To spank or not to spank
This morning, I took Ryan and Kate to the zoo. We had a great time. As we were walking back from Africa, I overheard a little situation.
A little boy hit his younger sister. Then his mother quickly swooped in and began spanking him repeatedly. She said "Don't you ever hit your sister again. If you do that again, you're going to get spanked! Now go say you're sorry to her."
So my question is: When does the mom say she's sorry and promise not to hit again?
I mean come on, does that sound completely ridiculous to anyone else? You hit your kid for hitting someone else. It took all my strength not to let the mom know how I felt about the situation. I'm not saying I've never spanked, because I have spanked Ryan twice and it didn't work. In my opinion, both people just feel sad and hurt and it accomplishes nothing but instilling fear into your child and a feeling of fake power into you.
A little boy hit his younger sister. Then his mother quickly swooped in and began spanking him repeatedly. She said "Don't you ever hit your sister again. If you do that again, you're going to get spanked! Now go say you're sorry to her."
So my question is: When does the mom say she's sorry and promise not to hit again?
I mean come on, does that sound completely ridiculous to anyone else? You hit your kid for hitting someone else. It took all my strength not to let the mom know how I felt about the situation. I'm not saying I've never spanked, because I have spanked Ryan twice and it didn't work. In my opinion, both people just feel sad and hurt and it accomplishes nothing but instilling fear into your child and a feeling of fake power into you.
posted by GUENTHERS at
2:27 PM
4 Comments:
TOTALLY!!! I can't stand it when I see people whacking their kids, especially over and over. So wrong! And I can't stand it when people say if you don't spank your kids will be brats. Ummmm, I think it's the other way around. because they fear you, and they usually hit other people. I've spanked my kids like twice also, and neither time was effective. In fact, the first time I spanked Carson, was when he ran into the street, and everyone told me pain would teach him, so spank him. Yeah, that didn't work. He looked at me, and said Mama, don't hit! the second time, he spanked me back, thinking it was a game. So, we do timeouts and just give them positive attention, where we don't really NEED to discipline that much. Crazy story. Oh, another story, Carson saw some Mom keep slapping their child in the store, and was very distraught by that and kept asking, why does that Mom hurt her child? Doesn't she love him? I was this close to telling that Mother off also!
Through trial and error I have come to the conclusion, as you have, that spanking doesn't work. I feel terrible when I do it, and nothings gets accomplished except creating more anger and unhappiness. I must admit that sometimes it's hard to keep my cool, but my kids are so much easier to get along with now that we've come up with other, kinder disciplinary measures. I still have to regularly apologize to my kids, though, because I regularly make mistakes.
I hate even hearing other people yell at their kids. I saw a mother getting ornery with her son today, and I just wanted to tell her to chill out. I didn't, but I tried to at least show as much love to my own kids as I could and hope it would rub off on her.
I agree. Spanking doesn't do any good. Of course I did hear something about if you can spank out of love and not out of anger, then it's ok. But How does someone spank out of love? You're usually pretty ticked off when you result to spanking. I've spanked a handful of times, just to show my boys how much trouble they were in because I usually don't spank them. It does end up hurting their feelings AND hurting their bottoms. :)
I think you're right. I wish you could travel back in time and admonish my parents when I was little because they spanked me with one of those plastic spatulas for extra sting effect.
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