Said Ted Cruz, dragging his daughter into politics again, plying an icky metaphor, and striving — I suppose — to win the hearts of the corporal punishment crowd.
I wonder, what do Americans think of the corporal punishment of children these days? This was a hot question in September 2014, you may remember, when a significant pro football player, Adrian Peterson, was found to have used a "switch" on his little son and the famous former basketball player Charles Barkley said:
"I'm a black guy ... I'm from the South. Whipping — we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances...."NPR's Gene Demby looked at the numbers and the research:
[A] sizeable majority of people in the United States, regardless of race, look favorably on corporal punishment. Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight looked at some polling data and found that just north of 8 in 10 black people favored corporal punishment. That's higher than white people, but not by a whole lot: 7 in 10 white people favored corporal punishment. (There was a slightly larger gap on this question among people who identified as born-again Christians and those who did not. But again, strong majorities of both groups felt this way — about 80 percent and 65 percent, respectively.)...
In 2002, [Elizabeth Gershoff, a sociologist at the University of Texas, Austin] reviewed nearly 90 studies about corporal punishment published over more than six decades. She looked for links between childhood corporal punishment and a range of different child behaviors and experiences, like moral internalization, mental health, aggression and criminal or antisocial behavior.
Gershoff found that one of the two strongest associations was between the use of corporal punishment and the child's immediate compliance. The other link was between the use of corporal punishment and the physical abuse of the child by the parent. (As she put it, corporal punishment is "effective in getting children to comply immediately," but it can also "escalate into physical maltreatment.") Those findings, she wrote, underscored just how complex the debate around physical discipline is.
Gershoff also wrote that studying the real effects of corporal punishment requires making a distinction between corporal punishment and abuse. Again, that's a hard ask: Parents report on their own tactics in these studies, and they're using different cues about social norms to decide where to draw the line.
Of course, any possible consequences of spanking (or not) butt up against all of parenthood's more immediate considerations and compromises. Should you spank your 3-year-old for darting out into the street? Will time-out help your kid internalize what he's done to warrant that punishment? These are the kinds of questions that folks grapple with day to day. If there are any long-term effects for a given child on how a parent chooses to answer that question, they might not be apparent until much, much later....
Posts
69 comments:
This post deserves a timeout.
"Butt up against"?
Nice.
There is a difference between spanking and beating up on you kids.
Spanking should not physically hurt the kid; it is the disgrace and humiliation that counts.
Hitting children is sick.
Depends on the child. Some are very sensitive and react to harsh tone. Some are defiant and even a spanking is not enough. Spank , using belt whipping with a switch are all mo9thods to correct bad behavior. If it does not work then discontinue. If telling a child does not work then escalate until something does. Brats turn into bullies and then just bad adults who never learn NO.
To make the assumption that correcting a child is abuse is stupid. We have several generations of terrible children that are not controllable due to failure of parents to correct early.
Every animal that raises its young uses some form of negative reinforcement (corporal punishment) to teach proper behavior.
Children are born as barbarians and need to be civilized.
I hope Dr. Spock is burning in Hell.
I think one good smack on the butt for darting out in the street is warranted. That's not the same as a beating, though, which is never warranted. The smack on the butt is a way of getting their attention and communicates the seriousness of the offense. This only works with small children, by the way. Not so much with older ones. Once they get to school age, they should know better and then you can just yell at them.
". . . if my daughter Catherine, the five-year-old, says something she knows to be false, she gets a spanking."
Oh, oh. Ted said a no-no. He's made an admission against interest. He's a child abuser. He's disqualified from being president. He's a brute. And his wife's an enabler; maybe she's also a participant in the child beating.
And if the child is wearing a blue dress when she's mercilessly being beaten to a pulp, we'll have real evidence.
"Today I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault," someone recently said. "Don't let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed and we're with you."
"dragging" - that word is icky. Violent.
Oh, please. I guarantee you Ted Cruz and his wife do not spank their children, especially not for something as common and innocuous as a five-year-old fibbing. Or, if they do, then it's extremely culturally aberrant among their elite social peers, and a bit disturbing. It's one thing for Papa to tell a little fib that would suggest he is a strong, common man ("Mah five-yer-old gets a spankin when she tells me a lah!"), and quite another for him to actually deliver routine spankings, knowing damn well that he's bucking the --very sensible-- cultural norm of his well-educated peers, and having that in the back of his mind while hitting his child. Plus, a grown man should not be spanking a female child. It's creepy.
Let's be clear: Adrian Peterson did not merely spank his son. He beat the bloody hell out of a kid who barely knew him with a "switch" leaving wounds on the 4 year old's buttocks, legs and testicles.
Let's not talk about how the Secretary of State (who didn't provide more security for her Ambassador) told her daughter it was a terrorist attack while telling the American people and families it was about a video.
That was done for re-election purposes. It would be nice if we could use that lesson to remember how easy it is to get distracted from the real issues during elections. But no. We use it to foster yet another distraction. Ted Cruz and spanking.
In my experience, the need to use corporal punishment and its effectiveness really depend on the child. My wife and I have two daughters, now 16 and 12. They both turned out beautifully but the older one was truly difficult as a kid and sometimes a spanking was the only thing that would snap her out of her temper tantrums (like scenes from The Exorcist, I kid you not). We did it rarely, but it worked. The younger one was a different individual, as all kids are, and much more easygoing. We only had to spank her a couple of times during childhood when she was doing something dangerous (running into the street without looking, climbing a bookcase). Once again, the message got through and it worked. We never went overboard, only used an open hand on the bottom or thigh, never hard and never in anger. Despite my belief that corporal punishment can work and should be available to parents, I also think it should have some stigma attached so that it is not overused or overdone. I once saw a father raise his hand and his son flinched in a way that I knew was a sign of abuse. I wouldn't want that to be normalized. On the other hand, I have also encountered kids that clearly never had any proper discipline and they suffer for that too. Sometimes I think these young totalitarians on university campuses are the products of a no-spanking culture. They still think they are little emperors, like most three year olds do, but that attitude won't serve them well in life. When done right, spanking teaches kids that there are limits to what they can get away with and realise that they have to consider others as well as themselves.
Cruz wasn't pandering to any mythical corporal punishment crowd. He wasn't dragging his daughter into the picture, at least not specifically. He was saying that a child would be punished for lying with a metaphor he assumed everyone would see as familiar and normal.
In a recent poll, 8 of 10 Americans strongly agreed with the statement: "Hillary would benefit from a good whipping."
An only slightly lower margin, 7 in 10, strongly agreed with the statement: "I'd like to personally give Hillary a good whipping."
Almost half of respondents strongly agreed with the statement: "Hillary should be sent to an island somewhere, wrapped in heavy chains."
Cruz wasn't pandering to any mythical corporal punishment crowd. He wasn't dragging his daughter into the picture, at least not specifically. He was saying that a child would be punished for lying with a metaphor he assumed everyone would see as familiar and normal.
In my experience, the need to use corporal punishment and its effectiveness really depend on the child. My wife and I have two daughters, now 16 and 12. They both turned out beautifully but the older one was truly difficult as a kid and sometimes a spanking was the only thing that would snap her out of her temper tantrums (like scenes from The Exorcist, I kid you not). We did it rarely, but it worked. The younger one was a different individual, as all kids are, and much more easygoing. We only had to spank her a couple of times during childhood when she was doing something dangerous (running into the street without looking, climbing a bookcase). Once again, the message got through and it worked. We never went overboard, only used an open hand on the bottom or thigh, never hard and never in anger. Despite my belief that corporal punishment can work and should be available to parents, I also think it should have some stigma attached so that it is not overused or overdone. I once saw a father raise his hand and his son flinched in a way that I knew was a sign of abuse. I wouldn't want that to be normalized. On the other hand, I have also encountered kids that clearly never had any proper discipline and they suffer for that too. Sometimes I think these young totalitarians on university campuses are the products of a no-spanking culture. They still think they are little emperors, like most three year olds do, but that attitude won't serve them well in life. When done right, spanking teaches kids that there are limits to what they can get away with and realise that they have to consider others as well as themselves.
Actually you could empty jails of a lot of minor offenders if you brought back corporal punishment for certain offenses, e.g., petty theft or vandalism, and save jail sentences for repeat offenders, those who aren't deterred by a whipping.
As a former teacher in inner city schools I'm here to tell you that African American parents whip their children. In public, in private and everywhere in between. I've stepped out of Administrator's offices while AF-Am parents belt whipped their children (the child threatened to kill a teacher - the exact phrase was "I be putting a cap in your fuckin' ugly white ass Ms. Smith." No police, no courts, no meddling downtown Admin types just immediate justice and behavior modification from the mother. Of course laws were broken by not immediately reporting the parent to Children and Families Services. A fellow colleague (white) was once asked to accompany his male Af-Am Principal to a classroom where the Principal escorted "LeCharles" out of the room and proceeded to bounce him off the adjoining walls and floor with the repeated admonition that he was not to disrespect his female teacher any more and to stop disrupting the class. As they were leaving my colleague asked if what had just happened wasn't against the law. The Af-Am Principal replied that the incident "never happened". My bewildered colleague said "It didn't?" The Principal replied "No. And you're my witness." I could go on for pages about this topic.
Cruz wants to spank Hillary, and that's....not hot.
While I'm not against mild corporal punishment in principle, I know all too well that historically things often got out of hand. For example, a friend of the family in Alabama grew up in pre-war 1920-30s Germany. Once at age 12, he called the family maid a "witch". His father then proceeded to beat his back with a shovel until the wooden handle splintered. Strangely, enough, in recalling this abuse, the family friend thought that he "deserved it" for what he had said to the maid.
Spanking worked on me.
Yes, AA. You're exactly right. Cruz even thinking about spanking a lying child is the issue here. It's certainly, now that you've made me think about it, the reason my brother hasn't worked in a year and my insurance bill is crippling me and that I now work two jobs earning less than I did on one three years ago. I hope, if only for a moment, to see things as clearly as AA just one time before I die.
More fly shit in the pepper, i.e. trivial bull shit from the LibCong.
Somewhere around 8 years of age, spanking becomes ineffective. My kids would just look at me with contempt, and ask "Are you done yet?".
Gershoff also wrote that studying the real effects of corporal punishment requires making a distinction between corporal punishment and abuse. Again, that's a hard ask: Parents report on their own tactics in these studies, and they're using different cues about social norms to decide where to draw the line.
Yes. But isn’t this an example of the weakness of sociology/psychological “studies” in general? There are other problems, too: bias - sometimes consciously, sometimes not - built into the methodology, the bias of the study authors and the bias of those studied as well as the changing “social norms” of studied populations. Readers, you can usually count on hard science research(chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) being accurate but the same is not true of the soft “sciences.” Some URLs below which explain the problems in depth:
http://tinyurl.com/qb4n9mf http://tinyurl.com/llrs3u4 http://tinyurl.com/o5ffjrh
http://tinyurl.com/nq4wh8g http://tinyurl.com/h4uwct9 http://tinyurl.com/py56gee
http://tinyurl.com/jmncv9h
With my own children I always found a “seaty-warmer” to work wonders for curbing misbehavior in public. Mine knew it was inevitable, immediate and that it would be administered away from the scene of the misbehavior.
It should be administered immediately and away from the scene of the misbehavior lest the child use it as way to get(not “garner” :-) attention. Take them outside of Walmart, outside of the restaurant, away from the place where they are making a fuss.
It should be consistent, which means it only has to happen a couple of times to be an effective deterrent.
No switches, no belts, no implement whatsoever – just a slightly stinging open hand on the bottom. I’m NOT a fan of brutality.
Much past toddlerhood different methods need to be used, isolation “timeout,” suspension of privileges, grounding, temporary confiscation of electronic devices, etc., and here too consistency is key.
One last thing: The parents should ALWAYS present a united front on this and all other issues regarding the raising of their children. Parental conflict about all this undermines parental authority.
Actually you could empty jails of a lot of minor offenders if you brought back corporal punishment for certain offenses, e.g., petty theft or vandalism, and save jail sentences for repeat offenders, those who aren't deterred by a whipping.
I agree. First time offense, it's the lash but in private. After that your punishment is in public. Limit it to five or ten lashes max per session. Three months minimum between sessions.
DUI? First time is ten lashes. Second time is twenty. Third time is forty. If you're on your third DUI, you get to spend the next year getting whipped every three months. Hopefully that's enough to modify a person's behavior.
Way to go for the squirrel Prof.
"dragging his daughter into politics again, plying an icky metaphor, and striving — I suppose — to win the hearts of the corporal punishment crowd."
This is written as if the writer feels like "the corporal punishment crowd" is a minority even though she knows that they are a very large majority.
Hillary is too old to be spanked. Perhaps she was spanked when she was a kid. Bill Clinton was almost certainly beaten by his stepdad.
Corporal punishment of some kids at some times can be useful.
But it's better that kids dispense a punch to punks and bullies and deliver the occassional beating to their peers. There are too many dishonest, smarmy people. We should all be able to punch each other without interference from the law.
I am sure the Military School straightened out an undisciplined Bronx rich kid in rebellion named Donald The lesson in Military School is that partial obedience is disobedience, and that the only discipline is perfect discipline. It creates men that once submitted to authority, are able to be trusted with authority.
And then there the graduates from the Hot Springs Resort School of alcohol and debauchery.
Hillary Clinton is reliably reported to have attacked her husband, Bill Clinton, with a White House lamp when she was told about Bill's blowjobs from Monica. As I recall, there were visible marks left on Bill's head after the attack.
Has anyone suggested Hillary Clinton is a violent spouse abuser? Well, she is.
Will we remove the beam from her eye, before we look for splinters in the eyes of other candidates?
Sure, she will win the presidency, because she has the organization and personnel to steal enough votes above the Republican's margin of victory, but let's not pretend she is anything other than a horrible person who has no business being any closer to a position of responsibility and authority than a seat next to her defense lawyer in a criminal courtroom.
As to African American discipline methods, I recall my Black, elderly, WWII veteran, high school principal having a discussion in the principal's office with a young Black male about a transgression against school rules. "Pop" Miller backhanded the kid for using a cuss word during their discussion. The kid flew several feet and bounced off the office wall. Then apologized.
I watched this from the chair outside the office, where I awaited my turn to talk with Pop, and tried to figure out how to reform my life. The secretary outside the principal's office door didn't even look up from her typing. Ahh, the 1970s!
Althouse has the beliefs of her class and generation.
OTOH, she was not subjected to the theories her parents suffered from in the '30s.
We never used corporal punishment. I'm glad of that, because my two eldest (and possibly #3 as well) could beat the crap out of me now.
I only have one. He's 3, never been spanked, because he responds well to immediate and consistent discipline; at most he's ever had a time out.
I suspect the immediacy and consistency is most important. But I didn't do a random controlled sample and maybe the next one won't be so easy.
Every time Adrian Peterson carries the ball, I pray to Gaia he gets his neck broke.
Like anything else in life, it's the dose and frequency that separates medicine from poison. With beatings, it's important to make it an event with three acts. You must not hit a kid with your hand: a belt or ruler works well, a switch will easily leave welts or contusions. My childhood friend's Mom used a Hot Wheel track. You must hit them on the clothed butt. It must sting, but not injure. It should only be employed when the kid does something that might result in death or grave bodily harm.
That being said, beatings can then be threatened occasionally for lessor offenses by saying "do I need to get my belt?" or by starting to take the belt off. One of my favorite compliance tools was to feign running to the situation by drumming the floor with my feet while sitting down. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
This does not work on all kids. My middle grandson (BTW, IMO a grand-parent cannot employ beatings ever) did not respond to punishment, so my son developed other tools to deal with him. In fact, none of the standard kid whisperer techniques my wife and I employ with great success work with him, so we have had to change the playbook to deal with him when he visited last summer.
Possibly unwise on the part of Senator Cruz, but then I am doubtful a swat on the behind is going to traumatize some 3 year old. Aren't these the kids taking opioids out of their parents' medicine chest? Giving us an opioid crisis that even The Donald doesn't promise he can fix completely.
Regards — Cliff
Spanking does not need to be punishment, but an attitude adjustment.
"Actually you could empty jails of a lot of minor offenders if you brought back corporal punishment for certain offenses, e.g., petty theft or vandalism,"
Hey, maybe cut off their hands for these offenses? Oh, wait.....
Cruz should withdraw from the campaign. He and his children are too young.
We can wait for you, Ted. Try again in 20 years after you've finished raising your kids.
What Progressives seem incapable of understanding is that most things are neither all good or all bad, and that what you need to know is "how much of it?" The dose makes the poison. There are many things for which a little bit is OK, or even desirable, while too much is too much. Of course, that requires common sense and mature judgment, which zero tolerance policies and endless regulations are intended to extirpate.
Cruz will be fine. The only people upset by this are those who would never have voted for him anyway.
First and only time I spanked my children was the first time they bold-faced lied to me. It was an instinctive, swift, swat on the rear.
Now in their late 20's, both remember it. And both say they still remember their particular lie--and that they still cannot fathom why they lied! They say knew they were lying--consciously made the decision to fib.
In today's culture, I don't think Cruz did himself or his family any favors by making this statement. Sure, there's an enormous difference between a spanking and a beating (as my son-in-law did to my little granddaughter--ripped my heart apart and I'll never be the same, may he rot in hell) however, with the lefty-types the main employees of CPS, Cruz better walk that one back and be careful.
Cruz manages to cite both his kid and his opponents kid in one fell swoop.
Wasn't he just complaining about people talking about his kid? Is he trying to invite more discussion, or just making a quote that will embarrass his kid forever?
AReasonableMan said...
Hitting children is sick.
Which is why your wife spanked the kids.
Three things I really despise when I come across them:
1) A two year old toddler throwing a screaming tantrum and totally out of control, while Mommy tries earnestly to explain why whatever he wants can't be given to him. (Usually it's a boy, hence my choice of the third person masculine pronoun, though when a girl gets into a tantrum it can be quite something to behold.) Lady, the kid is too young to process logic and too out of control anyway. Give him a swat on the butt or take him out of there, but have a thought for the rest of us.
2) A young child, pre-school to adolescent, who is hit in public by a parent. At that point the children are old enough to process logic and you can punish them in private later without publicly humiliating them. When you see this behavior on the part of an adult you are looking at a person from a very lower class background, regardless of whether their skin is black or white (I've seen both, and numerous times, in my nearly 70 years on this planet).
3) A childless person, or someone whose child-rearing days are long in the rear view mirror, pontificating about how wrong it is to spank a child. The former doesn't know what it's like to raise a child, and the latter has probably forgotten about the times they spanked their kids.
@Meade, I think the White House would be a marvelous place to raise two small girls as sweet as the Cruz kids. Have you forgotten the Kennedy kids so quickly?
Not only did he drag his own daughter into the fray, he dragged Hillary's daughter into it too! What kind of psychotic misogynist is this guy? Dragging women around, bragging about beating up a 5-year old girl- #WarOnWomenAndChildren
Could Cruz even administer a spanking with those dainty little Harvard debater's hands? He might hurt himself.
I knew a family. No corporal punishment, but the dad would yell and shout, holding and haranguing the kids at the top of his voice. The daughter sure turned out crazy.
Forget the Cruz children. Hillary! is a liar and should be spanked. Yes, I know she's undoubtedly too old for punishment to change her behavior, but if she's sent to bed without her supper and without the presidency, maybe she'll learn something (not likely she'll learn, I know, but it's worth trying).
What I want to know, is does Ted Cruz put his daughter in a carrier on the roof of the car?
Rusty said...
Which is why your wife spanked the kids.
I would not marry a woman who would hit a child. Parents are bigger and smarter than their children and, at least in principle, have better control of their emotions. Given these advantages if a parent truly can't raise a child without hitting them then they should be excluded from the breeding pool. If they can train killer whales to do stupid shit without hitting them, it should not be beyond the capabilities of the average person to get a toddler to behave reasonably.
It depends totally on the child. One of my sons would just get angrier. The other son I only spanked once, when he bit a babysitter.
One daughter would dissolve in tears with a harsh look.
I don't know the details of the Adrian Peterson case and you two seem to, but I have always believed he was making an effort with the kid when most pro athletes never see their myriad children.
"We do know Hillary told her daughter Chelsea, well gosh, I knew it was a terrorist attack, while we were out telling the American people it wasn't."
There's one problem with that - a very serious problem. That's what they thought the day of the attack and into the next day.
But then they unlearned
This flummmoxed Mitt Romney and it seems like a lot of Republican prefer this simple story - they knew it was a terrorist attack on September 12, and everybpdy agreed that it was laterm so surely they should have known it in the time in between.
Not true. Well, maybe not true except for Hillary who knew, for one thing, that there was no demonstration.
In the September 14-17, 2012 period all sorts of Sooper Sekrit Intelligence and the CIA reported it was a spontaneous and unplenned attack, inspired by what went on in Cairo.
That was the "best available intelligence" by definition. Of course it was actually just the highest rated intelligence.
Hillary has an explanation for what she did, that she's not being all too clear about now (she's assuming you know background facts) but she could be expected to get clear about it later.
The assessemnt of this as a terrorist act was in large part based on a claim of responsibilty by Ansar al Sharia on its Facebook page. But that claim was later retracted, or repudiated, and the CIA accepted the retraction.
Hillary did know that the CIA was wrong. Badly wrong. For a bunch of reasons. She may even have strongly suspected who exactly was behind it.
But she didn't want to contradict the CIA. And she didn't want to fight it.
But she was very careful with what she said in public.
What she did has even been justified by Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and also one of the members of the Benghazi (Trey) Committee.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-october-25-trump-christie-nunes-schiff/
Page down till...
[Adam] SCHIFF [D-Calif]: ….The early claims by Ansar al-Sharia responsibility … were very quickly followed with human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source reporting, that there was a protest. It wasn’t until about eight to ten days after the events where we actually got the tapes from the compound that we could see, quite demonstrably on those tapes, that there had been no protests.
But it was the — the considered judgment, the assessment of the intelligence experts for that week until we got those tapes, that there had been a protest. And that turned out to be wrong.
Now, Hillary Clinton, and everybody else high up in the State Department, of course, did not believe any of this. They knew ? not thought, but knew there had not been any protest preceding the attack.
The State Department had been in contact with the mission in Benghazi and knew it was a surprise attack.
Now what does this Democrat argue?
But to criticize Secretary Clinton for relying on the best of intelligence that we had at the time seemed to be wholly inappropriate. Had she had spoken, frankly, in contradiction of what our intelligence agencies were telling her, that might be something to criticize…
!!!!
Who do you believe – the CIA or your own eyes?
Obviously, according to Adam Schiff, it should be the CIA, or at least that is what you should tell the public when you know not just think but know that the CIA is wrong!
And it is apparently no business of the Secretary of State to tell the president or anybody in the administration she serves that the CIA is wrong.
The State Department, under Hillary Clinton, did fight the CIA on the content of the "talking points" - but not on this issue
The State Department wanted to make a correction on the status of the place where Ambassador Christopher stevens had been staying. It was NOT a consulate, the State Department wished to clarify - no visas were issued from there - but a "mission."
This was probably important to explain wy it has less security than a consulate would have.
The State Department also was concerned that the CIA not make it appear that they had warned of a possible attack. And in truth they really had not, except in general terms.
But the State Department was not interested in pointing out that there had been no demonstration in Benghazi. That was one bridge too far for Hillary Clinton. It didn't impact her reputation.
Ted Cruz didn't say he spanked her.
The nanny, or maybe soem female relative, does.
As an immigrant, Cruz should be careful of talking about the Hispanic culture of beating children, and then extrapolating that to the State Department, and woman who have bought their positions through political favors.
I was once on a school board where we held hearings on the subject of spanking. One teacher commented that she had never once spanked a child in over 20 years of teaching. However, she continued that the reason that she didn't have to spank was that the students knew she could if she had to. The board voted to continue to allow spanking under certain conditions.
Finkelman,
Utter bilge.
Every other mission in Benghazi had pulled out and warned the Americans to leave, and the State Dept had been repeatedly asked for better security by the Ambassador. Such a request should have had the highest priority, especially in such a dangerous spot. Neglect and inefficiency enough to put an end to the public careers of everyone in the chain of command. Everything afterwards was coverup.
This is as clear as sunlight to anyone but those self blinded by partisan interest, including the satanic media.
Sammy when that big check arrives from Hillary, don't spend it all in one place.
Corporal punishment, properly used, is a one-and-done physical unpleasant consequence in reinforcement of a needed lesson. It is administered without anger and then the matter is over with.
Today's culture prefers the passive-aggressive approach. It pats itself on the back for "nonviolence," but revels in lingering mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.
What Adrian Peterson did was more than just a spanking, and it's disingenuous to conflate it with what Ted Cruz was talking about:
> The beating resulted in multiple cuts and bruises on the
> boy’s lower body and defensive wounds on the child’s hands.
[...]
> Peterson confirmed that the child’s pants were down while he beat him.
link
nit-pickery Althouse. "Don't look at Hillary the lying weasel, consider how Cruz brought up the topic instead". Cripes.
Yes, Ann, we'll still need you and feed you after Tuesday.
When I was a kid in the '50s my father used a belt on my bottom. Mum used a hairbrush. In almost all cases it was well-deserved. My paternal grandmother once made me go out into the yard and *cut* the switch that was to be my discipline. That was worse than the actual switching, which was only enough to sting a bit.
Here's the point: They all believed "hands are for loving and helping". The use of a physical object not only kept their hands out of hurting people they loved ever-so-deeply, but provided a circuit-breaker for both sides. "Do I need to go get the belt (or brush), or are you going to LISTEN to what I'm telling you?" tended to do the job about 80 percent of the time.
I remember one morning when I was about 8 yo and the Fuller Brush man showed up at the door. Mum was in the shower or something, so I told him to go away -- that her favorite brush had broken, the one she used on my bottom -- and I didn't want any *new* brushes around the house. He laughed, and came back a week later, telling my mother the story. She bought the brushes she needed, but never again applied one (or her hand) to my bottom.
Younger sisters, yes, but she knew I was now ready to have rational discussions about childish behavior. Which we did until she could see the century mark just around the next corner.
Raising children isn't rocket science. It's not easy, but it is pretty simple. I say this as the proud grandfather of 7 wonderful kids, brought into the world by the three children my ex-wife and I raised, although I was a single parent for part of that time. Both of my daughters and my son graduated with technical degrees from good colleges, and are in stable, happy marriages. I tell you all this not to brag, but to establish that I do know what I'm talking about.
I had to spank my son only once that I can recall, and I don't ever recall having to spank either daughter. When my children misbehaved, they had to stand in the corner, facing the wall, without moving or speaking, usually for two or five minutes. If they moved or spoke, the timer reset to zero and they still had to do the time. The idea is to teach them self control, not to hurt or humiliate them. They knew that they could never win an argument with me. If they disagreed with me about something in a calm and respectful manner, they might persuade me to their point of view, but I would never give in to a tantrum. That always resulted in corner time. I was consistent about this, and it worked.
Of course, they also knew that they were loved and cherished, and that I was immensely proud of them when they did well. We played a lot together, had intelligent conversations, and we all strove to be as silly as possible whenever we could. And I tried to set a good example for them, by being the kind of person I hoped they would be.
That's pretty much it. Please deposit your $5.00 for Jeff's all-purpose parenting advice in the can on your way out.
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