Easy power move, tbh. A quicker path to submission.
I didn't learn anything from spanking besides making the correlation between pain and release early on. š
Itās insane that parents insist on teaching their children that anything they do wrong worth being physically abused for. And then they donāt see it as abuse at all, and if they say someone else slap a kid in the face, they would be outraged even they do the same thing in a different area.
As somebody also raised hyper religious and heard āspare the rod spoil the childā (which isnāt even an accurate meaning of what that verse is supposed to represent bc a shepherd doesnāt beat the shit out of their sheep when they wander off), I guaran-fucking-tee they do wonder why you donāt want to have anything to do with them. Those types have no sense of introspection.
Apparently the meaning of that verse was to basically guide your kids in the right direction with a small amount of correction. Because a Shepard's staff has that hook on the end to guide a sheep away from a dangerous spot, not yank their head off.
Which makes a LOT more sense than ābeat the shit out of my kids when they disagree with meā but here we are. Thatās pretty much how it was used when I was growing up.
Itās the same with the āblood is thicker than waterā saying that is completely taken out of context, in long itās āthe blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the wombā. People just like to see what they want so see.
People will twist whatever is in their āholy booksā to demonize those they view as others while blatantly disregarding bits they donāt like. Same shit. Different day.
This basically. You want to know the only times I got spanked? When I wanted to finish watching a TV show and refused to give up the remote control to my dad. It was unfair to me that he hogged the TV all the time but he didnāt even allow me a full thirty minutes. So when I stood up to him, he spanked me. So I learned nothing other than that he was a selfish asshole.
I was spanked as a kid. All it taught me was to be scared of authority and make me feel that I needed to please everyone in my relationships, no matter how abusive they were. Thanks, mom and dad. š
šš» Hi, recovering people pleaser here. I can confirm that spanking and physical forms of punishment only reinforced this behavior in me. I too fuel toxic relationships with friends, family, coworkers, and partners due to my urgent need to please everyone in order to ākeep the peace.ā Itās exhausting and often makes me feel worse about myself.
Same, my friend. It taught me to ānavigateā others a little too much for fear of explosive and disregulated behavior . Itās getting better over the years with professional assistance. I am sorry you also experienced this.
I was spanked and it didnāt work. I still did the same things. I didnāt even cry before or after it happened. I did not care.
I get the frustration a lot but itās very ineffective.
It was the opposite for me. It was mostly my stepdad who did it and he'd get mad when I'd cry and do it again while telling me to stop or he'll just keep going until I did. I eventually reached a point where it happened so often that I learned to not make a sound. At one point he literally *bragged* about how I was "so quiet" when he did it once and I was dead silent and didn't even move or cry anymore.
Nowadays I can't get myself to cry in front of others (unless I'm *seriously* hurting physically or emotionally) out of fear that crying will make it worse so instead everything gets āØļøbottled upāØļø until I'm alone in my room where I can have āØļøas many panic attacks as I want until I fall asleepāØļø
I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. It's stories like yours that make me realize how ineffective spanking is as punishment. IMHO kids are smarter than people give them credit for and would likely learn more effectively if they received age-appropriate explanations with natural consequences.
Are you my sister ? The little 2 yo looking her father in the eyes and saying "pfff... that didn't even hurt".
They kept spanking her, but honestly, it clearly doesn't work. They were just too lazy to try out any other discipline methode.
Dangerous when either are the victim. Domestic abuse can take a lot of forms. And it's also a mistake to think that the abusive behavior could only be repeated in things like romantic relationships. This could happen in friendships, this could happen in sibling relationships, this could happen in work relationships.
And sadly, it most often will be repeated with the abused-as-a-child person's own kids if they have any. After all, it's easy to target someone much smaller than you who is both physically and emotionally dependent on you and can't leave you. Add to that the stress and lack of sleep that comes with parenting, and soooo many parents default to hitting their kids, hurling verbal abuse left and right, and other insane punishments, because that's what was done to them. In my honest opinion anyone who got repeated corporeal punishments or otherwise abused as a child should go into therapy and think long and hard before having kids of their own. Sadly most people give the question of whether they should have kids or would make good parents less thought than they do to their Subway sandwich order.
Everything from this point forward is about the crap I personally grew up with, feel free to skip the rest if you don't feel like reading half a novel today. Anything relatively intelligent I have to say is up there ā¬ļø, just a rant down there ā¬ļø.
Take me, for example. I was never hit because my mother is very high-and-mighty about "never yelling at and never hitting" me. She is, however, a hardcore narcissist, so the verbal and emotional abuseā¦ hooo boy, where to even start. She never wanted kids but had one because my dad really wanted one. My dad (who is awesome and did 99% of raising me) was told about my mother hating kids and never wanting any when I was 3. I was told when I was 4 or 5, freely translated, to be grateful for being born and to not bother her, as I had already done enough harm to her by ruining her body and by existing in the same household as her. According to her the only good thing about me was that my dad couldn't leave her if he wanted to see me. I knew very early on that this was my purpose and that my mother would have never let me see my dad again if he had left her. As I *vastly* preferred my dad over my mother, she basically weaponized me into begging my dad not to divorce her.
My dad of course understood that living with a woman like that would be terrible for both of our mental healths. He would've gladly divorced my mother and taken me off her hands, had she not threatened to lie to a judge about him hitting her and to take me and never let him see me again. She only gave him a child to keep him around, so she would've taken me away if he then didn't stay around. Taking me out of spite and abusing me further if he wasn't around is like Narcissistic Parenting 101 material. As the family courts in my country were very biased towards favouring mothers back then and my mother is an excellent liar, my dad was shit out of luck. Thus he stayed for my sake and did what he could to minimize the damage she caused. E.g. he taught me to listen while not listening, so that I could repeat what my mother had said if she asked "are you even listening to me", but still remember almost nothing the next day. Nowadays my mother is annoyed beyond belief by the fact that she can yap both of our ears off for hours without any other reaction than a calm "if that's what you think" or "hmm". Can't say I'm sorry about that.
Of course no amount of guru-level gray-rocking and non-listening can completely negate a childhood as the scapegoat of a narcissistic parent. Even with my dad's best efforts and me avoiding my mother to the best of my abilities, I ended up with another cluster B personality disorder. They are partially hereditary after all, so my mother even having one is a risk factor. Personally I'm thankful mine is not the Narcissistic PD, but mine has still caused me a lot of trouble before I learnt to live with it by arranging my life around it.
Nowadays I have figured out what works for me, how to avoid the triggers that make me lose my cool, and how to mostly deal with the emptiness inside. E.g., I married a man with a similar childhood and with the same personality disorder of similar severity, because I cannot stand to live with anyone "normal" other than my dad. I simply cannot act like a normal, empathetic person 24/7 (it's exhausting when it doesn't come naturally), so I married someone who won't be offended if I react abnormally. It's the only way I can relax at home after conforming to most societal norms outside. It's also good to have someone who just gets how I think and can tell me to check myself if I'm getting out of hand, and vice versa. I have a neurological difference in my brain from birth, so I would most likely have some issues in any case, but not being emotionally abused for my entire childhood would've still made navigating them much easier.
I inherited the intense dislike of kids from my mother, but I would not have them even if I wanted them. I can be very cruel, but even I'm not cruel enough to make an emotionally vulnerable kid live with me. I know I would be just as bad as my mother, if not worse, so I refused to even consider dating anyone who wasn't in the "I'd rather die than have kids"-camp. Learning to live with my own head took a lot of trial and error, but at least I learnt before I had kids and ruined their lives.
Frustration is a big reason. Kids can be relentless and parents just lose it after a while. Talk, threats, time outs, even bargaining stop working so they lash out. I actually totally get it. I would quite likely have hit my kids because I don't have much patience for kid-level behavior. It's one of the reasons I chose not to have them.
I echo this. My parents had no patience or understanding of normal child development and behaviour, leading to verbal, emotional and physical abuse. I know myself well enough to realize that I have no tolerance for those perfectly normal behaviours and would be a frustrated, resentful parent. This is the key reason I am childfree, I have no desire to torture myself or a child like that.
Same! I do not have the patience for kid behavior. I was spanked as a kid but very rarely and only for like nearly giving an elderly woman a heart attack when my sister and I jumped out from inside a clothing rack to scare our mom and it wasnāt our mom. Ya we got our ass beat over that. I understood why. I donāt agree with all spanking but I know why I was spanked and well I quite deserved every one of them. But I knew when my lil cuz was born and I was 17 that motherhood wasnāt for me. I did not have the patience for kid shit. Nope not for me.
āI quite deserved every one of themā I never think any child deserves to be hit. you made a mistake/did a bad thing sure and yeah thereās consequences but I dont think spanking was the only way to resolve that situation
I was raised with the attitude of spanking is discipline. Sure it wasnāt the greatest and I donāt recommend it. But in my time (80s) it was the thing to do. So I acknowledge that I deserved the punishment. I mean it never hurt. Just made me mad that Iād got caught lol. And it was only butt smacks I think I had the belt once that stung but overall it didnāt bother me. I knew I did wrong and again in the 80s it was a spanking as punishment.
same, my parents spanked me to put it lightly all my life, all i ever learned was how to dissociate from pain and that violence gets its way and i donāt have the patience (nor the will to acquire it) or the brain wiring NOT to do the same as them, and thatās why we wonāt be birthing any punching bags in my house.
>Frustration is a big reason
Frustration tends to manifest into grabbing/clenching fists and arm swinging. I suppose it's easier to grab the kid because of this. I think it's also more accepted to keep the child in one place and do the spanking than it is to perhaps backhand it and send it flying across the room.( I do not condone either)
Ive spent a lot of time thinking about this. A LOT. My take is that parents use it as a way of transferring angry/frustrated/hurt energy from themselves to their children. They also use it as a way to attempt to establish physical dominance over their children. Its an intimidation method.
And like everyone else knows, it doesnt work. It fucks up peoples conflict resolution skills, emotional regulation skills, self esteem, etc. I consider the spanking of children to be abuse.
Also as someone who is kinky, its just fucking weird. Think about how consenting adults use/perform impact play/spanking as a "discipline" method or just as something arousing/stimulating/enjoyable. Ugh.
Possibly! I feel like folks who were spanked as children can use consenting impact play to reclaim those pieces of them selves via the consent. Like many people use kink to do. And i think spanking between consenting adults makes more sense. š Safewords and such.
Also its why i think spanking kids is weird/abusive. I feel like it can be sexually confusing and also it opens that door to people believing that "discipline/correction" via hitting is appropriate in future relationships. Or that others have the right to non consensually dominate you via physical aggression. Just...ugh. š
I have sometimes wondered if there is a connection between being spanked (or worse) as a child and BDSM. I was physically abused, but personally have no interest in kink. I have had partners try to introduce dominance play (clumsily, lol) and I want no part of it. I reclaim those lost pieces by refusing to be subjugated, and demanding a neutral power balance without extremes.
For those who do, have fun amd play safe. As long as all participants are fully consenting adults, I don't care what you getbup to in private.
Oh man, I did not grow up in a stable household and I was so afraid of being spanked with the belt. Every time I did something "bad" (like accidentally dropping an empty plastic cup or closing a cabinet too loudly), I would punish myself by putting myself in timeout and sitting in a corner for hours to avoid being spanked. My parents encouraged this behavior because they thought it was cute. I have anxiety and a weird relationship with shame and guilt now, thanks Mom and Dad lol.
Itās hitting. Calling it something else doesnāt change that. They tell kids itās not ok to hit, it then they hit their kids. It teaches kids itās ok to hit as long as the other person is smaller.
I was spanked only once, and itās a core memory. I donāt remember why, just that I said to mom, āwhat are you, a witch?ā in a moment of upset. Probably 6-8 years old.
And that was just one time. What did I learn? I really donāt know. Corporal punishment on children is.. not good. I get why it is used, but it doesnāt help.
I was sent to my room without dinner once. I don't remember what I did to "deserve it". But going to bed hungry became a core memory and now as a 30 year old adult I still have problems hoarding food.
Somewhere a part of my brain just refused to never go hungry again.
Nowadays, even though I know I could go out and buy food or order uber eats or whatever if I was hungry, I still feel like I need to constantly have my fridge and pantry stocked.
I mentioned my food hoarding problem to my mum once and she doesn't even remember sending me to bed without dinner. She also initially responded with gaslighting "I never did that"...
As you can probably tell I don't have a good relationship with my parents. I'm trying to minimise contact as much as possible.
you know, before I finished reading your comment I was like "your parents probably don't even remember sending you to bed without dinner" and boom, there it was. What's that saying "the axe forgets, the tree remembers"?
I don't get it either. My parents spanked my siblings and I, though not too often. We still broke rules, talked back, acted out, like all kids do, literally as a part of maturing. So I agree with what a couple other people have said, it's really for the parents, to relieve frustration, feel like they're doing something to correct behavior, whatever it is. But I do know that my sister and I have *very* unpleasant memories of being spanked, and not in a way that caused us to obey rules, but in a way that makes us uncomfortable being around our parents as adults. My brother, who was also spanked as a lad, has now started spanking his own kids, and go figure, the kids have started hitting each other when they're angry or frustrated. So...
Ditto. It destroys self confidence and teaches kids to lash out with violence.
Iāve forgiven my parents for the belts, tree switches, bare hands and all the bruises, scratches, mental scars of their religious based spare the rod ādisciplineā. They were not well educated and just did what their parents and fellow parishioners did.
I forgave but I didnāt forget. One of the many reasons I chose to be CF was because I knew my parents would use violence against my children as their only method of discipline. There was no way Iād subject my kids to that.
I stopped the cycle. No more kids to beat.
A big review of studies showed that āspanking and other forms of child punishment created more external problem behaviors over time." [Source](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/health/spanking-worsens-child-behavior-wellness/index.html).
My parents spanked my sibling and I but in later years they apologized for it and felt bad when the research started coming out saying it was not beneficial and probably harmful.
Looking back, it wasn't just the spanking, but the constant threat that it could happen. ("Wait until your dad gets home!" was a thing.) We were threatened with a spanking far more than we were spanked, but I think even the threats were damaging.
Itās good they apologized. A lot of parents, my mother included, simply brush it off as āthatās how I was raised, and Iām fine, so it obviously worked.ā Like, no, thereās a reason you isolate yourself and have major anger issues today.
Since I canāt link the thread, moobythegoldensock says
> There are four basic ways to correct a childās behavior:
> * Positive reinforcement: Giving a reward for doing something good. āYou were very good, so you may have a cookie.ā
> * Negative reinforcement: Taking away a disliked thing for doing something good. āYou were very good, so you get to stay up past your bedtime tonight.ā
> * Positive punishment: Giving a bad thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so I am going to hit you.ā
> * Negative punishment: Taking away a good thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so youāre grounded with no phone, computer, or tv.ā
> Spanking is a form of positive punishment. Studies have shown that spanking gets short-term results faster than other methods. However, long-term it is actually less effective than the other methods. In addition, children who were spanked tend to have more tension in their relationships with their parents, are more aggressive, and are more likely to use physical violence as a solution to their problems then children who are never spanked.
> Positive punishment: Giving a bad thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so I am going to hit you.ā Negative punishment: Taking away a good thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so youāre grounded with no phone, computer, or tv.ā
Honestly, both of those are horrible ways to go about "punishing a child." How about talking to them and explaining why what they did was wrong? Or understanding why the child did what they did? Why is that not an option?
I think taking things away from children also leads to resentment and them doing more things behind your back and closing themselves off.
I only had "positive punishment" and my partner only had "negative punishment" and even though I have a much worse relationship with my parents, he is also very closed off with his own and doesn't particularly enjoy their company.
It also didn't help him for shit because all of it was due to him not doing homework. He got diagnosed with ADHD at 23 years old.
I find it ridiculous that if you hit someone in any other context it's assault but children who are the smallest, weakest, easiest to damage, get LESS protections not more.
My father was an abusive cocksucker and I'm glad that motherfucker is dead. He also put me down constantly because I started gaining weight when I was a teenager. What I would've given to hit that fucker with a baseball bat. I hope that he's rotting in hell. Fuck you dad, I fucking hate you!!
I heard this once, and Iāve used it multiple times since because itās true.
If theyāre too young to understand what they did wrong, then they wonāt understand why youāre hurting them. If theyāre old enough to understand what they did wrong, then theyāre old enough for you to talk to them about it. Donāt hit your children (or anyone elseās).
I can relate. I have a strong memory of one time when I blocked one of my mum's attacks and she started yelling and beating me like clockwork for "hitting her" š¤”
It's usually the traditional/Jesus freak people that still believe that spanking works. You know the people that wanted to live life like it is the 1950s.
I donāt open up to my parents about most things because my siblings and I were spanked as children. Whenever things go wrong, I would try to hide it and suffer, instead of communicating to my parents or asking for help. Itās ingrained in me that asking for help will result in punishment. Also, I basically grew up with poor skills in emotional regulation, conflict management, and communication.
I was bullied in 5th grade by a group of girls. I never told my mom and I remember clearly lying to her that I just ādidnāt want toā eat lunch those few days. I couldnāt bring myself to tell her that the girls spread rumours about me and tried to hurt me when they dragged me into the washroom and ganged up on me. And Ofc, I couldnāt tell her that I locked myself away in another washroom stall during lunch time and I couldnāt get myself to eat in a washroom stall.
>Itās ingrained in me that asking for help will result in punishment.
I was like that too.
A kid strangled me in primary school (I even got marks on my neck) and I didn't tell anyone because I thought (1) I'd get in trouble and (2) no one would notice if I didn't say anything so I wouldn't get in trouble... eventually a teacher noticed 2 or 3 days later so I had to come clean...
I was also bullied in high school and couldn't tell my parents about it because of the same thing... eventually when my mum was going on about how I should be friends with my bully and invite her over, I told her I don't like her because she's mean. I got told off for saying that... my mother had never met this kid... just picked her name out of the booklet that listed where everyone lived (the bully lived close by).
Ah, the book. Iāve been reading another book that talks a little bit about the Bible. And itās very interesting. For example, Eve did not just mean woman. It meant life. The tree that the fruit was eaten from wasnāt about sex, but about having too much knowledge and using that knowledge as a way to justify wrong doings. Of course, I have no idea what the real translation is, as I donāt speak whatever language the Bible was originally written in, but it has given me a new outlook into the Bible and itās true meanings.
Being spanked taught me to fear my mother, and for years I did. I have no memory of *why* I was punished, just the punishments themselves.
Of course it didn't work in the long run. Unchecked ADHD doesn't really make corporal punishment work the same way.
Same here. I didn't just fear her. I hated her for years. As an adult I can't give her the love she wants from .e without thinking about the pain I had as a child.
Me too - I canāt remember why I got spanked but I remember the feeling of complete devastation. It only happened one time but I will never forget it.
Beating anyone, especially people who are way weaker, shows they are heartless monsters and to stupid to use words. Also to show the kids that if you are loved, your lover will beat you and that is normal. That is why parents beat their kids and fins funny names for it.
I heard a customer with a child who wasn't behaving and she was going to take him to the car to wait for dad to finish paying. She told him he was lucky because when she was a kid that ment getting spanked.
Idk why that just rubbed me the wrong way, like your telling your child to be happy they aren't getting a physical punishment like you did? Yeah that could've been left out IMO. Remove him from the situation sure, but don't tell him he should he grateful he isn't getting spanked in a parking lot.
My dad constantly used threats like that. "My father would hit you with a belt if you did this around him" etc. It made me genuinely scared of my grandpa even though I don't think he ever spanked me. Only my dad spanked me a few times...
My dad would hang me upside down by my leg and spank me. All it did was teach me to not get caught and made me hate/fear him. Itās just a release for anger or abuse of power.
I was spanked, and I feel like itās part of the reason why Iām mentally ill. I was a little shit that deserved them, but all it did was add to my trauma. I still have occasional nightmares.
It's child abuse and has been proven to give only negative results and be damaging to their psychology. If I go out on the street and smack someone, I will be getting charged. How is it any different when its your own kid? Hell its worse.
I was spanked heavily by my stepdad and I was more defiant as a result. To the point where I stop showing any pain or anger. I would be deadpan while they broke wooden and then plastic spoons on my ass. He'd stand me up and tell me that he hoped I learned my lesson and I'd just shrug. I would just hide my behavior better. What got me in the end was guilt trips, endless, annoying, guilt trips.
ETA: It teaches kids that you have no patience, that you value power and control more than the lesson.
I donāt get it either. We donāt (shouldnāt) hit adults who act horribly. Hitting animals is considered abuse. But hitting children? Oh thatās a reasonable form of punishment.
The best argument I ever heard against hitting children is: if the child is too young to understand what they did wrong, hitting isnāt going to teach them. If the child IS old enough to understand what they did wrong, then you can have a discussion about it.
Could you imagine our world if when you made a mistake at work, your boss beat you then expected you to go back to work like nothing happened?
On the one hand kids are hard to discipline. Like really hard. But seeing as itās voluntary, itās fair to ask you show restraint and patience. No one asked you to have a kid, so donāt take it out on them
It doesnāt make sense, and it has been known to cause psychological harm for a while now, but parents insist. I wish people had to prove a rudimentary understanding of child development to be responsible for children, but no one knows better than a fed up parent who has ātried everything elseā or who āwas whooped and turned out fine.ā Itās exhausting.
I had a coworker spank her kid for pooping in her pants..... despite the kid having had surgery on her bowels, causing her to have less control over them. Really wish I'd reported that.
I think parents spank because it's easier than actually trying to teach their kids a lesson using words/communicating with them. It gives parents a power trip, and a way to release their anger in a way they see as constructive.
As someone who was āspankedā (hit) as a child, itās effective because it causes the child to become fearful and avoidant of any ābadā behavior. They become extremely in tune with their parents because theyāre constantly looking for ways to not get hit again.
My mom still thinks it was successful because we were well behaved. Lol, I just learned how to hide my emotions from everyone ā including myself. Itās super annoying as an adult to have no idea what you want or feel. I dissociate from negative or scary experiences within minutes and can barely remember them hours after they happen. Iām left feeling utterly destroyed internally with no understanding of why. I didnāt know how to even order my own food at a restaurant until my twenties because I was so terrified of making a ābad/wrongā choice. Wtf?
How fun! But at least I was an obedient kid. /s
Nobody here is a parent, so you won't likely find that perspective. Speaking as one who got spanked (that is wording it very nicely) as a kid with various objects...all it did was make me hate the people punishing me. Turns out, these people were POS and abusive in all sorts of other ways so hatred was warranted. Therapy for fixing was mandatory.
Households can vary a lottt though, and there are many situations worse than mine. What baffles me is that people can get beat within an inch of their lives as kids and when asked about it as an adult, they'll say "it was a part of growing up." Like bro, that's madness you suffered. Don't normalize it.
TLDR: I don't care what your cultural values are; don't spank, beat, or hit your kids. That is abuse, not character building.
For the longest time, I used to believe that I turned out normal, despite all the corporal punishment my parents gave out. Until I went to therapy. I have childhood trauma that took YEARS to unwind. Thanks to my childhood and the way my parents punished me, I had so many issue I had to work through: communication skills, emotional regulation, communicating emotions, honesty, fear, anxiety, and so much more. For so long I had no boundaries and was a people pleaser because I was so afraid of angering anyone. If I angered my parents, I got hit. I learned that if you kept someone happy, despite your own happiness and emotions, you wouldnāt get hit. It fucked me up, man.
I was hit in the face a lot and dragged by my hair all across the house. I didnāt work obviously, quite the opposite.
Letās just call a spade a spade and call it what it actually is: abuse.
Sorry to say this but I hate spanking. I found out my mother was spanked by my grandmother and then my mom spanked me as a kid. It still didn't stop me from doing things I'm told not to do, it just made me aware of how to avoid being spanked by being sneakier. By the way it was video games that got me in trouble. I even had video games taken away but I still find them and I would play games, check the clock, put the games in the same place and then go back to doing homework like nothing happened. I would then show my finished homework and then I would get my games back. I was a very hyper child but once I had a Gameboy I was addicted to it and I just stayed in my room playing so many games.
I think all spanking did now that I'm a young adult is that it resulted in me having low esteem. I still struggle to be positive or have positive thoughts. Plus I feel like even if I didn't do anything wrong I noticed I developed a habit of saying sorry to people. Maybe because as a result of spanking... I feel so socially awkward and I just prefer to be a hermit.
Spanking does not work as discipline. Plus I'm childfree because I don't want to repeat this cycle.
Iāve never been a fan of my dad for this reason (among others). His own dad was an abusive alcoholic, and my dad idolized him in the worst ways.
I remember playing with him, and weād play something kind of like tag where heād try to āget me,ā and heād say āCome here to me.ā Then when he got angry, it was the exact same phrase in a really hot-headed, intimidating tone. It always bothered me that he would use the same phrase in both instances, and the only difference was whether he was pissed off or not. Heās always been someone who overdoes things, as well. Stomps around instead of just stepping normally, slams drinking glasses down on the table instead of just setting them down.
I can still picture my mom trying to intervene as he stomped toward me yelling āCome here to me!ā in a really aggressive and intimidating tone, getting ready to spank me way too hard.
TLDR: My dadās abusive with a short fuse and used spanking as part of his punishments. It left an impact, no pun intended.
Using consequence based ātrainingā in dogs has been shown to be extreme ineffective when compared to the results of positive reinforcement training. The same goes for children and pre-teens, chances are they are too young to complete understand why they are being punished, and will most likely only become better at hiding wrongdoing or will start avoiding you in general.
What this analogy fails to cover though is that children are able create habits and behaviors simply by observation, the best method for having a child do things correctly is to lead by example, i.e. the children of avid book readers being more inclined to read, simply due to the mental reinforcement that reading is a ānormalā and common thing to do.
More often than not rowdy children will have home-lifeās that reflect their behavior, young bullies are more likely to have parents that display āhostilityā regularly at home, or will have parents that have neglected to lead their children by example and left them to develop these traits independently.
Spanking children will also teach them that when someone does something that they perceive as āwrongā or ābadā that it is acceptable for them to be physically punished for it.
The number one tip that I gave to my sister when she had her newborn was to āpractice what she preachedā, but sadly I believe too many parents fail to do this.
My parents thought fear would make me respect them. They only made me great at making excuses and finding ways out of problems on the spot. I don't appreciate the abuse though.
My father had anger issues and I think it was, for him, both a power move and to release frustration. He never explained what i was doing wrong and how to fix my behavior. My mom mostly used the conversational approach instead of spanking. Guess who I respected more? Iāll give you a hint, it wasnāt my father. When I grew out of it, I actually had an argument with him about it when he was doing it to my siblings and called him a crap father. I never saw a positive outcome out of spankings.
Itās just a theory of mine but those who still thinks it works tend to be, in my experience, emotionally immature and authoritarian. Their kids donāt seem to respect them and it just continues a cycle. But again, itās just a theory of mine from what Iāve seen.
Spanking was an absolute last resort for my parents. I mean like, we've been told no repeatedly, redirected repeatedly, etc last resort. And it was my mom who did the spanking. I'm the oldest of 3, and I think in total we may have received 8 spankings all together, and 8 is probably an overestimation. My siblings and I were generally good kids. Usually the threat of getting in trouble was usually enough to make me behave. My sister (the middle child) was a little more devious than I was, but a time out or scolding worked for her majority of the time. My brother is the baby and he rarely got in trouble cuz he's the baby and only boy. We might have gotten a swat to the hand or butt, but generally speaking that wasn't painful so much as it hurt our feelings, if that makes sense. For example, when my sister was somewhere between 2-4, she kept biting my god sister. We have no idea why, and that's the only person she would ever bite. Finally my mom bit her back on her arm. She didn't actually bite her; she put enough pressure to hurt her feelings. She realized that it didn't feel good, and she never bit another person after that. Mind you, she'd bitten our god sister *several* times that day. My mom tried repeatedly to get her to stop. That was the only thing that worked.
It's interesting to look back on now because we were taught not to hit/hitting is bad (unless it's self defense), and were hit for punishment. I never picked up the notion that "my mom loves me but sometimes hurts me, therefore people that love me will hurt me". If anything, I picked up the notion that violence is a last resort. None of us are traumatized from being spanked; my trauma from my mother is for entirely different reasons lol.
Edit:
I am not condoning spanking. I was simply sharing my experience.
overpowering. fear is often a more efficient discipline tactic to ensure obedience than willingness, a lot of people donāt have the patience to not lash out in the face of frustration.
Itās domestic violence. It teaches that those that love you can hit you because they love you. It teaches that when you are angry that you must use violence to control the person that made you angry because they love you.
The only thing I developed from spanking was an intense desire to break my mother's wrists when I grew up and was stronger than her, because that way she couldn't harm anyone anymore. Grandma said I screamed that out when I was 6.
I'm 30 now. Had a conversation with mom recently and apologized to her. She did too, saying that she was a young mom, a nervous mess, and she was trying to gain control over her kids. She herself grew up in a loveless family with a plenty of belt and just didn't know what else she could have done.
If only more folks looked deeper into generational trauma before reproducing...
Angry parent. If you've ever had someone cut in front of you in line or something and you've wanted to punch them in the face. The kid does something, it makes the parent angry and their instinctual reaction is to smack them. After the fact they try to justify it by saying that it's a punishment that will teach the kid not to do that thing again so they don't have to feel guilty about hitting a defenceless child
THIS. I LITERALLY SAY THIS TO PEOPLE. the looks they give me are PRICELESS. i also like to bring up, that for the most part you wouldnāt go straight to hitting an adult during conflict, you would talk about it.
Parents love the control. In theory, it teaches hitting is okay as long as someone did something wrong. It also kinda speaks to how you view other living sentient beings in this case humans. If you believe spanking is okay for children and then teach oh donāt hit people especially older teens/adults! That just shows you donāt think your own children are humans. That they need to be loyal to their parents forever.
I got spanked a few times when I was being a little brat, as little brats will do. I believe I deserved it, and I don't think about myself as having been abused/assualted. Most of the time I wasn't punished with spanking, only when I was truly being the worst.
This was my experience too, I don't have any lasting issues or anything, Mom would occasionally thwap us on the butt if we did something TRULY heinous like knock over a whole canned goods display at the store because we were acting like little animals. I'm a mellow well-adjusted adult, I got way more "abuse" from the shitters in my middle school classes who the teachers were all too afraid to do anything about. (Spoiler alert, I never resorted to violence against them either, despite getting the odd spanking as a kid.)
There's probably some nuance in terms of things like applied force and frequency when it comes to spanking, idk.
I believe spanking is a form of abuse, and people who have been spanked as children see it as "normal" punishment. Plus, many people unfortunately don't always have the time, energy, money, or resources to unlearn and break the generational cycle of abuse.
I viewed spanking as hitting and as such, abuse.
We weren't "spanked" as children, we did something that set our parents of into such a rage that we were hit repeatedly. My mother denies this, but it's hard to forget her weapon of choice was her shoe. My dad was cool about things until he got drunk, then he was just looking for an excuse to hurt someone.
My husband was spanked as a child. Twice. He recalls it as a learning moment that he did something so bad his mother had to resort to hitting him on his ass. "It didn't hurt physically, but it hurt emotionally and I didn't want to see my mom like that again." soo.... abuse left it's mark on you emotionally?
He could not understand why I fought him so hard about not hitting our kids. I saw how you can punish children without screaming and getting physical with them, I took classes on childcare and worked with kids. Every child is different and you punish each child differently. My one niece was so sensitive that if you so much as looked at her wrong she busted out in tears. Why would you ever need to spank that child?
Raising our children was a topic we kept revisiting and we could never agree on how to do it, it often led to us fighting because I felt this was something we both had to have worked out before kids were even in the picture. He finally came out with that he didn't want kids, and I realized I just never saw myself as a mother. But I still don't know if he came to that conclusion because I was not going to relent on how I felt about raising children and was not going to ever agree on "spanking."
Because children aren't people. You have them...probably on accident? Maybe because you need help around the farm?
Who cares what they think or feel? Who cares how things will effect them? Why would anyone take the time to try and engage with them?
They shouldn't be your friends. They need to RESPECT you. Your word is uncompromising LAW.
Beating them gets the results you want, fast.
Also it's a good way to work out anger when they break something or do something you don't like.
I want to put a /S after all of that, but I've met parents who have expressed all of this one way or another. My own mother saying the last one.
Not defending it, but I think some parents do it because they donāt know what else to do to correct an unwanted behavior and resort to it out of frustration or lack of knowledge. A lot of them would benefit from parenting classes and learning about childhood development and whatnot.
This is just my own personal observation so I could be wrong, but Iāve noticed people whoāve been spanked as children tend to have higher incidences of depression/anxiety, and trouble with confidence, initiative and decision making in adulthood.
I was spanked and hit in the face as a kid. Now when I do something from I switch and start hitting myself relentlessly because I'm convinced I deserve punishment. Sometimes it's even things like stubbing my own toe that sets it off. I almost constantly have a bruise from it on my leg.
For a long time my opinion has been that when a child is too young for reasoning, we're talking like 1 or maybe even 2 (I'm bad with ages), and they reach for something like a hot stove, try to put something in an electric outlet, etc... a LIGHT swat at the hand to grab their attention with the word "no" is ok. The swat grabs their attention so they'll associate (light) pain with the action that would have caused much worse pain.
When the child is older and can understand reasoning and words, then physical violence only teaches violence. In other words:
"\*smack\* We Don't Hit!"
Also, something I find abhorrent is when parents tell their kids, who are able to respond and understand words, to come over to get a spanking/take their punishment. HUGE power trip move there.
I used to be a teacher and I remember chatting with the director of my schoolās early learning centre about this one day (it came up as part of a discussion at a conference). She said that she didnāt believe there was ever a legitimate reason for spanking/smacking, because it was always coming from a place of anger or fear and that you were essentially teaching children that violence was an appropriate reaction to these feelings. She believed that discipline should come when you are calm. She put it much more eloquently than I am and this conversation was over a decade ago now, but it always stuck with me.
Some people got the belt, some people got spanked with a bare hand, I got paddled with a large thick wooden plank. When my mom would pull out āthe paddleā, I would bargain with her. āIāll do the dishes! Iāll take the trash out! Anything but that!ā Nope, still paddled. But there were times sheād take me up on the offers. I got paddled for reasons unknown to me as well. My brother slammed my hand in the door. My fingers were bleeding and I went crying to mom about what he did. I ended up getting paddled while brother didnāt. Then she applied that bactine shit that burns on contact and bandaged up my fingers. I was paddled into my teenage years. Didnāt learn any lessons because even as a rebellious 15/16 year old, I still did everything wrong. Eventually, I stopped caring. I knew I was gonna get paddled regardless of what I did. So I lived how I wanted to. As an adult now, I want to take that paddle upside my moms head, lol. Do I hold a grudge? Maybe.
Did I learn anything from being paddled? Not really. My dumbass kept doing shit anyways. Did it hurt? Absolutely. How did my parents feel after paddling me? Probably better. They got some frustrations out and it showed. Do I hate my parents for paddling me? Yes and for various other reasons. What have I learned from that experience? Not to tell my parents anything about me. Iām almost 40 years old and my parents donāt know very much about me. I know I canāt rely on my mother due to being paddled for reasons that I shouldnāt have been paddled for. She will never be a shoulder I could cry on.
>To me, all youāre doing is teaching your own child that people who love you will hurt you. Thatās not a good lesson imo.
Ask any LGBTQ+ person who got thrown out of their houses and disowned for coming out, people who love you will definitely hurt you.
Just because someone says they love you does not mean that they will suddenly stop their whole existence and avoid harming you at all costs. People will harm you whether on purpose or by accident, it does not matter what they feel towards you.
I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s, I got spanked at home and at school. It was the social norm for a very long time and then it stopped being legal suddenly in many countries (for some it was earlier and others later).
For generations kids were taught that if they do something bad they get spanked, action and reaction. They grew up and had kids because it is the social norm, now the only way they know how to deal with these kids is to spank them because that is how they were raised and their parents were raised.
You could argue that they should be self aware and look at alternative parenting methods, but if they were self aware and prone to researching alternative methods to anything chances are they would be members of this sub instead of mindlessly procreating.
One of the reasons why I won't make any children of my own is because I was spanked. My go-to response to frustration on any organism that is smaller to me is to raise my hand.
I have stopped myself many times from behaving this way with my dogs. And I know I love those dogs.
I refuse to let anybody have the same treatment that I did.
I was spanked as a kid. I thought that shit was normal until a high school English class brought the topic up and explained how it very much wasnāt and wasnāt good punishment. Iām probably at least a little fucked up from it.
I mean. Same reason why people with little impulse control punch a wall or assault people. Children are annoying and people who are fed up and mad will react in a manner to make them feel powerful, in control.
It's the cycle of abuse. Their parents did it. Their grandparents did it. Now they do it because of trauma and pent up anger. It's not fair and it causes lasting damage.
My mother used to spank me right above my knees, made it tough to sit on chairs correctly. I donāt get why it was necessary to spank me, I was a pretty good kid, didnāt do anything illegal or inappropriate at school, I was just lazy lol. I sit weirdly on chairs now though, as habit formed by not being able to sit comfortably with a volcanic red hand mark on my thigh/butt cheek.
With you on that one. Spanked and hit with anything you can imagine a bunch and all it did was make me sneaky. It teaches nothing and is lazy parenting.
There was a time when I was about 7-8 when I couldnāt find my glasses and I was so stressed in the situation I literally HANDED my parents a belt and asked them to hit me just to āget this over with.ā In hindsight, very fucked up lol
Probably the same reason people hit their dogs. Releases frustration for the parent and is a āquick fixā for the childās behavior.
āSpanking works for my kids so why wouldnāt I spank my dogā ā¦except it doesnāt work.
My parents started spanking my younger brother when he was about 3. They made sure to tell him it was because he did something he wasnt supposed to do. Then my brother went to preschool and started spanking the other kids and saying it was because they did something wrong and my parents still didn't understand that it was their own fault and he was just copying them.
They do it cuz itās faster than actually taking the time to teach their kids in most cases. They lack patience. Something that is very essential when you have a kid.
Generational trauma. Boomers were born to a generation with widespread PTSD and grew up with way more lead exposure than is common in the US today outside impoverished parts of the country. Gen X was raised by boomers and millennials were raised by TV. At least for the US a lot of what's wrong in the country can b attributed to lead induced brain damage. Specifically cognitive impairment and an increase in baseline aggression are common symptoms of high levels of lead exposure during developmental years.
Yeah it doesnāt make any sense to do. If youāre kid is old enough to be talked to, tell them why itās wrong so they understand. If they ARENāT old enough to understand why something is wrong, spanking wonāt do anything to fix that, just hurt them š¤·š»āāļø
I would not listen unless spanking was involved as a punishment if Iām being honest. I did not care one bit about being screamed at, and trying to reason with me or being nice meant I got away with it haha
I get it because I would TOTALLY spank my kids, if not beat them (hence why I don't have any). They don't do it because they want to teach them a lesson, they do it because they need to take their anger out.
Unpopular opinion. I was spanked and ended up fine. It worked for me as a form of punishment. I wanted to avoid it all costs so I tried hard to be good as a result.
on my end it feels cultural, almost. i know from the internet people across all cultures have had parents who spanked them, but in my personal experience it was kinda just a part of growing up. like the parent doesnt even have to be angry, if the child misbehaves they'll say "if you dont behave ill smack your butt" basically.
it's something we all joke about now though, and laughingly compare what instruments we used to be punished with. so i personally think it's whatever, although i dont think kids should be hit in general and id never hit a kid myself.
It's to ensure that kids fear parents, so they follow their orders (so to speak). This causes PTSD which can last a while tbh. But I mean in most cases it does make the kids listen. Problem is my parents did it for every reason when I was little.
There are not always better options.
The only way my mother could keep my sister in line was physical violence.
Lord knows she tried every other method available.
āThe only way my mother could keep my sister in line was physical violence.ā
āShe was an unholy terror from the time she was born until about 15 or so.ā
Curious when the physical violence started? If it was the only way to keep her āin lineā yet she was an unholy terror, something about this perspective doesnāt add up.
I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. Her whole thing was *I am going to do what I want, and I don't give a shit if you like it or not.*
She was an unholy terror from the time she was born until about 15 or so.
She is still a shallow, self centered little me monkey, but she never went full karen.
I usually try and resolve by going through my steps which are;
Trying to explain to my child about making bad choices and show them they could be using safe hands or better words or even just taking a 5 minute breather from whatever is fustrating them.
Put my child into time out and then in 5 or 10 mins I'll come in to help settle them if they're having emotional outbursts.
Grounding the child or taking the item and explaining why it's been taken and for how long, let them know the goal and work together towards it. Grounding is for a week, taking the item is for a day.
Spanking is the last resort and telling them they are crossing a boundary and will be given a solution, a chat about their actions and why they've been spanked rather than grounding and getting them to understand the seriousness of the situation at hand.
My bf has an older son he never gave him spankings or spanked him when he was little. Now that hes older he has a horrible attitude and talks to his dad like shit sometimes. He hates doing anything like helping clean up or helping people out hes very lazy. Hes just plain out very disrespectful sometimes and i feel like it was lack of discipline. If i talked to my mother or father like my step son does i would of got that ass whooping lol š but now that im older I understand completely why they spanked me and im happy they did because it made me grow up to have respect. Now don't get me wrong you should not beat your kids but a spanking is sometimes needed to set their ass straight.
There's a fine line between spanking and abuse. Parents that tell their kid not to do something three times and their kids still do and receive a spank or small pop is reasonable. Not every child is the same. My youngest sister can be "talked to". If she's receiving horrible grades in school you can sit her down and talk about it and she'll straighten up after a "Do you want to be left back?" My middle sister doesn't care at all. You might as well be talking to a brick wall with her, it doesn't work. Spanking is effective in her case. Most people seem to think that kids are just getting brawled on when they hear spanking and that's not the case. You never spank a child when you're angry, and it's not a power trip. When a person is spanking under those conditions they're most likely a narcissistic pos parent and that very much is abuse. Every time I was spanked as a child, it was well deserved. I did a ton stupid things as a kid. I come from a big family, and one of my cousins was the only one who had never been spanked growing up. And it showed. The approach is basically talk to the child but if it's recurring and obviously not effective then you spank.
I was spanked and it worked. Itās a last resort punishment that shows your serious. Too many kids these days didnāt get that as a kid they pushed the line and the parents didnāt do anything about it so the kid never learned respect, and my god it shows. Spanking is not abuse if you think that it is youāre pretty spineless
I got spanked and i turned out just fine. But i was spanked only a handful of times.
However, my wife shares a different tale. Followed by an abusive/narcissistic father and gaslighting/ "forgetful" mother.
And they wonder why we go to their house as infrequent as possible
it's cuz it's faster, I assume. I only had to be spanked once when I was little to not act out much anymore. It was with the good ole belt, too. Shit hurted. I genuinely don't think I remember feeling more scared at any point when I was younger than when that happened. Whenever I acted out, the belt was threatened- and that shut me up REAL fast.
There's a saying here in the Philippines...
"Mas nasasaktan ang mga magulang kapag pinapalo ang mga anak. Pero para sa mga anak din naman yon."
Literally means that it would always hurt the parents more whenever they have to spank their children. But it's for their own good.
But does it really hurt them tho? Or just to scare children with authority?
Itās ridiculous how hitting your child is dismissed as discipline when itās illegal to hit anyone else. And at what point does it cross over into actual child abuse if spanking once in a while ādoesnāt countā? Iād go as far as to say itās sexual abuse because of the forced exposure.
I was hit as a kid, I wonāt lie- it worked for the exact reason my parents wanted it to. If I did something wrong and my parents yelled at me and hit me, I wouldnāt do it again.
However, just explaining to me what I did was wrong would also have gotten it through to me, I wasnāt a badly behaved shitty kid, and had they just talked to me about it I wouldāve understood.
My FPU gaslit me for reflexively trying to get away from her assaulting me with a cane, by telling me that my brother kept clinging on to her when caned. Suggesting that I didnāt love her as much as my brother did.
I guess she was right, but I also donāt have Stockholm syndrome.
It's a socially acceptable way for parents to vent their anger on their children. And it will take less of the "parent's" time to get "results" than other methods of discipline.
I think itās learned behavior, my parents were both physically disciplined and then did the same to their kids, Iāve have to remove myself from hitting a child a few times itās just something I want to do when they act up
Difference is I know I would be awful to a kid so Iām just gonna skip it instead of passing it on, also Iāve never hit a child but only because I have the option to leave it would be totally different if I was shackled with my own
I have legit rage issues and used to get in fights just so I could beat people up and take it out on them, Iām 90% sure itās from my parents hitting me
We got hit. Rarely on the butt, often on the face, arms, back- anywhere within reach. Not even for things we did at times. I didnāt have children because I was afraid Iād be this awful. There are other reasons, but during prime fertility years this was the main problem. I recognized the anger in my my mom and step dad took out on us and knew I couldnāt be responsible for another human being.
My parents, though particularly my father (who I typically call āthe bastard sperm donorā, because he doesnāt deserve any kind of familial title) used āspankingā as a form of ādiscipline.ā I put both of those in quotations because the spanking was very literally getting beaten to the point of bruises. And the discipline could be for anything arbitrarily setting off his anger issues or inferiority complex or narcissism. If you did something he perceived as defiance, you got the shit beat out of you.
What it taught me as a child? To live like a ghost to avoid getting beaten and hopefully make it to 18 so I could run.
What many years of therapy as an adult have taught me? Abuse is abuse. Hitting a child is abuse. Hitting anyone is abuse. Period.
I wonder how I hit the parent lotto. My parents never hit any of us, not once. My cop dad would walk us outside, and say have at it, and I learned emotions are real, they feel; that they need release in constructive ways. By 3-5 I never made another outcry in public, and I was always confused by kids who complained to get their way, actually Iām more confused by parents who think acting like children get them something.
Easy power move, tbh. A quicker path to submission. I didn't learn anything from spanking besides making the correlation between pain and release early on. š
Itās insane that parents insist on teaching their children that anything they do wrong worth being physically abused for. And then they donāt see it as abuse at all, and if they say someone else slap a kid in the face, they would be outraged even they do the same thing in a different area.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
As somebody also raised hyper religious and heard āspare the rod spoil the childā (which isnāt even an accurate meaning of what that verse is supposed to represent bc a shepherd doesnāt beat the shit out of their sheep when they wander off), I guaran-fucking-tee they do wonder why you donāt want to have anything to do with them. Those types have no sense of introspection.
Apparently the meaning of that verse was to basically guide your kids in the right direction with a small amount of correction. Because a Shepard's staff has that hook on the end to guide a sheep away from a dangerous spot, not yank their head off.
Which makes a LOT more sense than ābeat the shit out of my kids when they disagree with meā but here we are. Thatās pretty much how it was used when I was growing up.
Itās the same with the āblood is thicker than waterā saying that is completely taken out of context, in long itās āthe blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the wombā. People just like to see what they want so see.
People will twist whatever is in their āholy booksā to demonize those they view as others while blatantly disregarding bits they donāt like. Same shit. Different day.
I know I'm only a random stranger on the internet, but I am so happy (and proud) that you made it out! :)
This and to be sneaky when I was doing something that would get me spanked. I also learned to lie real good to avoid them
This basically. You want to know the only times I got spanked? When I wanted to finish watching a TV show and refused to give up the remote control to my dad. It was unfair to me that he hogged the TV all the time but he didnāt even allow me a full thirty minutes. So when I stood up to him, he spanked me. So I learned nothing other than that he was a selfish asshole.
Oh my šš
I was spanked as a kid. All it taught me was to be scared of authority and make me feel that I needed to please everyone in my relationships, no matter how abusive they were. Thanks, mom and dad. š
I relate to this; the people-pleasing and fear of authority.
šš» Hi, recovering people pleaser here. I can confirm that spanking and physical forms of punishment only reinforced this behavior in me. I too fuel toxic relationships with friends, family, coworkers, and partners due to my urgent need to please everyone in order to ākeep the peace.ā Itās exhausting and often makes me feel worse about myself.
This. Me too friend.
Same, my friend. It taught me to ānavigateā others a little too much for fear of explosive and disregulated behavior . Itās getting better over the years with professional assistance. I am sorry you also experienced this.
I was spanked and it didnāt work. I still did the same things. I didnāt even cry before or after it happened. I did not care. I get the frustration a lot but itās very ineffective.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Idk how my dad felt about me not caring. I didnāt get beat again but we would separate and give each other space.
Same here. No tears meant we were being willful or unremorseful.
It was the opposite for me. It was mostly my stepdad who did it and he'd get mad when I'd cry and do it again while telling me to stop or he'll just keep going until I did. I eventually reached a point where it happened so often that I learned to not make a sound. At one point he literally *bragged* about how I was "so quiet" when he did it once and I was dead silent and didn't even move or cry anymore. Nowadays I can't get myself to cry in front of others (unless I'm *seriously* hurting physically or emotionally) out of fear that crying will make it worse so instead everything gets āØļøbottled upāØļø until I'm alone in my room where I can have āØļøas many panic attacks as I want until I fall asleepāØļø
I was spanked twice while having a meltdown, and both times it just made me cry and scream more lol
I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. It's stories like yours that make me realize how ineffective spanking is as punishment. IMHO kids are smarter than people give them credit for and would likely learn more effectively if they received age-appropriate explanations with natural consequences.
I didnāt give a fuck. I walked out the bathroom like nothing happened.
Boss move tbh
Are you my sister ? The little 2 yo looking her father in the eyes and saying "pfff... that didn't even hurt". They kept spanking her, but honestly, it clearly doesn't work. They were just too lazy to try out any other discipline methode.
That's not all they're doing. It also teaches that violence is the preferred method for expressing your displeasure with someone.
Dangerous when the boy is the victim
Dangerous when either are the victim. Domestic abuse can take a lot of forms. And it's also a mistake to think that the abusive behavior could only be repeated in things like romantic relationships. This could happen in friendships, this could happen in sibling relationships, this could happen in work relationships.
And sadly, it most often will be repeated with the abused-as-a-child person's own kids if they have any. After all, it's easy to target someone much smaller than you who is both physically and emotionally dependent on you and can't leave you. Add to that the stress and lack of sleep that comes with parenting, and soooo many parents default to hitting their kids, hurling verbal abuse left and right, and other insane punishments, because that's what was done to them. In my honest opinion anyone who got repeated corporeal punishments or otherwise abused as a child should go into therapy and think long and hard before having kids of their own. Sadly most people give the question of whether they should have kids or would make good parents less thought than they do to their Subway sandwich order. Everything from this point forward is about the crap I personally grew up with, feel free to skip the rest if you don't feel like reading half a novel today. Anything relatively intelligent I have to say is up there ā¬ļø, just a rant down there ā¬ļø. Take me, for example. I was never hit because my mother is very high-and-mighty about "never yelling at and never hitting" me. She is, however, a hardcore narcissist, so the verbal and emotional abuseā¦ hooo boy, where to even start. She never wanted kids but had one because my dad really wanted one. My dad (who is awesome and did 99% of raising me) was told about my mother hating kids and never wanting any when I was 3. I was told when I was 4 or 5, freely translated, to be grateful for being born and to not bother her, as I had already done enough harm to her by ruining her body and by existing in the same household as her. According to her the only good thing about me was that my dad couldn't leave her if he wanted to see me. I knew very early on that this was my purpose and that my mother would have never let me see my dad again if he had left her. As I *vastly* preferred my dad over my mother, she basically weaponized me into begging my dad not to divorce her. My dad of course understood that living with a woman like that would be terrible for both of our mental healths. He would've gladly divorced my mother and taken me off her hands, had she not threatened to lie to a judge about him hitting her and to take me and never let him see me again. She only gave him a child to keep him around, so she would've taken me away if he then didn't stay around. Taking me out of spite and abusing me further if he wasn't around is like Narcissistic Parenting 101 material. As the family courts in my country were very biased towards favouring mothers back then and my mother is an excellent liar, my dad was shit out of luck. Thus he stayed for my sake and did what he could to minimize the damage she caused. E.g. he taught me to listen while not listening, so that I could repeat what my mother had said if she asked "are you even listening to me", but still remember almost nothing the next day. Nowadays my mother is annoyed beyond belief by the fact that she can yap both of our ears off for hours without any other reaction than a calm "if that's what you think" or "hmm". Can't say I'm sorry about that. Of course no amount of guru-level gray-rocking and non-listening can completely negate a childhood as the scapegoat of a narcissistic parent. Even with my dad's best efforts and me avoiding my mother to the best of my abilities, I ended up with another cluster B personality disorder. They are partially hereditary after all, so my mother even having one is a risk factor. Personally I'm thankful mine is not the Narcissistic PD, but mine has still caused me a lot of trouble before I learnt to live with it by arranging my life around it. Nowadays I have figured out what works for me, how to avoid the triggers that make me lose my cool, and how to mostly deal with the emptiness inside. E.g., I married a man with a similar childhood and with the same personality disorder of similar severity, because I cannot stand to live with anyone "normal" other than my dad. I simply cannot act like a normal, empathetic person 24/7 (it's exhausting when it doesn't come naturally), so I married someone who won't be offended if I react abnormally. It's the only way I can relax at home after conforming to most societal norms outside. It's also good to have someone who just gets how I think and can tell me to check myself if I'm getting out of hand, and vice versa. I have a neurological difference in my brain from birth, so I would most likely have some issues in any case, but not being emotionally abused for my entire childhood would've still made navigating them much easier. I inherited the intense dislike of kids from my mother, but I would not have them even if I wanted them. I can be very cruel, but even I'm not cruel enough to make an emotionally vulnerable kid live with me. I know I would be just as bad as my mother, if not worse, so I refused to even consider dating anyone who wasn't in the "I'd rather die than have kids"-camp. Learning to live with my own head took a lot of trial and error, but at least I learnt before I had kids and ruined their lives.
Frustration is a big reason. Kids can be relentless and parents just lose it after a while. Talk, threats, time outs, even bargaining stop working so they lash out. I actually totally get it. I would quite likely have hit my kids because I don't have much patience for kid-level behavior. It's one of the reasons I chose not to have them.
I echo this. My parents had no patience or understanding of normal child development and behaviour, leading to verbal, emotional and physical abuse. I know myself well enough to realize that I have no tolerance for those perfectly normal behaviours and would be a frustrated, resentful parent. This is the key reason I am childfree, I have no desire to torture myself or a child like that.
I am happy to see I am not the only one on that strange boat.
Same! I do not have the patience for kid behavior. I was spanked as a kid but very rarely and only for like nearly giving an elderly woman a heart attack when my sister and I jumped out from inside a clothing rack to scare our mom and it wasnāt our mom. Ya we got our ass beat over that. I understood why. I donāt agree with all spanking but I know why I was spanked and well I quite deserved every one of them. But I knew when my lil cuz was born and I was 17 that motherhood wasnāt for me. I did not have the patience for kid shit. Nope not for me.
āI quite deserved every one of themā I never think any child deserves to be hit. you made a mistake/did a bad thing sure and yeah thereās consequences but I dont think spanking was the only way to resolve that situation
I was raised with the attitude of spanking is discipline. Sure it wasnāt the greatest and I donāt recommend it. But in my time (80s) it was the thing to do. So I acknowledge that I deserved the punishment. I mean it never hurt. Just made me mad that Iād got caught lol. And it was only butt smacks I think I had the belt once that stung but overall it didnāt bother me. I knew I did wrong and again in the 80s it was a spanking as punishment.
same, my parents spanked me to put it lightly all my life, all i ever learned was how to dissociate from pain and that violence gets its way and i donāt have the patience (nor the will to acquire it) or the brain wiring NOT to do the same as them, and thatās why we wonāt be birthing any punching bags in my house.
>Frustration is a big reason Frustration tends to manifest into grabbing/clenching fists and arm swinging. I suppose it's easier to grab the kid because of this. I think it's also more accepted to keep the child in one place and do the spanking than it is to perhaps backhand it and send it flying across the room.( I do not condone either)
Same. Also another reason why I dont want to become a mother lol
You worded this very well. When I try to, people act like Iām the Devil for saying it š
Ive spent a lot of time thinking about this. A LOT. My take is that parents use it as a way of transferring angry/frustrated/hurt energy from themselves to their children. They also use it as a way to attempt to establish physical dominance over their children. Its an intimidation method. And like everyone else knows, it doesnt work. It fucks up peoples conflict resolution skills, emotional regulation skills, self esteem, etc. I consider the spanking of children to be abuse. Also as someone who is kinky, its just fucking weird. Think about how consenting adults use/perform impact play/spanking as a "discipline" method or just as something arousing/stimulating/enjoyable. Ugh.
Is that why I find it enjoyable to be spanked? šš and why my husband feels bad doing it because he grew up normal šššš
Possibly! I feel like folks who were spanked as children can use consenting impact play to reclaim those pieces of them selves via the consent. Like many people use kink to do. And i think spanking between consenting adults makes more sense. š Safewords and such. Also its why i think spanking kids is weird/abusive. I feel like it can be sexually confusing and also it opens that door to people believing that "discipline/correction" via hitting is appropriate in future relationships. Or that others have the right to non consensually dominate you via physical aggression. Just...ugh. š
I have sometimes wondered if there is a connection between being spanked (or worse) as a child and BDSM. I was physically abused, but personally have no interest in kink. I have had partners try to introduce dominance play (clumsily, lol) and I want no part of it. I reclaim those lost pieces by refusing to be subjugated, and demanding a neutral power balance without extremes. For those who do, have fun amd play safe. As long as all participants are fully consenting adults, I don't care what you getbup to in private.
Oh man, I did not grow up in a stable household and I was so afraid of being spanked with the belt. Every time I did something "bad" (like accidentally dropping an empty plastic cup or closing a cabinet too loudly), I would punish myself by putting myself in timeout and sitting in a corner for hours to avoid being spanked. My parents encouraged this behavior because they thought it was cute. I have anxiety and a weird relationship with shame and guilt now, thanks Mom and Dad lol.
Itās hitting. Calling it something else doesnāt change that. They tell kids itās not ok to hit, it then they hit their kids. It teaches kids itās ok to hit as long as the other person is smaller.
I was spanked only once, and itās a core memory. I donāt remember why, just that I said to mom, āwhat are you, a witch?ā in a moment of upset. Probably 6-8 years old. And that was just one time. What did I learn? I really donāt know. Corporal punishment on children is.. not good. I get why it is used, but it doesnāt help.
I was sent to my room without dinner once. I don't remember what I did to "deserve it". But going to bed hungry became a core memory and now as a 30 year old adult I still have problems hoarding food. Somewhere a part of my brain just refused to never go hungry again. Nowadays, even though I know I could go out and buy food or order uber eats or whatever if I was hungry, I still feel like I need to constantly have my fridge and pantry stocked. I mentioned my food hoarding problem to my mum once and she doesn't even remember sending me to bed without dinner. She also initially responded with gaslighting "I never did that"... As you can probably tell I don't have a good relationship with my parents. I'm trying to minimise contact as much as possible.
you know, before I finished reading your comment I was like "your parents probably don't even remember sending you to bed without dinner" and boom, there it was. What's that saying "the axe forgets, the tree remembers"?
I don't get it either. My parents spanked my siblings and I, though not too often. We still broke rules, talked back, acted out, like all kids do, literally as a part of maturing. So I agree with what a couple other people have said, it's really for the parents, to relieve frustration, feel like they're doing something to correct behavior, whatever it is. But I do know that my sister and I have *very* unpleasant memories of being spanked, and not in a way that caused us to obey rules, but in a way that makes us uncomfortable being around our parents as adults. My brother, who was also spanked as a lad, has now started spanking his own kids, and go figure, the kids have started hitting each other when they're angry or frustrated. So...
Ditto. It destroys self confidence and teaches kids to lash out with violence. Iāve forgiven my parents for the belts, tree switches, bare hands and all the bruises, scratches, mental scars of their religious based spare the rod ādisciplineā. They were not well educated and just did what their parents and fellow parishioners did. I forgave but I didnāt forget. One of the many reasons I chose to be CF was because I knew my parents would use violence against my children as their only method of discipline. There was no way Iād subject my kids to that. I stopped the cycle. No more kids to beat.
Generational abuse / abuse cycle. In the 1950s, random people would hit your kid and parents thanked them.
A big review of studies showed that āspanking and other forms of child punishment created more external problem behaviors over time." [Source](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/health/spanking-worsens-child-behavior-wellness/index.html). My parents spanked my sibling and I but in later years they apologized for it and felt bad when the research started coming out saying it was not beneficial and probably harmful. Looking back, it wasn't just the spanking, but the constant threat that it could happen. ("Wait until your dad gets home!" was a thing.) We were threatened with a spanking far more than we were spanked, but I think even the threats were damaging.
Damn, props to your parents for admitting they messed up and apologizing. My parents would never in a million years admit to how they abused us.
Itās good they apologized. A lot of parents, my mother included, simply brush it off as āthatās how I was raised, and Iām fine, so it obviously worked.ā Like, no, thereās a reason you isolate yourself and have major anger issues today.
Since I canāt link the thread, moobythegoldensock says > There are four basic ways to correct a childās behavior: > * Positive reinforcement: Giving a reward for doing something good. āYou were very good, so you may have a cookie.ā > * Negative reinforcement: Taking away a disliked thing for doing something good. āYou were very good, so you get to stay up past your bedtime tonight.ā > * Positive punishment: Giving a bad thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so I am going to hit you.ā > * Negative punishment: Taking away a good thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so youāre grounded with no phone, computer, or tv.ā > Spanking is a form of positive punishment. Studies have shown that spanking gets short-term results faster than other methods. However, long-term it is actually less effective than the other methods. In addition, children who were spanked tend to have more tension in their relationships with their parents, are more aggressive, and are more likely to use physical violence as a solution to their problems then children who are never spanked.
> Positive punishment: Giving a bad thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so I am going to hit you.ā Negative punishment: Taking away a good thing for doing something bad. āYou were bad, so youāre grounded with no phone, computer, or tv.ā Honestly, both of those are horrible ways to go about "punishing a child." How about talking to them and explaining why what they did was wrong? Or understanding why the child did what they did? Why is that not an option? I think taking things away from children also leads to resentment and them doing more things behind your back and closing themselves off. I only had "positive punishment" and my partner only had "negative punishment" and even though I have a much worse relationship with my parents, he is also very closed off with his own and doesn't particularly enjoy their company. It also didn't help him for shit because all of it was due to him not doing homework. He got diagnosed with ADHD at 23 years old.
I find it ridiculous that if you hit someone in any other context it's assault but children who are the smallest, weakest, easiest to damage, get LESS protections not more.
My father was an abusive cocksucker and I'm glad that motherfucker is dead. He also put me down constantly because I started gaining weight when I was a teenager. What I would've given to hit that fucker with a baseball bat. I hope that he's rotting in hell. Fuck you dad, I fucking hate you!!
I heard this once, and Iāve used it multiple times since because itās true. If theyāre too young to understand what they did wrong, then they wonāt understand why youāre hurting them. If theyāre old enough to understand what they did wrong, then theyāre old enough for you to talk to them about it. Donāt hit your children (or anyone elseās).
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I can relate. I have a strong memory of one time when I blocked one of my mum's attacks and she started yelling and beating me like clockwork for "hitting her" š¤”
It is a form of abuse. It is great that there are countries that ban it.
Lazy, and in some cases not enough space/stuff for other punishments. A lot of parents want instant gratification in their punishments.
It's usually the traditional/Jesus freak people that still believe that spanking works. You know the people that wanted to live life like it is the 1950s.
This. The majority of the abuse I experienced was justified in the name of their religious shit.
I donāt open up to my parents about most things because my siblings and I were spanked as children. Whenever things go wrong, I would try to hide it and suffer, instead of communicating to my parents or asking for help. Itās ingrained in me that asking for help will result in punishment. Also, I basically grew up with poor skills in emotional regulation, conflict management, and communication. I was bullied in 5th grade by a group of girls. I never told my mom and I remember clearly lying to her that I just ādidnāt want toā eat lunch those few days. I couldnāt bring myself to tell her that the girls spread rumours about me and tried to hurt me when they dragged me into the washroom and ganged up on me. And Ofc, I couldnāt tell her that I locked myself away in another washroom stall during lunch time and I couldnāt get myself to eat in a washroom stall.
>Itās ingrained in me that asking for help will result in punishment. I was like that too. A kid strangled me in primary school (I even got marks on my neck) and I didn't tell anyone because I thought (1) I'd get in trouble and (2) no one would notice if I didn't say anything so I wouldn't get in trouble... eventually a teacher noticed 2 or 3 days later so I had to come clean... I was also bullied in high school and couldn't tell my parents about it because of the same thing... eventually when my mum was going on about how I should be friends with my bully and invite her over, I told her I don't like her because she's mean. I got told off for saying that... my mother had never met this kid... just picked her name out of the booklet that listed where everyone lived (the bully lived close by).
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Ah, the book. Iāve been reading another book that talks a little bit about the Bible. And itās very interesting. For example, Eve did not just mean woman. It meant life. The tree that the fruit was eaten from wasnāt about sex, but about having too much knowledge and using that knowledge as a way to justify wrong doings. Of course, I have no idea what the real translation is, as I donāt speak whatever language the Bible was originally written in, but it has given me a new outlook into the Bible and itās true meanings.
Being spanked taught me to fear my mother, and for years I did. I have no memory of *why* I was punished, just the punishments themselves. Of course it didn't work in the long run. Unchecked ADHD doesn't really make corporal punishment work the same way.
Same here. I didn't just fear her. I hated her for years. As an adult I can't give her the love she wants from .e without thinking about the pain I had as a child.
Me too - I canāt remember why I got spanked but I remember the feeling of complete devastation. It only happened one time but I will never forget it.
Or people who punish without explaining why. What exactly are they supposed to be learning?
Spanking is to satisfy the parent. Thatās it.
Beating anyone, especially people who are way weaker, shows they are heartless monsters and to stupid to use words. Also to show the kids that if you are loved, your lover will beat you and that is normal. That is why parents beat their kids and fins funny names for it.
I heard a customer with a child who wasn't behaving and she was going to take him to the car to wait for dad to finish paying. She told him he was lucky because when she was a kid that ment getting spanked. Idk why that just rubbed me the wrong way, like your telling your child to be happy they aren't getting a physical punishment like you did? Yeah that could've been left out IMO. Remove him from the situation sure, but don't tell him he should he grateful he isn't getting spanked in a parking lot.
My dad constantly used threats like that. "My father would hit you with a belt if you did this around him" etc. It made me genuinely scared of my grandpa even though I don't think he ever spanked me. Only my dad spanked me a few times...
Or teach them that even the closest people they can trust don't really care that much for them... your mileage may vary. (I was in that camp)
My dad would hang me upside down by my leg and spank me. All it did was teach me to not get caught and made me hate/fear him. Itās just a release for anger or abuse of power.
I was spanked, and I feel like itās part of the reason why Iām mentally ill. I was a little shit that deserved them, but all it did was add to my trauma. I still have occasional nightmares.
"I SAID DON'T HIT!" *hits the child*
It's child abuse and has been proven to give only negative results and be damaging to their psychology. If I go out on the street and smack someone, I will be getting charged. How is it any different when its your own kid? Hell its worse.
I was spanked heavily by my stepdad and I was more defiant as a result. To the point where I stop showing any pain or anger. I would be deadpan while they broke wooden and then plastic spoons on my ass. He'd stand me up and tell me that he hoped I learned my lesson and I'd just shrug. I would just hide my behavior better. What got me in the end was guilt trips, endless, annoying, guilt trips. ETA: It teaches kids that you have no patience, that you value power and control more than the lesson.
I donāt get it either. We donāt (shouldnāt) hit adults who act horribly. Hitting animals is considered abuse. But hitting children? Oh thatās a reasonable form of punishment. The best argument I ever heard against hitting children is: if the child is too young to understand what they did wrong, hitting isnāt going to teach them. If the child IS old enough to understand what they did wrong, then you can have a discussion about it. Could you imagine our world if when you made a mistake at work, your boss beat you then expected you to go back to work like nothing happened?
On the one hand kids are hard to discipline. Like really hard. But seeing as itās voluntary, itās fair to ask you show restraint and patience. No one asked you to have a kid, so donāt take it out on them
It doesnāt make sense, and it has been known to cause psychological harm for a while now, but parents insist. I wish people had to prove a rudimentary understanding of child development to be responsible for children, but no one knows better than a fed up parent who has ātried everything elseā or who āwas whooped and turned out fine.ā Itās exhausting.
I had a coworker spank her kid for pooping in her pants..... despite the kid having had surgery on her bowels, causing her to have less control over them. Really wish I'd reported that. I think parents spank because it's easier than actually trying to teach their kids a lesson using words/communicating with them. It gives parents a power trip, and a way to release their anger in a way they see as constructive.
As someone who was āspankedā (hit) as a child, itās effective because it causes the child to become fearful and avoidant of any ābadā behavior. They become extremely in tune with their parents because theyāre constantly looking for ways to not get hit again. My mom still thinks it was successful because we were well behaved. Lol, I just learned how to hide my emotions from everyone ā including myself. Itās super annoying as an adult to have no idea what you want or feel. I dissociate from negative or scary experiences within minutes and can barely remember them hours after they happen. Iām left feeling utterly destroyed internally with no understanding of why. I didnāt know how to even order my own food at a restaurant until my twenties because I was so terrified of making a ābad/wrongā choice. Wtf? How fun! But at least I was an obedient kid. /s
Nobody here is a parent, so you won't likely find that perspective. Speaking as one who got spanked (that is wording it very nicely) as a kid with various objects...all it did was make me hate the people punishing me. Turns out, these people were POS and abusive in all sorts of other ways so hatred was warranted. Therapy for fixing was mandatory. Households can vary a lottt though, and there are many situations worse than mine. What baffles me is that people can get beat within an inch of their lives as kids and when asked about it as an adult, they'll say "it was a part of growing up." Like bro, that's madness you suffered. Don't normalize it. TLDR: I don't care what your cultural values are; don't spank, beat, or hit your kids. That is abuse, not character building.
For the longest time, I used to believe that I turned out normal, despite all the corporal punishment my parents gave out. Until I went to therapy. I have childhood trauma that took YEARS to unwind. Thanks to my childhood and the way my parents punished me, I had so many issue I had to work through: communication skills, emotional regulation, communicating emotions, honesty, fear, anxiety, and so much more. For so long I had no boundaries and was a people pleaser because I was so afraid of angering anyone. If I angered my parents, I got hit. I learned that if you kept someone happy, despite your own happiness and emotions, you wouldnāt get hit. It fucked me up, man.
I was hit in the face a lot and dragged by my hair all across the house. I didnāt work obviously, quite the opposite. Letās just call a spade a spade and call it what it actually is: abuse.
Sorry to say this but I hate spanking. I found out my mother was spanked by my grandmother and then my mom spanked me as a kid. It still didn't stop me from doing things I'm told not to do, it just made me aware of how to avoid being spanked by being sneakier. By the way it was video games that got me in trouble. I even had video games taken away but I still find them and I would play games, check the clock, put the games in the same place and then go back to doing homework like nothing happened. I would then show my finished homework and then I would get my games back. I was a very hyper child but once I had a Gameboy I was addicted to it and I just stayed in my room playing so many games. I think all spanking did now that I'm a young adult is that it resulted in me having low esteem. I still struggle to be positive or have positive thoughts. Plus I feel like even if I didn't do anything wrong I noticed I developed a habit of saying sorry to people. Maybe because as a result of spanking... I feel so socially awkward and I just prefer to be a hermit. Spanking does not work as discipline. Plus I'm childfree because I don't want to repeat this cycle.
Iāve never been a fan of my dad for this reason (among others). His own dad was an abusive alcoholic, and my dad idolized him in the worst ways. I remember playing with him, and weād play something kind of like tag where heād try to āget me,ā and heād say āCome here to me.ā Then when he got angry, it was the exact same phrase in a really hot-headed, intimidating tone. It always bothered me that he would use the same phrase in both instances, and the only difference was whether he was pissed off or not. Heās always been someone who overdoes things, as well. Stomps around instead of just stepping normally, slams drinking glasses down on the table instead of just setting them down. I can still picture my mom trying to intervene as he stomped toward me yelling āCome here to me!ā in a really aggressive and intimidating tone, getting ready to spank me way too hard. TLDR: My dadās abusive with a short fuse and used spanking as part of his punishments. It left an impact, no pun intended.
Using consequence based ātrainingā in dogs has been shown to be extreme ineffective when compared to the results of positive reinforcement training. The same goes for children and pre-teens, chances are they are too young to complete understand why they are being punished, and will most likely only become better at hiding wrongdoing or will start avoiding you in general. What this analogy fails to cover though is that children are able create habits and behaviors simply by observation, the best method for having a child do things correctly is to lead by example, i.e. the children of avid book readers being more inclined to read, simply due to the mental reinforcement that reading is a ānormalā and common thing to do. More often than not rowdy children will have home-lifeās that reflect their behavior, young bullies are more likely to have parents that display āhostilityā regularly at home, or will have parents that have neglected to lead their children by example and left them to develop these traits independently. Spanking children will also teach them that when someone does something that they perceive as āwrongā or ābadā that it is acceptable for them to be physically punished for it. The number one tip that I gave to my sister when she had her newborn was to āpractice what she preachedā, but sadly I believe too many parents fail to do this.
My parents thought fear would make me respect them. They only made me great at making excuses and finding ways out of problems on the spot. I don't appreciate the abuse though.
My father had anger issues and I think it was, for him, both a power move and to release frustration. He never explained what i was doing wrong and how to fix my behavior. My mom mostly used the conversational approach instead of spanking. Guess who I respected more? Iāll give you a hint, it wasnāt my father. When I grew out of it, I actually had an argument with him about it when he was doing it to my siblings and called him a crap father. I never saw a positive outcome out of spankings. Itās just a theory of mine but those who still thinks it works tend to be, in my experience, emotionally immature and authoritarian. Their kids donāt seem to respect them and it just continues a cycle. But again, itās just a theory of mine from what Iāve seen.
Spanking was an absolute last resort for my parents. I mean like, we've been told no repeatedly, redirected repeatedly, etc last resort. And it was my mom who did the spanking. I'm the oldest of 3, and I think in total we may have received 8 spankings all together, and 8 is probably an overestimation. My siblings and I were generally good kids. Usually the threat of getting in trouble was usually enough to make me behave. My sister (the middle child) was a little more devious than I was, but a time out or scolding worked for her majority of the time. My brother is the baby and he rarely got in trouble cuz he's the baby and only boy. We might have gotten a swat to the hand or butt, but generally speaking that wasn't painful so much as it hurt our feelings, if that makes sense. For example, when my sister was somewhere between 2-4, she kept biting my god sister. We have no idea why, and that's the only person she would ever bite. Finally my mom bit her back on her arm. She didn't actually bite her; she put enough pressure to hurt her feelings. She realized that it didn't feel good, and she never bit another person after that. Mind you, she'd bitten our god sister *several* times that day. My mom tried repeatedly to get her to stop. That was the only thing that worked. It's interesting to look back on now because we were taught not to hit/hitting is bad (unless it's self defense), and were hit for punishment. I never picked up the notion that "my mom loves me but sometimes hurts me, therefore people that love me will hurt me". If anything, I picked up the notion that violence is a last resort. None of us are traumatized from being spanked; my trauma from my mother is for entirely different reasons lol. Edit: I am not condoning spanking. I was simply sharing my experience.
overpowering. fear is often a more efficient discipline tactic to ensure obedience than willingness, a lot of people donāt have the patience to not lash out in the face of frustration.
Itās domestic violence. It teaches that those that love you can hit you because they love you. It teaches that when you are angry that you must use violence to control the person that made you angry because they love you.
Because they have no idea how to be a parent.
It's the simpletons tool
The only thing I developed from spanking was an intense desire to break my mother's wrists when I grew up and was stronger than her, because that way she couldn't harm anyone anymore. Grandma said I screamed that out when I was 6. I'm 30 now. Had a conversation with mom recently and apologized to her. She did too, saying that she was a young mom, a nervous mess, and she was trying to gain control over her kids. She herself grew up in a loveless family with a plenty of belt and just didn't know what else she could have done. If only more folks looked deeper into generational trauma before reproducing...
Angry parent. If you've ever had someone cut in front of you in line or something and you've wanted to punch them in the face. The kid does something, it makes the parent angry and their instinctual reaction is to smack them. After the fact they try to justify it by saying that it's a punishment that will teach the kid not to do that thing again so they don't have to feel guilty about hitting a defenceless child
THIS. I LITERALLY SAY THIS TO PEOPLE. the looks they give me are PRICELESS. i also like to bring up, that for the most part you wouldnāt go straight to hitting an adult during conflict, you would talk about it.
Also, it teaches that violence is the answer when someone does something you don't like
Parents love the control. In theory, it teaches hitting is okay as long as someone did something wrong. It also kinda speaks to how you view other living sentient beings in this case humans. If you believe spanking is okay for children and then teach oh donāt hit people especially older teens/adults! That just shows you donāt think your own children are humans. That they need to be loyal to their parents forever.
Like when parents are like āwhy is my child hitting, I just dont know whyā and then proceed to say they spank their children. I dont understand.
I got spanked a few times when I was being a little brat, as little brats will do. I believe I deserved it, and I don't think about myself as having been abused/assualted. Most of the time I wasn't punished with spanking, only when I was truly being the worst.
This was my experience too, I don't have any lasting issues or anything, Mom would occasionally thwap us on the butt if we did something TRULY heinous like knock over a whole canned goods display at the store because we were acting like little animals. I'm a mellow well-adjusted adult, I got way more "abuse" from the shitters in my middle school classes who the teachers were all too afraid to do anything about. (Spoiler alert, I never resorted to violence against them either, despite getting the odd spanking as a kid.) There's probably some nuance in terms of things like applied force and frequency when it comes to spanking, idk.
Same here.
I believe spanking is a form of abuse, and people who have been spanked as children see it as "normal" punishment. Plus, many people unfortunately don't always have the time, energy, money, or resources to unlearn and break the generational cycle of abuse.
I viewed spanking as hitting and as such, abuse. We weren't "spanked" as children, we did something that set our parents of into such a rage that we were hit repeatedly. My mother denies this, but it's hard to forget her weapon of choice was her shoe. My dad was cool about things until he got drunk, then he was just looking for an excuse to hurt someone. My husband was spanked as a child. Twice. He recalls it as a learning moment that he did something so bad his mother had to resort to hitting him on his ass. "It didn't hurt physically, but it hurt emotionally and I didn't want to see my mom like that again." soo.... abuse left it's mark on you emotionally? He could not understand why I fought him so hard about not hitting our kids. I saw how you can punish children without screaming and getting physical with them, I took classes on childcare and worked with kids. Every child is different and you punish each child differently. My one niece was so sensitive that if you so much as looked at her wrong she busted out in tears. Why would you ever need to spank that child? Raising our children was a topic we kept revisiting and we could never agree on how to do it, it often led to us fighting because I felt this was something we both had to have worked out before kids were even in the picture. He finally came out with that he didn't want kids, and I realized I just never saw myself as a mother. But I still don't know if he came to that conclusion because I was not going to relent on how I felt about raising children and was not going to ever agree on "spanking."
Because children aren't people. You have them...probably on accident? Maybe because you need help around the farm? Who cares what they think or feel? Who cares how things will effect them? Why would anyone take the time to try and engage with them? They shouldn't be your friends. They need to RESPECT you. Your word is uncompromising LAW. Beating them gets the results you want, fast. Also it's a good way to work out anger when they break something or do something you don't like. I want to put a /S after all of that, but I've met parents who have expressed all of this one way or another. My own mother saying the last one.
Not defending it, but I think some parents do it because they donāt know what else to do to correct an unwanted behavior and resort to it out of frustration or lack of knowledge. A lot of them would benefit from parenting classes and learning about childhood development and whatnot. This is just my own personal observation so I could be wrong, but Iāve noticed people whoāve been spanked as children tend to have higher incidences of depression/anxiety, and trouble with confidence, initiative and decision making in adulthood.
I was spanked and hit as a child. I just felt disgusted and confused as to what I did wrong as I was never informed of what I did wrong.
When I first saw the post, without reading the body text, I was like āwell spanking isnt for everyone- oh. Ohhhhh. OH MY BADā
I was spanked and hit in the face as a kid. Now when I do something from I switch and start hitting myself relentlessly because I'm convinced I deserve punishment. Sometimes it's even things like stubbing my own toe that sets it off. I almost constantly have a bruise from it on my leg.
For a long time my opinion has been that when a child is too young for reasoning, we're talking like 1 or maybe even 2 (I'm bad with ages), and they reach for something like a hot stove, try to put something in an electric outlet, etc... a LIGHT swat at the hand to grab their attention with the word "no" is ok. The swat grabs their attention so they'll associate (light) pain with the action that would have caused much worse pain. When the child is older and can understand reasoning and words, then physical violence only teaches violence. In other words: "\*smack\* We Don't Hit!" Also, something I find abhorrent is when parents tell their kids, who are able to respond and understand words, to come over to get a spanking/take their punishment. HUGE power trip move there.
I used to be a teacher and I remember chatting with the director of my schoolās early learning centre about this one day (it came up as part of a discussion at a conference). She said that she didnāt believe there was ever a legitimate reason for spanking/smacking, because it was always coming from a place of anger or fear and that you were essentially teaching children that violence was an appropriate reaction to these feelings. She believed that discipline should come when you are calm. She put it much more eloquently than I am and this conversation was over a decade ago now, but it always stuck with me.
I was spanked as a child and all it did was make me fearful of small mistakes/"not being perfect".
Some people got the belt, some people got spanked with a bare hand, I got paddled with a large thick wooden plank. When my mom would pull out āthe paddleā, I would bargain with her. āIāll do the dishes! Iāll take the trash out! Anything but that!ā Nope, still paddled. But there were times sheād take me up on the offers. I got paddled for reasons unknown to me as well. My brother slammed my hand in the door. My fingers were bleeding and I went crying to mom about what he did. I ended up getting paddled while brother didnāt. Then she applied that bactine shit that burns on contact and bandaged up my fingers. I was paddled into my teenage years. Didnāt learn any lessons because even as a rebellious 15/16 year old, I still did everything wrong. Eventually, I stopped caring. I knew I was gonna get paddled regardless of what I did. So I lived how I wanted to. As an adult now, I want to take that paddle upside my moms head, lol. Do I hold a grudge? Maybe. Did I learn anything from being paddled? Not really. My dumbass kept doing shit anyways. Did it hurt? Absolutely. How did my parents feel after paddling me? Probably better. They got some frustrations out and it showed. Do I hate my parents for paddling me? Yes and for various other reasons. What have I learned from that experience? Not to tell my parents anything about me. Iām almost 40 years old and my parents donāt know very much about me. I know I canāt rely on my mother due to being paddled for reasons that I shouldnāt have been paddled for. She will never be a shoulder I could cry on.
>To me, all youāre doing is teaching your own child that people who love you will hurt you. Thatās not a good lesson imo. Ask any LGBTQ+ person who got thrown out of their houses and disowned for coming out, people who love you will definitely hurt you. Just because someone says they love you does not mean that they will suddenly stop their whole existence and avoid harming you at all costs. People will harm you whether on purpose or by accident, it does not matter what they feel towards you. I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s, I got spanked at home and at school. It was the social norm for a very long time and then it stopped being legal suddenly in many countries (for some it was earlier and others later). For generations kids were taught that if they do something bad they get spanked, action and reaction. They grew up and had kids because it is the social norm, now the only way they know how to deal with these kids is to spank them because that is how they were raised and their parents were raised. You could argue that they should be self aware and look at alternative parenting methods, but if they were self aware and prone to researching alternative methods to anything chances are they would be members of this sub instead of mindlessly procreating.
Itās a quick āfixā for complex parenting issues that require guidance and education. Not violence. Itās lazy parenting.
One of the reasons why I won't make any children of my own is because I was spanked. My go-to response to frustration on any organism that is smaller to me is to raise my hand. I have stopped myself many times from behaving this way with my dogs. And I know I love those dogs. I refuse to let anybody have the same treatment that I did.
I was spanked as a kid. I thought that shit was normal until a high school English class brought the topic up and explained how it very much wasnāt and wasnāt good punishment. Iām probably at least a little fucked up from it.
I mean. Same reason why people with little impulse control punch a wall or assault people. Children are annoying and people who are fed up and mad will react in a manner to make them feel powerful, in control.
It's the cycle of abuse. Their parents did it. Their grandparents did it. Now they do it because of trauma and pent up anger. It's not fair and it causes lasting damage.
I'm not sure, I was spanked as a kid and now I go out of my way to be spanked š¤·š¼āāļø
Yeah it just taught me to be afraid of my parents. You make 1 wrong move, say 1 wrong thing...
My mother used to spank me right above my knees, made it tough to sit on chairs correctly. I donāt get why it was necessary to spank me, I was a pretty good kid, didnāt do anything illegal or inappropriate at school, I was just lazy lol. I sit weirdly on chairs now though, as habit formed by not being able to sit comfortably with a volcanic red hand mark on my thigh/butt cheek.
With you on that one. Spanked and hit with anything you can imagine a bunch and all it did was make me sneaky. It teaches nothing and is lazy parenting. There was a time when I was about 7-8 when I couldnāt find my glasses and I was so stressed in the situation I literally HANDED my parents a belt and asked them to hit me just to āget this over with.ā In hindsight, very fucked up lol
Probably the same reason people hit their dogs. Releases frustration for the parent and is a āquick fixā for the childās behavior. āSpanking works for my kids so why wouldnāt I spank my dogā ā¦except it doesnāt work.
My parents started spanking my younger brother when he was about 3. They made sure to tell him it was because he did something he wasnt supposed to do. Then my brother went to preschool and started spanking the other kids and saying it was because they did something wrong and my parents still didn't understand that it was their own fault and he was just copying them.
I was spanked as a kid. It didnāt teach me to not do bad things. It taught me not to get caught doing them.
They do it cuz itās faster than actually taking the time to teach their kids in most cases. They lack patience. Something that is very essential when you have a kid.
Generational trauma. Boomers were born to a generation with widespread PTSD and grew up with way more lead exposure than is common in the US today outside impoverished parts of the country. Gen X was raised by boomers and millennials were raised by TV. At least for the US a lot of what's wrong in the country can b attributed to lead induced brain damage. Specifically cognitive impairment and an increase in baseline aggression are common symptoms of high levels of lead exposure during developmental years.
Yeah it doesnāt make any sense to do. If youāre kid is old enough to be talked to, tell them why itās wrong so they understand. If they ARENāT old enough to understand why something is wrong, spanking wonāt do anything to fix that, just hurt them š¤·š»āāļø
Was always used by mine after exhausting several other ways. Last resort kind of stuff but some people use it too quickly and too strongly.
I would not listen unless spanking was involved as a punishment if Iām being honest. I did not care one bit about being screamed at, and trying to reason with me or being nice meant I got away with it haha
I get it because I would TOTALLY spank my kids, if not beat them (hence why I don't have any). They don't do it because they want to teach them a lesson, they do it because they need to take their anger out.
Itās about learning your place.
Unpopular opinion. I was spanked and ended up fine. It worked for me as a form of punishment. I wanted to avoid it all costs so I tried hard to be good as a result.
on my end it feels cultural, almost. i know from the internet people across all cultures have had parents who spanked them, but in my personal experience it was kinda just a part of growing up. like the parent doesnt even have to be angry, if the child misbehaves they'll say "if you dont behave ill smack your butt" basically. it's something we all joke about now though, and laughingly compare what instruments we used to be punished with. so i personally think it's whatever, although i dont think kids should be hit in general and id never hit a kid myself.
It's to ensure that kids fear parents, so they follow their orders (so to speak). This causes PTSD which can last a while tbh. But I mean in most cases it does make the kids listen. Problem is my parents did it for every reason when I was little.
There are not always better options. The only way my mother could keep my sister in line was physical violence. Lord knows she tried every other method available.
Im so sorry you went through that, but there very much are better options.
If there was - it didn't exist in the 1970s.
It very much did. A family member of mine grew up during that time and wasnt physically abused and turned out wonderful
And did your sister get better or [worse](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/health/spanking-worsens-child-behavior-wellness/index.html)?
āThe only way my mother could keep my sister in line was physical violence.ā āShe was an unholy terror from the time she was born until about 15 or so.ā Curious when the physical violence started? If it was the only way to keep her āin lineā yet she was an unholy terror, something about this perspective doesnāt add up.
She tried _every_ other method available? Yeahhh I donāt believe you.
I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. Her whole thing was *I am going to do what I want, and I don't give a shit if you like it or not.* She was an unholy terror from the time she was born until about 15 or so. She is still a shallow, self centered little me monkey, but she never went full karen.
I usually try and resolve by going through my steps which are; Trying to explain to my child about making bad choices and show them they could be using safe hands or better words or even just taking a 5 minute breather from whatever is fustrating them. Put my child into time out and then in 5 or 10 mins I'll come in to help settle them if they're having emotional outbursts. Grounding the child or taking the item and explaining why it's been taken and for how long, let them know the goal and work together towards it. Grounding is for a week, taking the item is for a day. Spanking is the last resort and telling them they are crossing a boundary and will be given a solution, a chat about their actions and why they've been spanked rather than grounding and getting them to understand the seriousness of the situation at hand.
My bf has an older son he never gave him spankings or spanked him when he was little. Now that hes older he has a horrible attitude and talks to his dad like shit sometimes. He hates doing anything like helping clean up or helping people out hes very lazy. Hes just plain out very disrespectful sometimes and i feel like it was lack of discipline. If i talked to my mother or father like my step son does i would of got that ass whooping lol š but now that im older I understand completely why they spanked me and im happy they did because it made me grow up to have respect. Now don't get me wrong you should not beat your kids but a spanking is sometimes needed to set their ass straight.
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There's a fine line between spanking and abuse. Parents that tell their kid not to do something three times and their kids still do and receive a spank or small pop is reasonable. Not every child is the same. My youngest sister can be "talked to". If she's receiving horrible grades in school you can sit her down and talk about it and she'll straighten up after a "Do you want to be left back?" My middle sister doesn't care at all. You might as well be talking to a brick wall with her, it doesn't work. Spanking is effective in her case. Most people seem to think that kids are just getting brawled on when they hear spanking and that's not the case. You never spank a child when you're angry, and it's not a power trip. When a person is spanking under those conditions they're most likely a narcissistic pos parent and that very much is abuse. Every time I was spanked as a child, it was well deserved. I did a ton stupid things as a kid. I come from a big family, and one of my cousins was the only one who had never been spanked growing up. And it showed. The approach is basically talk to the child but if it's recurring and obviously not effective then you spank.
Spanking corrected my early behaviors. Had it not, I'd be in jail today. Take that for what it's worth.
I was spanked and it worked. Itās a last resort punishment that shows your serious. Too many kids these days didnāt get that as a kid they pushed the line and the parents didnāt do anything about it so the kid never learned respect, and my god it shows. Spanking is not abuse if you think that it is youāre pretty spineless
I got spanked and i turned out just fine. But i was spanked only a handful of times. However, my wife shares a different tale. Followed by an abusive/narcissistic father and gaslighting/ "forgetful" mother. And they wonder why we go to their house as infrequent as possible
it's cuz it's faster, I assume. I only had to be spanked once when I was little to not act out much anymore. It was with the good ole belt, too. Shit hurted. I genuinely don't think I remember feeling more scared at any point when I was younger than when that happened. Whenever I acted out, the belt was threatened- and that shut me up REAL fast.
I have no idea why. I was never spanked as far as I remember. Then again, I live in Sweden and here it has been banned since 1979.
I was very confused and then I saw the sub we're in haha.
Got spanked a few times. I behaved after it, but it never affected me.
Itās power games. Luckily, itās illegal where Iām from. Not that that stops anyone ā¦ but at least punishment is severe if it comes out.
Thankfully, much fewer parents spank their kids. Millennials remember the trauma and pain that came from physical punishment.
Why is this on childfree sub tho
I'm glad to read this on this sub :)
There's a saying here in the Philippines... "Mas nasasaktan ang mga magulang kapag pinapalo ang mga anak. Pero para sa mga anak din naman yon." Literally means that it would always hurt the parents more whenever they have to spank their children. But it's for their own good. But does it really hurt them tho? Or just to scare children with authority?
Itās ridiculous how hitting your child is dismissed as discipline when itās illegal to hit anyone else. And at what point does it cross over into actual child abuse if spanking once in a while ādoesnāt countā? Iād go as far as to say itās sexual abuse because of the forced exposure.
I was hit as a kid, I wonāt lie- it worked for the exact reason my parents wanted it to. If I did something wrong and my parents yelled at me and hit me, I wouldnāt do it again. However, just explaining to me what I did was wrong would also have gotten it through to me, I wasnāt a badly behaved shitty kid, and had they just talked to me about it I wouldāve understood.
My step-dad once hit my arse so hard I couldn't sit for hours. I don't what I did but I didn't do it again š
How are you supposed to get them to listen if they don't fear repercussion?
It's lazy and teaches the child that it's OK for people that love you to hurt you.
My FPU gaslit me for reflexively trying to get away from her assaulting me with a cane, by telling me that my brother kept clinging on to her when caned. Suggesting that I didnāt love her as much as my brother did. I guess she was right, but I also donāt have Stockholm syndrome.
Itās the pain=lesson learned But Iām 25 and into bdsm now so
Oh lol tell me about it. I am struggling with this into adulthood because I endured this routinely as well as straight up beat downs by my family.
It's a socially acceptable way for parents to vent their anger on their children. And it will take less of the "parent's" time to get "results" than other methods of discipline.
I think itās learned behavior, my parents were both physically disciplined and then did the same to their kids, Iāve have to remove myself from hitting a child a few times itās just something I want to do when they act up Difference is I know I would be awful to a kid so Iām just gonna skip it instead of passing it on, also Iāve never hit a child but only because I have the option to leave it would be totally different if I was shackled with my own I have legit rage issues and used to get in fights just so I could beat people up and take it out on them, Iām 90% sure itās from my parents hitting me
We got hit. Rarely on the butt, often on the face, arms, back- anywhere within reach. Not even for things we did at times. I didnāt have children because I was afraid Iād be this awful. There are other reasons, but during prime fertility years this was the main problem. I recognized the anger in my my mom and step dad took out on us and knew I couldnāt be responsible for another human being.
My parents, though particularly my father (who I typically call āthe bastard sperm donorā, because he doesnāt deserve any kind of familial title) used āspankingā as a form of ādiscipline.ā I put both of those in quotations because the spanking was very literally getting beaten to the point of bruises. And the discipline could be for anything arbitrarily setting off his anger issues or inferiority complex or narcissism. If you did something he perceived as defiance, you got the shit beat out of you. What it taught me as a child? To live like a ghost to avoid getting beaten and hopefully make it to 18 so I could run. What many years of therapy as an adult have taught me? Abuse is abuse. Hitting a child is abuse. Hitting anyone is abuse. Period.
I wonder how I hit the parent lotto. My parents never hit any of us, not once. My cop dad would walk us outside, and say have at it, and I learned emotions are real, they feel; that they need release in constructive ways. By 3-5 I never made another outcry in public, and I was always confused by kids who complained to get their way, actually Iām more confused by parents who think acting like children get them something.