California no-spanking bill struck down

Joel LintonNov 28th, 2007 - 08:47:00

Actually, a wooden spoon or implement can be a better way to administer a spanking than by a parents hand because there is better control. You can inflict a little sting of pain to help the child know that what he or she is doing is dangerous, but then the child knows the implement is separate from the parent. Spanking -- immediately after the offense and consistently teaches a child about consequences to actions that are either dangerous or morally wrong. If you train a child to come when you say 'come', to come immediately, then you may one day save the childs life if he or she wanders onto a busy street. If you spank a child when they open cabinets that have poisonous chemicals, after telling the child 'No.', the child does not have to learn from experience how dangerous the chemicals are. And you certainly could remove chemicals out of a childs reach, but what happens when you are visiting someone else, etc.? Better that the child is trained to heed a parent's word and govern their own actions. If the child was never trained not to touch; the child was never trained to obey, then they can cause themselves harm. But parents who use spanking to train can be confident they will not do something dangerous even when the parent is not in the immediate room.

Spank to train, not to express anger.

Besides those zealots who think that causing pain of any kind is bad, I think a lot of the people who oppose spanking are actually opposed to spanking out of anger. This is something to educate parents, not to legislate. One thing is certain, most parents love their kids much better than anyone else in the world, and so they should be the ones to decide how to train their children.

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Bloody in BamaApr 27th, 2009 - 05:30:56

'This world is a cesspool of violence' because people don't spank their kids like they use to. Schools used to be alot better too, when paddling (and prayer) was still allowed. My parents spanked all 5 of us kids. Sometimes we even had bloody welts on our legs from the switches, but we never got in trouble with the law, and grew up knowing about consequences. As kids we all muttered 'I hate you' at times because we thought they were too hard on us, but as adults, we know they only did what they thought was best. We are all very close and love our parents more than ever. We are in our 50's now and each of us have been married for 25 to 30 years. (To the same people) I can't imagine how we might have turned out without the 'abuse'.

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