It's standard to dismiss comparisons between animals. But we are ALL very similar, with only minor differences.
The truth is, ALL animals instinctively PHYSICALLY (as well as "verbally") discipline their offspring.
It's not abuse. It's straight-forward and to the point.
We can all anecdote till the cows come home, but to your "I never had a problem" I can likewise say "I never WAS a problem", nor were my siblings. We were all smacked, even if it was SO long ago we don't remember it. I hardly ever remember any lectures, either, because it wasn't necessary. We were pretty free to roam because we already knew the limits and how to control ourselves (you could say we were "mature") - and we knew M&D "had the weapons and were willing to use them" - which they almost never did.
And again I'll say, the historical precedent is there. Physical discipline worked. There's no question. We have LESS control now in this country, both of children/humans, and of animals (as Cesar said, he never saw wacko dogs until he came to America). What's the correlation? Dr. Spock came along, and society changed. Not for the better.
Dear the OlLine Rebel,
"It's standard to dismiss comparisons between animals. But we are ALL very similar, with only minor differences."
I didn't say that we don't have similarities with other mammals.
But my sons aren't dogs.
"The truth is, ALL animals instinctively PHYSICALLY (as well as 'verbally') discipline their offspring.
"It's not abuse. It's straight-forward and to the point."
In that I began my posts agreeing that spanking one's child doesn't necessarily constitute child abuse, you're arguing against a straw man.
"We can all anecdote till the cows come home, but to your 'I never had a problem' I can likewise say 'I never WAS a problem', nor were my siblings. We were all smacked,..."
That's nice. Neither was I. And I was hit, as well. I can't say that the spankings, smacks, slaps, and hits I received made me a well-behaved child. I can say that my sister and one of my brothers took the brunt of this stuff, and they didn't turn out quite as well as I did, or my other brother. The spanks-to-success ratio in my family seems inverse.
Thus, when I had my own children, I decided to try to raise them without resorting to hitting, spanking, slapping, or smacking.
It's worked out rather well. Extremely well.
My question, then, is whether it was necessary for my parents to hit me, or your parents to hit you. In both our cases, the hitting seems to have been pretty minimal, and we both seemed to have been pretty well-behaved kids. What would have happened if our parents never hit us? We don't know.
What I know, though, is that my sons are doing quite well, having never been hit, smacked, slapped, or spanked.
"And again I'll say, the historical precedent is there. Physical discipline worked. There's no question. We have LESS control now in this country, both of children/humans, and of animals (as Cesar said, he never saw wacko dogs until he came to America). What's the correlation? Dr. Spock came along, and society changed. Not for the better."
Don't mistake a lack of hitting, slapping, spanking, and slapping with a necessary lack of discipline. I know plenty of folks where that's true, but it isn't necessarily so. I also know folks who hit their kids, and their kids are still willful and troublesome.
Most folks consider my wife and I to be rather strict disciplinarians. Although we don't hit our kids, we still have always enforced discipline, and more importantly, have always maintained exceedingly high expectations of behavior and accomplishment.
Instead of hitting my kids, I've labored hard to create a household environment that reinforces good behavior and encourages high achievement. We're overrun with books, magazines, newspapers, and journals. We have chess sets, board games, construction sets, Legos, chemistry sets, science kits, microscopes, basketballs, baseballs, bats & gloves, footballs, swingsets, monkey bars, a large, flat yard in which to play, good, solid bicycles, a studio-grade piano, desks & chairs, crayons, drawing paper, canvas, paint, and other lots of really fun stuff.
However, many of our friends consider my children rather deprived because of the "austerity" of our household, in that we have no video games, no Nintendo, no Gameboy, no Wii, no Xbox, no cable TV, no iPods (although both sons have stereos in their rooms, and are free to draw on the household collection of classical music CDs), no cellphones for the young 'uns, no TVs in the room (we have one TV in the family room, and use it mostly to watch old movies), and the computer is used primarily for school and personal research, with supervision.
Thus, my two sons have preferences for reading, playing outside, drawing, creating their own games with each other, riding their bikes, writing, developing their own personal projects (my younger son is trying to teach himself a bit of nuclear physics to figure out the best way to get to Mars, the older son is focusing on teaching himself Latin, as the high school that we're considering for him has invited him to attend part-time next year, a year early, and he wants to skip Latin I and go directly to Latin II), playing chess, listening to classical music, playing the piano, and inventing bad puns (the worse the pun, the better the pun).
My focus has never been on the "don'ts" of life, but rather on all the stuff that is permitted within the boundaries of life.
I haven't yet had to hit, spank, smack, or slap either of my sons. Nowadays, I don't have to do much direct discipline, at all. When they're told they're out of line, they apologize, and endeavor not to repeat their mistakes.
At this late date, I'm not sure why I'd change things.
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