Note: This is not meant to start a debate. If you have nothing nice to say, please do not say it at all. It is just a discussion question. You are free to express your opinions on the matter, but please do not be rude.
I ask this question because there seems to be many heated arguments over the topic of spankings versus beatings.
My significant other and I were talking about it last night over Skype. He does not believe in corporal punishment - such as spankings. He believes time outs and rewards systems would work better with children. Because as a child, his father was physically abusive. So I can understand why he would not spank, for any reason at all.
I do not believe in "spanking" per se, either. I do believe in a little pop on the bottom or hand to teach said child right from wrong.
Why? Because when I was about three or four, we had an old heater in our house that would get hot when it heated up. I would constantly try to touch it, even though my mother had told me many times not to. She never let me burn myself, but one day, it apparently made her so frustrated that I would keep disobeying her, she spanked me.
She did not take off her shoes, or take a belt, and beat me across the bottom for it. She swatted me, on my butt, for not listening even though she told me more than once not to touch the heater.
I learned my lesson then and never touched the heater again. Although, I do kind of wish she had let me, so I would have known hey, that shit is hot, it hurts. Do not touch it again, but I think in my toddler mind, the spanking worked fine.
And she has never spanked me, or my younger sibling since. I was never in fear of getting spanked, because as I got older, I was put in time out and had my things taken away as a result of acting out.
Now of course, you get people saying but I was spanked growing up and I turned out just fine!. What these people do not realize is that statistics do not work for an individual. I've seen people who were spanked beaten as a child, and they turned to violence themselves because that was the only way they knew how to resolve things. But I've also seen people spanked as children turn out to be great people, like myself and my older sister. My younger sibling is only nine, so who knows where she's heading.
I think, whenever I do have children that are of the age of spanking (I'm guessing anywhere between 3-5 because I feel like anything above that would seem a little outlandish. I think once they reach the age of where they can have something taken away, or be put in time-out for misbehaving, spanking needs to quit), I will not spank them unless it's a last resort. Such as if a time-out, or a reward system did not work, and they still continue to act out, they will get spanked. Not beat with a belt, or a shoe, or with whatever I could hand my hands on first, but a swat on the bottom to show them that they are wrong.
Now of course, I do not have children and these views may change when I do have gut gremlins of my own. I can't say for certain. I'm more interested in what the parents of Mibba think, because it seems as if anywhere else, you admit to "spanking" your child, you're accused of child abuse.
Discuss this. But please do not be rude or berate another use just because your opinion differs from what they believe in. This is not meant to start a war, just a discussion on what other users think.
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