Just read the Inuit traditionally are super calm with and around children, so they learn to be cool instead of having tantrums. Can’t find the post any more tho.
//edit
Article was still in my browser history: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger
Yeah. Honestly, 99% of the time my kid is having a fit, it’s because he’s hungry. I never yell either. Never have and probably never will (barring seriously dangerous things that need to immediately stop).
After a couple months of feeding him when he’s upset, watching him calm down, apologizing if I angered him and then asking him if maybe he was so angry because he was really hungry, now he’ll actually tell me mid-fit that he’s really hungry. Or sleepy, scared, etc. Talking basic needs, not just hunger.
Honestly I’m really happy. The emotional maturity of a toddler that can recognize that in large part his anger is being hungry it’s pretty cool.
There isn’t any good reason to hit your children as discipline. It may stop the behavior but it is gonna teach kids to use violence to deal with conflict with their peers or cause them anxiety later in life.
Spanking is coping for the parent, it isn’t effective or fair for the child. That being said, fear works and being generally gentle doesn’t so I understand why some parents feel like they have to. But it causes more damage than it fixes.
If you feel overwhelmed by parenting there is nothing wrong with seeking help via family therapy or even hiring a coach to assist you on how to handle difficult discipline situations with difficult children
I always struggle with this because it wasn’t ever a big deal and I say that as the one getting spanked. It happened twice and afterwards, the threat was used to let me know when I was crossing the line. I certainly didn’t “use violence” against my peers growing up.
I feel like most folks when they talk about kids being spanked, what they’re imagining is more akin to child abuse rather than spanking.
It’s just a tool like any other. It works on some kids, it doesn’t on others.
Ignoring the mountain of evidence that you can find with a quick search that corporal punishment in general, and “spanking” in specific doesn’t work in the way people think/want it to, there’s a giant flaw in logic here.
If a stranger does a thing to your kid, and you would want them arrested, why would you do the same thing?
Seriously. That’s the glaring flaw in the arguments. If I discipline your kid with a single swat to the rear, I have committed a crime. One which most parents would not only insist come with legal consequences, but a significant amount would feel totally justified in using force to protect their child ( and they’d be right in that use of force, imo).
But then you want to do the exact same thing or worse and don’t expect it to affect the child at least as severely as the trauma from battery by strangers. If someone is going to argue that they need to hit their kid to maintain discipline, then claiming that it only works when a parent does it is just stupid.
Worse, claiming that the affects of the trauma of an assault is magically not going to happen because it’s a parent is outright insane.
That’s why, even for the very limited benefits that can come from using spanking as a tool (that are achieved better by other methods) you end up with more drawbacks than it’s worth.
As I said to my parents and my family regarding my kid: if you attempt to use spanking or other violence to “discipline” or “teach” my kid, that means such methods are effective. If that’s the case, then me beating the fuck out of you and never letting you near my kid again is most definitely going to be effective in teaching you to never hit my fucking kid.
If you kiss my child or take their underpants off and help them clean their genitals, you’ve also committed a crime, but I do both regularly to my children.
I just had to clean diarrhea of the floor and then stick him in a bath to clean his… like. Entire lower body, including feet, somehow, because he’s got a stomach bug
“Parents shouldn’t do anything to their children that they don’t want a stranger to do” is a very flawed way to view parenting.
Anyway, I’m home with a sick miserable child today, so I think I’m just super tired and crabby, and I think I know what you actually meant lol.
Anyway, I don’t hit my children. I do reserve the right to scoop them up and force them to talk with me if they’re being violent. My kid hit someone, and he was off his feet and sitting on my lap in an intense conversation about it shortly after. That’s physical interdiction, and that is absolutely necessary sometimes.
