Parent-Child Negotiations

Doan wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004, Kane wrote:

Chris has been running away from me since the Straus et al (1997) debacle.
----------------
No, we simply stand back when you ****, and you **** everywhere
we take you, like a baby with projectile diarrhea.


I am for parents making up their mind. You
are not. You wanted to tell them what to do. I don't.
--------------
Yes, that's right, you understand it now, we're for the equal rights
of children, and their defense by the Majority!


Nope! I call a liar a liar when it fit and when I have proof!
Are you using stupidity as an excuse? ;-) The things I don't
do (unlike Y-O-U) is calling people "smelly-****", "**** you",
"public masturbation"..... and you said your mom is proud of
that???
[]
Nope! I would laugh if my parents said they are proud if I call
other people "smelly-****". Is that how your mom parented you? :-)
[]
Yup! That is why I never used the "smelly-****" word. You must
have NO-FEAR of your parents. ;-)
[]
Don't kid yourself. At least, I don't use the "**** you, Chris" with him.
[]
Because my mom didn't teach me to use the "smelly-****" and "**** you"
words. Tell me, are "never-spanked" kids always turned out to be as
obnoxious and verbally abusive as you and Steve? ;-)
[]
And I am not you! I didn't say "**** you, Chris"! ;-)
----------------
You seem to be PROUD about your ignorant mental-verbal blockage!
How can you use words you think are "dirty" and why do you think
that crap??

Very puzzling. Your couth is turned inside out!!
Steve

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

Simple answer - Steve is a "never-spanked" kid! :-)

Why in the world would you think that?

Because he said so! :-0

I'm still puzzled as to the reasons for your saying, "Simple answer - Steve
is a 'never-spanked' kid! :-)" How do you view it as an answer at all? Or
was that meant purely as some sort of "inside joke" that I didn't have the
background to get?

You got it!

Doan
--------------
It's SO "inside" that nobody gets it but him.
Steve

Could it be because your brain is fill with "****"? So much that it
oozed out of your mouth! :-)
Doan
----------------------
You're looking in the mirror again, you ****-mouthed peckerhead.
Steve

Nope, I was looking down the toilet, taking a dump, and I see
MYSELF with my mouth wide open. Then, I started thinking,
is that my **** coming out of my mouth? ;-)
Doan
----------------
I wondered how you could look down the toilet while taking a dump
unless your mouth was your asshole.
Steve

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: "R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
: ...

: No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed to
: abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned about
: abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against it,
: but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others more
: accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family among
: a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
: totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little playmates
: who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these abusive
: cretins!!

: If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of your "little
: playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking. Would you take the
: kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward me?

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris
-----------------
If you look at my post above, I would hardly call that
"verbally abusive".

Then your brain must be filled with "****" instead of gray matter! :-)
Even Chris can see that it's "verbally abusive". Are you calling
Chris, M.A. in biology, stupid? ;-)

As to being a "product of (abusive) child discipline":
Nope.
More complicated than that:

I witnessed OTHERS being severely abused and dishonored, while
I was not, so I was "abused" indirectly by witness of that abuse
to others, but was NOT abused, so I have both that AND survivor
guilt as MY motivations.
Steve

Then you are a coward to take responsibility for own behavior and
have to use the "I was abused" excuse.
Doan
--------------------
That doesn't even make any sense. I never used any excuses.
Steve

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

We are before an audience, I talk, then you talk, the issues are
extremely serious beyond our two lives, if you can't handle it,
then stop. If you want a private appointment, call my nurse.

How well do you think your tone plays before that audience? Do you come
across as someone interested in discussing the issues in a civil and
rational way, or as a fanatic who is unwilling to consider even the remotist
possibility that he might be anything less than 100% correct? And which
tone do you think the audience would be inclined to view as more credible?

Keep in mind that any system of logic is based on axioms, things that people
believe are true but cannot objectively prove are true. When people start
with different axioms, they can reach different conclusions even though both
are following perfectly valid logic based on the axioms that they believe
are true. If people recognize that they are operating from different
axioms, they can identify which axioms cause them to reach different
conclusions, understand the root causes of their disagreement, and disuss
why each holds the axioms he does. If not, they are likely to keep talking
past each other indefinitely. Each will be convinced that he is right and,
in fact, each will be able to "prove" that he is right, but they will never
really understand each other.

A large part of your problem of trying to tell me how I felt as a child has
to do with the fact that your axioms are so different from those that I held
as a child. You accept as an axiom (or something very close to the axiom
level) that the only proper relationship between parent and child is that of
equals. Therefore, you assume that children's reasoning and their emotional
reactions must be based on that axiom. And if the reactions a person
remembers having as a child do not fit that axiom, you assume that the
person must be self-deluded.

But the axioms I accepted were very different. I accepted the belief that
God gave parents authority over children, and that children were supposed to
obey that authority. That did not mean that I considered it okay for
parents (or for teachers acting under authority delegated by my parents) to
exercise their authority in clearly unfair or arbitrary ways. Far from it.
There were several occasions, especially at school, where I felt like I was
punished unfairly (not necessarily with corporal punishment) and I resented
it a great deal.

But unless I viewed a rule as clearly unreasonable, I viewed the use of
punishment to enforce the rule as legitimate. That's how my desire to keep
reading after bedtime fits together with my belief that it would not have
been unfair or unreasonable if my parents had punished me for my late-night
reading. The rule wasn't what I would have preferred, but it was reasonable
enough that I accepted it as a legitimate exercise of my parents' authority
nonetheless. And my memories of feeling that way go directly back to at
least two separate times when I got caught, with chains of continuity far
too strong for me to see any realistic possibility that the memories could
be delusions invented after the fact. (What I mean by "chains of
continuity" is that I don't just remember, but I remember remembering.)

That's not to say that I never resented times when I was punished, and
certainly not to say that I never resented being told what to do or what not
to do. But the level of resentment was mostly at the level of "I'm not
getting my way" rather than at the level of "There is something
fundamentally wrong with this" - except for the times when my analysis of a
punishment found no legitimate basis for viewing it as fair. And the fact
that I do have very clear memories of having had opinions regarding whether
punishments were fair or unfair at the time I was being punished, or very
close to that time, and of coming to different conclusions about different
punishments, makes it that much harder to believe that my memories could be
a product of some kind of delusion.

Of course if you want to, you can shut your eyes and ignore even the
possibility that there might be some validity to what I am saying, and that
your preconceptions regarding how children react to being punished might be
less than 100% accurate. But I'll know beyond the tiniest sliver of a doubt
that your doing so is a result of an arrogant, closed-minded refusal to even
consider the possibility that you might not be 100% infallible regarding
such matters, and I imagine most of our audience will recognize that fact as
well.

Or you can listen to what I have to say, and think about how things would
look through the eyes of a child who believes that parental authority was
instituted by God, and reconsider whether you might be overestimating the
extent to which adults' acceptance of our having been punished as children
is purely a result of some kind of delusion. Maybe at least one of the
reasons why not all children who are spanked react the way you think we
should is that we don't (and, as children, didn't) look at the issue through
the same religious and philosophical frame of reference that you do, and
that what makes no sense relative to your frame of reference makes (and has
always made) significantly more sense relative to ours.

While we're on the subject of axioms, there are two other places where your
axioms and mine diverge widely. One involves the question of who owes what
to whom as a result of parents' having children. You view the entire debt
as being a debt from parents to their children, as if a person's being
brought into this world were solely a burden and not at all an opportunity.
There are those at the other extreme who view the debt as going entirely the
other way, arguing that since children would not exist if it were not for
their parents, anything parents want to do to their children should be
considered legitimate. My view is somewhere in between, that there are
things that both parents and children owe each other. Any of those three
positions can be defended from certain religious and philosophical
perspectives, and just claiming that your position must be true is unlikely
to persuade people who hold fundamentally different positions that you are
right.

Another place where our axioms are different is in regard to the use of
parents' power to protect children from themselves. My view is that parents
are better equipped than children to evaluate the dangers and possible
long-term consequences of an action, and that it is thus proper for parents
to make a certain amount of use of their authority to stop their children
from doing dangerous things. Your view is that if parents cannot persuade a
child that a danger is excessive, the parents have no legitimate authority
to stop the child. Again, both points of view can be defended depending on
a person's religious and philosophical perspective. But just claiming over
and over that your perspective is the right one is unlikely to convince
those of us who hold a different underlying belief. (And you might think
about whether you would hold your principles yourself if you lived in a time
and place where the dangers children face were a lot greater than they were
in your own home.)

I hope I've given you some things to think about here, and that you actually
will take the time to think about them. You have some perspectives that it
would be interesting to discuss if you would be willing to set aside your
anger and your certainty that you cannot possibly be wrong for long enough
to have a real discussion.

I'll leave you with one last thought: the Golden Rule. Are you treating
people on the other side of the issue the way you would want us to treat
you? Are you listening to us and considering the possibility that we might
have points worth considering the way you would like us to listen to you and
consider the possibility that you might have points worth considering?

Nathan

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

We are before an audience, I talk, then you talk, the issues are
extremely serious beyond our two lives, if you can't handle it,
then stop. If you want a private appointment, call my nurse.

How well do you think your tone plays before that audience? Do you come
across as someone interested in discussing the issues in a civil and
rational way, or as a fanatic who is unwilling to consider even the remotist
possibility that he might be anything less than 100% correct? And which
tone do you think the audience would be inclined to view as more credible?
--------------------
Can't possibly do better than to be truthful.


Keep in mind that any system of logic is based on axioms, things that people
believe are true but cannot objectively prove are true. When people start
with different axioms, they can reach different conclusions even though both
are following perfectly valid logic based on the axioms that they believe
are true. If people recognize that they are operating from different
axioms, they can identify which axioms cause them to reach different
conclusions, understand the root causes of their disagreement, and disuss
why each holds the axioms he does. If not, they are likely to keep talking
past each other indefinitely. Each will be convinced that he is right and,
in fact, each will be able to "prove" that he is right, but they will never
really understand each other.
------------------------
That would be true of one simple stllogistic logic, but not of ALL
logical tools employed at once as humans can do. And that greater
logic is NOT axiomatic, but intuitive. Logicians have numerous
examples of this meta-tool logic.


A large part of your problem of trying to tell me how I felt as a child has
to do with the fact that your axioms are so different from those that I held
as a child.
--------------
No problem, for someone perceptive they are eminently discussable.
That is called psychology.


You accept as an axiom (or something very close to the axiom
level) that the only proper relationship between parent and child is that of
equals.
----------------
Not at all, being treated other than an equal is fine, such as in
infancy or when an invalid, as long as those helping you DO WHAT YOU
WANT THEM TO, AND NOT WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT!! Also, ledership is fine,
when VOLUNTARY, and only for as LONG as it is VOLUNTARY! The key is
simply, are you getting what you want/need. And what you want IS what
you need!


Therefore, you assume that children's reasoning and their emotional
reactions must be based on that axiom. And if the reactions a person
remembers having as a child do not fit that axiom, you assume that the
person must be self-deluded.
--------------------
Delusion of desire only comes about when paranoia is produced,
and that occurs dur to abuse.


But the axioms I accepted were very different. I accepted the belief that
God gave parents authority over children, and that children were supposed to
obey that authority.
--------------
But that is merely an abusive lie based on deception, and leads to
paranoia of any such authority in future once the victim's state
of abuse is discovered with experience. There is no way to show
such a thing is or should be true, thus it is not an acceptible
belief.


That did not mean that I considered it okay for
parents (or for teachers acting under authority delegated by my parents) to
exercise their authority in clearly unfair or arbitrary ways. Far from it.
----------------
Then you were forced by that lie to conclude that your will in fact
contradicted that of "Gawd" or that your parents were abusive liars.


There were several occasions, especially at school, where I felt like I was
punished unfairly (not necessarily with corporal punishment) and I resented
it a great deal.
------------------
That is the dissonance that proves the defect of such a relationship.


But unless I viewed a rule as clearly unreasonable, I viewed the use of
punishment to enforce the rule as legitimate.
------------------
And so do we often, we are forced, as childrenn, to trust blindly,
but we also sense when we are being taken unfair advantage of. Our
feeling that something required of us is wrong is our human right
at work, deciding our path for us. It must be respected as anyone
else's should be, to prevent one ignorant human from being allowed
to subsume another's very Life!!


That's how my desire to keep
reading after bedtime fits together with my belief that it would not have
been unfair or unreasonable if my parents had punished me for my late-night
reading.
---------------------
Nonsense. You resented it, we are surely NOT expected to believe that
you disagreed with your own reasoning! You were behaving in self-
contradiction if you entertained for a moment that they knew some
magical facts that made their opinion superior to yours, and such
illicit power implies that deception by alleged "magical" superiority.
People resent the catholic church for similar reasons.


The rule wasn't what I would have preferred, but it was reasonable
enough that I accepted it as a legitimate exercise of my parents' authority
nonetheless.
-------------------
Capitulation is not agreement, You were abused and considered yourself
so, you simply do not wish to say that of your parents simply so that
you can continue now to feel loved in retrospect!


And my memories of feeling that way go directly back to at
least two separate times when I got caught, with chains of continuity far
too strong for me to see any realistic possibility that the memories could
be delusions invented after the fact. (What I mean by "chains of
continuity" is that I don't just remember, but I remember remembering.)
----------------------
You are merely describing your experience in self-deceptive terms.
I told you why.


That's not to say that I never resented times when I was punished, and
certainly not to say that I never resented being told what to do or what not
to do. But the level of resentment was mostly at the level of "I'm not
getting my way" rather than at the level of "There is something
fundamentally wrong with this" - except for the times when my analysis of a
punishment found no legitimate basis for viewing it as fair.
------------------
That is abuse. That causes future progressive revenge formation and
distrust. That is why the older child evades parental wishes with
little concern, and it may cause danger to him. The line of
communication has come down because his end has decided that his
parents are not worth trusting. Trust must still be evalauated by
one indulging in it, it still cannot be blind trust. Parental assertion
that they "know better" than he does when there is no logical reason
to believe that registers as a deception in the child's mind, and
poisons the adult-child relationship. After such betrayal these people
can now never live together as equal adults, just like you would have
trouble trusting a housemate who has stolen from you. The child must
still always decide for himself to his satrisfaction. If the free child
feels unable to decide and turns over decision to parents as his wish,
that is quite a different matter!!!


And the fact
that I do have very clear memories of having had opinions regarding whether
punishments were fair or unfair at the time I was being punished, or very
close to that time, and of coming to different conclusions about different
punishments, makes it that much harder to believe that my memories could be
a product of some kind of delusion.
----------------------
Fairness is a fairly early sense in humans, as early as pre-age 2.


Of course if you want to, you can shut your eyes and ignore even the
possibility that there might be some validity to what I am saying, and that
your preconceptions regarding how children react to being punished might be
less than 100% accurate. But I'll know beyond the tiniest sliver of a doubt
that your doing so is a result of an arrogant, closed-minded refusal to even
consider the possibility that you might not be 100% infallible regarding
such matters, and I imagine most of our audience will recognize that fact as
well.
----------------------------------
I have faith that if I did so you would be right, but whether you grasp
quite how or not, I don't do that. I don't base my positions
on whether I might seem infallible or not, but upon the Truth.
If I need to seem to contradict myself and make the job difficult,
more so than it might be, I still do that if the Truth forces me.


Or you can listen to what I have to say, and think about how things would
look through the eyes of a child who believes that parental authority was
instituted by God, and reconsider whether you might be overestimating the
extent to which adults' acceptance of our having been punished as children
is purely a result of some kind of delusion.
----------------
The child who has been misled as to parental authority "Gawd",
knows long before he can express it, that he is being deceived,
and simply because such an assertion makes no logical sense without
extensive proofs that would even impress a philosophy teacher, and
that resentment starts long before his absolute denial in his ming
of that assertion. And that resentment causes a degradation of the
parent-child trust relationship, and that can never be recovered.


Maybe at least one of the
reasons why not all children who are spanked react the way you think we
should is that we don't (and, as children, didn't) look at the issue through
the same religious and philosophical frame of reference that you do, and
that what makes no sense relative to your frame of reference makes (and has
always made) significantly more sense relative to ours.
---------------------------
Whatever they know and when, and no matter how little they seem to
have understood earlier, all children will finally figure out if they
have been lied to and deceived IN RETOSPECT, and that parental betrayal
will cause then the very same degradation of the parent-child
relationship as it might have previously. NO lie goes forgotten with
time. ALL are remebered and held serious as to evaluating someone's
trustworthiness.


While we're on the subject of axioms, there are two other places where your
axioms and mine diverge widely. One involves the question of who owes what
to whom as a result of parents' having children. You view the entire debt
as being a debt from parents to their children, as if a person's being
brought into this world were solely a burden and not at all an opportunity.
-----------------------
I do that to turn the tables, because the notion of a child being in
debt is nothing more than simple bamboozlement by adults, it is not a
reasonable Truth, and my argument is WHY it is not. They didn't ask to
come here.


There are those at the other extreme who view the debt as going entirely the
other way, arguing that since children would not exist if it were not for
their parents, anything parents want to do to their children should be
considered legitimate.
------------------------
Haven't you ever noted that the belief that one OWNS one's children
is merely awfully damned convenient, and not really respectable as a
human feeling? It turns humans into slaves, and with each generation
magically thence becoming the slave of all previous, the human race
becomes entirely enslaved to the past, no one ever free, and no one
EVER living the life where they get what THEY want. It is sure and
certain breeding ground for a revolt, a revolution, since the old
rely upon the young. The old lost this one a long time ago, and in
tribal society's without benefit of technology based on petroleum,
no elder would EVER DARE to try to pull THAT one, they could easily
wind up on an ice floe or starving to death when next they are under
the weather, as we are moreso with age. So that dispenses with THAT
sort of nonsense!!!!!

Every tribal society has lore dictating respect for the young else
the old would perish from their abusiveness. The old ASK the young
to help them, perhaps guilt them into it, but NEVER try to force them
or deceive them, lest they die earlier than they might!!!


My view is somewhere in between, that there are
things that both parents and children owe each other. Any of those three
positions can be defended from certain religious and philosophical
perspectives, and just claiming that your position must be true is unlikely
to persuade people who hold fundamentally different positions that you are
right.
----------------
Still, deceiving others or coercing others simply does NOT work!! Not
for either of them, still, the old must avoid taking the liberties
that their size for the first decade affords them, or they will find
their children gone in the night. Don't bully, or you'll have NO
friends!! and believe me you NEED friends MORE THAN YOU'D EVER THINK!


Another place where our axioms are different is in regard to the use of
parents' power to protect children from themselves. My view is that parents
are better equipped than children to evaluate the dangers and possible
long-term consequences of an action, and that it is thus proper for parents
to make a certain amount of use of their authority to stop their children
from doing dangerous things. Your view is that if parents cannot persuade a
child that a danger is excessive, the parents have no legitimate authority
to stop the child.
----------------
It is NOT a matter of "legitimate" as in meaning authority-originated,
for there IS NO SUCH authority! If your kid gets ****ed off at you
even for a WRONG reason you can STILL wind up just as frozen to death
on an ice floe, or the emotional equivalent. If you're so ****ing smart
it is ALSO your duty to your species to NOT **** OFF YOUR KIDS! You
CANNOT SUCCESSFULLY STOP THEM, so you need to stop pretending you are
owed ANY "authority" if that offends them!!

In other words, act sensibly, think pragmatically!


Again, both points of view can be defended depending on
a person's religious and philosophical perspective. But just claiming over
and over that your perspective is the right one is unlikely to convince
those of us who hold a different underlying belief. (And you might think
about whether you would hold your principles yourself if you lived in a time
and place where the dangers children face were a lot greater than they were
in your own home.)
----------------------
No philosopphy about you controlling another means **** if THEY don't
agree, so give that up right now!


I hope I've given you some things to think about here, and that you actually
will take the time to think about them. You have some perspectives that it
would be interesting to discuss if you would be willing to set aside your
anger and your certainty that you cannot possibly be wrong for long enough
to have a real discussion.
------------------------
You will find my content always is more logical than yours.
So if you want more logic, avail yourself of it yourself.


I'll leave you with one last thought: the Golden Rule. Are you treating
people on the other side of the issue the way you would want us to treat
you? Are you listening to us and considering the possibility that we might
have points worth considering the way you would like us to listen to you and
consider the possibility that you might have points worth considering?

Nathan
------------------------
Yup. and I decide what that is for ME, just as you do!
Steve

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

My hypothesis does not require the existence of children who are
"completely indifferent." It requires only the existence of children
whose desire to engage in certain actions that their parents consider
unacceptable outweighs whatever damage to harmony those particular
actions will cause.
----------------------
I see that "harmony" is your euphemism for abject obedience to your
ignorant immature and insecure sickness.

That's an interesting accusation, given your sterling efforts toward harmony
in this newsgroup. You seem to be the one who views having everyone else
give in as the only allowable path to harmony around here.

Your definition of "harmony" seems to center around allowing children to run
wild and do anything short of things that are outright criminal, with
absolutely no regard either for how their actions affect others (including
the parents) or to how their actions might cause harm to themselves later in
life, if that is what they so desire. (And before you talk about how
wonderfully children who are raised with freedom will invariably treat
others, look at how you're treating me. That alone proves that it doesn't
always work.)

(By
"unacceptable," I am referring to matters serious enough that the
parents believe they ought to be non-negotiable or negotiable only
within certain boundaries, not just to actions parents would prefer
not to accept.)
--------------------
If you cannot convince your children of that by reason and logic,
then you're merely wrong in your beliefs.

Let me get this straight. If parents and children disagree, it is
automatically the parents, the people who have lived more than twice as long
and generally have a significantly higher level of maturity, that are wrong?
I don't see that as making any sense at all.

One of
the things that can happen in any relationship where needs and desires
are not entirely compatible is for there to be quiet power struggles in
which who wins and who loses depends on which side is willing to
give in in the interest of harmony first.
--------------------
No, actually that's you simply being wrong about human relationships
again. People who care about each other want each one of them to all
get what they each separately and differently want,

In general, that is true. But when you love someone, and that person wants
something that you know will be bad for them, you will generally hope that
they do NOT get what they want. For example, if your children would decide
that they wanted to take a dangerous illegal drug, would you want for them
to get the drug or want for them not to get it? If you would want them to
get it, I have the same contempt for you that you have toward parents who
spank.

Unfortunately, your model of human relationships seems to allow only for the
type of love that gives people what they want without regard to whether or
not it is good for them, not for the type of love that causes parents to
want to make sure their children will NOT get what they want if it is bad
for them.

(In an ideal relationship, both sides will love
each other enough and care enough about each other's desires that
a middle ground can be found without such a power struggle,
-----------------------
There is no such "middle ground". People who respect and love each
other make room all over the map for each other. They do NOT think
that everyone has to do the same things and feel the same.

Suppose the parents in a family want to go one place on vacation and the
children want to go another. The kind of "middle ground" I speak of would
come about if the parents decide to put their children's happiness first and
have the family go where the children want, or if the children decide to put
their parents' happiness first and agree for the family to go where the
parents want, or if both the parents and the children place a high value on
each other's happiness and the family agrees to go somewhere everyone would
enjoy (if not necessarily their first choice). Clearly, the concept of
"middle ground" can apply in that type of situation.

The degree to which it applies in other situations is at least partly a
matter of religious/philosophical perspective. From a philosophical
perspective in which exercise of parental authority is considered legitimate
only in regard to criminal behavior, and in which parents are viewed as
"owing" their children free room and board without expecting anything at all
in return, the only times when "middle ground" might apply are when children
want something their parents are not regarded as "owing" them. From a
perspective that regards parents as having legitimate authority over a wider
range of issues, the concept of "middle ground" would come into play more
often - for example, parents' allowing a child to do something that is more
dangerous than they really want to allow because the child wants to do it so
badly.

but I don't view it as
realistic to expect all relationships to consistently measure up to
that ideal.) If the parents generally give in first, the result is in
the direction of the stereotypical spoiled brat who knows that if
he or she doesn't cooperate, harmony will still probably come
when the parents give up.
----------------
A child wanting what they want for themselves is NOT a "spoiled" or
any kind of "brat"

Who ever said that merely wanting something makes a child a a brat? There
are two basic categories of behavior that I associate with the "spoiled
brat" stereotype. One is the use of tantrums or similar types of
psychological coercion to get what they want. (I see nothing inherently
wrong with, "Please, please, please can I have that?" although it can become
psychologically coercive if a child persists after being told no in the hope
that a parent will agree just so the child will stop asking.) The other is
the attitude that they can behave more or less however they want to with
little regard to the possible danger to themselves or to how their behavior
affects others and not expect to suffer any significant adverse consequences
as a result.

On the other hand, consider situations in which a child is reluctant to
give up doing what he or she wants to do in the interest of whatever
amount of harmony is at stake regarding that particular issue, and in
which the parents decide that they cannot afford to give up in the
interest of harmony because they view the issue as too important.
-----------------
Your entire take is one-sided, you completely ignore the degree to
which a parent trying to control to merely meet with his insane
or superstitious sense of order is inhumane and at fault.

You ignore the possibility that something more than just an "insane or
superstitious sense of order" might be at stake.

You indulge
in paranoid fantasy that children don't WANT you to be happy

On the contrary, I made it very clear to Chris that that was NOT my
assumption. Suppose a child would like to make his parents happy, but to do
so would require not doing something that the child believes (not
necessarily correctly) will make him happy. Further suppose the parents
have a good reason not to want the child to do what the child thinks will
make him happy - whether because they expect the long-term negative impact
to outweigh the short-term happiness benefit, or because of a danger
involved, or because of harm it would cause someone else (albeit not to a
point of criminal behavior). That is the type of situation I'm trying to
address.

If the child chooses to largely ignore the parents' efforts at persuasion,
it is not implausible that even though the child wants his parents to be
happy, the child will choose to put his own happiness first and do what he
thinks will make him happy in spite of the fact that he knows his parents
won't like it. Or are you going to try to tell me that in non-punitive
relationships, children will invariably put their parents' happiness ahead
of their own in such situations?

purely non-punitive approach leaves the parents with no choice but to
give up, accept defeat, and let the child win no matter how concerned
they are about the possible consequences of the behavior.
-----------------------------
This is as it should be, because actually, in real human life, you
cannot control any other living person but YOURSELF, and pretending
that you can or should, and that others should obey you, is LUNACY!!!

Perfect, total, complete control over another human being is impossible.
But in situations where a person knows that misbehavior will be caught and
punished (for example, if a parent counts to three to get a child to do
something or stop doing something), the level of control can be quite high.
Obviously, as the risk of a child's getting caught and punished declines, so
does the amount of control that can be exerted through punitive techniques.

Also, how sure can you be that you aren't falling into the "The parents
must not be trying hard enough" trap? Keep in mind that there is a
self-selection process involved in whether or not parents stick to
entirely non-punitive methods.
------------------------------
Bull****. Parents have far more they can do for a child by way of
negotiation goods than kids can do for adults.

And if parents actually use their highest-value negotiating goods as
leverage - things like food, clothing, and shelter - they undermine their
children's basic security. But your attitude, if I understand it correctly,
seems to be that children are entitled to those things for free with
absolutely no return obligations whatsoever to their parents, and that
parents must go beyond those things if they want to offer their children
something in negotiations.

To those of us who believe in free will,
------------------------
It doesn't matter how many of you are delusional, it won't be true!
The future is a result of the past, and as long as cause and effect
runs the Universe, it's neither POSSIBLE, NOR even DESIRABLLE to
have "Free Will".

If you truly believe that, why all the animosity toward parents who punish?
After all, they are nothing more than machines doing what they were
programmed to do, with absolutely no choice in the matter. Would you hold a
bridge that collapsed and killed people accountable for its actions just
because it succombed to the forces that caused it to collapse? If not, then
why blame parents who merely succomb to the forces that made their actions
inevitable?

I'm snipping the rest of this (as I have chunks before now) because it's
pretty much just rants and personal attacks. By the way, I might point out
that I don't have any children of my own yet, although I hope to someday.
So you might want to cool it with your presumptions about what my children
feel, how they act, and what and my relationship with them must be like.

I would also note that statistically, you have no basis for a claim that my
children can be expected to hate me (at least beyond occasionally being
angry at me for short periods) if I do choose the kind of parenting style
I'm talking about here when and if I have children. Most children are
punished more than you consider proper, yet as best I can tell, most
children love their parents. Which implies that your views about how
children react to being punished are way off target.

Nathan

Nathan, you brushed off the list of responses from workshop
participants to Thomas Gordon's question about how they reacted to
punitive control as children, saying it was "anecdotal." But you never
answered my question to you: which of the behaviors on the list did *you*
engage in as a spanked child? Don't say you didn't engage in any of them
because I know you did; all of us raised the way you advocate did.

You can call the list "anecdotal" all you like but I challenge you to
find a single person raised by the methods you advocate who didn't exhibit
at least several of the undesirable behaviors on the list as a result.
These side effects are not consistent with your assertion that punitive
control of children "by and large works well."

Chris

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004, Kane wrote:

Chris has been running away from me since the Straus et al (1997) debacle.
----------------
No, we simply stand back when you ****, and you **** everywhere
we take you, like a baby with projectile diarrhea.

The only "****" on this newsgroup I see is the "****" that coming out
of your mouth. If it's my ****, the question is how did it get to
your mouth, "never-spanked" boy? ;-)


I am for parents making up their mind. You
are not. You wanted to tell them what to do. I don't.
--------------
Yes, that's right, you understand it now, we're for the equal rights
of children, and their defense by the Majority!

No you don't! You are for the abusing of children! Your excuse is
that you'll abuse them less then their parents!


Nope! I call a liar a liar when it fit and when I have proof!
Are you using stupidity as an excuse? ;-) The things I don't
do (unlike Y-O-U) is calling people "smelly-****", "**** you",
"public masturbation"..... and you said your mom is proud of
that???
[]
Nope! I would laugh if my parents said they are proud if I call
other people "smelly-****". Is that how your mom parented you? :-)
[]
Yup! That is why I never used the "smelly-****" word. You must
have NO-FEAR of your parents. ;-)
[]
Don't kid yourself. At least, I don't use the "**** you, Chris" with him.
[]
Because my mom didn't teach me to use the "smelly-****" and "**** you"
words. Tell me, are "never-spanked" kids always turned out to be as
obnoxious and verbally abusive as you and Steve? ;-)
[]
And I am not you! I didn't say "**** you, Chris"! ;-)
----------------
You seem to be PROUD about your ignorant mental-verbal blockage!
How can you use words you think are "dirty" and why do you think
that crap??

Those are not my words. Those are words that "never-spanked" kids
like you and Kane0 used! :-)

Very puzzling. Your couth is turned inside out!!
Steve

Your mouth is connected to your...you know what! ;-)

Doan

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Nathan A. Barclay wrote:


"Doan" wrote in message
...

Simple answer - Steve is a "never-spanked" kid! :-)

Why in the world would you think that?

Because he said so! :-0

I'm still puzzled as to the reasons for your saying, "Simple answer - Steve
is a 'never-spanked' kid! :-)" How do you view it as an answer at all? Or
was that meant purely as some sort of "inside joke" that I didn't have the
background to get?

You got it!

Doan
--------------
It's SO "inside" that nobody gets it but him.
Steve

Could it be because your brain is fill with "****"? So much that it
oozed out of your mouth! :-)
Doan
----------------------
You're looking in the mirror again, you ****-mouthed peckerhead.
Steve

Nope, I was looking down the toilet, taking a dump, and I see
MYSELF with my mouth wide open. Then, I started thinking,
is that my **** coming out of my mouth? ;-)
Doan
----------------
I wondered how you could look down the toilet while taking a dump
unless your mouth was your asshole.
Steve

Nope! That's your mouth! ;-)

Doan

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: "R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
: ...

: No. Think a minute, what is the one way someone could be exposed to
: abuse and yet not themselves be abused, so that they learned about
: abuse but had little or none of the neurotic reaction against it,
: but who was scandalized by it and horrified by it unlike others more
: accustomed to it?? Answer: By living as the exceptional family among
: a real bunch of abusive insane fundy rural hillbillies and being
: totally disgusted by the effects of abuse on their little playmates
: who ARE being abyssmally abused for a decade or more by these abusive
: cretins!!

: If the statistics even come halfway close to holding, most of your "little
: playmates" presumably grew up to believe in spanking. Would you take the
: kind of verbally abusive attitude toward them that you do toward me?

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris
-----------------
If you look at my post above, I would hardly call that
"verbally abusive".

Then your brain must be filled with "****" instead of gray matter! :-)
Even Chris can see that it's "verbally abusive". Are you calling
Chris, M.A. in biology, stupid? ;-)

No response from you, "never-spanked" boy? :-)

As to being a "product of (abusive) child discipline":
Nope.
More complicated than that:

I witnessed OTHERS being severely abused and dishonored, while
I was not, so I was "abused" indirectly by witness of that abuse
to others, but was NOT abused, so I have both that AND survivor
guilt as MY motivations.
Steve

Then you are a coward to take responsibility for own behavior and
have to use the "I was abused" excuse.
Doan
--------------------
That doesn't even make any sense. I never used any excuses.
Steve

Good! :-)

Doan