This is my big dilemma. Before having children, I decided that I did not believe that it was right to spank. I just felt deeply that it was wrong to belittle a child by striking him or her for any reason. I also dislike causing physical pain. I hate it, in fact. Well, now I have felt the need to spank my child. It was a last resort when taking favorite toys away and time-out failed to work. It was one smack on the bottom, but it worked. It was the only thing that made my child stop and listen and quit the bad thing that she was doing repeatedly. But it made me feel horrible because it goes against my philosophy of no spanking. Why is this the only thing that worked in this instance? I'm very disappointed in myself for not being able to succeed in punishing in a different way. I think that sometimes I'm too wishy washy and too much of a softie, so my daughter doesn't understand that I mean business. Ah, but I don't like to yell either! I was spanked as a child. I don't feel that I was abused. I was spanked when I did something unacceptable. The only problem is that I remember a few times of being spanked, and I really didn't understand what I'd done wrong. Gee, after all that, I still feel terrible and that somehow I failed by spanking. Maybe there were other things that I could have tried, but I was completely low on patience. : (My questions for you:
1. Do you use or have you used spanking as punishment?
2. If so, is it as last resort when nothing else works? or Is it a loss of patience moment?
3. Were you spanked as a child? And do you think that it damaged you for life? Or do you think that it was beneficial means of punishment?
PS. Did you like the picture of the nifty time-out bench at the top of the page? I think that my kid would purposely get put in time-out just to sit on the cool "bad girl" bench. :)
4 comments:
You did the right thing. I was the same way, I planned on using time out as my method too but one day my son (age 3) looked me right in the face and said "Jesus is Sh*t". I was so shocked that I grabbed him out of his chair, marched him to his room and spanked his butt! We both cried but I never had to spank him again!
Anyhow the point was that he purposely said something he knew would get me furious in pure defiance and I showed him who was boss.
A spanking done in LOVE is a form of love. I believe that strongly.
Abuse is horrifying and awful. You know you love your kids...don't listen to people who call a swat on a kid's bottom abuse. They have to learn this stuff now or they will pay for it later in much more serious ways.
Thanks, Barbara. Wow, that is so similiar to the problem I had with MG. It involved a curse word & she stomped her foot and said "I'm going to say it!" Then proceeded to shout it over and over again in a very defiant way. Asking her to stop didn't help. She was tuning me out. That's why I spanked her. She is really trying to test her limits. Maybe that's what 3 year olds do. :)
When a problem comes along, you must whip it.
-Devo
Spanking is also a way for the child to learn that there are consequences for actions and many children are not impacted with time out. I saw a lot of this when I worked in child care. To me there are 2 lines between consequences and abuse. The first line is when children are punished without having done anything wrong. The other is when the punishment is way more severe than the infraction. What you did was NOT abuse. To individuals who care about kids that is obvious. Good luck with your delima!
Shaun
So there is no misunderstanding in my last comment- I believe in trying other methods first and if they don't work then spanking may be an option. The above comment implies that I believe that you should spank first and ask questions later- that is not what I was trying to communicate! (-_-)
Shaun
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