Kids are VERY counterintuitive (mine at least). Our kid has had behavioral problems at school and at home. And it's extremely difficult to understand the root of the issues (it turns out that the pandemic, moving houses, starting school and having a baby brother all at once can be a bit much for a 3 year old).
Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid into submission. But by reading stuff and talking to professionals, you learn that some kids do have weird ways of expressing their emotions, and that acknowledging that and supporting them works. You have to completely turn the way you speak to them around. It's really hard to do cause nobody wants to confort a kid who's annoying, but it works.
None of the stuff I do with my kids would have been possible had I not learnt it as an adult. Stop the magic thinking. Read about children, they're weird and wonderfully different.
What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here.
(FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)
I am in France, where hitting kids has become illegal only in 2019. There is a practice we call fessee which consists of slapping the butt of your kid, which sort of hurts but fades quickly. It’s been around forever here and when I was a kid in the 80s was the ultimate threat (our fathers got the “martinet” which is small whip).
Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here.
On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.
In the US it's called spanking, and would be carried out manually, via a belt (using the buckle if you're a true sociopath), a "switch" - a small, whiplike sapling or tree branch, or a paddle which looks like a small cricket bat.
When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.
That said, this entire thread is a shitshow and further convinces me that no one has any idea what they're doing or probably even any coherent idea of why they're raising children in the first place or what they want for those children, and reinforces my decision to opt-out of the whole idea.
> When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.
Beatings. I'm in my 30s and I was beat as a kid. You'd be surprised how legal and still often recommended it is, especially with neurodivergent young boys.
One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.
>> smack our kid into submission
> What does this mean?
It only has one possible meaning: beat your child until they comply. A large percentage of parents have no other response. If they don't use physical violence they may use verbal or psychological violence instead.
People have a biological urge to reproduce which they're happy to indulge but are often unprepared for the challenges of raising children. Exasperation and exhaustion make shouting at or striking your child an attractive strategy. Note that this is different to (effective) discipline in that these responses are often arbitrary and unpredictable, leading to anxious and depressed children.
I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting".
The intent was "ignore what the kid is requesting, and communicate to them 'no you don't want that, it is wrong to want that'".
One way to do that would of course be to "hit", but the idea is about insisting that 'your view is right', and ignoring/not acknowledging the need the child is trying to communicate.
My point being, this can do almost as much damage, even if you are not 'hitting'.
Source: Am parent, was child.
It is hard living some problem, and then experiencing that the people who are in charge of taking care of you, consistently communicate "No, there is just something wrong with you, you don't want that/that isn't really a problem".
FYI “smack” is British English for American English “spank” and they are just about synonymous, modulo cultural differences on what kind of smacking/spanking is acceptable.
That and (though I’m not speaking on behalf of OP) social media destinations like Facebook, where most of us are likely to have had “friends” we haven’t seen since high school and will never see again in person.
The people in my family who smacked their kids aren’t professionals. Plenty of professionals hit their kids though.
Right? Kids are different, but honestly not that different from adults. Just more impressionable, because they are learning the world. And of course less knowledgeable and developed by definition. But they work a lot of the same ways.
Would you make it practice to hit adults??? No? Why are you teaching kids that this is what happens?
Of course it makes sense. Pain is the universal teacher. It's why every organism that can move under its own power experiences pain. We are extremely good at learning pain avoidance. We even used to hit adults (and far worse) to get them to behave. So yes, of course it makes sense. Whether it results in positive outcomes is the only legitimate question.
My parents were married in 1966 ages 22 and 23, two children the next two years, a house three years after married. Dad was a high school dropout although his Dad my grandfather had a painting business. But my grandfather died aged 52 just as my Dad was beginning his life with Mom. So yes he did some growing up fast I really forget how hard it must have been for him and Mom with all that happening all at the same time.
My grandfather was married to my grandmother and had nine kids and then even a few grandchildren all before the age of 52 when he died.
So here I am now no children, not married, I'm past at the age my grandfather died. Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.
This is exhibit A, not only have they learnt nothing, but will reject every opportunity to learn. Exactly like my Father.
I have a daughter growing up, and every time there is a decision to make, I check what people like this would do, and do the opposite. Or at least make sure to avoid that.
I can't downvote this enough. Sure, it's true that experience is the best way to learn but that method leads to alot of dead ends that society then has to deal with. Saying that parents can self-learn and self-evolve totally distracts the reader away from the original comment which is about the critical need for society to better support parents structurally. Most of us don't live in multi-generational communes where this stuff might happen without a structured approach ... and for all those new parents who do not, the need is great.
>> Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do
This unfortunately is not a given and that's the crux of the discussion.
If every parent were able to achieve complete knowledge and wisdom about all things parenting before they had kids we wouldn't be talking of any of this.
My mother tried to be a good mom but never addressed her mental health issues, leading to four kids having pretty severe problems twenty, thirty years later.
She took decades from us, though she "tried to live" but didn't want to learn anything she didn't already know.
Wholeheartedly agree, the thought that we can school our way out this seems overly simplistic. And I'd go as far as to say the schooling philosophy is part of this pathology.
Society decided to dump most doctrinal support but unfortunately this has left a significant portion of the masses with little direction. But also many have little inclination or time to work it out for themselves. And even if you did start to read Jung, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hiedeger or whichever philosopher you chose there's a myriad of directions one could take it and it's a heady mix. I've started to read these philosophers but I bring it a traditional Creator grounding and it's still pretty wild.
Ultimately I don't think we have a clue what we're doing and we are prone to getting very scared and taking it out on those around us or in our care.
Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.