How to Punish Children

[Dinner]

Child abuse is the way to go. Hang them by their toes and electroshock them if they don't eat their veggies.

And if that doesn't work then cover them in honey and put them on top of a south American ant hill.

[Combat Ingrid]

Cervical dislocation

[rah]

Most of those reports are done by people watching other's children.

While I don't aprove of beatings, a spanking every now and then can be a good thing. Anyone that has children has seen them get into a frenzy where all the reasoning in the world is not going to have any benefit.

[Az]

sell them to a paedophilia network.


Seriously, though, Reasoning, and various grounding sounds right to me.

[Pekka]

Rule of the thumb v2.0, you can not beat your child with an iron bar bigger than your thumb is.

Nah, I think spanking is in order sometimes. But don't hit your child in anger. You need to be in control. And I still prefer reasoning and grounding. But I'll spank some butts if the house rules are broken and everything else seems to fail to get the youngster back in order!

[SlowwHand]

I would heartily recommend following any advice RAH has to offer.
Nothing like having little monsters with an inordinate fondess for ferrets.

[mrmitchell]

They should be obediant after that. Maybe a little crosseyed, but totally obediant.

Of course! Everyone who's been in the hospital for major head trauma is always obedient to whoever did it to them.

---

Schools are not for discipline. Parents are for discipline. Schools are for academics.

That said, senseless beating is not the only way to fix a problem.

[Japher]

There is no reasoning with a screaming, clawing, out of control 4 year old. Throwing them into their room (if there is one to send them to) doesn't do much of anything. They aren't going to "think" about their actions, they are just going to get more mad. Why? Because the only reason the brat was throwing a tantrum in the first place was to get some attention. Locking them in a closet does not warrent this type of "attention". You need to spank them, at least then they know that you will pay attention to them when they are bad and good. Thus, leading to the deep realization that they care enough to put up with you wether you are bad or good, and thus they learn to trust your judgement to be able to tell if you are being good or bad...

[mrmitchell]

It's better to act good yourself and not throw tantrums -- numerous studies show babies copy their parents -- and reward them for all good behavior.

[Meldor]

Having been both a child and a parent, I voted for #2.

Sorry, but children need to know that there are limits beyond which they can not go. They need those limits. Talking to a child does no good. If a child knows there is no consequence of bad behavior, it will continue to behave badly. Rewarding good behaior is great, don't get me wrong, but the bad must be punished. So, what punishment to use?

1) Reasoning with a child. Sorry, a smaller child does not have the cognative functioning to reason much beyond immediate cause and effect. To try and reason with them about not playing with matches, or not throwing a ball at their sibling doesn't work. They enjoyed the behavior (even though it was wrong) and theywill continue to do it as long as the worst that happens is a talk. Rewarding them for playing nicely with a sibling will only get you kids that play well together when you are looking. With older kids it will work to some extent but not if it is done all of the time. It merely builds up resentment and it begins to run in one ear and out the other.

2) Grounding - Again, smaller children don't ahve the ability to connect the complete punishment with the bad behavior. A small child that is punished by grounding, or having a TV taken away, will modify its behavior for a short period. After that, they no loger associate the behavior with the punishment. If you see and bad behavior and tell the child it won't be able to go to the movie as palnned two days from now it will feel bad. But when it behaves for two days and then can't go to the movie it builds a connection to the more recent behavior. It also is seen by the child as a parent that carries a grudge or is mad at them for a long time.

3) Spanking - The feed back is immediate. The smaller child has an instant connection between the behavior and the punishment. It is over quickly and the parent and the child can put it behind them. I made a pint to hug my children after I spanked them and told them I loved them. This was to put the punishment not on personal terms (I am going to spank you because you made me mad) but as an impersonal cosequence of their bad behavior. I have never spanked my children while I was mad at them (not because I couldn't control the spanking). I would let them see me calm down and get over the "being mad" part before I decided the punishment. I never hit the children hard enough to leave a long term mark (redness, yes, but it fades relatively quickly). I have always limited myself to 5 swats for minor offenses and 10 for major.

As a child grows up, and you have taught them well, you should have to spank them less and less. I have found that I do not spank my daughter any more (15) and only rarely need to spank my son (11). I think that by the time he is 12 it will be a done deal. Now that they can understand more complex relationships, removal of priviledges works better, but even that isn't used much, as they just don't do things they shouldn't ro the transgressions are now small enough (more of the not thinking rather than the covert action type) that reasoning with them is as effective.

I havew personnally witnessed children raised in both manners and frankly, I would rather have the ones that had a little spanking than those that didn't.

[Stefu]

Fire.

The answer is fire.

[mrmitchell]

Spanking a 15 year old daughter is more of sexual harrasment than punishment.

Likewise, by the time your child is 11 years old, he should have the ability to reason out the whole grounding thing and you don't need to spank him, unless you have raised an incredible idiot.

[Japher]

Thanks for your well-thoughtout reply... mainly because I agree

I would suggest trying to not punish them when they do something wrong (when old enough of course).

By the time I was 16 my parents had no more need to punish me either through reasoning nor grounding. When I erred it was just that an error, and I didn't need them to tell me that they were disappointed in me, I already knew. Whenever I F'd up and came home late, faught with my sibs, swore, etc... I would find myself apologizing to my parents before I even knew it!

I don't know what they did, but I think it was one time, when I came home late, I didn't find them sitting up waiting, and that made me fearful of them... I apologized, and told them it would never happen again. They told me that it probably would, but that the fact that I knew it makes them angry/worried should be enough to keep from doing it again, or to at least call.

I think there are stages, and spankings are one of them.

[CorpusScorpius]

I am not one to spank my daughter. Although there have been times it was warranted. When she was 6 we were in a grocery store & someone she knew that worked there was not working that day. She (my daughter) began to throw a major tantrum. I was trying to reason w/ her but it was not working. I did not want to spank her in public so I decided on a different method...........I began Jumping Up & Down & demanding that she behave very loudly.The adults around us were laughing. My daughter became Extremely Embarassed & started to cry. Mission accomplished!!! She has not thrown a fit with me ever since.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Japher
Throwing them into their room (if there is one to send them to) doesn't do much of anything.

Works great with mine. Spanking only makes him behave worse, because he gets more pissed off.