Gone Too DAMN Far

[Krista]

Well since I've pretty much raised my little brothers and sisters there were times when I wanted to bend them over my knee once or twice.. lol, but I haven't because it only makes me feel bad after I do it. I use the Time Out method. I make them stand in the corner until they appologise for what they done. It's really something you have to do over time as they get older. You can't really spank a toddler because they don't understand it most of the time, but put them in timeout for five minutes reminding them what they done wrong is the way I go about it. When they get older I keep them in the corner longer until they stop crying for being put in the corner and until they apologise to me for what they did wrong...

 

 

I don't know about spanking though. I've never done it and for the most part they're well behaved.

 

 

Krista

[MMandM]

I remember when I was a kid and wanted to read Mitchner's Hawaii, I guess I was really too young to know why, but it was considered a problem by librarians, because parents wanted to read the book, but didn't want the children to do so.

 

The present approach is rather like having removed all fiction written after 1900 to assure that no child would be exposed to "salacious" material such as was alleged to be contained in Hawaii (I'll be damned if I could ever find any really good passages in that book never have figured out what the hoopla was).

 

This also reminds me of Tipper Gore (whom I do not despise or belittle) and her battle against "objectionable" lyrics in popular music. The ultimate answer is parental participation. While under the age of 12, I never watched a minute of television without supervision, and usually with adults in the room watching the same programs. I could go to the library and browse, but if I returned home with books, I had to present them for inspection. Returning with no books would have resulted in a call to the librarian to know if I had checked out any books. My parents were not prudes, nor were they irresponsible about what we read and saw.

 

There is something very wrong with the notion that books, music, television, films any form of public expression ought to be regulated to assure that a parent or guardian doesn't have to get off a dead, lazy rear end to actually participate in the child's experience of the world.

Edited June 5, 2007 by MarkInAlisoViejo

[Kurt]

I really hope that some of you never have children. That may sound harsh and mean, but I do not care. No child, no matter what they have done, deserves to be beaten with any object. I do, in a way, understand why a parent might spank their children, however, i do think that there are better ways to go about punishing a child. A very wise person once said this, "most parents who use corpral punishment do so out of anger and frustration, not the desire to raise a responsible adult."

 

Kurt

[Graeme]

I really hope that some of you never have children. That may sound harsh and mean, but I do not care. No child, no matter what they have done, deserves to be beaten with any object. I do, in a way, understand why a parent might spank their children, however, i do think that there are better ways to go about punishing a child. A very wise person once said this, "most parents who use corpral punishment do so out of anger and frustration, not the desire to raise a responsible adult."

I've been hesitant to weigh in on this discussion, but I want to say a couple of things to complement what Kurt has said.

 

There is one category left out of that quote at the end: fear.

 

My two boys never had separation anxiety. Because we live on a rural property, there is also effectively no traffic. One day in town, while my wife was strapping our one year old into his stroller, the three year old headed straight for the road....

 

She grabbed him before he could step in front of a car and he received a smack immediately. Yes, it was done in fear, but it was also to reinforce an important safety point: stepping onto the road when you're not holding a grown-ups hand means you get hurt. They are now six and eight, and neither will cross the road unless they holding the hand of a grown-up.

 

BUT most of the time I agree with what is being said. Too many parents use corporal punishment as the first option in discipline, not the last. If they do use corporal punishment, it should never be done with anything other than the hand.

[eliotmoore]

I guess I spanked my eldest a few times. It never seemed like the right thing to do when I thought about it later. It was always better when we talked it out. The next two got off scott free. Being made to apologize and do restitution made more of an impact on them. When I grounded them and, gasp! took the car away from them, now then you should have seen the tears and remorse!

 

Well I might have to spank the eighteen-year-old. The guy needs a job! He spends all his time playing World of Warcraft!

[Lugh]

sorry but I have to laugh at this... DC went through a period of about a year where, I swear, he got daily spankings. But it was not the first option, nor the second. I just have an extreamly hard headed son.

 

We had a chart. We made the chart together under the guidance of the therapist. DC picked most of the punishments 'so they would be relavent to him and so that he would not feel *I* was punishing him but that 'he was earning consequences for actions he preformed'. Granted at the top of the list was time out, sent to room, no telle, no bike, things of that nature. In the middle there were more severe punishments. But at the bottom was this line: "These are things my father will not tolerate: lying, stealing, and leaving without permission. If I do these things I will earn a spanking of not less than five spanks with the belt on my bottom."

 

He knew it was there. He helped to put it there. He broke that one rule more often than any of the others. He would take his spanking and do it again the next day. I was frustrated. I told the therapist. The therapist talked to him. You know what he said? "Those things I know makes my dad mad, but I can't help it sometimes. So I put the one thing there that he could just 'get out of the way quickly' so that the punishment would be over and I could go out the next day."

 

After that conversation that bottom rule changed. He would get 7 SUNNY days of house restriction for the first infraction and begin loosing other things with each consecutive infraction. In less than a week he was on a month's restriction and had lost everything in his room... did I mention the boy is hard-headed?

 

Needless to say his behavior has now changed. I don't know what changed it. It surely wasn't my punishing him. Maybe part of it was maturity. A lesson learned.

 

 

now on to the original topic: censorship

 

I do not believe in censorship on any level. I do believe it is the parent's responsibilty to govern what their children watch, read, do on the internet. HOWEVER, I can understand why some people believe in censorship.. it's because parents are not doing their job. However some of it is rediculous. For example, we went to a public showing of "Grease"... yes the one with Sandra Dee and John Travolta. The guys showing the film stated that they had 'skipped one scene due to parental objection'. I was trying to figure out which scene had gotten skipped... I mean there was the coach's speech with 5 or 6 4 letter words, and the word "pussy wagon" in the song Grease Lightning... and then there was the word "virgin" in the Sandra Dee song... guess which one they clipped?

 

heh... the Sandra Dee song... amazing that.

 

Lugh