My column this week is in response to an article recently posted in our Parenting In The Media section about making spanking illegal.
Since reading the article, and others similar, I’ve been considering both sides. As someone who has fought for civil liberties all his adult life, I appreciate folks who say, “What I do in my own home, to my kids, in the name of good parenting, is my business.” But I also feel compelled to see the other side. The other side says that any violence committed on anyone, especially children, is wrong, period.
Not only that, but spanking just isn’t necessary. As proof, I offer my kids: I run an anti-violence home, as in, nobody hits nobody no-how, no way. For the most part, our home is a collective, governed by consensus. I have very few hard-and-fast rules. But one of them is, and has been since I started parenting: No Hitting. Which means we don’t spank, never have. And now, my oldest is 15 (in another few weeks) and my youngest is 11, and they are both spectacular kids. Seriously, I’d put ‘em up against your kids any day of the week and twice on Sunday. They are warm, engaging, polite, respectful, sensitive, flexible, sympathetic, and get great grades.
Lord knows they’re not perfect, but Stepford kids would be weird and boring. Sure, my son likes to bust my stones sometimes, for fun, like when he hands me a paper I have to sign, sometimes he’ll tease me with it, by pulling it back at the last second. My daughter, she still needs a reminder about doing the dishes. But that’s about it, really, I am having trouble coming up with better examples of my kids not being great. I don’t mean this as an exercise in bragging, (and if you talk to anyone who knows me, I am just not a braggart), but instead, I mean this as an example of what you can get out of your kids by treating them with unconditional respect. And when you spank a kid, you take away their dignity, you momentarily crush their self-esteem into the dirt, you stop being respectful to them. And in my house, that’s just not the way.
Now you may see things differently, and you’re entitled to your opinion. But if you want my advice, stop hitting, stop yelling, stop yourself before you act disrespectfully to your kids. It may prove difficult, it may create some short-term bumps in the road. But long-term, it works. Be unconditionally respectful. Stop the yelling, stop the spanking.
…just a thought…
Photo courtesy of Starfires, used under a Creative Commons License.
[tags]kids, spanking, violence, respect[/tags]
13 responses so far ↓
Rory // Feb 26, 2007 at 6:40 am
You won’t get a word of argument from me on this subject, Stu.
jhunterj // Feb 26, 2007 at 1:33 pm
> As proof, I offer my kids …
Anecdotal evidence of two kids is proof?
mcewen // Feb 26, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Whilst I’m all for democracy I’m afraid I have to disagree most violently with you. Around here, it’s pure dictatorship. We attempt the same outcome of ‘no hitting’ but by a different route. Nobody listens to me around here, so we resort to books - we have many of them on the subject - the titles range from ‘NO HITTING’ to ‘ Only meanies hit,’ but it takes a while to get the message across.
Good for you, your children sound super.
Cheers
Stu Mark // Feb 26, 2007 at 4:14 pm
jhunterj - yes, you are right, I have committed a logical fallacy, specifically what’s called an existential fallacy.
That said, the statement was used as a colloquialism, where the intent was to illustrate my faith in the concept of non-violence.
Stu Mark // Feb 26, 2007 at 4:23 pm
mcewen - It does take a while for the message to get through, agreed. However, my opinion is that if any kid is old enough to understand respect in any form, they can be shown that non-violence is a good path. I’ve written about “The Problem” elsewhere, but I may reprint it on this site next week, as a way of helping readers better understand my perspective.
As for the dictatorship, I hear you. There are moments where I dictate rules or terms. But for the most part, about 90% of the time, I make requests, which are heeded. That concept will become a future column, so thanks for the idea!
Mike // Feb 26, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I’m not a spanker. I don’t trust myself to do it properly. I don’t believe it would work with my kids. I was, however, spanked as a kid. Not super frequently. But, when I did something super stupid, I would get spanked. I was always sent to my room first for several minutes so my parents could get control of themselves before they spanked me. And as an adult I don’t think my parents ever abused it and it probably helped me realize the seriousness of whatever I had done.
The thing I don’t like about the government making a law like this is that it doesn’t allow for parents to do what they feel they need to do with their kids. And every kid is different.
If a parent run around pounding their kids everyday, then that parent should get in trouble. But, if a law goes into place, then parents get in trouble even if they rarely do it. I’m not so sure I support that.
But, then again, if an adult spanked another adult without permission they would get in trouble…where do we draw the line. If an adult told me that I couldn’t get up from the table before I ate my brussel sprouts, I would take issue with that but we do it to kids all the time.
Whitney // Feb 26, 2007 at 5:24 pm
This is always an interesting issue. I just had Alfie Kohn on the LD Podcast, and he would argue that we should not parent focusing on controlling our children, but on teaching our children self- control.
There’s a lot here, and I think we’re going to need a full post about it, later this week. (hint hint)
Suldog // Feb 26, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I would think the success of non-violent approaches varies depending upon the intelligence of the kids and the parents.
Just as some folks end up in jail and some folks do not, and some people NEED jail to straighten out and others do not, spanking or other corporal punishments will work to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the recipient.
In your case, Stu, you are intelligent and so are your kids, it would seem, so you have great success.
In all instances, non-violence should be the initial approach, but I fear that sometimes reason needs a back-up.
Stu Mark // Feb 26, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Mike - Right, exactly, that’s the question, Where do we draw the line? My argument is: We draw the line at physical contact as a means of correction. I’m ok with almost any other method (Until our kids learned to cooperate, we would send them to their rooms. Our daughter sometimes needed someone to sit in there with her, to keep her from escaping, but eventually it worked)….
Mike // Feb 26, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Going back to forcing kids to eat food. I wonder how many body image and eating disorders that has caused over the years. No matter how kids are disciplined, the key is to make sure that you communicate why you are doing what you are doing.
Stu Mark // Feb 26, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Whitney, I really like your point about self-control. I have clear memories of my kindergarten grades, lots of “outstandings” for reading and math and such, but always that nagging “needs improvement” in the self-control grade. Ugh. So I’m looking forward to your next entry.
Whitney Hoffman // Feb 26, 2007 at 8:54 pm
And while we’re on the subject, time-outs are intended to take children away from positively reinforcing stimuli, not isolate and punish the child. ie. the child is “acting up” and people start to laugh, giggle and pay attention. The child, the little actor, begins to play to his audience. You remove him from the situation to not only change or “edit” the behavior, but to remove the positive attention they are receiving for doing something you would label as “bad.”
And word of caution, Stu- I used to love being sent to my room. I never could remember what part of my actions and moral character I was supposed to be contemplating, but after a few mental rounds of “I’m frickin’ cinderella in this house, who cares about me?!?” a good book and being out of the mix was a good thing.
AuthorMomDogNut // Feb 27, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Tough topic to discuss because the lines are often so clearly and, unfortunately, often vehemently drawn.
Try to convince a parent who doesn’t believe in hitting, that hitting is a good thing. Ain’t gonna happen. Try to convince a parent who believes hitting is his or her God given right that hitting is a bad thing. Ain’t gonna happen.
Offer up the literally hundreds of scienfic studies that conclude hitting is detrimental to children, and some will find a way to find fault with the way the data was collected.
Make a law that prohibits hitting children and then try to enforce it.
One can scientifically demonstrate that hitting is often an adult lack of self-control and always a lack of creativity. Yet clearly reason–and even science– is not enough to move people away from hitting. If it were, hitting would have been a thing of the past a long time ago.
For instance, I doubt anyone’s views here have been changed by engaging in this conversation, no matter how civil.
That doesn’t mean the subject shouldn’t be discussed. But perhaps the approach with the best chance of success is to try to reach the kids themselves with the message that hitting is a form of violence, no matter how well meaning–before they become set in their beliefs and closed in their thinking.
Definitely no easy answers or solutions.
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