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I'm not a parent. I do work with kids in a limited capacity, as a volunteer. I obviously don't use any corporal discipline in that context, and if I had childre
by adrusi 11y ago
I'm not a parent. I do work with kids in a limited capacity, as a volunteer. I obviously don't use any corporal discipline in that context, and if I had children of my own I wouldn't have the heart to hit them. I'm just interested in the theory of it; are we sure that corporal punishment isn't more effective in a practical utilitarian sense, and, if we are, what explains the difference.
Jesus fucking christ no it isn't. Your boss doesn't punch you for not filing your TPS reports; your spouse doesn't hit you for not doing the shopping.
The point is that eventually if you refuse to comply it will lead to violence. It might be indirect, and in some cases it will sound contrived, but everything eventually comed down to an implied threat of violence. If you don't file a report, you might experience some minor consequences. Probably the sort of thing you can't refuse to comply with. If you keep failing to file reports you might be fired or at least suspended. If you don't respect that and continue to show up for work, they'll probably have security throw you out. If you come back in they'll probably call the police and you'll be arrested for trespassing. If you resist arrest, you might find yourself subject to violence. This is to say that every threat boils down to a violent threat, and therefore every threat is inherently violent; threatening your kid with a revocation of privilege is violent.
Time outs are not long - one minute per year of age. A 12 year old gets a 12 minute time out.
A time out doesn't apply for everything kids do. Great when you're watching them and they misbehave, but that doesn't account for everything. If you catch your 10 year old stealing, you're not going to put them in time out. If your eight year old beats some kid up, you're not going to put them in time out. I would consider any form of corporal punishment too much of an ordeal for the things a time out would be appropriate for. I was refering to inflicting pain on your child as an alternative to grounding them.
- DanBC 11y agoHang on, you're using violent in a strange and unusual way which makes your point confusing. > If you catch your 10 year old stealing, you're not going to put them in time out. Just checking, but are you saying you'd hit them? Why wouldn't you put them in time out? > If your eight year old beats some kid up, you're not going to put them in time out. Why not? > I would consider any form of corporal punishment too much of an ordeal for the things a time out would be appropriate for. I was refering to inflicting pain on your child as an alternative to grounding them. Grounding does not work. Grounding is applied for far too long. This is a mistake commonly made by incompetent parents. "Grounding" a child for 15 minutes is as effective as grounding them for a day or a week, and avoids the severe downsides. It's genuinely scary that you have any contact with children when your knowledge of safe effective discipline is so clearly lacking. If you were in the UK I'd be contacting child safeguarding boards about the organisation you volunteer for.
- adrusi 11y agoYou're not presenting any kind of defense for your claims. You're saying things like they're obvious truths, when they're obviously not for the sake of this discussion.
- DanBC 11y agoBut so are you, and since the action you're proposing (violence against children) is a violation of that child's human rigts as defined in international agreements, and is illegal in several countries, and will draw attention from child protection in many others, you have a higher threshold. No parenting expert recommends violence against the child - (although a few religious extremists claim to be parenting experts). Note that any experts dealing with children whose behaviour is described as difficult or challenging will reject violence against that child - and it's that behaviour which you have said should be met with violence. As one example of an evidence based programme (although the evidence is weak) you might wantto lok at Webster Stratton. I'm presenting this as self-evident truth because the evidence is over-whelmingly against hitting children. You might think there's some debate to be had, but that's because you live in the US which is i) extraordinarily violent country, and ii) has religious extremists who promote violence against the child. The rest of the developed world had this debate in the 1980s and decided that hitting children needs to stop.
- dang 11y ago> It's genuinely scary that you have any contact with children Please stop posting personal attacks to Hacker News, regardless of how strongly you feel about a subject.
- DanBC 11y agoSorry adrusi and dang. I'll stop posting to threads like these.
- tomhoward 11y agoPlease keep posting. I really like your comments and believe we need more of what you have to say on HN. Just try to develop the ability to avoid getting emotionally charged and venting your emotional energy on other commenters. It's something I've been working on for a long time and I can assure you it's worth the effort. You're most welcome to email me if you want some suggestions on effective techniques.