What form of discipline should be used at home?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Veg,

You have a short-term memory. Here's exactly what you said:

"That is such an old-fashioned idea."

Care to rephrase?

PhilX

I said I was referring to the idea that there should be a set time-span between feeds. What's to argue about or 'rephrase'?

Gee wrote:
.. it is imperative that you get the nursing sessions at least two hours apart, gradually stretching it to four hours apart.



I wrote: So you haven't breast-fed then, or was it 50 years ago? That is such an old-fashioned idea.

Seems pretty clear to me.

[Sappho de Miranda]

It does sound like you deserved it. But for every child who deserves it there are many who don't, which is probably why it's been out-lawed here. Lot's of adults deserve a good walloping, but it's just not allowed.

Yes I did deserve it... and dare I say... I support the idea of smacking because of it. But I qualify that by saying that smacking/strapping etc. should only be used for exceptionally bad behavior. It should be applied when the parent is in control of themselves and the situation. It should be delivered in a calm and controlled manner. It should be managed by a person with sound and reasonable emotional intelligence. And that sadly, because that does not fit the description of most parents... most parents should not use smacking/ strapping etc as a disciplinary option.

As you point out Veg... most parents lash out in anger... and that is where abuse begins.

I'd also point out that most people do nothing to develop or expand upon their emotional intelligence and that too is a cause for concern, not only for parenting skills need to develop fully functional adults, but in general.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Veg,

You have a short-term memory. Here's exactly what you said:

"That is such an old-fashioned idea."

Care to rephrase?

PhilX

I said I was referring to the idea that there should be a set time-span between feeds. What's to argue about or 'rephrase'?

Gee wrote:
.. it is imperative that you get the nursing sessions at least two hours apart, gradually stretching it to four hours apart.



I wrote: So you haven't breast-fed then, or was it 50 years ago? That is such an old-fashioned idea.

Seems pretty clear to me.

Pretty clear that you don't know what you're talking about. And name calling doesn't get you points with me. As far as I'm concerned, you and Hex have made my foe list.

PhilX

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Veg,

You have a short-term memory. Here's exactly what you said:

"That is such an old-fashioned idea."

Care to rephrase?

PhilX

I said I was referring to the idea that there should be a set time-span between feeds. What's to argue about or 'rephrase'?

Gee wrote:
.. it is imperative that you get the nursing sessions at least two hours apart, gradually stretching it to four hours apart.



I wrote: So you haven't breast-fed then, or was it 50 years ago? That is such an old-fashioned idea.

Seems pretty clear to me.

Pretty clear that you don't know what you're talking about. And name calling doesn't get you points with me. As far as I'm concerned, you and Hex have made my foe list.

PhilX

You don't even make sense. I was simply pointing out that the modern view is that the idea of 'four-hourly feeds' is out-dated. Which is true.

[Gee]

Voice of Time;

I can't figure out if you just like to argue with me, or if you are trying too hard to be funny. Please consider my following responses.

First I would like to say that pinching a baby's lip is a bad idea. It is too easy to accidently hurt them that way -- especially if mom has nails.

If you pinch that hard you are obviously pinching too hard! It's only easy if you're stupid!

Actually, I was not thinking about pinching, I was thinking about accidentally scraping baby's skin with Mom's nails. Little ones have very delicate skin -- easy to scratch.

You, apparently, are laboring under the misconception that there is an abundance of maneuvering room between baby's lips and Mom. You are wrong. Just getting to baby's lips would require Mom to use her fingertips; and therefore, her nails.

Then I would like to clarify that talking to a baby, or reasoning with a baby, of four months is ridiculous as they have no idea of what you are saying.

Of course it's ridiculous, so why did you assume I meant a four month old baby you idiot! I meant the 4 YEARS old, which are supposed to know language unless you've neglected to give them enough vocal exposure. You talked about 2 kids so I answered for 2.

I did not assume, I clarified, because you did not clarify. You know that dealing with a 4 month old and a 4 year old are entirely different.

In the first quote you implied that I am stupid. In this quote you call me an idiot, and further imply that I did not teach my children what they should know about language. There is no reason to insult me just because you are wrong.

Smacking a baby with your finger on the mouth or cheek is often how one wakes the baby up and stimulates them to feed, so I don't think that would have the hoped for results.

You smack your baby to get it to eat? Well I understand that you might take your hand and very weakly flip their cheeks or something to wake it up, but seems strange you would do that on their month, that's unnecessary. Also, if all you get is a "I want to eat" response, then obviously you've done it wrong. I was thinking about when they are sucking the tits, that if they bite you smack them with your fingers or pinch them until they stop. While hitting their head might work, hitting somebody's heading is really bad, that's the place you're NOT supposed to hit people. Especially a young baby with an undeveloped skull. Hit them where the problem is, and only just enough to get the right response.

Please review my prior post to Vegetariantaxidermy regarding the suckling reflex.

So if I understand you correctly, hitting the mouth or cheek is acceptable, but hitting the head is not acceptable. I don't know how it is where you come from, but in the States here, most of the babies have their mouths and cheeks on their actual heads. This is starting to feel like a comedy routine.

Saying "No!" in a firm voice is not very effective unless the voice is very scary. So you think that scaring them is a better idea?

You're taking it to the extreme, again, why on Earth would you suppose that instead of the obvious middle way? You can always do it more than once if the first time doesn't work. Saying "no!" is about building association to the word "no" and showing them unfriendliness in voice and facial expression. It works because human beings react to the aesthetics of your voice and your facial expression. Which is why yelling near kids is a bad idea.

Four month old babies do not understand what "No" means. Deal with that reality.

If you are nursing a baby and they bite you, trying to pull them away only makes them clamp down and causes more pain. On the other hand, a smack to the back of the head causes them to react similarly by releasing and pulling away. Pull them off, they bite down; push them in, they back off. It is very simple.

Have you considered it might be because you momentarily pull them out of consciousness? Take a finger inside their mouth to make them feel irritated seems much better. Force their teeth away if necessary.

"Pull them out of consciousness?" Are you serious? VoT, this is a philosophy forum. Philosophy studies that which is real, or as close as we can get. If you want to use your imagination, then leave these forums and start writing fiction -- you have a natural knack for it.

Regarding the finger in the mouth, that is how you are supposed to release the suction to remove the baby from the breast. Following that advice early on is how I learned that it is easy to scratch baby with a nail, so I stopped using it. Usually I would massage the baby's cheek and jaw with a knuckle to get him to relax his bite, then use the side of my thumb to release the lip suction.

Massaging the jaw can also help with biters, but not always; sometimes it takes a smack to the back of the head for the stubborn ones.

Why smack a toddler's butt? I have seen too many people smack a small hand or wrist when it was reaching for something dangerous -- like the cord to a hot iron. When you are frightened, it is just too easy to hit harder than you mean to, and little hands and wrists are fragile. If you hit a butt harder than you mean to, you are unlikely to cause damage.

I'd say you should avoid hitting harder than you mean to, to begin with. Perhaps a course in self-control is wanted?

Or perhaps a reality check for VoT is warranted. One can control themselves, but that does not mean that they can control their environment, especially when there are children in it. Consider:

A mother is ironing and her toddler is playing on the floor in her sight. The phone rings. She moves a few feet away and grabs the phone because her husband is going to call and tell her when he will be home for supper. It is not her husband, it is a damned solicitor. As she tries to politely explain that she is not interested in what they are selling, her husband calls, and she clicks over. As she says "Hello", her two older children come through the back door screaming because one of them is "touching" something that belongs to the other child. As she turns toward her older children, she sees her toddler grabbing for the cord of the hot iron. She lurches forward, stumbles over the cat, steps on the cat's tail, drops the phone, knocks over the ironing board, and reaches her toddler. She gives the toddler a smart smack on the bottom, and he sits down and starts to cry -- but he is safe. In the meantime, dear hubby hears the phone drop, his wife yelling, his children screaming, his baby crying, and the cat screeching. He wonders if his home has turned into a madhouse. (chuckle)

Do situations like this really happen? Yep. Is there a chance that Mom smacked her toddler harder than she would have otherwise? Yep. And all of this assumes a Mother who is healthy, not sleep deprived from feeding a newborn every three hours or caring for a sick child, and is not in the throes of grief over a family member, or dealing with another tragedy. Moms and Dads can get frazzled. Life happens and there is little we can do about it. But we can decide that if we feel the need to smack a young one, it should be on the butt.

When my children were grown, they confessed that they used to laugh about my "spankings" because they didn't really hurt. I asked them, "So why did you cry?" They admitted that if I was angry enough to spank them, then they must have been really bad. That is why they cried.

Obviously. Your hand spanking them is a "hand of anger", so it's still totally not cool to do that, and laughing at something bad is often a sign of psychological injury, it's a way of coping. Where I grew up I met a lot of children who had grown up in traumatized relations, and they had a tendency of laughing at each others tantrums or problems because they lived in a world where this was the only way to cope with it. It's was totally bizarre to watch, it was like those movies where some maniac laughs at their evil plan.

I am sorry that you knew so many people who were traumatized, but that is not the context of my children's discussion. You are misunderstanding. Between my husband and I, I was the stricter parent. It was my job to remind them to do their homework, pick up their socks, watch their manners, etc. I had to have a lot of rules to teach them about everyday living, but rarely did my discipline involve spanking. My husband had few rules, but breaking them meant a spanking -- and his spankings hurt. But sometimes when they did not break my husband's rules, he would pretend to spank and discipline them. I did not know about this. So apparently, my children spent more time considering who they should confess to and how to control any punishment, than they spent considering the error of their ways. And no, don't try to psychoanalyze this as it is a common occurrence in two parent households.

"Hand of anger" is a nice slogan, but it is also bullshit. That slogan is used to represent a person who is angry and wants to strike out -- which is abuse. As I stated earlier in this thread, I believe that physical punishment should only be used when a person's activities threaten life or property, and no other discipline stops the behavior.

I'll give you an example: When my grandson was two and a half years old, he was fascinated with electrical wall outlets. He had been told "No" very firmly many times; we even explained that the outlets could hurt him very badly. Apparently he did not believe us. I was sitting in the kitchen watching him play with a potato that he had gotten out of the potato bin. He looked under the table a few times, then rolled the potato under the table. Knowing that there was a wall outlet under the table, and seeing the calculation in his eyes, I watched as he followed the potato under the table. As soon as he got to the wall, he forgot all about the potato and reached for the outlet. I pulled him out and paddled his behind. But I was also impressed with his ingenuity, and a little worried about his deviousness. Was I also angry? Absolutely. He had endangered himself because he would not listen.

Anger, when used properly, is an emotion that protects us from things that we fear and things that are dangerous. So when a child does something that endangers him/herself, this makes us angry. Anyone who says differently, either does not care about the child, or is foolish. This is not the "hand of anger"; it is not abusive; when used properly, this anger is protection.

Gee

[Gee]

'Never nursed a baby'. Have you?

Of course. Why else would I have bothered to learn about it?

I assume you mean 'breast-fed'. I also don't see what any of those 'techniques' you describe have to do with 'disciplining' a child.

Some people are uncomfortable with the term "breast-fed", so I usually use the term, nursing.

This thread is not just about children, as PhilX left that option open intentionally. Also consider that discipline is not just about punishment, it is about teaching, guiding, training, and learning. Babies start learning when they are born.

So you haven't breast-fed then, or was it 50 years ago? That is such an old-fashioned idea.

Actually it was 30 years ago. But what do you mean by "old-fashioned"? Do you mean the way women were doing it 50 years ago? or 100 years ago? or 1,000 years ago? or 10,000 years ago? What is your context?

Gee

[Gee]

Well that's been an interesting read. I've learnt that the man against smacking a nappy clad bum is not against pinching a baby on the lip.

Sappho de Miranda;

I was wondering the same thing.

I noted in your other post that you were very clear on why you were being punished. (with the tickling your brother thing) I am not sure that I was as successful in teaching the lessons as your parents obviously were. Thanks for sharing that idea as it is worth considering.

Gee

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Actually it was 30 years ago. But what do you mean by "old-fashioned"? Do you mean the way women were doing it 50 years ago? or 100 years ago? or 1,000 years ago? or 10,000 years ago? What is your context?

Gee

I've explained about three times what I was talking about.

[Wyman]

Well that's been an interesting read. I've learnt that the man against smacking a nappy clad bum is not against pinching a baby on the lip.

Sappho de Miranda;

I was wondering the same thing.

I noted in your other post that you were very clear on why you were being punished. (with the tickling your brother thing) I am not sure that I was as successful in teaching the lessons as your parents obviously were. Thanks for sharing that idea as it is worth considering.

Gee

Yes, and I was amazed that he was giving advice on breastfeeding:

You smack your baby to get it to eat? Well I understand that you might take your hand and very weakly flip their cheeks or something to wake it up, but seems strange you would do that on their month, that's unnecessary. Also, if all you get is a "I want to eat" response, then obviously you've done it wrong. I was thinking about when they are sucking the tits, that if they bite you smack them with your fingers or pinch them until they stop. While hitting their head might work, hitting somebody's heading is really bad, that's the place you're NOT supposed to hit people. Especially a young baby with an undeveloped skull. Hit them where the problem is, and only just enough to get the right response.

Odd, a young man arguing breastfeeding with a woman who has actual experience with the subject, especially on a philosophy forum!

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Some people are uncomfortable with the term "breast-fed", so I usually use the term, nursing.

You must be kidding.

[The Voice of Time]

Yes. So they go to work while somebody takes care of the child in kindergarten.

Right, because being a mother isn't work at all. It's just doing nothing.

Oh come on, you know what I mean! Paid work!

[The Voice of Time]

Voice of Time;

I can't figure out if you just like to argue with me, or if you are trying too hard to be funny. Please consider my following responses.

Not the least trying to be funny. Anyone one who even appears to be trying to give merit to violence against kids or excuse themselves out of faults faces my wraith should I choose to engage in the discussion. This is a battlefield, and if I can beat it into the heads of bad people that their methods ARE WRONG and their GOALS VIOLENTLY PERVERTED I shall try so!

Nobody says "head" if they mean mouth. By "head" one usually refers to the skin-coverd outside of the skull and the back of the neck. For the front of the head one talks about "the face".

Do situations like this really happen? Yep. Is there a chance that Mom smacked her toddler harder than she would have otherwise? Yep. And all of this assumes a Mother who is healthy, not sleep deprived from feeding a newborn every three hours or caring for a sick child, and is not in the throes of grief over a family member, or dealing with another tragedy. Moms and Dads can get frazzled.

It's their absolute duty to not let their of weaknesses cause harm to others. So no, it's not okay, this is not an excuse. If one's weak, then seek help at least!

It's not funny either. If they loose control like that over their life, then perhaps there's a fundamental flaw in the arrangements of their life? People can actually choose the situations the end up in, they CAN often choose their environments, even in tiny details. We have much more power than the simple mind comprehends. While which powers you have, depend on where you are from, in some way or another, in normal western lives, you have the choice. You can choose schools if your kids school sucks, you can choose where you want to live if your place sucks, you can choose who you want to associate with, and most of all, YOU CAN choose your priorities! Weak people who just let themselves and others be afflicted by bad environments they themselves have the power to escape should they choose to, are immoral! And it's our duty to get them out of their pit of chaos!

"Hand of anger" is a nice slogan, but it is also bullshit. That slogan is used to represent a person who is angry and wants to strike out -- which is abuse. As I stated earlier in this thread, I believe that physical punishment should only be used when a person's activities threaten life or property, and no other discipline stops the behavior.

It's not a slogan and has never been one, you fool. It's the way you experience the situation, the hand is a natural symbol, a natural carrier of symbolism, and it carries with it a subtextual message of anger, of violence. Children get scared because they experience the message either you choose to send it or not. It's not up to what you think of yourself, but what becomes the cause of your actions.

Anger, when used properly, is an emotion that protects us from things that we fear and things that are dangerous. So when a child does something that endangers him/herself, this makes us angry.

No it makes us scared for their sake, if you get angry you have seriously misplaced priorities!

Anyone who says differently, either does not care about the child, or is foolish.

It's not foolish to be scared for the child instead of angry, anger is foolish. Caring has nothing to do with it. We can care and still have a range of different kinds of emotions, even plain lack of emotion if we are overly used to it happening for instance (overstimulated). Care is an orientation and not a product of emotions, emotions are deceptive and does not mean anything more than what the person interpreting it choose to make out of it.

[Blaggard]

That which works, this PC bollocks that says that reason will work with all children is fucking clown shoes. Shit, worlds greatest authority on bringing up children, or world's greatest authority on bringing up your children?

You have no fucking idea. If you had spent 30 years dealing with all sorts of children, maybe anyone would care. But you don't you talk shit, and you believe it because you are the worlds greatest authority on your own little world.

It's amazing that people buy into the memes of people who have well behaved children like it is mana from heaven. Congratulations you're a moron.

Use that which works, do not use abuse, verbal/psychological abuse is far worse than physical abuse. If you steer clear of both, understand that you are using one of the most devastating tools to undermine a child and that is words, a smack on the ass is nothing compared to that. You should think more closely on harm. You have no idea how much harm your words can do, a smacked arse heals, a word wrong and in the wrong place and at the wrong time, can never heal. Common sense, or am I a barbarian, who cares? But you can damage your children far worse by using reason badly than using a hand openly.

[Kayla]

even parents who believe in corporal punishment themselves do not normally delegate that to babysitters

yet most babysitters manage to control kids just fine

you might object that the child knows that if the babysitter tells the parents about bad behavior corporal punishment will still occur

that is nonsense

one, most children - especially younger kids - are not capable of this sort of long-term thinking

second, most teens doing babysitting will go out of their way to not report behavior that will lead to a spanking - I certainly did not nor did any girls with whom i discussed this

[Gee]

Voice of Time;

Please consider my following responses.

Nobody says "head" if they mean mouth. By "head" one usually refers to the skin-coverd outside of the skull and the back of the neck. For the front of the head one talks about "the face".

True, but the face is on the head, and damage to the face is damage to the head. Also true.

After considering this issue for a while, I remembered that there was another recommended way to stop an infant from biting mom, and that was to pinch the nose shut. I am sure it would be very effective, as a person will open their mouth if they can not breath through the nose. But I never used, or even tried, this method. It seemed wrong. Giving a baby the choice of eating or breathing addresses the very primal survival instincts of life and would have to cause panic and/or fear. This is the kind of thing that Freud explained causes mental issues.

After receiving my Grandmother's advice to smack the little biter on the back of the head, I learned that in other cultures this method is commonly used. They smacked, thumped, or flicked with a finger, and always on the back of the head, so why wasn't this advice in the books that I was reading? My thought is because hitting a child, or infant, is thought to be child abuse; whereas, pinching, cutting off their breath, or sticking you finger in their mouth (which is very invasive) are not child abuse.

I knew a woman, who never hit her children (no spankings) but had no problem pinching them hard enough to leave bruises. The pinch was usually on the inside of the arm, which hurts a lot. Her daughter was even sent home from school for pinching schoolmates hard enough to leave bruises. But this is not child abuse. I think that when we outlaw acts of discipline that are overt and obvious, dividing them from other forms of discipline, we just make child abuse sneaky.

I have never heard of a mother damaging her infant by knocking it's head a few inches into a fat squishy tit, but I could be wrong. Please provide evidence that mothers have damaged their babies in this manner, or shut the f**k up on this subject.

Do situations like this really happen? Yep. Is there a chance that Mom smacked her toddler harder than she would have otherwise? Yep. And all of this assumes a Mother who is healthy, not sleep deprived from feeding a newborn every three hours or caring for a sick child, and is not in the throes of grief over a family member, or dealing with another tragedy. Moms and Dads can get frazzled.

It's their absolute duty to not let their of weaknesses cause harm to others. So no, it's not okay, this is not an excuse. If one's weak, then seek help at least!

It's not funny either. If they loose control like that over their life, then perhaps there's a fundamental flaw in the arrangements of their life? People can actually choose the situations the end up in, they CAN often choose their environments, even in tiny details. We have much more power than the simple mind comprehends. While which powers you have, depend on where you are from, in some way or another, in normal western lives, you have the choice. You can choose schools if your kids school sucks, you can choose where you want to live if your place sucks, you can choose who you want to associate with, and most of all, YOU CAN choose your priorities! Weak people who just let themselves and others be afflicted by bad environments they themselves have the power to escape should they choose to, are immoral! And it's our duty to get them out of their pit of chaos!

And all the hungry in the world will be fed, and there will be no illness, and there will be no tragedy nor war nor misery, so sayeth the Voice of Time. Where do you live? Disneyland?

. . . the hand is a natural symbol, a natural carrier of symbolism, and it carries with it a subtextual message of anger, of violence.

This is not so. This only applies to someone who has been abused by hands; and therefore, associates them with violence. I see hands as helping, guiding, teaching, comforting, and yes occasionally disciplining. Hands pull you up when you fall down, they teach you to crochet or fish, they guide you when you lose your way, they hold you when you are afraid, and they comfort you when you are sick. You seem to have a very biased view of hands and are misrepresenting the truth of them.

Anger, when used properly, is an emotion that protects us from things that we fear and things that are dangerous. So when a child does something that endangers him/herself, this makes us angry.

No it makes us scared for their sake, if you get angry you have seriously misplaced priorities!

You are denying a reality here. Anger does have a purpose. It is not just some misplaced emotion that seems to infect most life. What do you think the purpose of anger is?

Care is an orientation and not a product of emotions, emotions are deceptive and does not mean anything more than what the person interpreting it choose to make out of it.

I am going to address this statement because I believe that ignorance of emotion is one of the causes of child abuse, and that it is necessary to understand emotion in order to avoid turning discipline into abuse.

Care is most definitely a product of emotion. One can not care about something that they have no feeling for, and feeling is emotion. Consider the underlined in your statement below:

Anyone one who even appears to be trying to give merit to violence against kids or excuse themselves out of faults faces my wraith should I choose to engage in the discussion. This is a battlefield, and if I can beat it into the heads of bad people that their methods ARE WRONG and their GOALS VIOLENTLY PERVERTED I shall try so!

You use the words "wraith", "battlefield", and "beat" in order to convey your anger and hatred of child abuse. Your words are violent. You are angry with "bad people" who abuse children, and hate the idea of child abuse. Whether your anger and hatred were acquired through personal experience, or if it was from witnessing this abuse, you clearly care about child abuse. Your caring was caused by your anger.

Most people are against child abuse, but they are not so violently against it because their emotions are not engaged. They have not witnessed it, so they do not see the real tragedy of it. They do not care as much. You, however, care a great deal and are obviously angry about it.

So you call me "stupid" and a "fool" and insult me by implying that I did not teach my children what they need to know. None of these things are true, and you have no evidence to support these accusations, so why did you state these thing? Because you are angry, and you are projecting your anger onto me and unjustly accusing me of being something that you hate.

This is exactly how child abuse happens. When the parent punishes relative to their own anger, rather than disciplines relative to the child's deed. It is important to understand your own emotions and know what is causing your anger, fear, or hatred, so that you do not inflict these emotions on the child and punish the child for something that the child has no control over.

As the Bible says, remove the fleck from your own eye, before trying to remove it from your neighbor's, or from your child.

Gee