Question for the Parents on TrekBBS

[Miss Chicken]

My mother used to belt her daughters with her pink brush. We would would be hit 8 to 12 times and we used to end up bruised.

My brother was never punished at all. He would sneak up and hit or pinch me or my sisters or even spit at us. If we retaliated he would run to Mum and say we were picking on him and we would get a belting. He would deliberately break our toys and Mum would blame us for it.

My brother ended up being a workplace bully who lost job after job. He is now an alcoholic.

None of the girls in my family ended up smacking our children except in those rare circumstances I mentioned.

My father never spanked us, though he did punish us in other ways. We (me and my sisters) behaved much better for him than we did for Mum because we hated to disappoint him.

 

[Deckerd]

Our mother never hit us. Father was The Punisher. They achieved more by glowering at us or grounding us than physical violence ever did, not that there was much of that anyway.

 

[Mary Ann]

Neither of my parents ever laid a finger on us, though they'd both been subjected to physical beatings as children. My father is an expert at emotional manipulation, though, which is a different kind of beating.

 

[iguana_tonante]

2/17/92. I am 20 about to turn 21.

You were born on the 2nd day of the 17th month?

Kid psychology isn't difficult. Just remember that you're smarter than him and so long as he believes it, you'll be fine. The day he realises he's smarter than you is usually around the time he wants to borrow your car, so you still have the upper hand.

Good advice.

Also, be consistent, and follow through any threats you make. The latter has worked very well for me. My kids are now teens and preteens, and threats of having prized possessions temporarily removed still work as well today as when they were toddlers because the kids know I bloody well mean it. Consistency is vital to children, otherwise they will not be able to anticipate the consequences of their actions.

Consistency will not be a problem, I think. It was of the utmost importance for me when I was a kid, too, so much that when my mother failed to follow through her threats, or relented and decided to forego the punishment (usually no tv, or being grounded for the day), I adamantly refused to allow it, and carried through the punishment on my own. I was a weird kid.

 

[Garrovick]

My kids are now 14 and 13, and I haven't spanked them n many years. I did do it a few times when they were younger, but only as a last resort. Even then it was a quick smack on the bottom and only with my hand, never a belt or anything like that. I received a few belt-spankings when I was a kid and they were terrifying - I promised myself that I'd never take a belt to my kids and I have kept that promise. Getting hand-spanked never scared me, although it did make very clear to me that what I was doing was unacceptable and I learned from it.

 

[Kenbushway]

2/17/92. I am 20 about to turn 21.

You were born on the 2nd day of the 17th month?

Seriously...You are going to come after me for not putting a 0..

 

[Pingfah]

No, he's coming after you for using crazy American date formats. In civilised countries such as the UK, we would put 17/02/92.

 

[Mary Ann]

Civilised? Please, we both live in the westcountry. We're still getting to grips with this magical indoor plumbing stuff.

 

[Pingfah]

I'm a pretty accomplished home plumber i'll have you know, I put in a new sink and toilet last year

 

[Tom Hendricks]

2/17/92. I am 20 about to turn 21.

You were born on the 2nd day of the 17th month?

Seriously...You are going to come after me for not putting a 0..

We have the same birthday, 2/17.

I know we're talking mostly about the physical aspect of discipline. However I believe that the psychological damage done by verbal abuse is much worse in the long run. My father was abusive, occasionally physically but the verbal abuse was constant and often harsher then any physically he could have done. Beyond promising myself to be a much better father to my children then my father was to me, I make a full conscious effort to not hurt my children with verbal abuse. I know how it has effected me, throughout my life.

 

[B.J.]

No, he's coming after you for using crazy American date formats. In civilised countries such as the UK, we would put 17/02/92.

If anyone was civilized, they'd use a format that couldn't be screwed up or misinterpreted, like 1992/02/17, which is what is required to be used on military documents.

 

[mari]

That's why you have socket covers.

If you have a particularly clever toddler, they don't work at all. In fact, they may find it a fun game to pull them all off!

My youngest sister intentionally stuck her finger in a socket twice. Because once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. I think after the second time we must have put those covers in, and laziness overrode curiosity.

 

[iguana_tonante]

No, he's coming after you for using crazy American date formats. In civilised countries such as the UK, we would put 17/02/92.

Yup.

If anyone was civilized, they'd use a format that couldn't be screwed up or misinterpreted, like 1992/02/17, which is what is required to be used on military documents.

It's just as likely to be misinterpreted as 17/2/1992, which is what we use. If "the military" use that format, my guess is only only because being seen using anything European will send them into fits of convulsions.

 

[B.J.]

If anyone was civilized, they'd use a format that couldn't be screwed up or misinterpreted, like 1992/02/17, which is what is required to be used on military documents.

It's just as likely to be misinterpreted as 17/2/1992, which is what we use. If "the military" use that format, my guess is only only because being seen using anything European will send them into fits of convulsions.

It not likely to be misinterpreted since nobody uses YYYY/DD/MM as a format, only YYYY/MM/DD. When the year is last, either the day or month could be first.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Only if putting the month first would make sense. Which it doesn't.

 

[Kenbushway]

I have a feeling the discussion is getting off topic. This could be another interesting thread topic though if the debate wants to continue.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Yeah, true that. The OT is interesting enough for once.

 

[Sector 7]

No, he's coming after you for using crazy American date formats. In civilised countries such as the UK, we would put 17/02/92.

If anyone was civilized, they'd use a format that couldn't be screwed up or misinterpreted, like 1992/02/17, which is what is required to be used on military documents.

You are both wrong! Any civilized person uses Stardates: 9202.17 is the logical way to do it.

2/17/92. I am 20 about to turn 21.

You were born on the 2nd day of the 17th month?

Seriously...You are going to come after me for not putting a 0..

We have the same birthday, 2/17.

I know we're talking mostly about the physical aspect of discipline. However I believe that the psychological damage done by verbal abuse is much worse in the long run. My father was abusive, occasionally physically but the verbal abuse was constant and often harsher then any physically he could have done. Beyond promising myself to be a much better father to my children then my father was to me, I make a full conscious effort to not hurt my children with verbal abuse. I know how it has effected me, throughout my life.

I was a victim of physical abuse in the home. If I did not get a beating one day, I was living in constant fear of it happening. However, the verbal abuse was much worse.

When I became a parent, I chose to spank sparingly... but I still spanked when necessary. My little girl is a mother of 4 now. She still remembers the one real spanking she received for getting away from me at a busy county fair. When I found her I was holding her by one hand and spanking with the other. I happened to look up and see a sheriff deputy watching me and said, "I'm going to jail, huh?" His response was, "If it was my child, I'd be doing the same thing. Carry on." She was about 4, I think. She never ran off in public again, though.

My brother and I were taught: Punishment follows wrongdoing. Both of us became successful in life. Our younger siblings were raised in the school of "let's rap/talk about it" and were never spanked. Both are less successful in many areas of life.

I raised both my sister's children, including the little girl mentioned above. Although both went back to their mother in high school, to this day, both of them call my home "Home".

I am also in favor of the new wave of "public embarrassment as punishment". It also teaches them the moral of "Punishment follows wrongdoing." Prisons are full of people who never learned this lesson until it was too late.

 

[thestrangequark]

^In general, though, the data don't support your experience. Adults who were spanked as children are generally less successful than those who were not spanked. And I certainly don't think one has to be physically punished to be punished.

 

[BillJ]

When I became a parent, I chose to spank sparingly... but I still spanked when necessary. My little girl is a mother of 4 now. She still remembers the one real spanking she received for getting away from me at a busy county fair. When I found her I was holding her by one hand and spanking with the other. I happened to look up and see a sheriff deputy watching me and said, "I'm going to jail, huh?" His response was, "If it was my child, I'd be doing the same thing. Carry on." She was about 4, I think. She never ran off in public again, though.

The only real spanking my sixteen-year old son ever received was from my wife. We had a grocery store that was a block away from our house and she was there checking out when she let go of his hand to pay the cashier. She looked back down and he was gone. They locked down the store and called the police.

They found him sitting on our back porch. He decided he'd walk home instead of waiting. He was around four and got his ass reddened good by my wife.