Guitar Gear Forum

Do you believe in spanking/hitting children as discipline?

No

There are other ways that work well.

I believe in it, bc it worked on me when I was a kid, but in this day & age, you cant discipline your kids that way, or they'll lock you up.

I'm thankful for the whoopin's I got when I was a kid. Had I not got that ass beat, I probably woulda ended up in prison.

I only spank other people's kids. And that's why I'm not allowed to live near schools or playgrounds.

I spank my wife

You know, I asked my therapist about this. I asked him from a psychological standpoint, can corporal punishment have good behavior modification results without causing any real damage to a child. He said that yes it's possible but it's tricky because what causes the trauma is the anger that conveyed along with the hitting. Aside from feeling pain they are being psychologically affected by the fury that goes along with it. If you can use spanking as an emotionless, straight forward manner of consequence, and do so sparingly and not abusively you can achieve the desired result without any issues.

That's really hard to do. I personally don't hit my kids but part of that has to do with the fact that when I was going through family court proceeding my ex-wife was lying to the judge stating that my kids told her "daddy hits me", which just wasn't true and was wrong of her to use as a tactic to gain custody. It was a real custody battle, so to not jeopardize anything I've learned to still be able to intensely discipline my kids without the need to hit them. They take me very seriously and they don't respect her authority, even though from time to time she still spanks them.

It's truly not necessary to hit your kids. There's other "rods" that will keep the child from spoiling.

100 watt wrote:I spank my wife

Winner /thread

Only under certain circumstances.

We only do it for really bad things (running into the road being the big one).

I would also like to point out that there's a difference between an 'in the moment' spanking and physically punishing your child. In my opinion, the latter is borderline abuse. Children's attention spans are so short that its prohibitively difficult to properly change behavior through physical punishment. Especially with my son, who has autism.

I'm not going to bash people who do the latter kind of spanking but I've seen many people cross the line and that is not ok.

I've also seen people who just spank exclusively and don't use any sort of redirection or even explain to their child WHY they are getting punished and those children are almost always less behaved.

I remember when I was a kid........I had a friend in the neighborhood. He was a pretty naughty kid in retrospect, but his parents were "belt" disciplinarians.

He talked about it, and always said "I don't want to get the belt again".....even though he just did whatever he wanted anyway. I didn't quite understand, since I was never disciplined that way.
I had been at his house for a sleep over. we were playing sega or nintendo in the basement.
All of a sudden his little brother stands on the back of the couch and starts pissing into a big laundry pile (pretty messy people).....my friend does the exact same thing......they're just laughing like crazy.
I'm like WTF?!?

Anyway, the next morning the parents must have figured it out........the dad came down in a fury, belt in hand.

I'm going , frozen.

Literally, grabbed him of the chair, laid him over his knee, bared his ass, and started cracking away on my friend. must have been like 10 hard whacks.

He was crying and yelling.

Afterwards the dad said I should go home. I started getting my stuff. The dad left and my friend just starts laughing his ass off, and says "that wasn't so bad.
I was petrified and didn't say a word about it to anyone. Got the hell out of there.

Weirdly, soon after that incident he started getting into more and more trouble.....cigs, beer......at 13-14 (I think), and I stopped hanging out with him.
I found out later......he ended up working at the restaurant I worked at in HS and had been in jail for drugs.
His parents were always very weird. Dad seemed overworked and always cranky.....the mom just seemed super depressed all of the time. I think that had a lot more to do with it than anything.


Not sure what I'm getting at here.......lol.

I was a MEAN ass kid. I was mean..I had a nasty mouth, loved to give people the finger, tore shit up all the time, always gettin in fights, or getting in trouble at school. I think anyone who had to put up with a kid like me would eventually end up spanking them lol.

My wife & I were at a family reunion on my mom's side of the family. All of my aunts, great aunts etc would get to talking to my wife, and every one of them would tell her what a mean little bastard I was.

If my Dad didnt work on the boat (work 30 days on the boat / then off at home 30 days), and was home every night, I probably wouldnt have been such a dick when I was a kid. If Dad was on the boat, the only other person I'd mind, was my Granny. Granny didnt put up with no shit either lol.

Corporal punishment is the most effective tool when used correctly. So long as the child knows exactly why they are being disciplined and the parent does not do so out of frustration or anger, the kid will learn the consequences for poor behavior. There isn't a fine line to me. There is either corporal punishment or there is abuse. Abuse happens when the discipline is absent. If done correctly, your child, in 20 years, should look back and be thankful they were corrected and not harbor bad feelings.

There were a few times I had the shit whooped out of me for no reason and those memories stick out like crazy. But, when I look back, I saw where I justly deserved 90% of the corporal punishment I received. Reason simply will not work up until a certain age.

No, I always just took away stuff from him as discipline, toys, video game, tv time, that kind of stuff. These days, all I have to do is threaten to suspend his allowance and cancel the cell phone and I get instant results.

if they were too cool to play marshalls i would beat the shit out of them

GuitarBilly wrote:No, I always just took away stuff from him as discipline, toys, video game, tv time, that kind of stuff. These days, all I have to do is threaten to suspend his allowance and cancel the cell phone and I get instant results.

Helps if the kid is naturally mild. I assume he is pretty chill most of the time. I know I wasn't.

good thing I ain't your kid slee!

I won't touch anything Marshall.

sleewell wrote:if they were too cool to play marshalls i would beat the shit out of them

If I had kid & he didnt wanna play Mrashlals, I'd get a paternity test done

If I had a little boy, you bet your ass he'd have a couple old plexi mini stacks, and a beat to shit mini strat, with a candy cigarette stuck up on the headstock, like dad

I won't take any reasonable, non abusive behavior modification device off the table.

The most powerful is to reward behavior that you approve of. Unfortunately, that's not very effective at eliminating behaviors that you don't approve of...which is why punishment has to be used. I only spank my kids when talking to them seems to be ineffective, i.e. if I have to repeat myself several times its clear that only talking isn't going to change anything. At that point, I escalate and continue to escalate until the desired results are achieved.

I will put a puppet on my hand when I whip that ass. That way, "Mr. Spanky" is the bad guy, not dad.

I figure it will cause some real good mental anguish that'll make itself known down the road.

GuitarBilly wrote:No, I always just took away stuff from him as discipline, toys, video game, tv time, that kind of stuff. These days, all I have to do is threaten to suspend his allowance and cancel the cell phone and I get instant results.

Yeah, this is how I've resolved to handle discipline issues. With 4 boys in the house there simply MUST be a clear understanding of the cause and effect relationship between behavior and consequences. Everything with the exception of clothing, food, water, shelter, and education activities like books and puzzles etc. are a privilege that only good behavior will maintain as a reward. Sometimes, restrictions on them feels like a restriction on myself because I have to be diligent that they aren't finding ways to get away with things or getting what they want and it requires focus and being consistent. It's a lot easier in the immediate moment to be a lazy parent and not follow through but it's harder in the long run. All of the extras that they enjoy are in jeopardy of being restricted when they misbehave or disrespect, and all rewards and punishments are equal across the board for all 4 boys.

I would never raise my hand against my daughter. If you have to resort to physical violence (and please don't try to soft-pedal it -- striking someone is violent by its very nature) to modify your child's behaviour, I truly believe you've failed as a parent. I have a very well-behaved daughter who I have no trouble disciplining with timeouts and taking away privileges. They work well as long as you're consistent, firm and fair.

I can't count the number of times I hear parents threatening to take things away, leave an event, etc. but never follow through. I always do, usually after a warning if it's a relatively minor behavioural issue. More serious ones have instant consequences, without the warning.

And I will always get down to her level after the punishment has been delivered to talk about why it happened and let her tell me how it could have been avoided. Then a hug, an "I love you" and it's over.

I was spanked when I was younger and 35 years later, I still remember the pain, the humiliation and the fear it caused me. Some parenting.

I don't and I won't. I was spanked as a kid, but I don't think it particularly saved me (FWIW, I don't think it irreparably ruined me, either). I just don't want my kids to be motivated to obedience by fear of physical pain.

100 watt wrote:I believe in it, bc it worked on me when I was a kid, but in this day & age, you cant discipline your kids that way, or they'll lock you up.

I'm thankful for the whoopin's I got when I was a kid. Had I not got that ass beat, I probably woulda ended up in prison.

This.

And there's the whole mixed message thing too.

I wonder how many parents who use corporal punishment tell their children they should never resort to violence to solve problems?

I didn't get many spankings, but the ones I got were well explained to me and done very calmly and with obvious regret on the part of the parent that did it. It was clear it wasn't a beating, it was a disciplinary action I had earned by not listening to the usual fairly clear warning they had already given me.

The one time this wasn't true was a fuckup in school where there was a massive brawl, I stepped in to help a kid up that had fallen, and a teacher comes to break it up right at that moment so of course I was suspended with the lot of 'em. It was the one time I got the belt. Not because I got caught fighting, but because "you continue to lie about it and say you weren't involved." They always did have a problem believing me when I was telling the truth. Anyway, I got a nice tanned hide, and I was pissed at them for weeks. The kid that I helped up ran into them when they were out and told them he was sorry that I got taken in with them and explained the whole thing to them. They came home, mom was bawling her eyes out, dad was practically climbing the walls with this, "OMG, WHAT HAVE I DONE" schtick. No real apology for it, but I never got another swat, spaking, or belting again.

Most every other spanking I deserved. Like I said there weren't many, but I had a tendency to go way off the rails once every year or two. The ones I deserved I just remember it happening, and why it happened. I don't harbor any real ill will about it. That one I got that I didn't deserve still sticks in my craw. I've always had a major problem with false accusation, and that incident sort of drove it home for me. That's still a problem for me sometimes. Somebody accuses me of something I didn't do even just fucking around and I'll sometimes fly WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY the fuck off the handle. Which, of course, now means that I'm guilty because I'm so worked up about it. It's caused more than one giant mess for me. As I've gotten older I've gotten better at holding back in the moment. Then I'll go rant and rave about it later to my wife.

Part of the reason her and I agreed not to have kids is we just don't have any fucking idea how we'd deal with discipline. Everything we believe about it is held in contempt in this area. We've still got a large percentage of folks around here that truly believe you should never, EVER tell a child no, about anything. And then they wonder why junior goes ballistic apeshit when he leaves for college.

Axe wrote:I would never raise my hand against my daughter. If you have to resort to physical violence (and please don't try to soft-pedal it -- striking someone is violent by its very nature) to modify your child's behaviour, I truly believe you've failed as a parent. I have a very well-behaved daughter who I have no trouble disciplining with timeouts and taking away privileges. They work well as long as you're consistent, firm and fair.

I can't count the number of times I hear parents threatening to take things away, leave an event, etc. but never follow through. I always do, usually after a warning if it's a relatively minor behavioural issue. More serious ones have instant consequences, without the warning.

And I will always get down to her level after the punishment has been delivered to talk about why it happened and let her tell me how it could have been avoided. Then a hug, an "I love you" and it's over.

I was spanked when I was younger and 35 years later, I still remember the pain, the humiliation and the fear it caused me. Some parenting.

I don't strike my children, but I'm not going to tell other people who chose corporal punishment that they are failing as parents. Maybe you were irresponsibly spanked, or maybe you're just a sensitive person, since it's still following you around.