“Fear is not a good thing for relationships.”
Have you heard of celebrity Jessica Alba? Most young moms will have done, probably. Her fame hadn’t reached me though, until thanks to Nance and Deanne, I first caught her act this week.
She admits to locking her toddler in the bathroom with the lights off because “her previous methods weren’t scary enough to keep the tot from behaving badly.” But, she tries to justify the practice by saying:
I mean, we don’t believe in, like, spankings. Or like when I was a kid I used to get hot sauce in my mouth . . .
In her television-and-film stunted-story mind, that’s “creative discipline” rather than, like, creative abuse?
Like, no, let me see if I can talk your childish gibberish teevee language to help you pay attention so you can behave better than this. Here’s what it’s, like, really like: it’s like the oh-so-creepy choco-beast tv commercials where mom and dad in spooky darkness, purposely terrify their children all to warn them away from their dessert stash in the fridge.
Then they laugh and congratulate each other on their kids’ screams.
Alba is like, the perfect celebrity to star in those commercials, too bad she wasn’t cast! Did her agent not know, somehow never realized she’s been playing out that role at home in a self-produced sequel of her own poorly-parented childhood, for a captive (and I do mean captive) audience of one helpless and unlucky little girl?
I’m very strict with her. When it’s time for her to eat, whether she’s hollering or whatever, it’s time to eat. She gets a time out if she cries for no reason. So then she stops because she doesn’t want a time out.
What she learned about parenting and teaching from her own childhood made her anorexic and authority-averse, according to her bio-and-quotes page at IMBD:
I wasn’t given a whole lot in my life. I was on the bottom of the class system. But I got wisdom. I never just did what people told me. I questioned everything. . .
From a very early age, I remember thinking that adults were always acting like assholes. I couldn’t understand why I had to respect them. My pre-school teacher forced me to write right-handed when I was left-handed. I didn’t get why I had to change. Nobody could give me a reason. I have had a big problem with authority ever since.
Yet now she has no trouble wielding adult authority herself and considers locking a toddler in the dark bathroom not merely “creative” but hard-won “wisdom” she’s proud to publicize for her fans.
So like, here’s my creative wisdom:
Alba’s real-life parenting performance might, like, be rewritten for the next act with some creative adult education, maybe call it method acting for post-pregnancy reality show stars — worth at least as much study preparing for one’s maternal starring vehicle as was creative sex during pregnancy.
She should start with some scary time locked in her own bathroom but, like, with the lights ON to make it even scarier, so she can read about this real-life (and real death) confinement-as-discipline case from AZ, of a ten-year-old girl:
“. . .admitted putting the child in the trunk and padlocking it. . .
John Allen was allegedly angry with Deal because she had taken a popsicle from the freezer. . .
And if that, like, doesn’t work because it isn’t like, sufficiently scary enough to make the damaged child inside Jessica Alba at least wise enough so that she can behave better as a parent than as a sex object, then let’s get “creative” by her lights: you turn out her lights while I, like, get the hot sauce.
It won’t work either, but at least we won’t have to smack her around.
Personally, I think that’s much more traumatizing to a child than a mild spanking (which I’m not a fan of but at least there is research evidence showing that it isn’t harmful).
Jessica Alba didn’t mention whether she was spanked (mildly or otherwise) as a child, just the hot sauce reference. So pain and fear were part of her upbringing ergo pain and fear are being perpetuated on her child/ren now. Thus she has been quite obviously harmed as a person and parent, whatever CW’s generic research may or may not have measured and reported by *whatever* it was that created Alba’s own childhood pain and fear in the first place.
Spanking creates pain and fear; it is coercive. Hot sauce and locking up, scolding and controlling and withdrawal of affection as Russian parents once favored as their primary control tool, indeed the whole idea of “punishment” and “training” (not to mention concepts like backtalk, sass, disrespect, temper tantrums and of course sinful natures, etc) that punishers focus on, all are part of the pain and fear parents inflict in the name of “discipline.” So I don’t know what to make of that, in light of CW’s belief that the harm and fear of punishing children is relative and can be parsed.
No, that’s not true. I do know what to make of it. It doesn’t matter which pain and fear is better than other pain and fear.To paraphrase a former president (who was pretty clearly damaged by his own childhood) it’s the pain and fear itself, stupid. We go wrong the moment we take our eyes off that overriding reality and start equivocating.
Desperate for Control? Abusive Parenting, Abusive Politics
Can You Go All Day Without Hitting a Child?
Alba: “I remember thinking that adults were always acting like assholes.”
If only parents could read their children’s minds.
Mmmm, Jessica Alba. Wait. What were we taking about?
Chris, you can’t fool me. You’d never turn her loose on your kids . . .
Lynn, good for you. T-shirts!
If only parents could read their children’s minds.
Chris’s kids wouldn’t put up with her!
Touche!
Ouch. Yea–Locking a kid in a small, enclosed space is not just –not good, that is highly traumatic. You don’t do things like that.
I am really saddened to read about this.
Sometimes as parents we really screw up, but there is a difference between premeditated trauma, and ham-handed idiocy.
At some point the child will get bigger and gods help Alba if that kid is smarter than she is. Because then it’s on. Smart, abused kids have a unique talent for getting themselves into deep fecal matter. The kind of trouble that doesn’t wash off. And Alba will have no one to blame or to thank but herself. Assuming that is, she ever becomes self aware enough to make the connection.
But then again, I am sure that this story has generated a lot of angry mail and who knows someone might even file a formal complaint.
Or we can always just let Beep and Nance have a rescue road-trip. Y’all would do it, I know — and you can bunk with Lynn while you’re out there.
Homeschoolers aren’t fans of forced intervention in parenting, of course! — not only conservative Christian libertarians like CW, but homeschool families across the spectrum object on principle and on practical grounds. Like custody battles in court, DCF intervention comes late to a bad situation no matter what happens, and the kids have already been hurt; too much pain and fear have already been inflicted and probably left scars. All the choices are between bad and worse at that point.
So we talk here with parents around the country about these ideas now, so they each can think and talk about them in their own families and communities, before other kids get hurt or even before there ARE kids to get hurt in other families. I don’t write hate mail to the stars of our power of story here. I don’t call DCF or go to meetings and rallies either. I’m not that kind of activist. To me talking about a specific case (like Jessica Alba or Sarah Palin or specific students who are tased, expelled for not swallowing the communion wafer or get crosses burned on their arms by their science teacher etc.) can help change society’s stories and conversation before it’s too late for the next child. You never know who an idea can help once thoughtful people start tinkering with it!
The fancy term for this is using the “critical incidents case study” approach, as my dad did as a business ethics and policy professor/author.
Maybe this blog needs a new name, Nance? Ahem :
Critical Incidents in Parenting Ethics and Policy..
Oh yeah, that’ll ping the Ping meter.
CIPEP? If you are going to rename the blog you have to tie it to a catchy acronym!
Sounds like an antacid lol — or a cheerleading squad — besides, didn’t you already come up with a better blog name for this use, something like, oh I remember
How about NOT O.K. –
NOw They Ought to Know?
Oh no! I like Cocking a Snook. Whenever I talk about this blog by name I get the freakiest looks! Everyone wants to know what a snook is, and what cocks have to do with it. Sometimes there is eyebrow waggling involved. We like that.
I don’t know if I would impress any of you with my immediate reaction to people who are abusive like that. I doubt it would impress a judge. It is much easier for me to have a thought, if I am out of arms reach.
I lived a very rough childhood. And I won’t say that was entirely bad, but it certainly puts one into a mindset of doing everything the hard way.
I am not against corporal punishment, but I am very much against depriving a child of their dignity, and any activity that could be construed as torture. And locking a child in a dark bathroom is torture. You are inducing serious separation anxiety and intensifying that feeling of impending doom with feelings of abandonment + sensory deprivation.
All that is missing is for Alba to admit witholding food and using sleep deprivation techniques and she could apply for a job at the Gitmo.
Stuff like that warps a kid for a variety of reasons, and weakens the emotional bond between mother and child–eroding the trust at a foundational level. When that child becomes a teen or perhaps even a preteen, if Alba keeps this sort of treatment up–the child will become a runaway, or if she is smart, sue for emancipation. Assuming she is not removed by another concerned family member or authorities first.
Beep, before anything, let me make clear that “cock” is a VERB here!
Now, where were we? Oh yes. Good comparison of some child treatment to Gitmo torture, seriously. The flip side, where you don’t include striking the child, needs a good comparison too, so I would offer animal training.
In the same way that human torture is both wrong and less effective than establishing relationships where trust can replace pain/fear and be more effective at the same time, human children respond better to trusted relationships than pain and fear, go figure! Heck, even animal behavior responds better to relationships of mutual trust and family bonding than to pain/fear.
(Beep, have you read Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards?)
Punishment/reward even for animal training is heavy on reward, almost no pain/fear, and physical restraint is not a training or teaching tool even when it’s benign as in removing a young child or animal from an environment; at best it recognizes teaching and training isn’t possible for the moment and so as a last resort, better than a bad situation unchecked, the animals/children/criminals/mentally afflicted/enemy combatants are physically restrained to prevent them hurting themselves and others.
What I mean is that even a “mild” time-out much less a “mild” spanking [shudder] is widely misunderstood as teaching the child to behave, a la “discipline.” No. At best It interrupts what isn’t wanted for the moment, that’s all.
What it teaches or conditions depends on what comes next — love, trust, support, companionship, attention to set things right and feel better now, help figuring out personal ways to feel better sooner next time so it can go better? Or pain/fear/loss of trust/alienation/despair/anger/helplessness?
Do unto others . . .
I don’t buy it for a second that a normal, reasonable swat on the behind causes those emotions. I got swats, and that was not what I felt or thought. My first thought was usually–”wow, I will never do that again.” Or at least not get caught doing that again. And in one case, I knew I would get a swat [at school] because I stood up to a teacher about something that needed to be dealt with whether they wanted to deal with it or not.
That day I learned that I could stick to my guns, even if it meant thwarting the powers that be. What a glorious feeling that is!
I have seen discussions like this blow up so big and ugly that, because I like the way things are now, I am not sure I am willing to pursue this aspect of it much further.
I respect that you have a whole other opinion on the matter and you find the thought of it repugnant. Perhaps this is a cultural difference.
Attendance and participation aren’t compulsory here, and as unschoolers we don’t even grade ourselves, much less commenters.
Maybe CW will pick up the slack to your satisfaction because your position is similar to one she’s never been shy about taking here! — and come to think of it, y’all do share military “culture” that might explain why, at least in part. In any case, either way, Beep and anyone, everyone else, feel free to opt in and out of any discussion here. (Just don’t expect us to stop because you do!)
For anyone wanting to read and think more, with or without speaking up yourself:
Why not paddle naughty parents?
Spanked, not-spanked, learn different power of story
Desperate for control: Abusive parenting, abusive politics
Spanking as Child Abuse?
Can you go all day without hitting a child?:
Stop every kid-hitter you can — teach ‘em a lesson!
Thinking about hitting and children
Is your love for your kids controlling?
Control [by Nance, good think piece]
Control part two, unfortunately
One of these links reports that
and that
Thank you for being so understanding. I would love to see what your other reader has to say, if they are so inclined to comment.
Betcha wouldn’t love to see what I have to say about the idea of hitting children . . . it’s wrong.
JJ can say it more nicely. I’m not the nice one.
Nance
JJ–I was rereading your post and noticed a hyperlink: If you have to ask someone if they can go all day without hitting their child, then you are looking at a seriously, deteriorating situation. Clearly the kids and the parents need a break from each other for starters, and some guidance.
There are a thousand ways to beat a child down and 999 of them don’t involve hitting. So for me, when someone says child-abuse, I don’t just think about someone physically abusing a child. There are a lot of different ways in which children are neglected and abused. Someone abusing their child and calling it spanking or discipline –that’s just hiding behind words. People “teach” kids terrible lessons all the time and call that discipline too. That is also hiding behind words.
Hiding one’s claws in a velvet glove doesn’t make one harmless.
One of these days I am either going to rediscover or create a phrase for that. A better descriptive.
It reminds me of the concept of legalism in religion. This idea that one sin in particular or one act considered sinful is often focused on to the detriment of realizing others that might be just as harmful, but less obvious.
Whatever my faults may be as a parent, I try to be the most consistent and predictable mom. That way uncertainty isn’t something that drives our relationship. I make sure that boundaries are drawn and discipline is not invoked for those times when it is clear, that there was genuine confusion regarding an action.
Most of the time, as children get older, when they make mistakes, that is enough of a lesson without someone else piling it on.
Not being against corporal punishment isn’t the same as using it daily, monthly or even yearly.
But Nance, if I’m the nice one, you must be the pretty one! [cheesy grin]
Beep, when I say CW, I mean Crimson Wife. She was the first commenter in this thread (see above) and I think commented in several of the linked discussions . . .
Maybe so, JJ. We’ll never know, will we?
DH and I were just talking yesterday about my being perfectly content not having my picture or the kids’ pictures swirling through the intertubes.
And, BP, a threat hanging in the air and rarely used is still a threat. Want to stick with how you were raised with a little less violence? Or hardly any? You have that privilege.
Nance
I’ve always loved your air of mystery, personally.
Btw I was just noticing that Parent-Directed Education crossed over its TENTH year of operation! And this blog is about to hit five years.
And it doesn’t matter one bit that I’ve had no mental image of you all that time . . .we booklover types almost prefer it! 
JJ and Nance,
Clearly you godless socialists deserve a “whacky whack on the hiney” – and some time-honored, Biblical edjucation on this matter.
“Why Socialists Hate to Spank Children”
http://vimeo.com/22065674
fwiw: Kevin Swanson is a former executive director of CHEC (Christian Home Educators of Colorado) and host of the “daily radio program – Generations Radio – the world’s largest homeschooling and Biblical worldview program.”
Well Nance, you raise your kids and I will raise mine.
Lynn, what will happen to me if I don’t go watch the crazy man lecture about the virtues of hitting children? Nothing? See, my atheist socialist plot is working!
Today I’m more focused on the crazy Christian saying Oprah is the Harlot of Babylon, Lady Liberty is a Demonic Idol and oh, yeah, Rick Perry isn’t political, just chosen by Jesus to heal this land as its um, unidolatrous Hair God or something . . .
For anyone so not stuck to personal guns that he or she wouldn’t be open-minded to actual research, atheists are less “violent” than the evangelical Christians so keen to whack kids, bully gays and kill infidels (who btw also are less violent, at least when they are Muslim) — did you see the Gallup poll (Florida) Lynne Facebooked the other day? It was based on violence to innocents and it occurred to me that children like non-combatants, are innocents.
When I saw it, this discussion came to mind, that it is consistent to be evangelical/authoritarian and have dominion and to make others bend to your will in the name of the ultimate authority, God, which of course would include your own children . . .and humanists, particularly secular humanists who do not follow any religion’s authority and who respect other humans as true equals, are not authoritarian thus not keen to bend others to their will. Under whose authority would they be?
So California Lynn, I think socialists belief-wise, must be more likely to be humanists and not violence-sanctioning authoritarians? Which apparently will get you whacked!
Maybe the moral of the story is that authoritarians divide people into whackers and the whacked, so they would prefer to be the former. The rest of us don’t see people as needing to have much to do with whacking.
Alas, so many T-shirt/bumper sticker possibilities; so little time.
Hineys for Humanism!
Whacker or Whacked? Which Are You?
Authoritarianism. Putting the “U” in Bully
Nance,
No, nothing will happen to you if you don’t watch the crazy man. Plus, you get to still enjoy playing ping-pong.
Don’t the British use that word “whacker” as an insult or something close, hmmm?
So now I am an Evangelical Dominionist Bully, if I don’t see things your way? Are you sure I am the only stuck to some guns here, because I feel like I just got it with both barrels? I don’t recall implying any sort of insult towards others who disagreed me,or practiced a different philosophy.
I thought that the insult was Wanker. And it has to do with a subject of –well never mind…
This has gotten really rather insulting and it’s surprising. I expected more from the company here.
Hi Beep,
I don’t know if you’re including me in your comment, but I should have made it clear that I was not including you in mine. My mental picture of evangelical authoritarian bullies who mug for cameras with paddles and rods is light years away from my positive impressions of you. I’m sorry I was careless.
I appreciate you making the distinction Lynn. Thank you. I am sorry if I misconstrued anything said here to be personal, if it wasn’t meant in that way.
Again, comments are not graded or judged but that goes for quarreling over a comment you find offensive from someone else, too. Unless you can do it with humor!
We are old and weary of all that hence won’t be playing out the usual personal dramas here. (Nance and I especially have had a couple of lifetimes of that both online and in real life already.)
But honestly, here’s something else to think about: if one personally associates ugly blow-ups with this issue, thus politeIy opts out to avoid that, and is just as politely excused but with the caveat, “just don’t expect us to stop because you do!” — is it surprising when the ensuing discussion seems ugly and upsetting to that person?
Which doesn’t have to be taken as insulting because I don’t mean that to be personal pushback either. It is a thought, a connection, an expanding of the topic into different ideas instead of contracting it down into the same old conflict. It could lead us to another conversation about confirmation bias, for example, maybe applying it to spanking research this time, hmmm .. . .
Oh, and Beep is of course right about whacker/wanker. Good girl for getting the word I was alluding to, even if you didn’t quite get that it was my way of using humor to express the offense I took to Hiney Holiness.
Beep, I wonder if you’ve been through the horror of learning about the Pearls and their “To Train Up a Child” ministry? If not, maybe that’s why you would take my remarks personally instead of realizing their true target?
Guess this needs repeating from above (not from a sky-god, just higher up in the thread!)
BP, it’s not about whether you meant to insult anyone with your insistence that hitting children is OK.
And it’s not about whether you feel insulted when challenged.
But if you find the people who agree with that idea are uncomfortable company. . . maybe that’s something to ponder.
Nance, I’ve noticed lately how much I’ve learned by associating myself with the company of people who think as I do about many things important to me but also differ in some significant ways, like, oh, you for instance.
Well, I’ve learned too. We all do, I hope.
And choosing when and what to argue about is part of what we learn. When the other person is completely unshakeable in their opinion or when there is some room for discussion. When the other person “knows” something and you “know” differently — not much chance for progress.
I saw a bit of a program about “knowing” things yesterday on C-Span. A psychologist/researcher was presenting about a study he had done on people who “know” about their Miranda rights. He was just using that as an example, not particularly focusing on a cause. But he contrasted college students asked about what they “knew” about their Miranda rights and a huge percentage got many features wrong even after they had been taught about the rights. And the researcher compared this group — not under the stress of actually being stopped by the police — with suspects in real-life situations. The suspects naturally did even worse when it came to knowing their rights. And fuzzy wording from the fuzz didn’t help, either.
Anyway . . we are too soon old and too late smart.
Nance
So. Is it time to go smack some sense into Alba now?
Casey Anthony Cited BY DCF for Three “Child Protection” Violations (ya THINK??)
Hi! Thank you for linking me. The discussion in the comments here has been great. I will never understand why such forms of discipline are considered appropriate for anyone, let alone a helpless 3-year-old.
Welcome Vickie. It was your ice-cream-in-the-mailbox story that inspired me!
Several columns taking different tacks in NYT discussion this week: Is Spanking a Black and White Issue?
So I’m thinking about this in light of the newly released research from Notre Dame about who the TEA partisans really are (ignorant belligerent bigots even compared to other white Republicans.)
And that’s who they were from the very beginning, even as they claimed to be drawing members from both parties and not to care about social issues like conservatives generally, only fiscal issues. We had local homeschool innocents here (conservative Christians of course, one a military wife I recall) sincerely hurt when I questioned their open invitation on our eclectic hs elist, presenting a TEA rally at the Capitol as just a lovely nonpartisan picnic atmosphere and I was so wrong to say plenty of Dems wouldn’t be there or that it was politically toxic, not a safe place for all kids.
So. Here’s the new thought I just had:
Doesn’t that connect dominionist types most prone to inflict biblical pain and suffering on children, as the same people or at least family members of people most prone to inflict political pain on everyone else from women and girls, black and brown people to immigrants, gays, Muslims, atheists, disabled or otherwise vulnerable folks, etc etc.? To take up literal arms and refuse to lay them down again up to and including warfare, to torture, to want the police using live ammo and water cannon even against unarmed demonstrators, etc etc?
If so, they are the Spankers perpetuating it at home and school (and Wal-mart, dammit. I hate that!) And disproportionately they are black. Taking all that, isn’t there an obvious argument waiting to be made against spanking that might actually persuade dedicated but not-very-educated spankers to turn from it when nothing else has worked? — to the white spankers, that it’s such a black thing to do, and to black spankers, that it’s a racist TEA partisan thing to do?
So use one aspect of their ignorance to manipulate them about another? Is that jujitsu? Or just sneaky-sneaky?
Wow, that’s the pithiest description of excellent editorial writing I’ve seen!
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