Comic Genesis Forums

Before I get to the topic at hand, the 'message board' link on L&E is broken, since, as you might recall, they've moved the boards.

Now, about the article... I honestly can't percieve how you think spanking kids is going to do any good.
Now, I myself have a younger brother. There are those times when he won't listen to reason, and there is a great desire to spank him (if not more). But there are two big problems with such a path of thought: First, if we teach our children right and wrong through violence at an age when they can already see reason, it will be rooted in them that violence is an appropriate way to deal with problems. If you try to say that hitting people is wrong, they won't take you seriously, because you've hit them yourself.
Second, on rare occasions, we did spank my brother. It helped for exactly crap. Do you think that at a point where a child is too stubborn to listen to reason, he's going to be swayed by violence? He'd cry, be he wouldn't stop doing whatever it was that he was doing which was wrong.
You could say we weren't hitting him hard enough, but I think that causing physical damage as a method of education is a bad enough idea for me to not have to explain.
I apologize for the serious tone of this post, but I really do want to know why you think spanking's going to help anything.

Alrighty then.

Children are not born with a code of ethics. Primary schools are notorious hotbeds of persecution and bullying. A sense of right and wrong has to be drummed in at this stage with a real punishment that the child sees as genuinely frightening or in later life the child could turn into the kind of lout who terrorizes the city streets nowadays. I'm not saying they should be spanked for every indiscretion. A stern word can work but only if the promise of spanking is in the subtext. If no spanking is allowed then it can't be.

Secondly, there's the principle of the thing. The government made it illegal to discipline for parents to discipline their children when surely that is a private matter.

I find a lot of people are against my argument, I'd appreciate a wide display of opinions here if you will.

MP stands for Member of Parliament.

Yeah, I sorta got that MP stands for Member of Parliment...

Anyway, on the legislation I agree. This is a private matter.
Also, obviously, stern words without any actual ability to carry them out are useless. But consider this: Instead of spanking, why not take away the TV? Worked like a charm on me at the time. There are plenty of ways to punish kids without resorting to violence.

Hmm ... well, taking away the TV might work but it could also be something of a hassle. If there's more than one TV in the house, as is the norm nowadays, then you can't stop them from watching altogether. And what if they'd done something really bad, worse than what they did last time that caused you to take away the TV? There's no mediation. It's not as bad as other punishments. Like, and this is just off the top of my head you understand, spanking!

*long pause*

I think Yahtzee's actually SERIOUS about this.

You could always take away the TV for longer. You could disallow them to meet with friedns. There are lots of other ways, I just brought the TV as an example.
All in all, though, I suppose that there are cases when it's unavoidable.
I'd still wait a long, long time before I'd do it, myself.
At any rate, if the subject of your articles is legalization anyway, I agree with you. PC laws have gone too far. You can't tell a dirty joke nowadays without it offending anyone.

Oh aye. PC sucks. PC is how we got into this mess.

Im with Yahtzee here. I have a two year old cousin. When hes misbehaving, you can do what you want. You can take away his toys, the TV, whatever-he'll just find something else to do, usually something worse then what he was doing to get him in trouble. Whatever you try,it wont get through to him, unless you reach over to the cupboard and bring out the wooden spoon. Smacking a child is the best way of disiplining children. Unlike a ban of something, its quick and out of the way, so the child learns their lesson, without having to sit and brood about it, which often leads them to blame everybody else but themselves. I know that I was smacked as a child, and believe that it is not inhumane, and also believe that I was the better for it.

so....just give the kids a whooper if the child really acts bad...when i was about 8 i had to stand in the corner, for an excited child it horrible!!, and when i was really bad i got spankings...the butts so full of meat a few whacks isnt gonna break anything... but for small things taking away the television probably would work

Sorry if I wasnt clear. I meant to say that smacking is the only thing that works for major problems. My bad.

Alright, this may be the case, but I still think there are times when it's better to try and reason with a child. He's likely to grow up more civilised this way.

I looked "whooper" up on http://www.m-w.com and apparently, it is "one that whoops." Confused, I looked "whoop" up.. and I don't see how giving a bad child one of these would help at all.

I thought Whooper was a pokemon...



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RhubarbCelestial on 2002-03-19 02:48 ]</font>