No Gerald, it is KANE who has made a lot of claims. Consider the absolute
nonsense of what you propose.. KANE claims that a practice which has been
acceptable throughout history is harmful, yet you want ME to substantiate
that it is not???

KANE claims that he has so damned much 'experience' when it eventually
boiled down to his own limited observations.

KANE claimed that rich or powerful people never spanked their children,
(based upon his own fraternizing with a few in his lifetime) and wants proof
that throughout history of ANY of the great leaders being spanked. Common
sense would tell you that the wealthy and powerful would not stray from
acceptable practices of the period, and in fact, most literature points out
that many were schooled in private institutions, most of which DID in fact,
use corporal punishment for disciplinary actions.

Then, both you and he avoid the separation between a swat on the behind with
the open hand as a means of teaching a young child to avoid a dangerous
situation, and the use of spanking for older children to instill discipline,
with outright abuse.

I have dealt with hundreds and hundreds of children, both abused and non
abused, and I can assure you, most of the parents in this group can tell you
that each child responds differently and no one single method works for
every child, even within the same family.

No one is proposing abusive treatment of children, as you and Kane seem to
try to portray and you cannot capture the high moral ground by avoiding the
distinction between abuse and spanking.

I argue vehemently because it is precisely this nonsense that people like
yourself and Kane try to imply that all spanking is abusive by avoiding the
separation of such and attempt to put yourselves upon high moral ground.

And I DO take a long hard look at the truth and how people like you have
created a generation of children who lack respect or discipline in their
lives simply because you've coddled them to the point of not being able to
deal with reality.



"Gerald Alborn" wrote in message
...
Dennis Hancock wrote:

"Gerald Alborn" wrote in message
...
Dennis Hancock wrote:

"Kane" wrote in message

I've noticed that you make a lot of claims, yet offer nothing to
substantiate
any of them, even claiming that Kane's knowledge is faulty and that he's
backed
down on all his claims, etc. You offer nothing to support your positions
except
for a tight (even seemingly desperate) grip on your beliefs.

Did you ever consider taking a long hard look at why you are so compelled
to
simply accept your beliefs about parenting and spanking, etc., without
coming
out into the fresh air, smelling the coffee and asking yourself why you
must
simply accept, without question, that your beliefs constitute a model of
pure,
unadultrated truth that all should live by?

Twenty years ago, I had essentially the same attitude you have. I was a
spanking
parent. I saw no reason to question it or my belief that it was the way
children
needed to be parented. Then, at a friend's urging, I ended up in a
Parenting
Effectiveness Training (PET) class.

A short time afterward, I started to ask questions about my firmly rooted
beliefs. I started to look into the whys and the hows of parenting, etc. I
must
admit that I didn't have an open mind about this before then. Since then,
I have
had a yearning to know more about it, how emotions work, what
developmental and
emotional needs are, how children's needs are so often violated by
traditional
parenting methods, what motivates people (including children) to behave as
they
do, and how parenting is blindly passed from one generation to the next
without
so much as a question or a passing thought about it. These and many more
questions never come to the surface of a person's mind when one has a grip
on
beliefs that is as firm as yours. In all fields of life, a firm grip on
preserving the ways of the past offers little benefit for the future.

We didn't go to the moon using the technology of the 1800's. People are
creative
beings with energy, imagination, and drive for the advancement of
knowledge to
better understand our world and to better our lives. We spend trillions on
learning about the world, about the universe, and about life and how to
make it
better - in many ways. But, when it comes to raising children, the ways of
past
generations is good enough and no one has any business questioning any of
it.
Apparently it might offend one's parents and grandparents to not blindly
accept
their ways and carry those ways forward into future generations. So,
knowledge
about parenting, and how the minds of little children work during their
crucial
years of early development, is not an arena where most people want to or
care to
visit or to make any changes or advancements?

Dennis, are all your beliefs so firmly rooted that I may as well assume
they are
cast in concrete, such that there is no chance for changing them?

Is everything you disbelieve "nonsense?"

-Jerry-