Is It Harmful Or Humiliating?

[becca74]

What tactics do you use with your children?

My mum never smacked, confiscated or indeed, punished.

She used The Voice. You know the one. The Voice that freezes your heart inside your chest, and leaves you obeying before you've even realised you were going to.

Think of a cross between Supernanny and scary-Galadriel (from the LOTR movie). Or if you've read the Dune series, you'll know exactly what I mean.

If you managed to continue regardless (which took serious cojones, let me tell you), she'd calmly and relentlessly explain exactly how much extra work you were causing, what she needed to be doing instead, how far we were behind on the rent, and exactly how you were making it worse... and generally dumped a boatload of pure anxiety down the back of your neck - so all the fun went out of acting up, there and then

We were DAMN well-behaved kids. Nothing was worth that.

[Baby Girl]

If you managed to continue regardless (which took serious cojones, let me tell you), she'd calmly and relentlessly explain exactly how much extra work you were causing, what she needed to be doing instead, how far we were behind on the rent, and exactly how you were making it worse... and generally dumped a boatload of pure anxiety down the back of your neck - so all the fun went out of acting up, there and then

Guilt is a much better punishment - Absolutely!!

[Mister Noodle]

What tactics do you use with your children?

I give it a good hard stare, and explain that kicking my wife in the uterus from the inside is just plain mean.

[becca74]

I give it a good hard stare, and explain that kicking my wife in the uterus from the inside is just plain mean.

Sounds like it needs a good whipping with a stick - I dont condone this once they're born, but these crazy foetus's need to be cracked into line every so often..........

[Mister Noodle]

Nah, I just make one of my famous curries....

[Mister Noodle]

As for the anxiety thing - first up, there's a difference between guilt and anxiety. It's not as though we were raised catholic...

Second, it was always very definitely "*while* you continue to do this, I cant' get any work done, and so..." - thus always giving us a simple out.

I fully agree that just dumping guilt, stress or a hopeless situation on a child would be unacceptable. But just making their own bad behaviour their problem strikes me as something significantly different.

The thing that made it deadly effective was the fact that it was always completely true. She'd never make stuff up, or exaggerate. It was just a case of making us choose between adult authority and adult responsibilities. We could opt out of the behaviour and not have to worry about anything, or we could keep it up, and know precisely what would happen. I'm not talking "consequences" (aka threats) - we'd never have respected that. Just plain old results.

And of course, this was all reserved for actual defiance. First line of defense was always plain and simple Absolute Power - and if you knew her, you'd know that standing up to that was like standing up to an oncoming ocean liner.

I still have to wonder how exposing your children to reality is bad, but hitting them is good...

(weird tangent: did anyone here see Pleasantville?)

[Odessa]

Mr Noodle, I believe you were the one who brought up slapping a child. No one has condoned it.

[the_queen]

For my 0.02c worth.... Just wanted to add that I hope I'm never in a situation where the only solution I can think of is to put hot sauce on my kid's tongue.

I think too often we (parents) punish the behaviour, when maybe we should be trying to find out the cause of the behaviour.
A drug addict who steals a DVD player, and then gets a whippin' for the stealing.... he still has the addiction which drove him to steal in the first place, and so he'll probably do it again. He'll just be more careful not to get caught. That's a far-flung analogy, but the principle is the same. Why does a child scream obscenities at his parents in public?? I would want to know what has caused this behaviour, and deal with the root issue so that the behaviour won't happen again.



A paraphrased quote from a Dharma and Greg episode (they were looking after Greg's teenage niece, who had snuck out her bedroom window to go out without permission):

Greg: You're going to take her shopping as punishment for sneaking out?

Dharma: No, I'm going to hang out with her and boost her self-esteem so she hopefully doesn't feel the need to sneak out again.




JMO. Maghan asked for our opinions, and this was mine.

[cosmic]

You're very smart Queenie.

I don't know what I'd do with a swearing ten year old to be honest. Especially after trying every other darn thing to stop it. I feel for you Maghan! Must be frustrating, and I guess it's good that it's stopped.

I have heard of mothers putting chilli on their kids tongues when they are very, very small and I think that is just wrong! But perhaps at 10 if it works as a deterrant and nothing else does....?

[pumpkin]

this is probably going to ark people up but it is NOT intended to.

my daughter (she is 7) swore at me when i asked her to do something about 2 months ago and i told her to go into the bathroom and to bite the soap. (she did pmsl) she has never sworn again as she thought she would be "smart " and bite the soap to show me see its nothing but even 10 mins later she was complaining of the taste and trying to drink as much water as she could to get it out of her mouth.pmsl i never actually forced it into her mouth.

yet a friend of hers at school (there are 4 or 5 kids all up)

whenever there children play up as in swear or backchat they use liquid soap because (and i quote from her: "it gets throughout the mouth a lot quicker" this supposedly works for a little while but i personally do not think i could tell my kids that if theya re naughty they can suck on the liquid soap iykwim(lol)