can see you have a bit more posts than I do on this particular forum.... just a little bit... Ill catch up
"....I've given a hell of a lot worse too."
Well no one's stoppin ya, certainly not my feeble arguments. Feel free to let loose!

Kk enough nonesense... down to business now

---



Behaviorism was one of the major movements of psychology in the early 20th century, and it was based on the concept that the only way we can know anything about human behaviour is by observing poeple's reactions to environments empirically. It was a very scientific approach, but it failed however, because the mind is just too complicated to be observed with such a linear methodology. With this approach, you can gather an amazing amount of accurate data, but little can be concluded from it. And most conclusions would get opposed by similar empirical results that seem to, just as righfully, suggest the complete opposite. By animal testing, its from this line of thought that the reward/punishement operant conditioning methods emerged. And its the exact reasoning corporal punishement is based on (and the word punishement itself).

Around the 1950s a new movement in psychology started called "cognitive psychology." This movement combined the new technologies and understandings in other fields of pure science in order to observe the happenings inside the human brain, and combine it with the emperical evidence of behaviourism in order to produce much more realistic and tangible conclusions. From then to this day, a vast amount of remarkably unexpected results and discoveries were made about the brain anatomy and how it operates. A lot of these findings have contradicted many oversimplifications that had been assumed over the years. For example, the sexual nervous system operates without the consent of the person and the buttocks is tightly connected to the sexual nervous system. Inevitably, through spanking, even in pain, and even at an extremely young age, some of the impulses recieved by the brain are sexual. Children have a proven pain threshold inferior to that of adults. Through humiliation, and learned helplessness, such treatements can contribute to the lowering of self-esteem, depending in which setting he child is spanked. All sorts of innapropriate associations between hitting, pain, and the events happening around them can be made that will permenantly effect what kind of adult they will eventualy become. And even the complete opposite can happen with repeated use, habituation, where the child gets used to the punishement and turns it into a game of "not getting caught" instead of the lesson that ought to be learned. And if you spank too often, habituation is inevitable. Once your child no longer responsive to spanking, what do you do? Hit them harder?

Now obviously, everyone who's been spanked is not going to turn into some un-loved depressed masochist, or some angry bully eventually to turn into an antisocial criminal (except seraphina of course ... jk plz dont maul me ;/). These only happen in extreme cases, and it also depends on the child in question of course. The point of all this rambling is not to convince you what will happen if you spank, but rather what can happen, and to illustrate that there is a lot going on in that little head, a lot more than some of you seem to realise or that psychologists even know. A child starts using logic as early as 18 months of age, and claiming that it follows opperant conditioning even remotely close to perfectly is a completely false statement. If it did, this means spanked children would never repeat any action they were ever spanked for. Does it work this easily? No, sorry, because if it did, 12 year olds could probably be acceptible parents. There is a lot at work and a lot at stake. I think most of us would agree that spanking has little side effects on some, but can potentialy have side effects on others. (Reffering to the "gentler" kind of spankings, no bruises or stuff like that). If this is the case, how can you tell what kind of child you have? When its too late perhaps?

Realistically, children will do misdeeds, wether on purpose or by accident. As soon as these occur, parents have choices. For argument's sake, pretend below is a complete list of ways to respond to a child's unacceptable act. It ranges from talking, to spanking, where "..." is everything in between, in some appropriate ranking, that I'm waaaaaaaay too lazy to list (just take my word for it, such techniques do exist, and I even have a link for the nonebelievers ):

-talk
- ...
-spank

I think most of us will agree that spanking should saved more as a last resort. In this case, we can argue that the proper way to go about solving a problem is by starting with the first thing on the top of the list. And then, depending on the severity or repetition of the act, you pick something lower and lower on the list that is closer to or equal to spanking. In other words, you are ferm where it is due.

I don't have anything completely and utterly against spanking and those who use it (although I have to admit, knowing myself, it would definitely have screwed me up... that I am pretty certain of). In any case, my claim is the following:

Even if spanking was on my personal list as a last resort, it would not change anything, because I believe children are born innocent, and as such can be exposed to the world in such a way that you will never have to resort to corporal punishement in order to teach them anything. ANYTHING. In my opinion, If one feels they need to resort to corporal punishement, it is only due to failure of proper parenting in earlier stages, or due to the lack of commitment and care for the child's mental developement.


ANYWAYS.....

This is a very controversial topic, and one that is by far not agreed upon by experts.

Those who are against it claim it is too risky for the child's mental health, and that it contradicts human morale standards by hitting the most important individuals of our society's future, when in most countries it is outright illegal to hit other adults, prisonners, or even animals. (I'm more convinced by the first than the latter, but probably somewhat biased by the latter still)

Those who support it dont see it as a necessity, but rather as a usable tool. They advise using it only on children 2-6, never when in a bad mood, explaining the reason clearly in order to avoid misinterpratations, and doing it rarely enough to avoid habituation. (This is from what I've read gathered from various sources over the internet)

What most experts do agree on however (that's right, there is hope yet!), is that unconditional love and affection are a must, and can actualy lead to very serious mental illnesses if heavily lacked. Any form of punishment is suggested to be creative and variant from one misdeed to the next, because children get used to the same punishement fast, and these start loosing their effectiveness just as rapidly.

So if you swat, be oh so very careful please, and never forget why you are doing it. The earth's human population is already large enough as it is, this world needs more quality poeple, not more quantity. And if you give a damn what I think, spend more time with your kids, and never resort to swating in the first place.

PS: I'm sorry for the length of my post... I dunno if I would even read it were it not by myself

But yet violence in our youth and the world in general has escalated since parents became afraid of being turned in if they discapline their child in public. Something to think about. eh?

I think you argued a valid point SpeedOfDark, and yes.. despite the length of your post.. don't worry about it I read it.

Recalling back from an incident in my childhood that I've been 'physically disciplined' for is: Being misunderstood. Parents tend to physically discipline children to account for one or few crucial moments they missed out in their child's life, so they hit them to make up for lost time without really knowing the entire story. Great. Another shortcut/quick fix that parents can use so they can continue juggling their full-time career and relationship with their child.

I think that the reason the kids are so unruly today is the lack of fathers in their lives. I really believe that.

I also don't believe that children are born innocent and you can nurture their mental health with love. Mental illness is something that comes on like cancer or diabetes and cannot be controlled with love anymore than any other disease can be controlled with love.

My bestfriend's ex-husband's cousin and his wife had a boy that I believe was born with something fundamentally wrong with his personality. At age 3 he smashed a kitten's head against a headboard of a bed until the kitten died and at age 5 he drowned 3 chihuahua puppies in the toilet. Sound like a serial killer in the making?

By today, every known disorder (including personality disorderders) has a label, and atleast some information about it. I'm not particularly familiar with what you are describing, so if you want me to reply, I will need to know atleast the name of the disorder so that I can read up on it.

I agree to that.



Now that is scary!

I'd call it detachment disorder. Violence doesn't affect them, these types of humans, be it children or adults. Sometimes I think they were just born without a soul.

There are studies I have heard that surmise that some of the worst sociopaths are formed within the first year of life by how they are treated.

Aha! I think I found what you are refering to! w00t!

If the child acts this way towards most things, then it is most likely due to a severe case of antisocial personality disorder. The term 'antisocial' should not be confused with the way we generally use it, because in this context it refers to the rejection of social norms and a partial or complete indifference to the rights and feelings of others. Some describe the antisocial personality disorder as a person who can only experience a certain range of emotions the way normal humans do, and they usualy have a weak sense of things like empathy or pitty.

It is estimated that about 3% of men and 1% of women suffer from this disorder to some extent. Often, severe cases will end up in jail for a reason or another because they have a hard time following social rules, and giving respect to those around them as the law demands. However, there is still hope for poeple with this disorder. They can be farely succesful in jobs where a certain sense of cold logic is required and a lack of attachement to specific individuals. Such jobs mostly include highly ranked military and business positions.

Raising a child with a severe case of antisocial personality disorder is definitely a challenge, and something that can also be very hard mentally for the parents. The child will most likely respond to colder logic, instead of emotional arguments. Things like "it hurts the animal" will not convince it to stop, because it doesn't really understand what you mean. Its like raising a child that only, or mostly, cares for itself. In a sense it is innocent, because it actualy cannot feel empathy as the rest of us do, so in its eyes, its not causing any harm, as it only feels its only feelings. For these children you need to use arguments that relate to and effect the child directly, or else they will not understand.

Raising a child with this disorder is definitely something most of us would rather not to go through, but we have no direct control on the innate properties of our child. We can only do the best we can with what we get, just like with ourselves.

This would tap into Theory of mind -

the ability to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.

And how it connects to empathy

Empathy is a related concept, meaning experientially recognizing and understanding the states of mind, including beliefs, desires and particularly emotions of others without injecting your own, often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". Children are supposed to develop 'theory of the mind' at around 4 years of age.

There will always be a debate between the perspectives in psychology on whether Theory of mind is something innate or not. But it's known that sometimes this isn't fully developed till later teens, reasoning is another thing. Textbook age for getting past the development stage of adolesence is actually 25 years of age, but different cultures will gage this at different ages.

So behaviour like this in childhood although antisocial doesn't always reflect a disorder. A development problem perhaps but it would be impossible to know if it would carry on into adulthood or not.

I am saying you can't cure mental illness with love. It's not something someone asks for. It's a disease like cancer.

Spanking creates sensible people. People who never had spankings will probably never understand how effective it is.

My parents used to spank me quite a bit (although I probably should've
listened to them more ).
I don't think it did anything to me mentally.
A slap/spank every now and then doesn't hurt.. as long as you're not seriously
injuring the child..

Sometimes talking to your kid just doesn't cut it, I know it didn't with me. >_>

Discipline and abuse are two totally different things, it's always annoying
when people mix the two together.

Discipline isn't the kind of thing that 'creates' serial killers, abuse and mental disorders
do.

o_< that's my opinion.

For some mental disorders yes, for others no. For example, depression is a mental disorder. Can it be cured with love? Yes, and its not the only one. On the other hand, can Schizophrenia be cured with love? No. Surely it can't cause harm, but it will not get rid of the unwanted symptoms, because their root is much more simple and chemicaly based, one that a drug takes care of quite efficiently.

With a lot of effort, for the most part, personality disorders can actualy be "fixed" or improved, but this is usually very hard to do. Generally, poeple with personolity disorders' personalities don't change much throughout the lifespan.

The mind is a tricky thing, and not to be taken lightly, or oversimplyfied. There are treatements for many mental disorders that involve only talking, and there are some that involve only drugs. From one person to the next, different talking techniques will work, others won't, and the same even applies for some drugs.

For these reasons, many of today's common mental disorders are cured by combining the power of both drugs and therapy toegether (therapies which are always optimism centered, like love).

There should be no doubt that what a person thinks and feels greatly effects their symptoms, especially when the most common example is cited every day: the placebo effect. If thinking positively can empirically be shown to help poeple cure faster from things such as back pain (which has no seemingly obvious relation with the mind), then certainly mental disorders can too, and to a far greater extent.

I hate to burst your bubble, but depression cannot be "cured" with love. It's a chemical imbalance. However, the effects of "love" (say, meeting a potential mate) can alter the chemical balance of your brain - everyone experiences this alteration. It's called "falling in love". So, to an extent, and for a very limited time, a depressed person, falling in love, may cease to be deeply depressed. But it always returns. Sadly, the only sure-fire way I've found to battle the imbalance is with medications. Don't get me wrong, it would be wonderful if the odd hug could cure depression, but it just can't. Ah, the beauty of the human brain...

What you say is true.

If the chemical imbalance is more innate, then there is very little that can help other than medications. However, suppose a milder case of depression where the chemical balance was perfectly fine before some traumatic event, it is possible for it to restabilize itself purely by environmental interactions (love only being an example) and without drugs. Depression does improve, can be cured purely trough therapy. I don't recommend it, because therapy+drugs works so much faster, but it's still possible. Note here, that it is possible for SOME cases, of usualy milder, depression. I don't claim that all depressed patients simply need love, nowheres near it. And as for yourself, you surely know your own personal case of the disorder much better than I do.

If you prefer examples;
My father was diagnosed with depression due to work related-stress when I was younger, and it lasted almost a year, during which time he was in the hospital for therapy mostly. He is perfectly fine now and no longer takes medication. During his long stay at the hospital, he was on drugs yes, but therapy was still a big part of it, or else he would not have been required to stay at the hospital instead of home.

Although I dont think I was plainly 'wrong,' I could see though, that perhaps my choice of words were a bit too confined to extreme cases, and not representative enough of reality... instead I should have said something like:

Some mental disorders have stronger correlations to love than others. For example, depression is a mental disorder. Does it have a decent negative correlation with love? Yes, and its not the only one. On the other hand, does schizophrenia have a decent negative correlation with love? Not quite. Surely it will help some, but mostly towards their well being and not actualy work at getting rid of the unwanted symptoms, because their root is much more simple and chemicaly based in the sense that they can usually not be attributed to some life event, or any form of environmental factor. Because of that, a drug takes care of much more efficiently, and theropy is practicaly useless. For most cases Schizophrenia, symptoms are completely gone as long as they stay on them the drugs.


I dunno if its accurate yet, you probably know more on it than I do... is my bubble still intact or no?

Sorry, that bubble-bursting crack probably sounded pretty snotty, which wasn't my intention at all. I wasn't trying to argue with your reasoning; indeed, in 'milder' (for lack of a better word) cases of depression, the patient can be helped with therapy and support. The trick to that, of course, is that the patient has to want the therapy to help, in order for it to 'work'. That's pretty tricky, in a society that generally regards therapy as for 'lunatics' and 'drama queens'.

That said, though, I was referring to 'curing' depression in children that have been born with that particular disorder. I understand that 'mild depression' can develop at any time, in anybody, but clinical depression, the type that you can't generally 'cure' without adjusting the chemicals in the brain, is something you're born with. This type of depression can be latent, not emerging until the late 20s, but it can also emerge in very young children, triggering bad behaviour (such as aggression, irritability, insomnia, nightmares/terrors, the list goes on). I think the argument, way back in the thread, was that children can be born with certain disorders that can cause unacceptable behaviour, thereby requiring fitting punishments. Sorry if I got the wrong handle there...

Just to get argumentative here... (because it's not like I haven't been doing that already, right? ) I still have to disagree with the love/depression argument. Sorry. While falling in love may temporarily relieve some of the symptoms of clinical depression, it rarely fixes it. In most cases, it actually makes the depression worse, when the first flush is gone; which then ruins the relationship, and the depression is back in all it's cruel glory. If someone is suffering from clinical depression, the only way to properly fight it (along with therapy), is sadly, drugs that counteract the chemical problems in the brain.

PS: Glad to know your Dad's doing better now!

Thanks liokee you saved me a mouthful.

For accurate information on mental illness please visit this site.

SpeedOfDark: There are too many misconceptions and stigmas about mental illness already without creating more so please for up to date, accurate information please visit the above site if you have any questions. I'm not trying to attack you or demean your experience in any way but presenting inaccurate information is a big problem. People need to be aware that mental illness is not something that people bring on themselves or something that can be 'cured'.

Thanks so much.

Discipline with love is different than discipline with anger. I use to get my bottom smacked, or grounded when I got older for misbehaving. It didn't do me, or my siblings any harm.

I don't think you should smack a child while you are angry, as you could end up hurting a child. I use to put my daughter in a time-out chair in the room. She hated it. Although she could see the telly; she hated it, as she couldn't do what she wanted at that time. She use to go in her chair when she started throwing tantrums. After a while, she would calm down, I would give her a hug and kiss, along with telling her how much I loved her and how it hurt me when she behaved that way.

She is a well-rounded adult and recently got married. Discipline with love doesn't hurt any child. I was discliplined with love, and I don't regret any minute of it. I hate to think what I would have become without it.

I think the reason children are so misbehaved these days is that they lack discipline and parents shout abuse at them rather than being firm and loving. I know not all parents shout verbal at their children, but I have heard how some speak to their children and it makes me cringe. It would devastate me if my parents ever spoke to me the way some children are spoken to by their parents.

Mind you, the breakdown of society and parents not really being given in help in learning how to properly discipline their children (my neighbour above me is a single mother and she shouts at her young child some harsh words)that would benefit the parents and the child/ren

Good site Coldethyl, I read a few of the articles, including the one on depression.

However, it agrees with what I MENT with my comment of a few posts ago, wether or not it was what was understood from it (direct quote from your website):

"Psychotherapy. There are several types of psychotherapy that have been shown to be effective for depression including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy (IPT). Research has shown that mild to moderate depression can often be treated successfully with either of these therapies used alone. However, severe depression appears more likely to respond to a combination of psychotherapy and medication."


stated in other words: some form of negative correlation with optimism and love, which is what most therapies are based upon, albeit more complicated and done by a medical proffesional. (@liokee: when I said love, I did not mean it in the sense you are thinking. I simply mean affection to and from others, regardless of their sources, not sexual relationship. Depression patients without any of this affection will most likely commit suicide.)


A final word on personality disorders:

Yes, for the vast majority, they are persistent throughout life, and something someone must deal with everyday. However, for most cases, scientists believe poeple are born with a certain degree of genetic or mental predisposition, and not the mental disorders themselves, which is believed to be caused by a dynamic of genetics and environment, like almost everything else. A bad childhood can give someoene with a predisposition a nasty personality disorder that will last the rest of his life, which he would not have had, or as badly, with a good childhood.

The majority of personality disorders can only be identified in the latter teenage stages and early adulthood. There is still high debate onto what exactly consists some personality disorders, and many left unclassified. There even exists some ambiguity between extreme personalities and personality disorders.

---

My point, concerning children:

Hiding yourself behind the fact that your child has (or you think he has) a mental disorder is useless. A lot of children misbehave, and lets remember that the majority of these do not have severe mental disorders that cause them to do so. Suppose your child does suffer from a mental disorder, most are proven to be improved by therapy and optimistic thought (almost everything is proven to improve through optimistic thought, that is the definition of the placebo effect, empirically proven countless times). I'm not claiming that if a child with a mental disorder that causes trouble, all blame should be aimed at the parents. I'm saying that the parents should not blame the mental disorder everytime something happens. If they do, they have already given up. There is always room for improvement, and this not just me talking, but years of empirical evidence. Environments shape the brain just as much as some drugs, and a positive loving one can do wonders. Once again, I don't want this misinterpreted, I'm NOT saying, love your child and he'll be perfect, nor that it will cure their disease. I'm saying that for almost every disorder it DOES help. That being so, it helps raise the child as best as he can become, with his condition. Which is definitely a goal worth persuing.

If personality disorders do anything to my argument against spanking, it only reinforces it. Children with high predispositions or with the disorders themselves are more mentally fragile than other children, and should be taken extra care how they are dealt with... the possible misinterpretations by the brain of spanking and long-term ineffectiveness of classical opperant conditioning... I am not gonna go over again... Writing 1 novel-sized post per thread is enough for me, refer to that one if you want to argue with me on that topic


PS:

I agree that my initial post about mental disorders was quite a bit misleading, and I do apaulagize for that. I will take more care to state things as explicitely as possible next time. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, it made me do a few good reads.

Thanks. It's a very important subject for me. And I do want to make it clear as you stated in your post that love and cognative behavior therapy are two very different things. You go thru therapy with a doctor and it's done by a professional.

Those are the points that I wanted to clear up. People think too often that psychiatric problems are just "all in the head" or not real and that is not the case at all. Knowledge is power.

Thanks much for the apology.

In the middle of posting this yesterday UM went down, I cant figure out why this tangent has gotten to be so big, this thread is about child discipline, not about mental disease. Mental disorders result from a small fraction of child 'discipline' gone too far, There is no need for the thread to be dedicated to it. Furthermore i dont understand why methods of treatment are being discussed when i havent seen any kind of credentials. I'm sure if anyone is in need of aid in that arrea they'll seek professional medical advice. What might be right for some maight not be right for others, I'd appreciatte if the conversation ended here. This thread is borderline unsuitable IMO but i will let it continue, So long as it gets back on topic.

My mom was old-fashioned in her discipline methods, which were basically spanking and grounding. "Grounding" was a whole bunch of punishments rolled into one. The spankings were with a hand up to age 6 and a wooden spoon or paddle from age 6-14, on my bare butt, and believe me, mom didn't quit spanking until I knew I'd been punished. Afterward I was always expected to apologize for my misconduct.

After a spanking I would be grounded to my room at least for the day, but at times (when I really screwed up) it could be up to 4 weeks. Whatever the duration of the grounding, while it was going on I had extra chores and an early bedtime. When I wasn't doing chores, eating or using the bathroom I was sitting on my bed. I could read, and that was it.

On some occasions when I was grounded, if mom had no more chores to give me and thought sitting on my bed reading was too easy on me for my particular offense, I had to stand with my nose in the living room corner for most of the day.

My mother was strict even by 1970s/80s standards. Would I trade my childhood for anyone else's? Not a chance. The punishments I got helped me learn self-control, and self-discipline, and the fact that the world did not revolve around my every whim. If I could go back and live it over again I wouldn't change anything.

I just don't like kids getting hurt...

Well kids are going to get hurt, whether it be from discipline or from one of the many other hazards of the world which lack of discipline can contribute to.

I think there is a solid line between physical discipline and harmful beatings, but many cross that line, or don't see it at all.

I asked someone a question about this the other day. He heard me say I hit my kids and came up to tell me as a friend that he didn't think I should do it.

He was very nice and we had a good conversation.

But I was looking at him at 33 years old. Unemployed and still living with mom and dad who were very liberal. Never hit him. He's a folk musician and has to go back to undergrad classes in order to get into the grad school program he wanted. He's not sure what he wants to do with his life. Totally unorganized and does drugs as a bad habit.

So I said to him "You are a mess and you know it. You are telling me not to hit my kids. Well let me ask you this. If you could go back in time and get hit for a month straight. And in doing this you would solve one of the problems you are faced with now, would you do it? If doing that would take away your lack of discipline with school for example, would you do it?"

He of course said yes.

I think this is the difference between the way a parent looks at hitting their kids and a non parent looks at it.

A non parent looks at it as you are hitting a kid.

A parent is worried about the adult that kid is going to become and will do what is needed in order to get that kid on the right path.

Do I like it? Of course not. But no way in hell is my kid going to wind up on drugs or in trouble because I wanted to be a "nice guy" when they were a kid.

Having his parents hit him when he was younger probobly wouldn't change his life a whole lot. His parents should have used a more effective form of non physical discipline.

You may be right in saying he needed more discipline when he was a kid but that doesn't mean it needed to be physical.

I remeber when I was younger and my punishments came in multiple forms of disciplinary actions. The two big ones where beatings and being grounded which consisted of doing absolutely nothing for two weeks and my Dad making me do repetive uncessary work. If I where to have a choice in the matter I would have chosen the beatings. It also makes more sense when you grow up and do bad things you go to jail(boring, repetitive) you don't just get a smack on the bum.

Pain is only momentary complete boredom for two weeks drives you to the edge of insanity. Groundation was a way more effectiveof a punishment for me. Of course my Dad went by the old school rules of groundation...two weeks of literally doing nothing save for going to school and church...it's kind of just like prison except I didn't get stabbed or had a boyfriend name Bubba.

Also for the record going to bed without dinner is just as bad as a punishment as beatings.

Some kids respond to non-physical discipline, some don't. There's not one rule that covers every case.



Keep in mind that there's no rule saying you can only use a single punishment for a single offense. Whenever I got spanked I was also grounded.

sorry but I was grounded as a kid and was punished in solitary confinement for weeks for minor offenses.

You are right. Its much worse than a spanking. Why you think its better to punish a child by withholding food and pushing them to the brink of insanity, is beyond me.

And its sad that a simple ten minute SPANKING not a swat on the bum but a full out ten wallops with a belt in a controlled manner is considered child abuse to some.

But not feeding a child and mentally torturing them is not.

That's just weird in my opinion.

I just think theres a better way to discipline a child then hitting them. I just don't like seeing people get hurt.

Also in my experience beatings didn't teach me anything. All it did was make me angry and It wouldn't stop me from doing it again, because the pain was only momentary. That's why my dad eventually found groundation a better solution.

You also have to know that eventually beatings may become useless. They may be effective on younger kids but when they get to be about twelve or so it may not work. My dad isn't a very strong guy so when I got to be around 10 or so he couldn't hit me hard enough on the bum for me to feel enough pain...which caused him to find new places to hit me, but thats another story.

Well that's my opinion anyways.

I don't have children and never plan to, but here is the BEST solution. Shock collars. Does that sound cruel? Think about it like this: Anytime the child does something wrong, it hurts. For the first couple of years, the child will not even know that you are the one zapping them. Usually when a child puts their hand in a fire, they do not make the same mistake twice. More than likely a child will learn that doing certain things hurts, so they will not do it. It is probably a lot more humane than some forms of discipline. For instance, when a child does something wrong and a parent uses a slap or a beating of some kind to teach the child a lesson, the child associates the act of getting caught with being disciplined. If they spent the first several years of their life just feeling pain when they did something wrong, they would not wait until your back was turned to do something wrong because they would not associat the pain with you.

As you can tell, I don't like kids very much, but this would probably work better than a lot of other methods commonly practiced.

I hope your not serious. Anyways it would be very hard to program a collar to do that.

That's the best part! You don't program the collar to do that. You get to do it! They just don't know that you are the on doing it, (for a couple of years anyway...)

And yes, I am only half serious. People that don't have kids should never be taken seriously when stating their views on raising children.

Oh I get it...like with a remote control? hehe.

I totally agree.

well, how would you like it if YOU were shocked, frankly hitting a child is wrong and should not be done

I've been shocked when I was trying out a shock collar for my dog...and it wasn't that bad.

I thought about getting one for my husband to get his attention sometimes.

Don't talk to me.

If you do it again I will shock you.

Frankly if you don't have children, then you really shouldn't have an opinion yet.

but I am 15, shouldn't I have a voice in child punishment

Nope, sorry!

well that was unfair, I have rights to you know

when I was a young mother , I swore I would never use corporal punishment on my child, nor let anyone else. By the time he was in school, I had changed my tune. If I could , I would have used it earlier. My life and his would have gone a little better. He's 14 and thank goodness has some level of respect.

My brother's kids never get disciplines, just the playstation removed....they are disrespectful little yahoos. I digress.

i love the shock collar its perfect. u gota disciplin your kids or else they become little brats who think they are the boss and make the rules. then they grow up and dont care what anyone has to say and just screw around and dont get jobs because they wont care.

and a good smackn never hurt anyone.

A teenager objecting to spanking is like a drunk driver objecting to the highway patrol