Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

+1

This makes me sick.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Civil poster here and since we are having an honest and civil discussion, where I'm swearing up and down why I'm right that spanking is not ideal and carries big time potential to harm kids, I absolutely need to admit that I have one child that I really do struggle with his behavior sometimes. I absolutely do think sometimes that "a good spanking" would end this ceaseless back and forth over the relentless onslaught of parenting a strong-willed child. Must we really do this thing again where I tell him 15 times to get his darn clothes on? So I'll open that up to you. I was able to change his behavior by concerted effort at redirecting, immediate consequence (you take someone's toy, mom takes it off you and hands to other kid with a redirection. You push a child or misbehave, you come sit with mom for a few minutes when youd' rather be playing, you hit or bite? we leave immediately, etc) (BTW thank god neither of mine were biters!)

My kids are a little bit older now - one is well past spanking age and the other (the rascal) is still in the spanking age but on the older side at 7. Overall i'm really happy with the human beings they are becoming but there were many, many times i left a party feeling like i had the worst behaved kid there. And I bet if I did spank i wouldn't have had that problem. So I really do get why people do it, and I've simply made a different but perhaps also not perfect choice. I just have to think that one involves a big person hitting a child and the other doesn't.

Your comment is very civil indeed. I only take slight issue with your last line because that's kind of developed to still go for *some* moral high-ground. I'm betting that there were plenty of times when you used your advantage of physical size to enforce the "sit by mom" punishments or leave the party punishments.

The other question I'd consider is that would the overall happiness and peacefulness of all parties have been improved if one spanking prevented 15 other punishments or confrontations (or whatever ratio you suggested)?

To your first comment, I get what you mean, but obviously I do think I get the moral high ground, I never said that I don't think spanking is wrong - I've said all along that I DO think it is wrong, but at the same time I both understand why some people do it and certainly don't think that my parenting is perfect and couldn't guarantee that I'm not screwing my kids up equally (again, assuming that I'm right, which obviously I do, and you don't) in some other way.

To your second comment, I don't think so with respect to the peacefulness of all parties would increase if one spanking prevented 15 (or countless, sometimes) other confrontations, but of course, that's the question I DO ask myself - and I DO sometimes think that a "good spanking" would have saved some time and made me into one of those moms who just had to raise an eyebrow to get compliance. But, at the end of the day, I think that compliance would come with a cost.

Honestly, even if I'm wrong, feeling how I feel about spanking, it was always going to be the wrong thing for me to do. Because I wouldn't have felt right doing it, etc. If you're very confident, and you truly spank in this controlled way, than my guess is that you are probably doing better than most parents including many who do NOT spank but do yell (I do, but damn i try hard not to, yell) or even uber permissive parents who never teach their kid not to be an entitled jerk. none of us are getting it right, so I guess I'm just saying that - don't know - it's a big bright line for me when it comes to hitting or hurting. I think that is NEVER okay, no matter the justification, except genuine self defense / defense of others. But there are some people who go a step further and are super horrified by it and I guess I'm not one of those people either, I don't think it's okay, and yet as I said, I see how there are many crappy things that otherwise well intentioned people do to their kids every day.

Spanking is per se harmful to people.

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.

http://news.utexas.edu/2016/04/25/risks-of-harm-from-spanking-confirmed-by-researchers

Anonymous wrote:I once cut off the top of my brother's finger. I was seven. When they returned from the ER, my dad whipped (not spanked) me with a leather belt. I totally deserved the punishment, and I certainly didn't feel any resentment toward my dad for doing it. This was in the 70's, so more parents spanked, I believe, but I never felt abused. It's not like it happened every day. More like once every six months, and rarely with anything besides a small switch.

No. No, you did not.

If it was an accident, you did not deserve the punishment.

If it was not an accident and you intended to cut off the top of your brother's finger, you needed psychological help and not a whipping.

Were they able to reattach the finger?

Anonymous wrote:I once cut off the top of my brother's finger. I was seven. When they returned from the ER, my dad whipped (not spanked) me with a leather belt. I totally deserved the punishment, and I certainly didn't feel any resentment toward my dad for doing it. This was in the 70's, so more parents spanked, I believe, but I never felt abused. It's not like it happened every day. More like once every six months, and rarely with anything besides a small switch.

so every six months you were doing something as bad as cutting off bro's finger?

^^^ And vice versa.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Me too. It is one thing for a parent to be at their wits end and give a kid a swat in the moment if they've really crossed the line...but this weird, ritualized routine in which the parent is totally calm is just so...gross.

It is certainly not better to be giving any punishments simply as a reaction to your own anger. What PP has described is the correct way.

Parents are allowed to get angry with their children, and to punish while angry. The danger is that a parent might go too far into abuse. If a parent does not abuse their child, then being calm is not better than being angry.

One thing I should add, though, is that my parents would have never made us remove any clothing for a spanking. That would have felt, to them and us, like an invasion of privacy.

I once cut off the top of my brother's finger. I was seven. When they returned from the ER, my dad whipped (not spanked) me with a leather belt. I totally deserved the punishment, and I certainly didn't feel any resentment toward my dad for doing it. This was in the 70's, so more parents spanked, I believe, but I never felt abused. It's not like it happened every day. More like once every six months, and rarely with anything besides a small switch.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Me too. It is one thing for a parent to be at their wits end and give a kid a swat in the moment if they've really crossed the line...but this weird, ritualized routine in which the parent is totally calm is just so...gross.

It is certainly not better to be giving any punishments simply as a reaction to your own anger. What PP has described is the correct way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Me too. It is one thing for a parent to be at their wits end and give a kid a swat in the moment if they've really crossed the line...but this weird, ritualized routine in which the parent is totally calm is just so...gross.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Eh, whatever. We do the same thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you do it?

I mean - do literally?

Do you put your child over your knee and hit them? Do you hit them where they are standing?

What are the logistics of spanking?

I was spanked as a child (once) and I never forgot it. I'm wondering if it works the same for all parents.

For us, we don't do it out of anger or in the moment, which I think could be confusing. So one of us will sit down with the child and briefly go over the behavior that has earned the spanking. Then put him or her over our knee and give three or four spanks on the bare tush.

There's crying, of course, but it's not an out of control angry event.

This description actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.