Soccer moms can blow me.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

Reading all this, I wonder how many of you have children(rant warning)...

Spanking
All kids are different.  My son is 4 and this is what I have observed.  If I only use one form of discipline, it loses its effectiveness.  If all I ever do is spank, it doesn't work.  If all I ever do is time out, it doesn't work.  I take away toys, especially of he doesn't pick them up.  If he takes too long to pick up his toys, he doesn't get snuggle time before bed.  Then the next night, I just ask if he wants snuggle time and he picks his toys up fast.  My husband and I were talking the other day about why our son acts differnt depending on who does the spanking.  He said because he spanks harder.  I said, no, when you spank him it hurts his pride, when I spank him it hurts his feelings.  If you spank a kid on the butt with your hand, you end up hurting yourself more than them.  It is not about inflicting pain, it is about getting their attention.  I also have a rule, for myself, the angrier I get, the more likely I am to use a time out.  

ADHD/ADD/Whatever
This is an actual disorder, but it is really rare.  It does respond to Ritalin.  The problem came in when teachers and parents and busdrivers and doctors and pharmicists and etc. found this out.  Suddenly normal childhood behavior was being examined to the point where any child that did not fit the norm was in danger of being drugged.  Teachers wanted to put my nephew on Ritalin because he did not pay attention like he should have.  Turned out he needed glasses realllllllly bad, but he had passed all the vision tests at school, so no one thought of that.  Thank goddess that my sister-in-law is a raving bitch and told them to stick it.  

Parents
Anybody watch any of these shows where a nanny comes in and takes over.  Hilarious, but not meant to be a comedy.  The parents let the children run the house.  They have no control because they gave it up.  I have seen this happen.  People don't discipline their kids when they are toddlers, because they are so cute.  Whatever.  You can discipline a child and still let them be a child.  When these out of control toddlers get a little older and are out of control teens, everyone is so surprised.  Not me.  I expect things to go to hell in a hand basket.

All of this being said.  All parents are unique, each child is unique.  You have to be creative and find balance.  My child is happy and well behaved.  Want to know how I know this?  People tell me this and they always say it as if they are surprised.  Fuck'em.  Just because my hubby and I look like hippies, doesn't mean we are idiots.  He likes to say

Don't let the long hair fool ya

I'm a pretty good parent because I put my child first almost all of the time.  I know if I don't put myself first sometimes, I will be too much of a wreck to be able to put him first.

[DJRubberducky]

eldora,

I have very deliberately chosen never to breed, in part because I don't think I could discipline effectively.  It has not stopped me from forming ideas of what I would do were I in that situation - if anything, that's what's helped me come to the decision never to take on a parenting job.

[Hoshiko]

I tend to agree with Hos =)

Well, except on the point that ADHD doesn't exist.  

I never said it didn't exist. I believe it exists just as much as depression or anxiety or any other mental disorder exists, but we should try to find behavioral causes and treatments for those things before we skip to mind-altering drugs in every case.

I was one of the few kids put on Prozac back before it was discontinued for children (day terrors). Drugs mess with your chemicals in a huge way, and some of that is irreversible. They should be a last resort, and only after adequate testing. There is a test that conclusively diagnoses ADHD, it's just expensive and most doctors won't tell you about it. Instead, they prefer to diagnose you themselves and get their cut from the drug companies.

Re: the spanking issue, I took care of my step-siblings for a few years, and I know first-hand that you shouldn't overuse spanking as a diciplinary tool. Like Eldora said, it loses it's effectiveness, and it can also errode relationships. It too should be a last resort by a parent who respects their child. If a child runs into the road and almost gets hit, then a light spanking would be justifyed. You should never spank a child when you're angry or have something to prove, and some kids should never be spanked period. To recommend it to everyone is stoopid.

Goldy

BTW Eldora, you sound like you're an excellent parent. Good on ya.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

eldora,

I have very deliberately chosen never to breed, in part because I don't think I could discipline effectively.  It has not stopped me from forming ideas of what I would do were I in that situation - if anything, that's what's helped me come to the decision never to take on a parenting job.

That's how I felt in my 20's.  My son was born 5 weeks before my 38th birthday.  My hubby was 44.  We had resolved most of our issues from our childhoods, so hopefully we won't pass along the same crap we were dealt.  We'll probably pass along new crap.  

[Lord Trout]

I don't believe in swatting them for every little thing, but you can bet your paddled ass that if I were to breed, and my podlings attempted to leave my side and run into the street, they would learn that doing so is immediately unpleasant on several levels.

... and that's how I feel about it, even though I'll never have kids.

(A - My wife is barren... B - I'm too old to deal with rugrats, anyway)

The point (as I see it) is that there is a time and place for everything. If a 'Time Out' is called for, then that is what should be used. If the kid needs a more direct, memorable punishment, I don't see why a swat on the butt is uncalled for.

[chaosgraves:agentoferis]

I don't believe in swatting them for every little thing, but you can bet your paddled ass that if I were to breed, and my podlings attempted to leave my side and run into the street, they would learn that doing so is immediately unpleasant on several levels.

... and that's how I feel about it, even though I'll never have kids.

(A - My wife is barren... B - I'm too old to deal with rugrats, anyway)

The point (as I see it) is that there is a time and place for everything. If a 'Time Out' is called for, then that is what should be used. If the kid needs a more direct, memorable punishment, I don't see why a swat on the butt is uncalled for.

all right you all seem to not know how to do  it (and of course I'm an expert)..

we are not trying to raise robots here ( well we are but robots that have decided for them selves what they want to do )...

spankings and time out are not the answer.

look in real life when people do not like what you did what do they do about it... usually distance themselves from you or they tell you what they didn't like.

this is all I use with my daughter and she's one of the most behaved children that people know ( or at least thats what they tell me).

of course my daughter is allowed to rejoin with me.

and I try to use soft tones when telling her what she's done that was "wrong"...

her fits a very short ( because she knows that they won't sway me) and she is very thought ful ( i see ideas go through her head that are discarded before she crosses "the line".).

[Lord Trout]

I'm glad that works for you, but it would never fly with my nieces and nephews. Demon children, for the most part. I refuse to babysit any of those kids, simply because they won't listen at all. You are forced to either stick 'em in a corner or (last resort) swat 'em on the hind-end.

Yes, my family is evil on a genetic level. I'm just glad I don't have to raise a "Little Me", like my brethren do.

[Rev Thwack]

The way I look at it, if I ever have kids they better watch out. My parents used beating the shit out of me as a form of diciplin, and I turned out pretty damn well. I figure why stop what worked? It's only since we stopped beating our kids that they started taking guns to school and shooting their classmates.

[Hoshiko]

Suuure, there's obviously a clear corollary between a lack of spanking and school shootings.

This is but one of the many reasons you should not breed, Thwack.


Spanking /= Beating the shit out of your kids.

[East Coast Hustle]

acutally, it seems to me that Thwack is right...I would have taken a gun to school and executed the fuck outta my classmates if I wasn't pretty goddamn sure that I'd get my ass kicked for it...

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

The way I look at it, if I ever have kids they better watch out. My parents used beating the shit out of me as a form of diciplin, and I turned out pretty damn well. I figure why stop what worked? It's only since we stopped beating our kids that they started taking guns to school and shooting their classmates.

I do see your point.  But to me it's not directly because people stopped beating their kids.  I see a lot of people whose parents used excessive physical punishment go to the opposite extreme and discipline their kids not at all.  Children find comfort in limits, even if they get pissed about it from time to time.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

all right you all seem to not know how to do  it (and of course I'm an expert)..

we are not trying to raise robots here ( well we are but robots that have decided for them selves what they want to do )...

spankings and time out are not the answer.

look in real life when people do not like what you did what do they do about it... usually distance themselves from you or they tell you what they didn't like.

this is all I use with my daughter and she's one of the most behaved children that people know ( or at least thats what they tell me).

of course my daughter is allowed to rejoin with me.

and I try to use soft tones when telling her what she's done that was "wrong"...

her fits a very short ( because she knows that they won't sway me) and she is very thought ful ( i see ideas go through her head that are discarded before she crosses "the line".).

That's fine, once they get to be teenagers and have started to establish logical thought. That doesn't even start until about age 7. My son is 4, there is no logic. If he is overly tired or hungry or has a sinus headache or hasn't pooped in a couple of days, he is grouchy and he has a temper. Sometimes he needs to scream and yell and I leave the room and let him. He gets no reinforcement for that behavior. But for some kids that is the only way to get that stuff out. We have long talks about all kinds of stuff. Trust me. We talk about penises and vaginas and fractals and Scooby Doo and Grandparents and school and how just about everything works and anatomy etc.  And sometimes the only way to get his attention is a spanking.  Spanking may not be the appropriate discipline for your child, that's why it shouldn't be used in schools.  But it works for my kid and I hardly ever have to do it anymore.  I ask him if it is going to come to that.  The biggest fights we have right now are at dinner.  Most other things are getting easier.  For now.

[Hoshiko]

acutally, it seems to me that Thwack is right...I would have taken a gun to school and executed the fuck outta my classmates if I wasn't pretty goddamn sure that I'd get my ass kicked for it...

Of course, that had nothing to do with how frustrating the school system has become, or how shitty your classmates were because they live in a society that doesn't give a fuck, or the fact that you can buy a gun from the guy 3 lockers down or use the one your daddy owns.

No, none of that mattered because your parents spanked you when you were 14 and made it all better.

I knew it was wrong to kill people in the sixth grade, which was right about the time I started to hate school. My parents never spanked me, but they were good parents and they listened and paid attention.

If Thwack's theory were correct, you would have seen me and all the other little hippy kids on the news in the early 90's with blood on their hands.

Instead you see middle class boys who were probably spanked regularly growing up and whose parents either didn't know or didn't want to admit that their kids had become so desperate. Spanking won't fix depression and anger. It's easy to spank a kid into apparent submission, but all that really does is make them quiet about their problems and disillusionment.

[Rev Thwack]

It's not just beating your kids that does it. You have to make sure to beat them at the right time, for the right reason, and talk to them about it making sure that they know why you are beating them. Of course, I always knew what I would get a beating for, so when I came home and found the taste getting smacked out of my mouth, I always knew what it was that my dad had found out about. That's why I got good at hiding what I was doing and making sure that I wasn't going to get caught.

[chaosgraves:agentoferis]

yes it works better when they have "Logical" thought.

and I'm paving the way for that while she is still in emotional growth.

look she's a person... but a person that makes a lot of mistakes.

I let her experiment with her boundrys and others... but there are limits and she knows it.

I was at a freinds house and they told me and several other parents that they didn't want our children down a certain hall.

So I took my daughter to where the hallway began and told her not to corss this line ( it was an imaginary one drawn invisably into the air) and children younger than her crossed it several times and children older than her crossed it several times... she however was the only child that stood at where the line was drawn for a total of ten minutes straight ( or at least thats how long the host had said she had been there I counted about six off myself)... most of the other children were spanked or put into time out... for what they did wrong... the one time my daughter wound up pushing one of the other kids (he was merely trying to take a toy out of my daughters hand... I don't blame him she made playing with it look like so much fun) I went over and said to her " it'd not ok to me for you to hit.

and walked back to the chair I was at ... she followed me and told me she was sorry.. I told her that she would have to tell that to the boy... she walked over to him and said... "i;m sorry... here" and handed him the toy.

she wasn't told to hand him the toy.

she just did it.

the boy who had been told several times exactly why he was getting a spanking came over and hit my daughter with the toy...

From me she gets discapline.. from the other parents children get attention.

negative attention but attention... I keep my involvement with my daughter after she does something like that short enough to let her know why i am about to withdrawl from her... i allow her to talk to me further as long as It's not a fit. ( fit's get ignored until the yelling has stopped... after working yourself into a tizzy over something it's a little hard to keep the breathing from being sporadic)...

see time out sets someone up as being an authority  and thats just asking for a natural target... and spanking... well I've said my feelings on that already.

come on I'm not the only person here to have read timothy leary am I... i know I'm not the only one to have read RAW.