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In Reply to: Re: Michael & Debi Pearl (USA) & John Angelico (AUST) posted by Family Specialist on October 26, 2008 at 04:06:47:
There have been several interesting genx and journeys discussions about spanking.
Journeys archive #9 -- scroll down to:
"something i found - Repost on spankings Oct 14, '06 13:07"
"the spanking controversy - damaged Oct 13, '06 21:35"
Several people such as "Swede," "Had a Swedish girlfriend" and "damaged" posted about alternatives to spanking, and about the positive results of countries like Sweden banning spanking and even threats of violence against children altogether. I agree with their views completely. I am against spanking, and if I could do it over again I would never ever hit my children. You don't need to use violence to "teach" anything. There are other well-proven methods for effective discipline. If anyone has to resort to the quick solution of violence to "teach" a child anything, something is already horribly wrong with the parent(s) and the situation.
I was raised with horrendous abuse and violence. I in turn subjected my own children to violence, not only thanks to TF teachings, but also thanks to my own upbringing. I felt the urge to hit my children whenever they stubbornly disobeyed me. But in so doing I lost whatever moral high ground I thought I had. Hitting my children may have afforded me some "control" or a temporary "win," but the battle was already lost in the long run. And the "control" and "win" and "teach" was just an illusion. Studies have shown that about all children really learn from being hit is fear, humiliation, resentment, meanness to others, that might is right, that the strongest wins, to do things behind your back rather than get caught, that violence is a solution to problems. Virtually without fail, children who bully others are children who are beaten at home. And parents who hit children were themselves subjected to violence as a child.
My personal experience tells me that spanking doesn't work. I used it to try to control one of my sons who was getting into all kinds of serious trouble, believing that the answer was discipline, to assert strong control and show him there were consequences for his actions, yada yada. To cut a long story short, he ended up in juvenile detention doing time for some SERIOUS crimes which I will not mention out of respect for his privacy and mine. In my distraction and delusion that I could literally solve his behavioral problems with my own hands, I had missed the fact that there was something else horribly wrong with him. He has an as-yet-unamed syndrome similar to Asbergers. He has calmed down now as an adult, not due to my spanking him, but due to a support system he later had which I could never give. I look back with deep regret at the waste of anger and violence, the missed opportunities I had for doing something that would actually help.
Nothing bothers me more than to see my children hitting their own children, to know that I started it. No words can describe how horrible I felt to see the cycle of violence perpetuated generation after generation in my own bloodline.
