I HAVE TO DO AN ESSAY ABOUT SMACKING CHILDREN.....TELL ME YOUR OPINIONS PLEASE

[fawkeoff]

i am doing an essay about the smacking law and want to know the peoples pros and cons, if you think that the law should be changed....should it be banned or should it be slacker.i would appreciate if you could give me personal experiences as well

thanks for that clarification colditz. I see you're thinking.

Oh - I've often heard people talking about Naomi Aldort in glowing terms, but never got around to reading any :-)

pops off to Amazon

that should be see your thinking - apologies

or NOT using punishment and reward systems to control children!!!!

lol

now I'm imagining mynameisnic rubbing her hands in evil glee saying "at last, I can really hone this punishment and rewards thing... eternal power over my children... cackle cackle"

Violence breeds violence - and violence to children is particularly awful in my book - it makes me cringe thinking about it.

My parents smacked me and it was a bad experience - it definitely damaged my relationship with my mother.

My dd is 8 now and is well-behaved without ever having been smacked.

I haven't smakced ds - because that's my personal conviction of how to parent. I wonder how many parents there are who have NOT smacked purely because it's (almost) illegal. I guess the law's effect is more general, encourages a debate and a general perception that smacking is not viewed as the best way of doing things.

I also agree that the not leaving a mark part of the law is deeply problematic - different people/skin colours marking at different 'pressures' etc.

I agree with Custardo that it's a half hearted law - needs to be a) clear and definite that hitting children is illegal regardless of marking or not marking and b) backed up by money which is there to provide parenting classes for all, in order to give people a wider understanding of parenting strategies.

ooh this luverly debate again...

"are adults like children"

COMPLETELY spurious argument...as a teacher I would gives lines as a punishment to a kid but not to an elderly grandmother!

I would send them out of the room / naughty step - but not to a grandmother!

I would teach them right from wrong, repeated over and over again cos their brains are not developed enough at a young age to get it first time. Their Id is not yet developed (or whatever part of the brain is responsible for actions!)

KIDS ARE NOT ADULTS they therefore cannot be treated the same!!

i have already wrote 3 pages on this great information you are posting....please keep it coming

To add to my earlier post, obviously if and when pain happens it needs to be backed up by an explanation - if it is caused by themselves, you need to try make sure they understand how the hurt happened; or if you cause the pain, why it happened. This explanation needs to come immediately, or the child won't understand the connection (so no..."wait til i get you home..." scenario).

And the people who need parenting skills are presumably the ones i hear swearing at their kids past my house every morning, or letting their 2 year old out on the streets alone! Do we think they would take a blind bit of notice of 'parentcraft lessons?'. Would they even turn up?

they would if there was a financial benefit - if you want child benefit you must attend the classes - if you want nhs treatment for your children you must atend the classes

True. But it still wouldn't make any difference if someone did not want to use another way of disciplining their child.
What makes you think if a parent is using smacking as their only form of punishment (as most people don't, they would try other things first), that they would bother doing withdrawal of privilages/ distraction/ grounding etc even if they went to lessons to teach them different methods?
You can lead a horse to water...blah blah yakkety.

you can lead a horse to water, etc, yes - but the thing is that at least the state would have taken a stance and withdrawn consent to it. Just because people may not DO right, doesn't mean that others shouldn't try to put in place things to ensure that right is done by children.

Custy is right - tie it in to benefits, NHS, etc and you've got the best chance of people taking up the parenting class side of things.

I don't smack for the usual reasons. I have two dcs. The youngest who will be three in Jan is a handful. Se screams at the top of her voice and is incredibly demanding. Twice recently when on the phone and she could be heard in the background screaming away I have been asked do I smack her. It is obvious that people think the only way to handle her is to smack her.

I have a very bad back and at times it flares up big time. Today was one of those days and at times like this I find her very very difficult. It is harder to think of ways to deal with her when your back is killing you and she is screaming but so far I have thought of appropriate and successful sanctions. Mainly I threaten to take her to her bedroom. Sometimes I have to do this so she knows it is likely to happen. She stays there and scrams for about 2 mins and I then go to her and ask her if she is going to stop. SO far this works. I'm not sure if this is ideal. I suppose it is a bit like the naughty step which I have mixed feeling about.

as a child my mom gave us one smack and the threat of a smack worked for as long as i can remember

Gawd, no I don't want the state putting its heavy boots into the private lives of families any more than they already do.

There are good ideas and bad ideas about how to treat children, as there are about anything. Good ideas should persuade by their merits.

I'd rather the culture changed slowly as people are persuaded of better ways to behave than that the government wades in - after all, who's to say that the HVs ideas of good parenting are going to be consonant with mine or yours or something quite different shudders

It's bad enough being told to wean at 6 months, but there are all sorts of aspects of being a parent where I think I can do better than the average HV, thanks.

"KIDS ARE NOT ADULTS they therefore cannot be treated the same!!
"
no, but if the argument for smacking is "they don't understand reasoning / I don't have time to reason", do you not see the parallels?

No ... because sometimes it is imperitive that children do as they are told, whereas adults make their own choices.

For example, I would never let a child walk around with faeces in his nappy, but if am 80 year old decided that they want to do the same in their pad - I have NO right to stop them, and no way bar persuasion and laying down of the consequences ie, you are not comeing into the food serving area until you let me change you or you change yourself, it is not fair on the other residents. A three year old, having refused point blank all persuasion, would be held, stripped and showered while they p-rotested.

And if someone doesn't have time to reason there is not a chance in Hell they would stick an elderly care job for more than 6 hours. carers are pushed to the limits timewise, but must remain reasonable at all times.

hmmm...I'm not ignoring, I'm thinking
FWIW I think the carers in my Grandma's home would change any resident who was refusing, dealing with physical resistance is surely part of the job. I take your point though that if she was at home it's no-one else's business.

if someone in a care home was diagnosed with a mentally incapacitating illness a carer would be within their rights to change them but the essential dilemmas would be mroe about how to achieve that- if you hold a wriggling toddler down for a change it can be ahrd (and as ds3 is still in nappies, blinkin hard as they get older!) but its fasible without much force; a grown adult can put up a fight and thereby place themselves at more risk- esp. of fracture- than the nappy would cause, iyswim?

'And the people who need parenting skills are presumably the ones i hear swearing at their kids past my house every morning, or letting their 2 year old out on the streets alone!'

do you not think there's a world of disparity between swearing- ideal no, but not necessarily always harmful (FFS get a move on being far less derogatory say that oi you idiot which is not swearing), and allowing a 2 year old out on a road which imo is never ever right or safe or can be justified?

No actually you are NOT allowed to change someone who resfuses to be changed, it's illegal and considered abusive in a residential home environment.

That's not to say it isn't ever done under protest, but how on earth would you restrain an 80 year old man without injuring him? It honestly doesn't happen. But then, in the environment I worked in, explaination of consequences, with pictures of pressure sores, was usually enough, and if not then getting the doctor to speak to them always worked.

explanation of consequences would not work on someone with severe dementia they wouldn't have a clue. I assume the staff cajole and distract.
Anyway, I apologise for turning this thread into a discussion about care homes

We used to change poeple without consent BUT maybe because many of our patients were sectioned so that might be the essential difference- refusing to change for a prolonged period would come under self harm. Also, some of our patients- with sometimes severe conditions such as bowel cancer requiring in depth toilettingc are plans (sadly often meaning literally a clean up squad several times a day in their room) were simply impossible to communicate with; permission couldn't be 'obtained' under any circumstances because they didn't engage sufficiently- they literally didn't know where they were.

OTPH its many years since I worked in the sector, when I was striaght out of Nursing college, and my hat goes off to those who do it becuase I found it very challenging (never enough time to achieve all you wanted for the aptients, esp. when I was working with younger Psych patients who were simply not getting the clinical support they needed- as longa s their fees were paid they were left)

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