Stop Every Kid-Hitter You Can: Teach ‘Em a Lesson!
29 04 2007. . .and a good place to start might be to stop calling kid-hitting any kind of love or learning, and to object when others do.
Tomorrow–Monday April 30–is SpankOut 2007 and for once, this is a Snook post that Thinking Parents needn’t give much thought. It’s the Unthinking Parents, those too deeply in thrall with traditional church and school teachings, who need to start thinking. What they need to think about is how they teach all the wrong lessons by hitting — even in the exalted name of education or eternal life, much less from simple ignorance, habit or lack of a better idea.If you know any such folks, please apply any or all of these implements where they can do the most good (and don’t let up until they learn a good lesson!)
Discipline at School: National Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools
Religion and Discipline: Spare the Rod…Spoil the Child?
Discipline at Home: The Kindness to Children Index (by State)
As the Stophitting homepage reminds us, good old Dr. Spock WAS ahead of his time:
If we are ever to turn toward a kindlier society and a safer world, a revulsion against the physical punishment of children would be a good place to start.
- Dr. Benjamin Spock
I almost fell out of the bleachers one afternoon when a fundie Mom threatened her 5 year old daughter with “the wacker” when the little girl started pouting at a homeschool sporting event. The poor kid wasn’t doing anything unusual…just whining a bit and refusing to participate in some activities. Her mother pulled a flat child beating device out of her purse (obviously “the wacker”
in front of everyone. I had never seen anything like it. I’m thinking the woman must be religious to some extent since she seemed to think the threat was, in some sense, a good way to handle the situation. I shudder at the thought of what must go on behind closed doors if she didn’t think twice about airing her abusive ways in front of at least 10 other parents.
There are so many threads floating around here and elsewhere that touch on this. All about control and parenting and unschooling and applying principles in real life and . . . I better think some more and see if I have anything coherent to write.
Nance
And self-control and self-discipline — how to leave space for them to grow, how to help kids develop them and how to get some in our own “all grown up” lives.
Hmmm. . .
Nance
Since 9-11 I can’t hear a story like that without hearing the Taliban in it. Regress everything to mullahs and mysticism, ignorance and social controls in the name of a vengeful and punishing deity whose mind is known mainly to MEN.
Vengeful and punishing “men of god” can be directly and openly resisted in a fair fight and usually will arouse just that response. But when Taliban Theocracy is enforced through the seemingly sweet, gentle “truth and light” of loving, protecting motherhood divining what’s in a child’s heart and then hitting it with a stick in the name of the fathers (like Michael Pearl and Tedd Tripp) — that’s when my faith in the Constitution is most sorely tested. I’m thinking maybe American freedom should be emulating Turkey rather than the Taliban.
Something Teresa Heinz Kerry said on her next-to-last blog tour stop applies to this issue too — heck, it IS this issue, better environments for women’s and children’s health! That is all my issues rolled into one big one, pretty much what animates my life:
BTW eireann, I am really enjoying your unschooling billboard bible tour of the South!
Something Favorite Daughter had to say about hitting kids as shocking:
“I Can’t Hear You, LALALALA!”
Thank you for posting this. I wish I was aware of this sooner. I’m definitely applying for one of the grants to have a “No Spank” event and some education in our area next year!!!! There were so few events listed on their site, and not one in FL.
Hey, you know — we could maybe do a blog tour next April, like the one we just did with Teresa Keinz Kerry? Get Doc and Daryl and COD et al, Deanne and the Snooks, School of Thought, Culture Kitchen, Pam Sorooshian’s no-spanking group and enough other evolved Thinking Parents to make a “Healthy Means No Hitting!” online event throughout the month leading up to the Spank Out Day? — who could we get to be the star interview, hmmm . . .
Sandra Dodd posted a truth-revealing story that happened to Favorite Daughter a couple of years ago. What it illustrated for us is how spanking either teaches kids to believe in spanking as parenting, or else not to believe in their own parents because of spanking.
Either way, a very bad learning outcome!
Good to have you “on board” this year. Great post.
[...] 05 2007 As I listened to Zimbardo’s wonderful radio interview this morning, I thought about kid-hitting! This brilliant experimenter explains so much about unhealthy environments of power and control [...]
“Deanne and the Snooks” sounds like a pop music group —
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[...] easy way you can help is to look directly at the prayer and politics and punishment in a family, if you want or need to know how dangerous they are to our civil liberties and national [...]