If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
Parent-Child Negotiations
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 06:38:59 -0700, Doan wrote:
Let me ask you, LaVonne. You were spanked as a child, right? Did you learn to hit? Of course she did. Then she learned not to. Some never do learn not to. Using that logic, if you take toys away from your child, the child will learn to rob and steal??? :-) Actually, for a logic impaired person you do pretty well at times. So tell me, are there do people that steal? Where did they actually learn to? From whom did you learn to lie to yourself about your motives? The pretense you are neutral and simply want people to choose for themselves is patently false to any reader that cares to google a bit of your posting archives. At some point, as a child, some adult very likely said one thing to you but did another. Your posts are ripe with it. But, by golly, boy genius, in this, you are correct.....that is ONE of the ways a child IS taught to steal and rob if it is used as a punishment, rather than simply teaching how to use his toys (without using them to hit for instance) and how to put them away. The entire punishment model if fraught with just such risk of teaching a lesson you don't KNOW you are teaching, that you will blame the chid for later, and swear that the only way to deal with it is to punish...and the child will fight that because YOU TAUGHT HIM ONE THING AND NOW ARE TRYING TO UNTEACH IT....hence, you, and folks with your faulty logic will have to be more severe..........OR You can start waking up now and thinking some of this through, and figuring out that YOU teach your child everything they know, sans instinct, about how to operate in the world, and ALL of the social skills. Assume that when a child "misbehaves" either you have taught them to do that behavior (and you probably won't even remember doing it) and patiently explain you have something NEW to teach them.....completely avoiding the control battles. Doan, you are always, as a bright intelligent person, just one step away from the answers, just as you did with this one, but it's old story... I bet you I can state one step away from but you cannot touch me. Of course there is a door between us. All YOU have to do to touch me, that is learn and wake up, is open the damn door, instead of playing games that keeps the door shut to you. If you cracked some books on learning theory and worked to put away your biases about the need for force to make people do things....you might begin to understand why so many of us make the claims we do here that YOU think are impossible, apparently. Doan I'm very serious. As for the question to LaVonne. My guess is ALL those who were spanked as children, and punished much, had to mature to the point, and often with great pain and struggle, cast off that early experience and get to REAL logic, and recognize they had been conditioned, not lovingly taught. It's not easy. It takes courage. Sometimes it takes risk. It feels like one has no place to stand at times. Like, if I can't punish what CAN I do? Best wishes, Kane On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Carlson LaVonne wrote: Nathan, On the other hand, a two-year-old has few bargaining tools. He or she is physically tiny, compared to his/her parents. This little child is just beginning to understand case/effect, and only in immediate situations. When this little child begins to understand cause/effect, the spanked child learns to hit. The non spanked child learns other ways to handle anger. LaVonne Nathan A. Barclay wrote: I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children trying to negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly fair negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First, both parties must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength. Second, it must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part of the negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not use extraneous issues to threaten each other. In regard to the first point, the nature of the parent-child relationship is such that the parents get to decide how much negotiating power their children will have. At one extreme, if parents say, "Do this or else," they give their children no negotiating power. At the other extreme, if parents refuse to put their foot down at all, they keep no real negotiating power for themselves. So the trick is for parents to find a place in between that gives their children enough negotiating power but not too much. In my view, the best types of negotiations are aimed at dealing with the issues the parents consider truly important while providing as much flexibility for the children as possible within that context. For example, suppose a little girl keeps running late because she can't decide what to wear to school and Mom, who is busy getting ready for work herself, keeps having to take time out of her own preparations to deal with the issue. The important thing for Mom is that the problem of running late be solved, not exactly how the problem is solved. Further, the solution doesn't necessarily have to be 100% foolproof. If Mom has to get involved and hurry her daughter up every now and then, it's probably not the end of the world. From that understanding of the problem, the mother and daughter could get together and try to find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't matter which of them proposes the solution that they ultimately decide together would work best. What matters is that the problem be solved. And if Mom has misgivings about her daughter's preferred solution, she might accept it on only a provisional basis, with the understanding that if it doesn't work, they'll have to change to something else. With a little luck that will give the daughter some extra incentive to make her preferred solution work. Regarding the second issue, it would be highly improper for a child who is caught shoplifting to be able to demand something from his or her parents in negotiations in exchange for not shoplifting anymore. When something is wrong, you don't do it, and you don't expect to get any special reward or compensation for not doing it. The lesson that some things in life are non-negotiable is a vital one for children to learn. On the other hand, if parents want to label something non-negotiable, they need to be able to defend why they view it in non-negotiable in ways that have as little as possible to do with "because I said so." And if they use reasons rooted in their religion, they would be wise to also provide the strongest reasons they can that are not rooted in their religion as additional reinforcement. If children understand why their parents hold a particular belief, and if the parents' behavior is consistent with what they say, children can respect their parents for standing up for what they believe is right even if the children disagree. (That is especially true when the parents and children have a strong relationship in general.) But if parents just say, "That's non-negotiable," without providing any real explanation, the risk of anger and resentment is vastly greater. Finally, if either side brings extraneous matters into a negotiation as a way of threatening the other, that upsets the balance in the negotiations. Such behavior is a way of trying to bully the other side into accepting a win-lose solution, and thus violates the spirit of trying to find a solution that both sides truly consider acceptable. That also means parents who are looking for win-win solutions need to try to avoid invoking their parental authority any more than they feel like they have to. Now, what does this have to do with the issue of punishment in general and of spanking in particular? If win-win solutions can be found within the context of these types of negotiations, it is often possible to avoid the need for threats and punishment entirely. That is especially true for children whose sense of honor is strong enough that just reminding them of what they agreed to is enough for them to comply with their part of an agreement. On the other hand, not all children will necessarily comply with an agreement just because they agreed to it. In those cases, the possibility of punishment may be needed as an enforcement provision in agreements, especially if a child wants to be allowed to push to the outermost limits of what the parents feel like they can accept. (For example, parents might feel safe allowing a child to stretch a 9:00 bedtime a great deal, but be unwilling to accept a 9:30 bedtime unless it will be enforced pretty strictly.) If all goes well, the child's knowledge that deliberately violating the agreement will result in the punishment coupled with parental understanding toward accidental violations could still make actual punishment unnecessary. But for the possibility of punishment to mean something, parents have to be willing to punish if a child pushes too far. Note that if a child has made an agreement and agreed to what the punishment will be if the agreement is violated, it is much harder for the child to resent being punished for violating the agreement as "unfair" and "arbitrary" than if the rule and punishment were imposed unilaterally by a parent, or especially if the child were punished without really understanding what the rule was (especially in practice) before the punishment took place. Those kinds of distinctions are extremely important in understanding how punishment affects children. Also, consider situations where negotiations fail, either because no common ground acceptable to both the parents and the child exists or because the common ground cannot be found in the amount of time available to look for it. If parents refuse to allow the child to proceed with a solution the parents view as unacceptable, the need for threats and punishment might still be averted if the child is willing to defer to the parents and live with a solution that the child does not really consider acceptable. But if the child refuses to defer to the parents' authority and judgment out of respect, the threat of punishment (and, if necessary, the actuality of punishment) are all the parents have left to prevent the child from doing something they cannot accept in good conscience. Punishment might not provide a long-term solution, but it at least has a chance of solving the problem in the short term. And in the longer term, parents can hope that as the child gets older, he or she will come to recognize that the parents were right after all, at least enough to make a solution that both sides can agree on possible. (Or, in some cases, the problem might solve itself as the child becomes mature enough to be allowed to do things the parents did not consider it safe to allow earlier.) Such situations are not ideal, but considering that we live on Earth, not in Heaven, always having ideal solutions available would be a bit much to hope for. As one last interesting point regarding negotiated solutions, consider the possibility of negotiating what form of punishment should be used in situations where punishment is required. From a parent's perspective, the punishment needs to be serious enough to achieve the parent's goals (which are often short-term in nature, or "serially short-term" - that is, solvable over an extended period of time through a series of short-term solutions). In some cases, parents consider it desirable to disrupt the child's activities (for example, to keep the child away from "the wrong crowd"), but often, such disruption is considered undesirable. Parents may also feel a need to consider how punishing one child might impact others. For example, how do you ground one child from watching television without having an impact on the lives of the child's siblings? After all, the siblings might very well want to play with the child who is being punished and watch television at the same time. From a child's perspective, the important points are how unpleasant the punishment will be and how much the punishment will interfere with the child's doing things he or she enjoys. Some children may view physical pain as radically worse than other forms of unpleasantness, but many do not. Children may also consider how different forms of punishment would affect their friends, and the possible embarrassment if their friends find out about their having gotten in trouble. Of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment can concentrate a given amount of unpleasantness into the shortest amount of time. That's probably one of the reasons why some people object to it so strongly: the pain of a child crying from a spanking is a lot easier to see than the same total amount of unpleasantness spread over a week or two of being grounded. We can empathize with the pain of the spanking, but it is much harder to capture the sense of time needed to empathize with the grounding - especially for people who haven't actually experienced being grounded for an extended period of time. Yet ironically, depending on the personalities and the situation involved, the same concentration of unpleasantness into a short period of time that makes spanking so objectionable to some outside parties can sometimes make it a preferred form of punishment for both parents and children. It's over with quickly, and they can get on with their lives. Which raises an interesting problem for those who support win-win solutions but oppose spanking. If parents are going to punish a child, and the child would rather be spanked than punished in some other way, does that not make spanking the child a win-win solution to the problem of how to punish the child (or at least the closest thing to a win-win solution available)? Nathan |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 01:38:42 -0700, Doan wrote:
From the thomas gordon's website: "Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation studies. The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23 different studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had methodological discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons between P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored P.E.T., 11% favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant differences." I have found that people that come from a strong belief in punishment have a very difficult time with the concept that one can go about human affairs virtually devoid of punishment as a tool. It confounds their beliefs. You may have noticed this in international affairs, as the epitome of the punisment mindset. I certainly have. When I taught PET I saw a lot of that very thing...a belief in punishment, even extending to things very far removed from dangerous to one's self or others. That conditioned mindset in folks sharpened my skills as a teacher. What I learned to do was use the principles of PET as my teaching method. The participants then had not only first hand experience by my example and their participation.....THEY felt the result the child would feel. One day I might use them here. Or have I already? The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but learn and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-) Even Dobson can't spend all his time torturing children and be believable enough to seel books. He has his public and his publisher to consider. {;- Do you really think that people who debate you here just blindly, out of some Disney "Zippidy Do Dah" syrupy, emotional, thoughtless grab at a picnic of life chose this or other non punitive parenting methods? It took me years to even hear of it, and I struggled to stay away from punishment with my own children...lacking a repertoire. It taught me a great deal about patience....but PET turned the corner for me. For the first time there were the very tools I had been looking for. I read it standing at a supermarket book stand cover to cover...it was that striking...but then one has to be looking. And I put PET, Thomas Gordan, and his trainers to the test, not on children, but on adults first, and allowed the methods to be used on me by other parents learning. The results you see above in that survey are remarkable. In a population that is 90% spanked, if you are to be believed, THAT MANY got it? Damn, man. It took far more than that to get people to believe the world was round, even with the circumnavigation of the globe. Spanking is GONE GONE GONE, if that many are getting it. Wave goodbye. Doan And I'm quit curious what a "comparison" is. Who did the comparing? People that had attended and applied a number of programs and alternatives? Or a panel of "experts?" I suspect that, just by the language of the claim (look familiar to you at all, Doan?) that this is a weasel research. But I still like that that percentage got it, even with the deck stacked, very likely, by the research, and the fact that 90% of the population are spanked, and probably 99.99999% were punished fairly regularly. You have succeeded in brightening my day. Wanna talk about my citing of Singapore police claims about youth crime in the past few weeks? Or didn't you lie? Could it simply have been a mistake. Unlike you, I don't need the ego boost of calling others liars when they have NOT attempted to deceive. Did you make a mistake, or did you attempt to deceive? Kane On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote: How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. When one person tries to control another, you can always expect some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the other reacting to it. This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers. They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way. "Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel, but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to adults' power and does precisely what is demanded. These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books I've collected along the way: "Be firm but fair." "Insist that your children obey." "Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking." "Discipline with love." "Demonstrate your parental right to lead." "The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership." What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an action-and-reaction event. This omission is important, for it implies that all children passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and, eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter. However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged for mercy, or promised we would never do it again. We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation. It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such statements as: * "Kids not only need punishment, they want it." * "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or bad, because justice is security." * "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love them." * "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears almost relieved when it finally comes." * "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child] understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his own impulses." * "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility." * "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted." * "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their relationship." * "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy relationships." Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's "Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a "benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a "dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you "do it lovingly." Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time again: * "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents, children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself." * "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight." It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful. The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is, I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions, an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping behaviors" or "coping mechanisms". The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) * Resisting, defying, being negative * Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing * Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing * Hitting, being belligerent, combative * Breaking rules and laws * Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry * Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth * Blaming others, tattling, telling on others * Bossing or bullying others * Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the adult * Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking, currying favor with adults * Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming * Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look good, making others look bad * Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off * Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away, quitting school, cutting classes * Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing the adult off, keeping one's distance * Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless * Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant approval, feeling insecure * Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments * Overeating, excessive dieting * Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet * Drinking heavily, using drugs * Cheating in school, plagiarizing As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own experience, they invariably make such comments as: "Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the behaviors it produces?" "All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't want to see in my children [or my students]." "I don't see in the list any good effects or positive behaviors." "If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our own children certainly will, too." After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a 180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals. For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International: USA Gordon Training International 531 Stevens Avenue West Solana Beach, CA 92075 Telephone (858) 481-8121 E-mail: Website: http://www.gordontraining.com |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 10:41:06 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote: "Chris" wrote in message ... How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. snip The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like something deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction. You are correct. That IS the point. To explore the actual experiences of people, not create, as you seem to be doing below, move away from the real and into the theoretical. To teach someone about how others experience things it is useful to point out their own experiences that may be similar. An objective analysis Again, a jump away from the point of training people to use and develop their capacity for empathy. PET is based on empathy as ONE of its principles. There are others of course. would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to affect individual children. You seem to be missing something. The exercise was with a room full of people, so in fact one would have a rich producting of of just what you ask for. Usually such exercises result in long lists of wall posted newsprint display of the group's responses. And one would then know how individual people in this group were effected by adult controls. This exercise, instead, creates an amalgam of negative effects across all the people in the group, a combination that will almost certainly be significantly longer and uglier than a typical child is likely to exhibit. It IS ugly. That IS the point. And of course the many will have more kinds of experiences and reactions. That isn't a fault, it's an eye-opener. One finds out rather quickly that not only are there many effects, but that there are some one an personally identify with. Worse, a person might add something to the list because it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it happened on a much more regular basis. What would be the problem? It isn't a frequency issue. The purpose is to identify different effects by adult control over children. I'm not saying that efforts to control children through force don't have negative consequences, or that parents should adopt a dismissive attitude toward the risk of such consequences. I'm not sure then what your point would be. The exercise is a class room exercise. Classrooms are for learning. Information is needed to learn. But it is important not to blow the risks out of proportion either. It isn't a listing of risks. It's a listing of effects. If parents want to do a risk/benefit analysis regarding whether the risk involved in exerting their authority in certain types of situations is likely to be greater or less than the benefits, they need an accurate appraisal of the risks, not an exaggerated one. Gordon wasn't promoting, in this exercise, a risk analysis of punishment. Just a review of the fact there is some negative effect. In fact it IS up to the participant to judge the risk/benefit themselves and reject or accept. The problem in this society is that the risk/benefit of punishment is rarely even looked at, or if done, because of long taught, conditioned, societal values, the risk will be rated low and the benefits relatively high for punishment. The unchallenged belief in punishment as a way of controlling relationships has consequences we see around us all the time. Divorce rates, school dropout rates, crime rates, failures in international diplomacy, job failures. When human interactions fail to produce wanted results one can pretty well count on one of the parties at least, coming from a punishment model. Nathan Kane |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
Chris wrote:
How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. When one person tries to control another, you can always expect some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the other reacting to it. This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers. They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way. "Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel, but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to adults' power and does precisely what is demanded. These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books I've collected along the way: "Be firm but fair." "Insist that your children obey." "Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking." "Discipline with love." "Demonstrate your parental right to lead." "The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership." What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an action-and-reaction event. This omission is important, for it implies that all children passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and, eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter. However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged for mercy, or promised we would never do it again. We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation. It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such statements as: * "Kids not only need punishment, they want it." * "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or bad, because justice is security." * "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love them." * "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears almost relieved when it finally comes." * "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child] understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his own impulses." * "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility." * "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted." * "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their relationship." * "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy relationships." Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's "Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a "benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a "dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you "do it lovingly." Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time again: * "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents, children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself." * "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight." It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful. The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is, I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions, an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping behaviors" or "coping mechanisms". The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) * Resisting, defying, being negative * Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing * Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing * Hitting, being belligerent, combative * Breaking rules and laws * Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry * Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth * Blaming others, tattling, telling on others * Bossing or bullying others * Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the adult * Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking, currying favor with adults * Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming * Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look good, making others look bad * Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off * Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away, quitting school, cutting classes * Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing the adult off, keeping one's distance * Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless * Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant approval, feeling insecure * Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments * Overeating, excessive dieting * Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet * Drinking heavily, using drugs * Cheating in school, plagiarizing As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own experience, they invariably make such comments as: "Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the behaviors it produces?" "All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't want to see in my children [or my students]." "I don't see in the list any good effects or positive behaviors." "If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our own children certainly will, too." After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a 180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals. For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International: USA Gordon Training International 531 Stevens Avenue West Solana Beach, CA 92075 Telephone (858) 481-8121 E-mail: Website: http://www.gordontraining.com --------------------------- ABSO-****ING-LUTELY!! Steve |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
Doan wrote:
From the thomas gordon's website: "Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation studies. The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23 different studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had methodological discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons between P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored P.E.T., 11% favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant differences." --------------------------------- All this means is the for most purposes, programs similar to this are simularly effective, so you're lying like the **** you always are. The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but learn and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-) Doan ------------------------------------ No, you vicious ****, again what you're trying to pass off is the individualized permission to "hey, if you think for a moment that PET doesn't work "for you" just shuck it and start hitting again!", which is nothing more than your usual excuse for your violent anti-child perversion!! Steve On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote: How Children Really React to Control by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D. When one person tries to control another, you can always expect some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the other reacting to it. This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers. They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way. "Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel, but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to adults' power and does precisely what is demanded. These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books I've collected along the way: "Be firm but fair." "Insist that your children obey." "Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking." "Discipline with love." "Demonstrate your parental right to lead." "The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership." What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an action-and-reaction event. This omission is important, for it implies that all children passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and, eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter. However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged for mercy, or promised we would never do it again. We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs. Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation. It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child "asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such statements as: * "Kids not only need punishment, they want it." * "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or bad, because justice is security." * "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love them." * "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears almost relieved when it finally comes." * "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child] understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his own impulses." * "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility." * "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted." * "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their relationship." * "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy relationships." Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's "Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a "benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a "dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you "do it lovingly." Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time again: * "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents, children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself." * "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight." It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful. The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is, I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions, an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping behaviors" or "coping mechanisms". The Coping Mechanisms Children Use Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) * Resisting, defying, being negative * Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing * Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing * Hitting, being belligerent, combative * Breaking rules and laws * Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry * Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth * Blaming others, tattling, telling on others * Bossing or bullying others * Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the adult * Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking, currying favor with adults * Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming * Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look good, making others look bad * Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off * Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away, quitting school, cutting classes * Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing the adult off, keeping one's distance * Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless * Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant approval, feeling insecure * Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments * Overeating, excessive dieting * Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet * Drinking heavily, using drugs * Cheating in school, plagiarizing As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own experience, they invariably make such comments as: "Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the behaviors it produces?" "All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't want to see in my children [or my students]." "I don't see in the list any good effects or positive behaviors." "If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our own children certainly will, too." After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a 180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals. For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International: USA Gordon Training International 531 Stevens Avenue West Solana Beach, CA 92075 Telephone (858) 481-8121 E-mail: Website: http://www.gordontraining.com |
#16
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
There is a difference between a "punitive" parent or teacher and one who occasionally makes reasonable use of punishment. --------------------- Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a child's actions. But punishment is alright to use in ONE and ONLY ONE circumstance, where a child is being criminal to other children or to adults without them first having been and done so to him. This is rare, and even so comes from some kind of emotional abuse and is the child's personal compensation for it. Whether it is bullying or destructive behavior, it has to be stopped because it cannot be allowed to succeed in a civilied society. Even then, note that we do not even punish adults corporally for this, instead we isolate and restrict them in jails and prisons, and we do not inflict bodily pain calling it "cruel and unusual". One of my best friends in elementary school was my fourth grade teacher (who I first became friends with when I was in second grade and stayed friends with until she left the school sometime when I was in junior high). Teachers in my school did spank occasionally, and one time she paddled me on the hand (her normal method of using corporal punishment - this was in the mid 1970's, by the way). I was embarrassed to get in trouble with her, and I was afraid my getting in trouble like that might hurt the way she felt about me, but I don't remember ever holding it against her. And as I said, we remained friends long after I left her class. ----------------------- Nonsense, that was your self-deception, you actually repressed your hatred of her action out of fear and it migrated to elsewhere in your psyche to live again as your sick desire to torture children's hands. It is the very reason that you are right here right now quite guiltily and neurotically trying to defend yourself from the poster's obvious attack on your sick little perversion. From my experience (and I think anecdotal evidence I've seen from others tends to back me up), -------------------- This is illicit in reasoned exchange, anecdote, yours or others, are irrelevant and undocumented. what is really important is how the use of authority fits into the overall relationship. If an adult exercises authority in a way that exhibits a lack of concern for a child's needs or desires, the child probably will react to punishment from that person in much the way Dr. Gordon describes. If an adult normally cares about what a child needs and wants and generally exercises authority only for reasons that the child can respect (if not necessarily always agree with), occasional instances of punishment are far less likely to cause any significant harm to the relationship. ----------------------------------- Nonsense, wrong assaults on children, if rare, simply become more shocking and formative to the child. If not rare, they merely serve to engrain the compensatory behaviors that those first shocking occasions first gave rise to. Steve |
#17
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"Chris" wrote in message primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping methods you employed as a youngster?) The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like something deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction. ---------------------- Quite right, to generate an awareness of the results of one's actions in another person, something that is systematically avoided and even denied by the opposing philosophies. We ARE, after all, interested in the actual cause and effect upon children's minds and behaviors!! An objective analysis would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to affect individual children. ----------------------- It is disingenuous and has abusive motives to even try to find some group of children for which abusive punishment might be suitable, and it does nothing but point up the desperate neurotic origin of your sick little perversion. Child torturing has never been effective, all it does is act as a compensation for your own early abuse. This exercise, instead, creates an amalgam of negative effects across all the people in the group, a combination that will almost certainly be significantly longer and uglier than a typical child is likely to exhibit. --------------------- Nonsense, these are what is felt, not necessarily "exhibited". YOU don't like the anti-behaviorist emphasis on invisible internal processes, you would like to claim the human mind is some "black box", one that cannot BE understood, when each of us is totally aware of what everything another does to us and how it affects us, IF WE ADMIT and accept it to awareness instead of repressing it and substituting your "anti-self" abusive philosophy for it. Yes, behaviorism is nothing more than a mean-spirited and itself a neurotic symptom-ridden illness that rejects feeling response and the sanctity of the self. Worse, a person might add something to the list because it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it happened on a much more regular basis. ------------------------ You're merely afraid of being taken to task for ALL your crimes, like a criminal in the dock. I'm not saying that efforts to control children through force don't have negative consequences, or that parents should adopt a dismissive attitude toward the risk of such consequences. But it is important not to blow the risks out of proportion either. ------------------- In other words you want to establish permissive excuses for crimes against children so that your own crimes can be excused, and even so that you can avail yourself of them when again when you need your next "fix" of compensatory viciousness for your neurosis that was caused by YOUR OWN abuse as a child. If parents want to do a risk/benefit analysis regarding whether the risk involved in exerting their authority -------------------- "Exerting 'their' authority", nooooooooooo. You misunderstand, this whole exercise is intended to show you that authority is NOT yours, that the entire notion of parental "authority" is entirely ILLEGITIMATE, and that use of it always comes to NO GOOD. We realize that your loss of authority will be discomforting to you, because of your desperate need to feel power after having been so abused and your power so stolen from you as a child, but allowing you to pass on this violence to yet another generation would be a very wrong thing to do. Instead we have to stop the abuse of this generation, even if it deprives you former victims of your compensatory outlet, because THAT IS HOW THE SICKNESS IS TRANSMITTED generation to generation! in certain types of situations is likely to be greater or less than the benefits, they need an accurate appraisal of the risks, not an exaggerated one. Nathan ------------------------------------- Nonsense, you're fishing for an excuse to abuse. Steve |
#18
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
"Kane" wrote in message om... On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 10:41:06 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay" wrote: The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like something deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction. You are correct. That IS the point. To explore the actual experiences of people, not create, as you seem to be doing below, move away from the real and into the theoretical. To teach someone about how others experience things it is useful to point out their own experiences that may be similar. An objective analysis Again, a jump away from the point of training people to use and develop their capacity for empathy. PET is based on empathy as ONE of its principles. There are others of course. I view empathay as both extremely valuable and potentially dangerous. Without empathy, true objectivity is impossible because a person doesn't really understand the consequences of an action if he can't empathize with those who will be affected by those consequences. But when empathy is overly focused on one particular aspect of a situation, causing other aspects of the situation to be ignored or given less weight than they deserve, that excessive focus can be extremely dangerous. Yes, it is valuable for parents to empathize with how their children are likely to feel about assertion of parental authority, and to understand how their children might react. But parents also have to take a larger and longer view, to consider (and empathize with) the consequences if they fail to exert their authority. What will it do to the child's future if they do not intervene? What dangers will the child's behavior present to the child or to others? How would their child's behavior affect other children, both now and in the future? And, for that matter, how would their child's behavior affect them (the parents)? As I said, parents need to empathize. But if they get so caught up in empathizing with one aspect of the overall situation that they ignore other aspects, they are likely to make worse choices than they would if they empathize but also look at the overall picture objectively. I view empathy as a part of objectivity, not a replacement for it. would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to affect individual children. You seem to be missing something. The exercise was with a room full of people, so in fact one would have a rich producting of of just what you ask for. Usually such exercises result in long lists of wall posted newsprint display of the group's responses. And one would then know how individual people in this group were effected by adult controls. If the exercise is conducted in such a way that each person's list is seen separately, that would indeed portray what reactions individual children went through, although the question of how often the various reactions occurred would remain. And if that is the way the exercise is conducted in the classes, then the problem of not providing an idea of how many different reactions individual children tend to go through would not apply in that context. snip Worse, a person might add something to the list because it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it happened on a much more regular basis. What would be the problem? It isn't a frequency issue. The purpose is to identify different effects by adult control over children. I assume you're aware that people with agendas frequently manipulate their choice of what information to present and how to present it in order to make their viewpoint look as strong as possible. My concern is that Dr. Gordon seems to be doing that here, calling attention to what can go wrong without encouraging people to examine the entire context. To the extent that he includes the possibility of children's reacting by behaving at all, he portrays it in a negative light ("Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet"). Further, he encourages people to focus on how many of the coping behaviors they exhibited, not on how common or serious they were (especially in contrast with the total length of childhood). So the exercise seems aimed more at causing people to form a negative opinion of the use of authority than at causing them to objectively evaluate how the risks and benefits of using authority balance against each other. snip The problem in this society is that the risk/benefit of punishment is rarely even looked at, or if done, because of long taught, conditioned, societal values, the risk will be rated low and the benefits relatively high for punishment. I'm inclined to strongly agree that society (or at least a very large part of it) tends to underestimate the risks and overestimate the effectiveness. But I think Dr. Gordon's article errs in the opposite direction. The unchallenged belief in punishment as a way of controlling relationships has consequences we see around us all the time. Divorce rates, school dropout rates, crime rates, failures in international diplomacy, job failures. This accusation has some validity, but it ignores other, more important causes. It seems to me that the biggest factor in the divorce rate is that we as a society have largely replaced, "for better, or for worse... til death do you part" with "until you get tired of that person or find someone you'd rather be with." Yes, situations where spouses' desire to punish each other drives them farther apart are a contributing factor. But I think lack of commitment - both on a personal level and as part of the legal concept of what marriage is - is the deeper problem. (And I would point out that society's belief in punishment is probably weaker now than it was before the divorce rate started skyrocketing, not stronger.) With dropout rates, I think the biggest problem is a lack of choice in our education system. When families have little or no choice regarding what kind of school a child will go to, and what is available is not a good fit for the child, that creates serious problems. Of course if the child reacts to those problems by getting bored or frustrated and misbehaving, and is in turn punished for that misbehavior, that makes the situation even worse. But if families could (and would) choose schools that were a better fit for their children, and if children who are considering dropping out had the option of changing to a type of school that fit their needs and desires better instead, that would deal with the problem a whole lot closer to its source. The people most likely to be criminals are those who suffered abusive treatment as children (and by "abusive," I refer to more than just what legally qualifies as abuse). When parents yell or punish because they are angry rather than because they make a calm, rational decision that a child's behavior warrants a particular punishment, the damage can be enormous. And if parents take out anger or frustration they get from elsewhere on their children, the situation is even worse. Portraying the crime rate as a result of excessive belief in punishment when the things criminals went through as children are so disproportionately likely to involve a lot more than just punishment is highly misleading. I'm not trying to say that "the unchallenged belief in punishment" doesn't cause problems in all of these areas. A lot of people do seriously overestimate how much punishment can accomplish and underestimate the importance of other things. But I think you're painting a highly misleading picture when you blame belief in punishment for issues that have other important causes and contributing factors. |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message ... Nathan A. Barclay wrote: There is a difference between a "punitive" parent or teacher and one who occasionally makes reasonable use of punishment. --------------------- Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a child's actions. I won't quote your whole message, but I find your faith in your own infallibility both obnoxious and insulting - especially when you try to tell me I'm wrong about my own life just because my reactions don't fit your prejudice. That reflects a degree of prejudice that would probably make a brick wall easier to have an intelligent debate with. I doubt that you would be any more likely than a wall to even consider changing your mind, and at least a wall wouldn't insult me along the way. |
#20
|
|||
|
|||
How Children REALLY React To Control
"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message ... Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a child's actions. I think I'll respond to this point after all, if only for the benefit of anyone else who might be interested in the issue. Adults face consequences for far more than just criminal offenses. For example, an adult who is obnoxious to his boss or is unwilling to do his job can generally expect to get fired. That, in turn, can result being unable to buy food, pay the rent, and so forth - especially if a person keeps being obnoxious or lazy and getting fired. The idea of firing children from their "job" of being their parents' children because they behave obnoxiously, or because they refuse to do a reasonable share of work around the house, or some such would be completely impractical - not to mention reprehensible in the eyes of most civilized people. Therefore, parents are given authority to punish children in other ways that are far less damaging than throwing the children out on the street would be. In other cases, actions that parents punish children for involve a danger to the child. I suppose one could argue that if a five-year-old girl wants to go wandering through a dangerous part of town alone at night, it is her life at stake and thus should be her choice. But most people take the view that a five-year-old girl doesn't understand the risks well enough to be ready to make that choice for herself. Therefore, we give parents authority to make and enforce rules to protect their children's safety. Do some parents abuse their power? Yes. Do some parents do too much threatening and not enough discussing and explaining and looking for compromises and alternatives? Yes. But by and large, the system works. And throwing it out before we're positive that we have something that will work better in the real world, with real parents and real children, would be foolish. To the best of my knowledge, even societies that seek to abolish corporal punishment invariably allow other forms of punishment. Nathan |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Chemically beating children: Pinellas Poisoners Heilman and Talley | Todd Gastaldo | Pregnancy | 0 | July 4th 04 11:26 PM |
misc.kids FAQ on Breastfeeding Past the First Year | [email protected] | Info and FAQ's | 0 | January 16th 04 09:15 AM |
| | Kids should work... | Kane | Spanking | 12 | December 10th 03 02:30 AM |
| Ray attempts Biblical justification: was U.N. rules Canada should ban spanking | Kane | Spanking | 105 | November 30th 03 05:48 AM |
So much for the claims about Sweden | Kane | Spanking | 10 | November 5th 03 06:31 AM |