To spank or not to spank?

[MTL]

Thanks, and my sympathies to you as well.

Wait, I know. We'll get enough of our childhood abuse stories together and make a movie. Yeah, yeah! Now for a title, .................how about Breakfast Club?

How bizarre that you should say that.  Last night I dreamt that I walked into a library where there were four other people and I sat down and looked around at them, and said, "Hey...do you realize that we're The Breakfast Club?"

They looked around at each other and laughed and agreed. 

I was in all black, like Ally Sheedy's character.
There was an athlete, a preppy girl, a brainy type, and a metalhead guy.

It wasn't the actors from the movie, and nobody I know IRL...just the characters.

How very weird you would say that, the very day after I had that dream.

[MTL]

I can sort of get the idea that you want to give the kid a negative association with doing something wildly stupid like sticking a fork in an electric socket. Obviously I don't mean smash them with a polo mallet, but I could understand a little sharp smack.

I'm not saying I'd do that, but I could understand the thinking.

It's funny....I used to try to stick objects in electrical outlets, when I was a small child...including metal forks.

And I never got disciplined for THAT.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd -like- to call that inexplicable...but I know that it isn't.  What kinds of things -did- you get disciplined for, in that manner?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

At the most basic level, spanking is employed as a method to correct undesirable or dangerous behaviour. All well and good, as far as that goes. But there are clearly other effective way to correct such behaviour that do NOT require physical violence (and before the pro-spankers jump at it, I'm not going to quibble over the non-issue of is-spanking-violent. It is, so belt up).

If there are other methods to instill in children the behaviours that parents find desirable, what is the point of spanking at all? It is a power move, pure and simple: I'm bigger and stronger than you are, so I'm going to hit you until you act the way I want you to act. Abuse aside, this is psychopathic behaviour, in and of itself - the use of force to elicit a desired response.

And some of the pro-spankers here have put upper limits on the age at which kids should be swatted. Why? Because by the time they're 16 or 17, they're likely to hit back. Funny how these people want to hit the wee ones, but the big ones, not so much.

If you need to employ physical force to correct the actions of a human being half your height and a fifth of your weight, maybe you shouldn't have sprogged in the first place.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not sure why you have to imagine so many strange things about people who spank, Brian. I definitely don't think that spanking is a universally appropriate method, or that everyone who spanks has good reason, or that there's just -no other way- to do something...but if I wanted to dissuade, or mount a diatribe against spanking..I could probably do it without all the flights of fancy. You could too, I'm sure.

[MTL]

My Mother "spanked" me.  A lot.  I'm still covered in scars from her "spankings".  Her favorite thing was her "railroad track".  It was a Hot Wheels Track piece.  She wound one end with duct tape for a handle.  She would swing that thing until she was exhausted.  I was her stress relief and punching bag, and I still thought it was all my fault, I was an evil little demon child who didn't pray and read her bible enough.  (I never spoke back.  I got straight A's in school. These "spankings" would be over a spoon that I didn't get clean enough, or dust on my dresser.  I got it about three times per week, from the age of 4 until 16.)
She also burned me with the tip of her clothes iron, to show me what hell was like.  She is, after many decades, still the most terrifying person on the planet.

I have seen parents give their toddlers a quick swat on the behind, and it worked.  Got their attention.  I have heard stories of spankings (even with a switch) where the buildup and discussion were much worse than one or two quick swats with a switch.

I would worry about the possibility of a parent losing their temper and going far beyond.  I think, after much study of psychology and motivation, that there are much better methods of parenting.  There are ways to get even a toddler to a basic understanding of cause and effect, as just one example.

I would say your case was definitely worse than mine.

My parents hit me hard, and often, and a lot at a time, and on parts of myself that shouldn't have been hit.

but they never used anything hard on me, like this piece of toy railway track you refer to,
and NEVER a burn.  I mean, my god.

Especially when you say that you were " her stress relief and punching bag",
and that "she would swing that thing until she was exhausted".

That's not discipline.  That's abuse.  Plain and simple.

But I was able to relate when you said,

"I got straight A's in school.
These "spankings" would be over a spoon that I didn't get clean enough,
or dust on my dresser. "

Same here.  I never did anything as a child that could be described as full defiance,
and that's a big part of the reason why I think that the "discipline" was too much.

My parents were not consistent about being calm, either;
they tried, but they did lose their temper at times.

Sometimes the discipline was calm and measured on their part;
but sometimes they just got frustrated and lashed out,
and I agree that all that does is teach the child that if you're angry, it's okay to hit.

Also, in administering punishment, my Dad seemed to get ANGRIER, with each stroke.
Mom finally had to stop him, once, and he whirled on her like he wanted to hit her, in that moment,
although he never did.

(It is worth noting that I love my Dad and I actually respect and get along with him better than I do,
with my Mother.

My Dad suffered physical and verbal abuse at the hands of HIS mother
...and my Grandmother was more like what your mother sounds like.)

[The Grand Nudger]

Horror stories, yall.  Sucks.  I got switched/belted/slapped (and once or twice just flat out clocked) for things like "stop trying to run your sister over with your go-cart".  She got the same for the same reason with positions reversed.  "Moccasins are not toys you play with" - shit like that. I think that what my grandparents did at least bordered on abuse....but the stories you guys are sharing are unambiguous.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm not sure why you have to imagine so many strange things about people who spank, Brian.  I definitely don't think that spanking is a universally appropriate method, or that everyone who spanks has good reason, or that there's just -no other way- to do something...but if I wanted to dissuade, or mount a diatribe against spanking..I could probably do it without all the flights of fancy.  You could too, I'm sure.

I'm not sure to what 'flights of fancy' you're referring. Could you be more specific?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, for you, let's see what Boru has decided about spanking and people who spank.

That it's a power move, that it has something to do with being bigger and stronger, that it's singularly motivated by how said power moving bigger stronger person wants the other to act, that they're psychopaths who only hit those who can't hit back, and that all of this is their only means of correction..that it's a need, somehow.  

Let me offer an alternative scenario.  -Some- spankers are people who have witnessed their children, whom they dearly love, doing terrible, deleterious things, often more than once, and having failed to correct that behavior by a host of others means have decided to employ the distasteful but, in their experience, effective means of spanking their child, not beating them with objects or fashioning tools with which to strip their skin away...for behaviors that have and would otherwise continue.  Some even stop spanking if it doesn't work for that child, on that issue, or when said child begins to respond to some other method.

But I'm sure your summary is probably more accurate.

[brewer]

I haven't seen any of you talk about the pleasure of picking out your own whooping stick.

That's charming, isn't it?  My grands like to tell the story about me dragging a log into the house, big shit eating grin, thinking I'd gotten over on them.  Nope, smacked with the fuckin thing.  I wonder how that started...why it's such a common thing..picking your own switch?  My opinion on that whole business...as an occasional spanker, is that once you're using tools...it's become a fetish.

Generational. No clue how it started. I'm sure you and I aren't the only ones. I've not heard it from what I would consider a youngster, a generation below me.