Hamilton1794 wrote:
For it to be of practical use to parents considering continuing
spanking or taking it up with their newborns, it has to be at least
as
explicit as a traffic speed control sign. Easy to read, understand,
and
apply to human children. Just as 55 MPH is to the driver who drives
the car down the road under varying conditions

If you want the process of bringing up children to have simple,
easy-to-understand rules that are like road speed limits, you're
going to be
forever frustrated as a parent.

I didn't say that I wanted that or expected it for "bringing up
children," simply for engaging in parenting methods that have well
known risks attached. It's very hard, for instance, to leave a bruise
or break a bone by redirecting a child's behaviors verbally. Not so
hard to do with swats, smacks, paddlin's, and pops.

Child-rearing isn't an exact science,

One of the most clever ways to avoid discussing what someone has
postulated is to move the discussion of in another
direction....especially if you are good at using something that seems
closely related.

You'll notice I wasn't deviating from the issue of using corporal
punishment. I addressed no other issues, of which there are many, on
child rearing. In many of those others I do not ask for roads signs
that show absolute boundaries. I do in spanking for a very sensible
reason: the injuries to children that have occurred as a result of CP,
especially when it has gotten out of hand and the children have been
taken by state and the parent in in jail for criminal assault.

I'd rather avoid that. It's bad for kids and parents.

it demands the ability to adjust
methods of behavior modification to different children under
different
situations.

Sure and the range is nearly infinite. I can sit around all day with
just about any issue in parenting and dream up tactic after tactic. I
tend though to go to what I have proven over the years to be not only
the easiest AND most fun, but the most effective in my child learn SELF
control, over seeking out OTHER control.

Spanking may work for certain children in certain families under
particular
conditions, but that doesn't mean it should be applied to ALL
children under
ALL circumstances.

"work" is the word to watch out for. It's an ill defined term. What you
may think of as it "works" I might think of as having set the child on
a path of control battles with you appearing to win but they just going
to grow into a teen...and you know what happens then. 0:-

Those are decisions for individual parents to make for their own
children,
just as they make other types of child-rearing decisions, hopefully
with
success and to the best of their ability.

Yes, they are. Wrapped up in, possibly without your conscious
awareness, is the insinuation that someone else is going to tell them
how to parent. I'm all for people making their own choices, and taking
the consequences of finding opposing ideas offered in places such as
this. No one was forced to by Benjamen Spock's baby book. Nor to follow
it.

You are not forced to follow any non-punishment parenting tips I might
offer. But you might consider giving them and the supporting arguments
I make without assume I'm trying to force you. Or did you inheret a
tendency to enter into control battles and power struggles somewhere,
sometime, from someone?

Even posted speed limits don't always apply, if road conditions
(ice, snow,
fog, etc.) make driving at the posted speed hazardous.

Well, I would presume, as a motorist would, that should a speed limit,
or spanking limit would be modified by conditions neither would
accelerate and to hard turns.

The problem is I can find a posted limit for one, and I'm asking for a
posted limit for the other, from those that perport to be the experts
in what's right for their child. I want to be such an expert. Who
knows, I might want to spank my kids one day. 'Course now in their
forties they might think me a bit weird, but hey, if it's so good why
wouldn't it still work to teach them things.

If my daughter shows up again asking me about an ethical business
decision she made that she now is questioning her actions about, first
I'll turn her over my knee for her "mistake" then I'll sit her by me,
dry her tears and tell her "never do that again young lady if you know
what's good for you."

I'm sure she'll learn a lot, and start shopping for the better prices
care homes.

To think that applying child-rearing strategies, including
discipline, is
going to be like following a few simple, easy-to-understand rules,
that strikes
me as a naive and highly facile approach.

It strikes me that you are thinking yourself too too clever to have
expanded the argument to all parenting issues, and child-rearing
strategies, when I spoke to one, and one only.

I'll give you an example of another though, that I want clear
guidelines about. Diet. I do not want to by guess and by god on my
child's diet. And by golly there are some very clear guidelines. Do not
feed a small baby chunks of apple with the skin on. Do you know why?

I also know in health matters that certain things I might Rx a child
with certain other thinks I cannot or risk terrible harm .

I also don't put my 5 year old in 8th grade. In fact not even in
second, unless I have an outright proven genius, and even then I'd be
thinking boundaries...very carefully.

We use clear boundaries, and we consult with others to establish them,
teachers, doctors, child psychologists, but for some reason this area
of whalin' on a kids body and calling it a semi polite trick name,
"spanking," doesn't want to lend itself to the same kind of considered
reasoning and care in choice making.

Now why IS that I wonder. What is so sacred about spanking that the
parent would go into all these other areas seeking clearer guidelines
but scream their heads off like spastic leaping arm waving monkeys when
it comes to spanking? Or they sulk and run. Hmmmm? Hmmmm? This
inquiring mind wants to know.

When you wish to talk about this one issue, and admit there are plenty
of clear boundaries in other areas of child rearing that are more than
overdue in spanking, maybe the debate will take on a more wholesome
feeling. As it is I always feel icky not pasting a spanker in the head,
hard, for what they are doing to children. But then I'm a peaceable
sort.

Thanks for working on this problem with me.

{Hamilton}
(Casio)

Kane