Subject:
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Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 5 Feb 2004 04:44:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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566 times
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What follows is not my best writing... I used a lot of that up today working on
deliverables for my client and for BrickFest PDX.
But it's a great topic and I wanted to take one more swing before I went to
bed...
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote:
> > Dave, I'm thinking that you are nit-picking by way of purposely failing to read
> > between the lines. If I'm wrong, then I must have communicated rather poorly.
> > If you take a minute to evaluate my notes and your response, and then think that
> > your inquiry is completely reasonable, I'll address your points.
>
> Hey, don't get all reasonable on me now!
>
> I can cut through my verbosity and sum it up this way:
>
> 1. I dispute the assertion that verbal instruction is generally sufficient to
> steer a recalcitrant child away from ultimately self-damaging behavior
>
> 2. I dispute the assertion that physical intervention in a child's behavior is
> never justified.
>
> 3. I submit that your construction of the parent/child debt structure is at its
> essence arbitrary and designed to yield maximum payoff (i.e., zero debt) for the
> child and maximum debt (i.e., zero payoff) for the parent.
>
> Each of these points is supported to varying degrees by the examples provided in
> my previous post. I grant that some of the examples were extreme, but not so
> extreme as to be irrelevant to real-world situations.
>
> I didn't intend to be nit-picky, nor do I think your post was poorly worded.
> Let's just split the difference and blame DaveK's breasts. He's a Canadian,
> anyway.
>
>
> Welcome back to .debate, by the way.
>
> Dave!
I know Chris didn't completely agree with the wording that was chosen by Dave!
But that's OK! I think a good job of wording was done in this case by Dave!
(ok enough with the !)
More seriously, I think Dave put his finger on a couple of the things that I
have problems with regarding Chris's approach.
let me preface by saying I think corporal punishment ought to be like abortion
ought to be: "Safe, Legal, and Rare" (1) And we in our family didn't use it
much in the past and not at all now, because as I said our kids are older.
But I do think it's necessary sometimes. Children are not adults. Their rights
are not fully formed. Their emotions are such that we cannot hold them to a
perfect behaviour standard, a calm and reasoned discourse about the next thing
to do, at all times. Sure, when it works, it's great. But it doesn't always work
out.
Upthread, I deliberately set up an extremely constrained example with my stated
assumptions. You are somewhere you HAVE to be (you cannot leave) and it is
unacceptable for the child to be throwing a tantrum. For whatever reason, be it
your fault or not that the tantrum is going on, you have to get the tantrum to
stop as fast as you can.
(maybe you're in a situation where a terrorist has you hostage and you have been
told get the kid to stop crying NOW or he will be shot... choose whatever
scenario you like to validate my assumptions but they are the assumptions I
used, you can't walk out with the child and you can't calmly reason at length
with him, those are givens)
Given those postulates, no amount of reasoning is going to work. You can hold
your hand over the childs mouth but that is doomed to fail. What you really need
to do is get the attention of the child, and do it as fast as you can. A squirt
of water or a slap is going to work better than any amount of talk talk.
Contrived situation? Sure. But not completely impossible.
Now, something else Dave touched on... when a child is a newborn he/she has a
100% claim on your resources, you have to do what it needs done and do it within
the time needed or the child might die, and he/she can't do any of it, he or she
is helpless. When a child becomes a normal adult, able to be responsible for
itself, he/she no longer has any claim on your resources, he/she IS responsible
for him/herself.
So at one end using Dave's terms it is zero debt and the other end zero payoff.
It's not a step transition. You are not enslaved to your child forever just
because you decided to bring him or her into the world. Nor are you 100%
enslaved until the child turns 18, then 0%. Rather, it's a sliding scale. At 2
years old you're only 98% enslaved and somewhere around 10 or so you cross and
it's about 50 50 and when the child is 17.9 years old it's about 5%, or
something like that.
So what I am trying to say there is that a, say, 5 year old child, does not have
a 100% claim on you and your time and your energy and your resources to the
exclusion of anything at all that you want to do or be or go or experience. Some
compromise is necessary and acceptable. And as the provider of the resources in
question (the child isn't contributing to the economics of the situation) it is
appropriate that you get some say in how they are expended. So even if the child
doesn't WANT to go antiquing for 3 hours, sometimes it just has to go along
because that's the way it is, you are not enslaved to him or her, you have needs
too. So even if the child WANTS 20 cookies in a row it's appropriate to say no
after 4... "that's it you don't get any more cookies, sorry". Reason with
him/her, explain the situation, be a good parent, but if he/shethen throws a
tantrum, that's behaving unreasonably... then what? Tough it out?
I don't want to get into a my kid is better than your kid, or my style is better
than your style, but I do want to make this point.... Chris's style works. I was
pretty impressed with Chris's kids when I had a chance to interact with them.
But Chris in turn has had a chance to interact with one of mine and I would be
greatly surprised if he said that my son wasn't pretty well behaved with adults
as well. Meaning: my style worked too.
So is Chris WRONG in his strategy?
Nope.
If he can do it, more power to him. But his choosing that strategy doesn't mean
that every *other* strategy is therefore wrong. Sometimes there are more paths
than just one to the top of the mountain. I think corporal punishment is a valid
strategy and I'm not satisfied that it should be banned by the government. Get
after parents who are abusive, sure. Ensure that non parental caregivers are
extremely constrained in how and when they can use it, sure. But ban it
outright? I don't think so.
At least not in my view.
1 - I can't take credit for that phrasing, I think That Man said it first.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| (...) It is improbable, but not impossible. Surely, the key must then be that you should have the respect of your kids before you encounter your extreme life-or-death scenario? We don’t share the same culture or kids, but for me beating children is (...) (20 years ago, 5-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
| | | Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| Larry, I did think that Nik was a courteous young man. And I don't mean to suggest that you can not get acceptable, even good, results in turning a child into an adult with corporal punishment as a tool. I was spanked. I'm OK. But I do question how (...) (20 years ago, 5-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| (...) Hey, don't get all reasonable on me now! I can cut through my verbosity and sum it up this way: 1. I dispute the assertion that verbal instruction is generally sufficient to steer a recalcitrant child away from ultimately self-damaging (...) (20 years ago, 4-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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