Smacking children can affect schooling Smacking children can affect schooling Smacking children can affect schooling Smacking children can affect schooling

[papillon]

this

sorry about the heading... WHOOPS wot happened there? only one came up of my screen? did try pasting it and nothing came up - the pasted ones must have been invisible as I typed it in as well

I'd be interested to see if the study controled for other factors, such as social class, parental education level, school catchment area etc.

I will try and remember to look and see if the review is posted on the net after the seminar

Paps have had a look and can only agree. As many of you know I am against smacking mainly because I have done it a few times and always felt it was for me not the kids and it didnt work at all. I felt guilty, I felt bad and they were upset but not sorry as I was in the wrong. It only made me look like an out of control mum who couldnt be creative enough to solve the problem. Dont hide on other threads as the title of this one made me pml

oops plus paps saying something three times is spookily like a pagan chant dont you think?

I have saved this article to have handy for visits to my Dads - if he ever lays a finger on my DS that will be the last time he sees him.

Did he hit you Aussie? My fil once smacked/pushed my son and have to say it was the angriest I have ever been in my life. My ds8 was the one who said he missed grandad and I chatted to him and we see him now but I am careful.

I agree with hmb - there must be more to the study surely???? These studies do my head in. Smacking children how often? How hard? For what? With what? How old are the children? Are they saying that a slap on the hand for a two year old will turn him or her into an academic failure and a suicidal depressive? And maybe not smacking some children can affect schooling because they're undisciplined? And is the article suggesting that you can't have warm family relationships if you smack your children? Sorry - ranting - these things annoy me.

while the review was based on international research articles it did come out of New Zealand. And New Zealand as the news article mentions has the 3rd highest rate of maltreatment of kids in the OCED.
Alot of Maori and pacific islands families are heavy handed with their kids. I grew up around alot of Maori kids to whom getting a hiding occurred regularly. Actually I mentioned one on a thread yesterday about bullying. A Maori girl who was threatening to hit me was beaten up by her two of her much older sisters in the school toilets. I remember seeing her a couple of years later at high school with the remedial teacher. It was the first time I had ever seen that girl truely happy. Somebody was giving her love and attention, she was like a foal around this woman. I don´t know wot has happened to her, but another girl in our class who came from a very hard Maori family ended up a real mess. Needless to say their schooling was very affected by their lives at home.
There has also been TV dramatisations of common real life situations made in NZ and I remember seeing one about a Pacific Island family. Hitting your kids in many Pacific Island families is seen as normal and acceptable behaviour. One dramatisation I watched was about a church leader who hit his kids. Both of the childrens school life was suffering. I guess they used this family model as an example because the father was a respected member of his community and church.

Cultural and religious opinions regarding appropriate disciplinary actions towards children is hard one to improve or change.

Not discounting that you cannot have a warm relationship with your family if they smack you as a kid. I am very close to my family, but told my parents several years ago that a sad memory for me is being smacked by my father once he came home and then crying on his lap. I cannot remember what I did wrong, but I remember being smacked. It was not something that happened alot and did not affect my schooling.

I remember my father very slowly undoing his belt to get the maximum effect of fear before using it or his slipper. We were terrified of him and it made me work harder at school to get away.

What is using violence meant to teach a child????

...that violence is a way to get someone to do what you want them to?....

At the risk of sounding like 'It never did me any harm....'

I was spanked and it didn't! My academic career was just fine. I was never scarred by my mother smacking me BUT what did badly affect our relationship was her spiteful, hateful, sulking, where she would ignore me for days if I did something wrong. She used to say it was the only way she 'could get her own back on me'. There are worse things than a simple smack on the bottom.

Oh I agree hmb. I wasn't smacked as a child at all, my parents just dealt with punishments as and when, in an appropriate way att he time - luckily none of the sulking like you describe ever happened.

y parents never felt the need to resort to smacking I guess - and believe me, neither me, my brother or my sister awere angels. I hope to be able to deal with DD in that way too. The idea of smacking doesn't lie well with me

Yes its a kinda of rule by fear approach. My parents were always loving and warm, but I also have a vivid memory of being taken into another room in the house by my father and made to lay down over his knees were he proceeded to wallop me very hard on the rear several times. I also cannot remmeber what I had done wrong. I just remember sobbing and sobbing for hours. It makes me choke up even writing it here. But I havent yet told them that it is a vivid memory still. It was something I was threatened with several times. My mum tells me I was a wonderful and bubbly child, what on earth could I have done to deserve this. although I believe my mother suffered severly from PND for many many years , as she also kicked us in anger too. I feel bad saying that here ,a s we now have a close relationship , but this seems to have unearthed somethings tonight.

I dont think I will allow anyone to treat my child this way ever. There are much more powerful disciplines that involve no forms of any physical or mental abuse whatsover. and really when you think --- what terribleterible thing can achild do that that is neccesary. I hope I never get riled enough by my ddd in years to come to get that angry.

Is it a civilised society that has to resort to violence to control our children? There are many other ways....

I would like to see if they can prove that there is a specific case to be made agains smacking, taking out the cases where a child is also affacted by parents whi F and Blind at a kids, theraten them with violence and make the child feel generaly worthless.

I have given the kids a tap on the bottom, and it was just that. I can't remember the last time it happened, it must be over a year. I didn't feel good about it, but I didn't regret it either. It wasn't done in anger and I have two children who know that they are adored. We praise positive behaviour and spend lots of time with them They are both very confident and dd is doing very well in school.

This is a complex issue and I would be very interested to see if other factors, such as the general 'atmosphere' of child rearing has been taken out of the equation.

I also had the silent treament like you HMB , thats more physchologically damaging as a child, often never knowing what Id done - if anything.

But I think Im coming to terms with it more and more as I realise my mum didnt know what else to do, espcecially with severe PND and no suppost system from her family or husband.

It is hard, isn't it melsy? I have no anger about it, possibly due to the fact that my mother has dementia, so there is nothing I can do or say that will change our relationship.

Ironicaly I don't feel anger about the smacked bottoms and never have.

Im sorry about your mum hmb, so you feel youve resolved a lot of the issues in your own mind ??

Its a very very immotive subject; I cant say right now that I wont give a little hard tap here and there, BUT they really dont know what there doing wrong IMHO until they are able to understand and commnicate fully.

Got no choice

Life is as it is. I have to accept it.

My only advice is that it is probably better to discuss things when you get the chance. But life still goes on either way.

Neccessity is the mother of invention as they say.

I will I think , talk to them, gently!!

The way this study is reported is quite typical of the way the media reports things. This is not original research, it is a survey of 300 other studies by the looks of it. Which begs so many questions: how did they choose these 300 studies, on what basis, which studies did they exclude from the research, how did they collate the data so that the sample base of each study was compatible, the methodology was compatible, the social and economic variables were factored in, the results were compatible... it's all just rubbish! I personally never believe any headline that starts "new study shows that..." because you can guarantee that a) it is probably not a new study, it's a re-hash of several old studies, with a sample base of eight students, and b) the new study shows no such thing. Think I lost my faith in "research" when I read about the research that was done in Sweden on drinking in pregnancy, showing that it was very dangerous and women shouldn't do it. It turned out that the sample base was 9 (no, not 900, not 90, 9!) Swedish women, all of whom had a long history of alcoholism and drank several bottles of gin/ wine etc., throughout their pregnancy. And from that study it was extrapolated that pregnant women would have babies with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome if they had so much as a sip of dry sherry at Christmas. It's all Bo*cks! Like most of the research which the media picks up on and reports in the most irresponsible way imaginable. But what really annoys me is when health professionals, government officials etc., give this sort of rubbish house room. The fact is, none of us really know what effect smacking has - I agree with what most people have said, that context is everything - but "studies" like this, are not going to give us any further enlightenment. Or at least, the way the studies are reported are not - because to be fair, academics are not responsible for how the media report their work.

Hang on Meanbean, I really don't see why you are using this report to have a go at the media. Looks like a very straightforward, balanced account to me. The newspaper story makes it very clear that this is a review of 300 other studies ? it's the second sentence! And what's wrong with literature reviews/meta-analysis anway? OK, it has its limitations, as does any other type of study, but if we relied on individual studies and never looked at the overall picture our understanding of the world would be seriously skewed. Do you think journalists should pretend academic research doesn't exist and refrain from reporting it? You say academics aren't responsible for the way the media reports their work. I think it's more complicated than that ? academics are responsible for explaining their work to the public who fund it (taxes/charitable donations/ buying the products of the companies which sponsor research) and who are affected by it when it is used to make decisions about public policy. And academics are responsible for what they say to journalists. There is plenty of bad research out there (particularly in medicine, a field I know a little about) but journalists aren't responsible for it. Yes, people make sweeping claims for limited research but this doesn't look like the most glaring example to me. And I think you'll find the sweeping claims are often made by the researchers themselves or their sponsoring organisation.

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