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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Is it possible that your brother was an "a*hole" because of how he was treated? I'm not just talking about "spankings". I think whichever parent abused your brother had no patience or tender feeling for him and took any opportunity to hurt him and justify it by labelling him as a bad kid. My parents were each abusive in their own ways and I observed at the time that my dad was roughest on my eldest brother and my mom was harshest on me. You seem hesitant to accuse your parents of abuse, by where do you suppose your rage comes from? I know I was affected not only by being beaten, but from witnessing my siblings being abused, as well. Please consider working on your rage feelings toward your kids. I promise they do nothing to deserve it.[/quote]

I know why I was an a**hole and got punished harder as a kid - it's because my sister was the Golden Child who could do no wrong and I was the Scapegoat who could do no right. I always felt that my parents were teamed up with my sister and against me, which made me resent my sister and be an a**hole to her, which led to me getting punished, which increased my resentment, and so on. [/quote]

I'm sorry that happened to you. Children aren't born aholes, they act that way for a reason. My eldest sister was the golden child and never got beaten. There was a time I was with her and couldn't have done something which enraged my dad. I was whipped with a belt and she didn't tell him I was innocent. My skinned swelled so much, it split and I bled. I was 9. I have never and will never spank or otherwise assault my kids. I don't view them as anything other than children, who are to be treated gently and with love. I hope you treat your kids gently, too.[/quote]

I'm a different poster. I think it's fine to do what you want, but some kids are born aholes. Like why are some kids doing super disrespectful things? [/quote]

Many people consider certain developmentally normal behavior from kids as "super disrespectful" because of their own issues. Like sometimes kids will break rules or do things they know will annoy their parents, on purpose, just to see what will happen. This isn't "disrespectful" unless you define respect as a child who always does exactly what they've been told, 100% of the time. That's not developmentally appropriate for children and childhood and adolescence are largely about using trial and error to learn about the world in a relatively safe environment. Kids who do stuff like this are not a*holes, they are just kids. And when they do it, it's a terrific opportunity to provide them with natural consequences for risky, rude, or inappropriate behavior, and to talk to them about why that behavior will cause problems down the road. All of which you can do without hitting them. This is literally what parenting is.

But if you just hit or ignore kids in this stage instead of, you know, parenting and teaching them, then they will keep engaging in sometimes escalating bad behavior. Maybe they become nihilists who figure "I can't do right so I might as well enjoy doing wrong," maybe they are testing the absolute limit of your relationship with them to see what will push you to throw them out or say you hate them (because at least then they'll know instead of living in fear of that moment), maybe they are just so freaking confused about what it even means to make good choices because they see their parents consistently raging and hitting in a way that is deemed fine and justified within their family, but when they do the same they are punished.

No kid is a born a*hole. I know that's hard to hear, but kids get that way through experience.[/quote]

I get what you are saying. But let's fast forward to the older years when kids aren't getting spanked....why are kids being nasty to one another, hurting one another, manipulating, doing drugs, constantly lying. Many of them have not been spanked. A lot of this is considered common for older kids but many parents have laid the foundation when they are young. I'm not saying spanking is the answer but the cop out answer of "Oh something is wrong" or "They are just kids" just doesn't do it for me. I don't believe people are always as "good" as some of you are trying to make it seem. I'm not perfect. But I've been around kids when I myself was in middle school, high school, college etc. and some of the things kids do is really not okay. I myself have lied and cheated yet I was not taught to do that. Whether you spank or don't spank I just don't think that makes a child "good". The "just kids" reminds me of all the people that justify bad behavior in later years. You know the boys that rape girls in college at some frat party...."oh they are just kids". I hate this statement.[/quote]

If you don't think spankign is the answer than why bring this up here? But to answer your question --

I don't think kids are innately good. I think human beings are animals, and I mean that in the neutral sense. We are animal creatures with animal needs (food, shelter, security, companionship) and that like animals we will use the tools at our disposal to obtain these things. If violence and nastiness works to get them, that's what we'll do. We are programmed to get our needs met so that we can survive.

The thing about society and civilization is that it recognizes that if we engage in anarchy, where there are no rules and people can just use force to get their needs met, it's miserable for a lot of people. It's brutal, and results in people who are not as physically strong just not surviving. We've constructed a society in which we have things other than mere survival that we want to protect and contribute to. And to do that, we have had to tame the animal instincts to uses violence and other forms of cruelty (social exclusion, abandonment, etc.) to get needs met. In creating society, we're saying "okay, we're better of working together."

I think kids become jerks for the same reason anyone becomes a jerk. Look around. There are nasty, violent, manipulative, cruel people everywhere. They've decided it's more worthwhile to engage in that behavior, violating what some of us believe is a moral contract, because it gets them what they need. Plenty of kids see that behavior (and not just in the news or online or on TV, but often in their own homes from their own family) and they do it too.

Children are not inherently good or bad. They are always a reflection of society. If you see a lot of angry, manipulative, cruel teenagers around, I suggest you cast your gaze upon the rest of your community. The adults might be better at dressing this behavior up as civilized, but it's still what it always is -- anti-social, animal, cruelty. It doesn't well up inside a child from nowhere. They learn that it will serve them. We have to teach them that it won't. It's hard. But that's what it is to be a parent in 2022.[/quote]

I brought it up because you answered what I was getting at. Way too many people on here have this idea that kids are a complete product of how you parents. This is somewhat true but like you said society really plays a huge part and of course other things. I don’t believe in shaming people for doing what they think is best. I don’t spank but I seriously do not think spanking your child a couple of times results in many of the outrageous and degrading behavior we see today. That’s all I’m getting at. Kids are people and sometimes people do bad things even if they had all the gentle and loving parenting. I say this because I’m not going to get myself down if I’ve done all that I possibly can and they do something outrageous. [/quote]

The flaw in your argument is that by saying "spanking your child a couple of times" open a door to all kinds of abusive behavior.

If you asked my parents if they hit us, they would say "no, we spanked you." If you asked if it was just a couple times or a lot, they'd say "it didn't seem like a lot, we only did it when we felt like we had to."

I was terrified of my dad when I was a kid. He "spanked" us with his belt. I saw my mom slap my 16 year old sister across the face. They hit us in anger and rage, it was far more than a couple times, it was not controlled, it was not an effective or measured form of discipline. I have PTSD from that experience. I consider it abusive, as do most people I have told about it.

But my parents felt it fell within the category of "spanking" that people on this thread are defending. People will say "oh I'm just talking about a swat on the bottom." In the moment, you cannot control how hard or in what state of mind a parent hits their child. Saying it's okay because you are envisioning a very occasional and not-very-hard swat opens the door to people to abuse their kids. The reason I say that spanking is never okay and that no one should do it is that there is no other way to prevent people from doing what my parents did. Many, many abusive parents will minimize their abuse as "just spanking." Why give them that weapon? Why come up with this narrow category of socially sanctioned hitting of children when you could just... not? Why not just say "don't hit your kids, it's never okay" to prevent people from feeling justified in hitting their kids in a way that goes beyond what you seem to think is an acceptable level of spanking?

By the way, I feel confident that if spanking had been 100% considered not okay when I was a kid, my parents would not have done it, or it really would have only happened a couple times. My parents have lots of issues but they are extremely motivated by what is considered "correct". They were raised in strict, rule-following households and if the rule was "don't hit your kids", they would have worked really hard not to. Even if they'd slipped up, it would have spared us a lot of trauma. Don't you think that's worth it? I do. [/quote]

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