FaultenXIII wrote...
As a recent psych grad I feel I can offer some insight to this thread. Corporal punishment 'CAN' have some uses in child rearing, though it is only effective when used vary sparingly. If it is used commonly and at the same intensity each time, i.e. you spank the child close to the same number of times with the same amount of force each time, then the effect of the corporal punishment begins to rapidly fade. To maintain the effectiveness of corporal punishment you must keep delivering it with an ever increasing intensity or risk loosing the effectiveness of the punishment. Now I probably don't have to spell this out for people here to see the risks of what that could mean, but for the sake of clarity I will. To keep this effective you would have to keep escalating the intensity and forcefulness of the punishment with each application, so spankings with your hand would upgrade into something like a pop from a paddle board or something similar, and it just goes up from there. Now the real trouble here is that after awhile the line between corporal punishment and abuse becomes very hard to discern.
Another point to bring up is the child's increasing age. At a young age corporal punishment can be EXTREMELY effective in establishing behavior in children. Their young minds are very impressionable so an extremely intense stimulus like corporal punishment will quickly get them to stop something, at least for the moment. However as they get older, especially in the teen years, they will be close in physical size to the parent, and if you have been doing this to them for years, you may have instilled some unintended side effects in them. First could be a sense of bitterness or aggression from being treated that way. Second could be that they no longer want to be treated like that, and right or wrong, trying to physically discipline someone who is close to your size and does not want to be is going to be pretty difficult.
So going back to point, corporal punishment can have its uses in child rearing, though it is best used sparingly.
I'm no psychologist, but I'm not sure I agree with everything you say. Or perhaps I misunderstand.
A smack on the butt or the hand, to immediately curb unacceptable behavior and get attention, is a form of corporal punishment, no? IMO, it can be used repeatedly. Now, yes, as the child gets older, the smack will need to get harder (a light tap to a child of 18 months will likely barely be felt by one of 9 years), but it does not need to escalate. One smack need not become 2, then 3, then 5, etc. And a smack with an open hand need not turn into one with a closed fist, then an object, etc.
Maybe you consider that "sparing use", in which case, I think your point is valid. But when I hear "sparing use", I think "very rare, almost never". And in that event, I'm not sure it's valid.
I also think - and again, may have misunderstood your point - that corporal punishment alone is of virtually no use. By "corporal punishment alone" I mean the only discipline ever used is physical. To me, this is meaningless, as a child learns there is only one punishment for any transgression, regardless of severity. Frankly, if I know I'm going to get hit with a baseball bat 10 times regardless of whether I forget to make my bed or if I throw my playmate down the stairs, well heck, why not go big and toss away?
Discipline of a child is, first and foremost, for teaching rules of behavior - what is and is not acceptable in different situations. The beginning of this is telling the child what they can and can't do, and as they get older, explaining why. The second is being consistent in those rules. The third is being fair in discipline - failing to make a bed does not deserve the same punishment as hitting a playmate, whether that punishment is a time out, taking away a toy, a grounding, or physical punishment.
To me, if a child is repeatedly engaging in the same unacceptable behavior, the problem is the parent - and not in terms of the form of punishment, but in terms of their ability to set boundaries and/or stick to them.





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