Dennis was U.N. rules Canada should ban spanking

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 22:42:01 GMT, "Dennis Hancock"
wrote:


"Kane" wrote in message
It isn't dishonest of me to consider the link between abuse and
spanking nor is it dishonest of me to consider the state of the
world
and its societies as possibly being linked to the use of pain and
humiliation in parenting.

One can find a 'link' to just about everything,

Yes, one can. I've noticed the spankers do, just as you will do very
soon in this reply of yours.

Do you believe that pain received in childhood reduces the pain given
by that child when she grows up?

yet there is a vast
difference between 'abuse' and 'spanking'.

A claim frequently made and rarely defended with any rigor at all.
There is a very fine and tenuous line between the two. Many variables
are involved. The child, the parent, the events, the time of day, the
reasons for the abuse or spanking, even the health of the child, and
much more.

To try to qualify the link by
using the state of the world and it's societies, you are ignoring the
ever
growing psychobabble that we have been spoon fed for the past twenty
years
about the evils of spanking.

I'm not ignoring it at all. I tend to view it, as I have written, as
weak compared to my observations for over 40 years, in both
professional mileu and private life.

Perhaps the absence of spanking is the greatest link to the state of
the
world today?

Doubtful given the prevalence.

Since more and more begin to follow that advice almost daily.

All you must do is come up with a lot of children who weren't spanked
or punished in our prisons and mental wards. Should be easy. Give it a
shot.

Caveat: Note that other researches have gone bust trying to find them.
I never had and I've looked.

Or is that beyond your comprehension.

Not in the least. I began at age 19 to consider this issue. Very
shortly it became apparent to me that when the unspanked child still
behaved badly it was more likely a product of other more severe
emotional or psychological punishments.

I suppose you use 'reason' to a small child of one or two to keep him
from
running into the street. Well it doesn't work.

There we go again. I do not "'reason'" with small children. I set up
systems, as humans have had to do since the times when small children
were the favorite prey of pack and predatory animals that preyed on
the edges of the human pack.

Jerry Alborn answered this question most eloquently some time back.
I'll point you to his comment:

http://tinyurl.com/rfzq

or
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%2...igy.com&rnum=1

Not only have I proven to my own satisfaction and written many times
about the method I used to teach children not to run into traffic, I
do know that punishment does not work to keep children from attempting
to make street entries. I've posted this study before, and I'll post
it again just for you, since you appear far more dedicated to
discrediting me than to searching for facts that might confound your
locked in belief....three of which you've already shared with us.

Let's start with the bonifides of one of those you believe is spoon-
feeding you psychobabble, shall we? Then I'll provide you with a
little note about what his observations showed on the very question
you bring up:

http://www.paxis.org/people/DR.%20Em...aphy-1999.html


And here is what he had to say about his study:

In the Summer 1987 issue of _Children_ magazine, Dr. Dennis Embry
writes:
"Since 1977 I have been heading up the only long-term project
designed to counteract pedestrian accidents to preschool-aged
children.
(Surprisingly, getting struck by a car is about the third leading
cause
of death to young children in the United States.)
"Actual observation of parents and children shows that spanking,
scolding, reprimanding and nagging INCREASES the rate of street
entries
by children. Children use going into the street as a near-perfect way
to gain parents' attention.
"Now there is a promising new educational intervention program,
called Safe Playing. The underlying principles of the program are
simple:

1. Define safe boundaries in a POSITIVE way. "Safe
players play on the grass or sidewalk."
2. Give stickers for safe play. That makes it more fun
than playing dangerously.
3. Praise your child for safe play.

"These three principles have an almost instant effect on
increasing safe play. We have observed children who had been spanked
many times a day for going into the street, yet they continued to do
it.
The moment the family began giving stickers and praise for safe play,
the
children stopped going into the street.

Dennis D. Embry, Ph.D.
University of Kansas
Lawrence Kansas"

So you see it's not about reasoning with the child as in cause and
effect or other abstractions (and they are to the toddler), but to
simple management of what abilities they do have...though this does
NOT in any way endorse the idea that the child can be left unattended
by a busy street.

Even before one can learn to reason, they learn what behavior is
harmful. A
child will not touch a hot stove again once burned because of his
curiosity,

They assumption they won't try again is disproven, and waiting for
them to find out when they are too young to be taught with
non-punishing methods my and has resulted in serious lifelong scars
for the child. I'll pass thank you and supervise my child until she is
old enough to teach and even then I'll supervise.

and a swat on the behind which may wind up saving it's life is well
worthwhile in the long run.

The stove is a direct logical consequence and may serve to teach the
desired behavior (at the risk of a severe burn of course) one cannot
allow the logical teaching consequence of letting a child be hit by a
care to learn not to go into traffic.

Before the age of reason it is quite confusing to the child to be
running and playing, unaware of any impending danger, and have a giant
swoop one up and lay on with vigor the child's behind.

The words "car," "traffic," "street," and "don't," are very likely not
going to be processed accurately, and we don't usually when we have
sudden pain and fear layed on by someone.

In fact most mothers that pay attention, and most have to, know that
saying "don't" or "no" to a toddler will very likely result in them
doing exactly what they were asked not to do, spank or no spank.

Most spankers, especially those that kid themselves, wind up
supervising just like we non punishers, and finally getting the child
to the age they get it.....but we don't kid ourselves that it was
punishment that did it. As we know it's the passage of time and the
developing brain that much more likely turned the trick.

I pity those who feel they can use 'reason' and 'logic' on a one or
two year
old,

Me to, right along with those that think the child will understand the
logic of being whacked a good'un and had words babbled at him or her.

and just hope they don't realize how flawed and deadly their handling
of a situation can truly be.

On the contrary. The flaw much more likely arrises in the parent that
believes, because the child froze a few times out of fear with the
adult present, that they will do so when danger threatens. The child
under six is going to have a very difficult time connecting the danger
to the freezing because they will not have absorbed with any meaning
what the defined danger actually is.

They will merrily ride their tricycle behind the car backing out of
the driveway and be terrified of going toward the street...not really
knowing why.

The fact of the matter is, lessons learned without fear and pain are
far more powerful than those with.

But I still, in either case, would not leave my child
unsupervised...would you?

Think you can spank them enough, creatively, to trust them to not go
into traffic without you?


You may not LIKE it, my examining and questioning, but there is
nothing dishonest about it.

If you think so I'm sure you can point out what is dishonest on my
part by showing us the truth you think I am not showing.

No?

Kane

It's doubtful the use of brain scans can provide much insight as to
lessons
learned by experience, even painful experience.

Why? The point of the studies is to do just that.

All they can do is measure
the response of the brain to a situation, not the logical analytical
thought
involved pertaining to one's perceptions of the event.

On dear, one of the poor souls that do not know of the extensive
mapping of the brain going on for years now that identifies exactly
such thing. They know precisely, for instance, where conscience
derives in the brain, down to a small area. It can be tested with pics
and other testing while the subject is having their brain scanned.

Even the lowest of creatures react to pain, learn to avoid certain
situations once they've experienced a bad consequence of their
actions.

It often takes a number of lessons in animal and human. Even a
flatworm, famous in psych 202 college classes, will try a couple of
more times to get to food and light at the expense of some pain.
Eventually they will learn, but while MY child is learning she may
well get to die from the lesson.

Are
you saying that humans are less than animals in their ability to deal
with
pain?

Actually there isn't much difference in pain responses.

Our human superiority is that we can, once we pass out of the animal
linear thinking stage of toddler hood, make reasoned choices based on
an analysis of the situation with all kinds of variables (as well
learn by experimentation and later by study of other's work).

Animals never get to our ability of abstraction and cause and effect
reasoning. Some of the apes just skirt it but can be confounded by
things that a grown human would laugh at if we presented them as a
problem.

We know the source and transport of water. Animals cannot figure that
out.

Once we reach the age of reason it is easy, quite, to figure out how
one stays alive by staying out of traffic...I call it "The Flat Possum
Lesson," though all I could ever find for my kids was a flat Racoon on
that particular day.

One was old enough for reason, the other old enough to believe his
elder when she reactied to the lesson.

I assume you know now to research a little, so why not do so next time
out?

The Embry Street Entry study is just one of those that give us more
than a little hint that thousands of years of thumpin' butt may just
not have been entirely in the best interests of our race.

Check out Tom Edison....not only not spanked but pulled by his mother
from school because of the hitting done to him by a teacher. I do not
think Albert Einstein was spanked. At least the info about him from
his teen years showed a remarkably indulgent family that pulled him
from Gymnasium (HS) were he was failing mathematics, and sent him off
to Italy to family friends to wander the sunny roads there and have
what later was identified as his epiphany of E=MC2.

All of our children who are spanked and punished, I estimate, has some
portion, sometimes significant portions, of their development
displaced into survival reactivity.

It's a fascinating study. I hope you'll join in.

The very first thing you need to do though is admit that there might
be the slightest possibility that the spankers have erred. I don't
think you can even entertain it as speculation, but I tried.

Step two is easier if you have managed step one. Get a book on the
stages of childhood development and project all the behaviors of
children you know into that list.

In other words, instead of thinking of children in terms of adult
understandings of right and wrong, good and bad, evil, willful, etc.
try thinking in terms of all behavior, before the age of 6, as being
driven by nature...forced compulsive exploration of the environment,
which you are just a part of to the child, once she does that 1.5 to 2
year old definition of self separate from the environment and YOU.

Best of luck..

Kane