Slashdot Mirror
Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars
sciencehabit writes "Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres — structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease."
Could the telomeres of chromosomes be lengthened? Would this theropy have the affect of causing the cell to handle longevity better?
Child abuse isn't taken seriously? Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public.
A study (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6490.full) was published in PNAS today showing how low-ranking monkeys have worse immune systems than high-ranking monkeys. (In monkey societies, 'high-ranking' is a euphemism for bully.) We've known for a long time that subordinate monkeys have worse health and live shorter lives in general than dominant monkeys, but this is one of the first studies that describe how this actually happens, genetically and physiologically.
Spanking can also help stop a kid from doing something that ends up being even more traumatic.
Unless it happens on school grounds. Then people turn a blind eye.
Especially if other kids are doing it. Then the school administration gives their silent consent by doing nothing about it. Or worse, when it's physical abuse, they punish both the bully who attacked someone without provocation and the one who defended himself, just to add that element of mindfuck to existing injustice.
I am thankful to have had parents who told me I would not be in trouble for legitimate self-defense even if the school system was far less reasonable. What I found was that if you knock out one of them, the rest tend to leave you alone, for the nature of a bully is to find a doormat who will not fight back. I believe the school officials who have no doubt studied child psychology and the like are also aware of this and understand the injustice they facilitate. It is not mere bureaucratic ignorance but some kind of desired effect, a sort of unwritten portion of the curriculum.
People who can and will stand up for themselves, even when a price must be paid, are extremely undesirable to increasingly tyrannical governments. It's something they would discourage and it is not difficult to understand why. It's amazing how hard that is to accept for people who cannot comprehend that organizations, like individuals, can also be selfish and encourage only what is in their long-term interests.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Ever since the 1960s, child abuse has been touted as the worst thing an individual could do to another individual--it's pretty high up there in America. I was under the impression it was being taken seriously.
It's already known that stress can seem to accelerate aging. Ever see those pictures of presidents before a term, then after? 4 years passed for everybody else, but it looks like they aged 10 years.
Psyche and soma are not fully distinguishable.
Actually, if you RTFA you would know that the measurement only applied to two or more kinds of violence exposure. Thus, the occasional spanking without other forms of violence would not qualify as harmful under this study.
Sorry, but that opinion is not healthy. Abuse is abuse, but on occasion a parent (assuming they are actually parenting) will have limits tested beyond any other punishment. Normally, I see your type of comment from one of two kinds of people.
1. Those that have no children so have no idea what parenting is.
2. Parents who's children are monsters that have no respect for any authority. Generally the parents are either ashamed or afraid to take the kids out in public, or the children are so poorly behaved that people don't want them in public.
Truth be told, I have spanked my son 2 times in his whole life. The first time he refused to stop what he was doing, refused any punishment (go to time out) and was doing something dangerous. The second time, he was a bit older. He refused punishment and took a swing at me.
Now unlike when I was a kid and just got the shit kicked out of me with a belt, I explained to my kid on both occasions why I had to punish him and how we could not repeat those mistakes. He learned valuable lessons on both occasions. In my opinion, he learned valuable lessons from those occasions. He is going to be an adult soon, and one day may ask for advice when it comes to parenting. I really hope he remembers how he was raised or talks to me before he talks to someone like you.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Even as recently as 2006 a majority of people still think it's acceptable to hit infants, so while some progress has been made it's hardly a solved problem.
Sometimes spanking is necessary. It isn't necessarily the first thing I would go to. It depends on the child's personality as well as their age. Also, the whole of the point of discipline and part of the point of raising a child is to modify behavior. I doubt anyone wants to have a jerk for a son.
You forgot child birth also. Not that I remember, but I am sure that my birth was extremely painful.
Parents need to learn there are other ways to handle discipline and yes, aside from being damaging in yet another known way - previous revelations including lower test scores and greater aggression from children who have been spanked, spanking is the lazy way out. There are more effective, responsible means.
Timeouts for one, if done right and that is key, if done right, are absolutely better. Parents screw this one up by making them too long or delaying them. I for one always found a minute per year of age, given immediately at the time of the infraction regardless of where we were, done standing, done silent and done facing a wall, corner, tree, whatever was handy and followed with an explanation for the punishment and a directive for future behavior was very effective. So effective in fact I would find no need for their use within a couple weeks time. I had compliance.
Now I'll admit these weren't my children - rather I was a nanny for a great many years, and parents tend to have to be around their children a bit more than I had to, so perhaps adjustments would be necessary to maintain effectiveness. Or other avenues explored. My point is simply that there are other ways and they can be much more effective, if done right.
It's a very difficult problem to solve because some forms of abuse are nearly universal. Therefore you can't talk about them objectively without provoking all the emotional defenses of guilt and justification that people harbor from being exposed to or performing those actions.
"Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked." -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
That doesn't at all address the parent, you're just changing the subject.
Yes, there is a difference between spanking and beating the crap out of a kid. There's also a difference between beating the crap out of a kid and quadruple-amputating him for no sound medical reason, but that doesn't make beating the crap out of a kid okay.
Rather than speak to differences between thing X and an obviously worse thing Y, you should clarify why thing X is not a bad thing on its own merits.
Indeed.
Don't put disinfectant on that scrape on your kid's knee, because it stings.
Don't take him in for surgery because there will be post-op pain--after all, the doctor abused him by cutting him open. How is this still legal, in this day and age?!
The examples above are cases in which the end justifies the means. I think that there are better ways to discipline most children than spanking, but equating a spanking given by a clearly responsible and loving parent with slapping a kid because he blocked your view of the television is incredibly simplistic. There is an argument to be had about whether or not spanking can be categorized with my examples above, and it's one I'm interested in, but your position is untenable.
Your brain is not a computer.
Now unlike when I was a kid and just got the shit kicked out of me with a belt, I explained to my kid on both occasions why I had to punish him and how we could not repeat those mistakes. He learned valuable lessons on both occasions. In my opinion, he learned valuable lessons from those occasions. He is going to be an adult soon, and one day may ask for advice when it comes to parenting. I really hope he remembers how he was raised or talks to me before he talks to someone like you.
I'm sure you are a fair parent. However, you need to realize that you justified striking your child out of frustration with your inability to control him by effectively saying, "at least I wasn't as bad as my parent." In that statement, you condemned your parents' actions as abusive and affirmed that the lesson you learned from them was not to do what they did. What do you think your son is going to tell people when he emotionally abuses his kids? Or locks then in a basement room without food for days at a time? "At least I didn't beat them like my father beat me."
Both my parents' fathers were abusive alcoholics. My mother justified punching us and cutting us because "at least I'm not whipping you with a leather belt like my father." Her sister kept wooden paddles mounted on the wall with her kids names on them. And my father would refuse to let me eat breakfast, lunch and dinner until I could convince him I deserved to eat. After hours of any response I gave being met with "you're worthless" he'd send me to bed without any food at all that day, and tell me that "at least I'm not hitting you like my father hit me."
They all justify it by comparing themselves to their parents, while condemning their parents. Were they really better because when they hit their kids it didn't put a hole in the wall? Did they really learn anything? Where does this cycle end? I'm not saying its easy to raise kids. I'm saying you have a responsibility to recognize the difference between parenting and lashing out in frustration. If you do it, OK, it happens, it's human nature, apologize, explain and move on. But don't hide behind this claim that it's OK because you're better than your parents. If you need to justify yourself by comparing yourself to them, then you're really not any better, because they (and everyone who's ever been accused of child abuse) hid behind the same bullshit argument.
Forget the organizational level for a second, and consider on a human level. Officials working for schools and depend on them to put food on the table would have to understand that authoritarian regimes tend to target and eliminate education.
Target and eliminate? No. They aren't that stupid (would that they were). What they do is pervert education and use it for the purpose of social engineering and indoctrination. Any transmission of knowledge or understanding is incidental and only to the extent necessary that the peons/students can perform useful labor, to form the bottom of the pyramid. They would also encourage conformity and permit various bullying and other abuses to ensure that the immaturities of childhood extend well into adulthood. What they absolutely would not do is teach serious, tough-minded critical thinking skills and raise up people who can educate themselves and do not need to depend on an instructor to tell them what is important to learn.
Sounds just like what we have now in the USA. These things happen slowly from the perspective of a human life, but quickly from the perspective of written history. Just consider how much the USA has changed in the last three generations. Then you can get a feel for what's going on, where it is headed, what the ultimate expression of it would be, and why it would be done that way.
The USA's tyranny is not going to be hard tyranny, the kind that waves a gun in your face and demands that you submit. It is going to be a soft tyranny, the kind that knows what's best for you, that you have learned to depend on. That, however, is just a matter of style, the means. The result is the same.
I have to ask, were you trolling or did you truly not understand that? What real tyrants understand is that the average person is so caught up in their day-to-day affairs that they tend not to be long-term thinkers. They are not skilled at seeing the path something is taking and projecting what the end of that path will be and that skill is not taught to them and they are not self-educators who would acquire it on their own. So if you want to implement tyranny, you do it in baby steps, each one carefully justified and defended by its ardent little apologists. After all, you don't want the terrorists to win, do you? After all, you want to protect the children, don't you? After all, you want the poor to be taken care of, don't you?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Cats, however, take a stepped-on tail as an unforgivable, grievous insult against their Gods. Which are themselves, incidentally.
I doubt anyone wants to have a jerk for a son.
I disagree; I'm sure countless Americans would want that. Everyone wants kids that grow up to be just like themselves.
Why would you hit an adult who's making no sense? Or a child?
Spanking and other forms of punishment are to negatively reinforce bad behavior, not to deal with someone who's upset and irrational. And yes, we absolutely do hit adults when they behave badly. Well, most of us don't, but the police certainly do. They hit them, with metal batons if necessary, until they comply, and then they're taken to jail. Luckily, most adults don't need this, and most kids raised correctly probably don't either, but there's always some knuckleheads who understand nothing but force.
I have a brain and put to its full use, I can't for the life of me figure out how the liberal bogeyman came into this for you, but I'm sorry to tell you that your reasoning is inherently flawed. First off, I have found that people of all political stripes are more than willing to take a study, apply it universally and try to force it on everyone.
I did not, in any way, suggest that timeouts would work for everyone. What I did find was that for the thirty or so children I cared for as the eldest of three, the neighborhood babysitter for twelve years and a full-time nanny for six years timeouts done in the fashion I described were effective for all of them. I got years of compliance after only a few of these. I would add that some jurisdictions around the country have found a similar effect in jail sentences, faster and shorter sentencing apparently reduces recidivism.
I emphasize again that there are alternatives. Some parents have found groundings of all sorts to be effective or ineffective depending on the child, the type involved and the method used to carry it out. Some parents have forced chores as punishments. Some parents force extra schoolwork using workbooks bought from the likes on Amazon - I discourage it because I don't believe education should be thought of as a negative / believe it could lead to some long-term harm, but for some it's arguably effective. Sometimes you just need to apply a little more time. I had one boy who needed two weeks straight before he got it.
What I can say is that there are universal truths. Spanking, whether it is effective or not for getting a child to stop a particular act, is bad for all children. It leads to aggression, lower test scores, etc. Whatever the manifestation for a particular child the point is, if I shoot you in the foot you're going to stop kicking me with that foot, but let's look beyond just getting you to stop kicking me. Put another way, when there is permanent harm, it doesn't matter if it is effective. It could be the most effective method out there and that would change that it is wrong, especially in light of alternatives.
This study may eventually prove to be yet another piece backing that.
It used to be taught that environmental factors during an organism's lifetime (malnutrition, etc.) did not have an effect on the genetic heritage of offspring (you get a "clean slate" of DNA, so to speak). [...] But here we are with a study that says environmental factors can leave a genetic mark.
The study was about somatic cells, eg "body cells" that make up the specialized tissues of your body. Your offspring are formed from germ cells, found in your gonads, and consequently your offspring can only inherit DNA from your germ cells, but never your somatic cells (except in the case of cloning or other artificial techniques).
Telomeres are the "endcaps" of chromosomal DNA. Every time a chromosome is copied, a small portion at the ends of the chromosome get "left off" of the copy, which limits the number of time a cell can divide before the telomeres are consumed and functional DNA segments begin to be deleted. This (usually) prevents cells from reproducing in an uncontrolled fashion, and it's one of your body's main defenses against cancer. That's how it works in somatic cells.
Germ cells, on the other hand, can express a ribozyme called "telomerase," which can bind to the ends of a chromosome and extend the telomeres. This is why animals can reproduce indefinitely even though 99% of their cells are "mortal." (As others have pointed out, when a somatic cell begins to express telomerase it's usually cancer.)
The upshot of all of this is that shortened telomeres in your somatic cells will have no direct effect on your offspring. This particular study in no way supports the idea that environmental factors are responsible for genetic changes in offspring. Your post is therefore ill-informed even if your thesis is correct ("almost everything they teach in American public school is either wrong or simplified to the point of uselessness?").
To rectify your error, your homework assignment for tonight is to study the enzymes called "telomerase" and "reverse transcriptase," followed by learning the "central dogma of biology."
Dismissed.
While I do not personally use spanking, I think that categorizing it as being for "an adult who knows no other options or who chooses not to take the time needed to solve the situation" is incorrect.
Parents, in the mini society we call the family, perform the role of government. If we, as adults, do things like use violence and intimidation to get our way we will find the police using state sanctioned violence against us. I personally think smacking is an appropriate response to violent, bullying behavior in children and most kids will try that out at some stage. It is better for society that we learn this lesson at the hands of our parents as children rather than at the hands of police as an adult. I do note that it isn't the only method I'd recommend to correct bullying.
Additionally, sometimes behavior correction needs to be immediate. Where disobedience will lead to the child's life being in danger taking "the time needed to solve the situation otherwise" could be interpreted as neglect. If you are in a situation where you need to correct behavior right now, smacking could be the best option.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Here's one. You can find other studies that have found even higher frequencies than this one if you keep looking.
Yes, and it has very powerful long term effects on their personality.
I went to primary school in the 60's and throught those 6yrs there was an girl in my level to whom nature had not been kind. ALL the other kids would yell "Allison's germs" and run away when she approached them in the schoolyard. It didn't help that her parents sent her to school with dirty clothes and oily hair, this just reinforced her status as the lepoar of the schoolyard. Sometimes she used their fear against them by delibertely following them, or steal their marbles by chasing them away. These 'attacks' often ended with her falling to the ground in tears. I'd like to say I befreinded her but I too saw the germs and not the Allison.
Everyone remebers what happened to them in the schoolyard, it's much harder to remeber what you did to others. It's neither an remedy or an excuse for this behaviour but I beleive the Stanford prison experiments clearly demonstrated what old time religion had intuitvely known about human nature from day one, how did 'middle class' germans willingly become death camp gaurds, and why are kids so cruel? - Stable, strong societies survive, the "golden rule" found in most societies and religions combined with resrtricing the definition of "others" is a powerful stabalizing force, war against non-others is a powerful strenghtening force.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Historically, authoritarian regimes - the hard sort, have targeted education for elimination - perhaps not for the entire population, but large portions. The most glaring example would be Mao's China - but that really wasn't my reference.
Any others?
The USSR had great educational systems; they taught people to be physicists, rocket engineers, classical musicians, gymnasts, etc. No, they didn't teach people to be independent thinkers, but they poured lots of resources into higher education that benefited the state.
North Korea is about as authoritarian as they come, and they certainly are working hard to produce scientists and engineers to build them bombs and rockets.
Nazi Germany was certainly authoritarian, yet they had higher education too. How do you think they produced so many aeronautical engineers and rocket scientists?
Mao's China was really an exception, as Mao was a very stupid man who was basically an anti-intellectual farm worker who led a revolution and then forced his idiotic ideas on everyone, which led to the "Great Leap Forward" which was really a great leap backwards and resulted in countless people starving to death. He wanted to get rid of all "intellectuals" (anyone with an education) and basically make it a country of uneducated workers. China suffered greatly under his leadership, and only got better once other people took over. China's current leaders only pay lip service to Mao, and don't follow his methods at all; most of them are actually engineers.
Education is very important to authoritarian regimes, because it allows them to impose a particular school of thought on the entire population from the top down.
Funding is being cut on all levels, class sizes are going up, teachers and the very concept of education are being regularly attacked by politicians, religious types, etc.
The religious types aren't authoritarians; they hate public education because, at least these days, it prevents them from indoctrinating everyone else's kids with their religious beliefs, so they're always working against it. If this weren't a pluralistic society, this wouldn't be the case. Go to any religious schools and see if the concept of education is being attacked there; it isn't, because the religious people have complete control over the instruction(/indoctrination).
Furthermore, the attacks on educational funding in this country aren't evidence of creeping authoritarianism; they're evidence that there's many different forces at work, and this one is working against centralized authoritarianism. What's going on in this country is really rather complicated; it's not like other nations' revolutionary times where some jerks rose up and seized power militarily and then started imposing their ideas on everyone, as seen in the early Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, Hitler's Germany, Napoleon's France, etc. One way you can see this is that there's no one person or small cabal in power at this time; Obama has a high office, but he's shown he isn't pulling any strings, but rather he's the puppet with his strings being pulled by various other interests. Furthermore, there's still a big division in power between the state and federal governments, with a lot of states openly challenging the federal government on various issues. If you want to boil things down, the main thing you can say is that the governments in this country (and more so at higher levels) are extremely corrupted by corporate influence. There's no single leader who's going to seize power like Stalin or Hitler or Napoleon; instead, various interests are going to be constantly fighting each other until the whole house of cards collapses.
"Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public."
Not back in the 80s, in Texas.
I'll give you two guesses as to how I know. Hint: I'm 30 now.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There's definitely too many adults ready to substitute violence for parenting, but the opposite extreme of a complete ban on spanking doesn't work well either. Let's face it, there are adults out there who you can't get through to without a little force.
Nice straw man. I knew I would receive opposition to my view, but I didn't think it would almost universally of the kind where people intentionally misrepresented my intentions. Did I really need to add "as punishment" considering the nature of the article, the other comments, common sense, and the person I replied to before people understood my intent?
I'm curious about how spanking could be classified in the same area in the examples you give. Both situations could lead to issues up to and including death if such problems requiring this care are not provided, and are only necessary because there is no way to prevent this pain while providing the cure to the situation. I'm sorry if I find it hard to believe backtalk is in line with medical treatment. I do not believe social order should be maintained through physical discipline. That is the root of my issue with spanking.
A real problem with spanking as a whole is it is more often not the clearly responsible, loving parents you describe who are doing this. Another part of the problem is how vague the word "spanking" is. I am not strictly opposed to the idea of spanking but the reasoning, implementation, and severity. I grew up in a spanking household. Spanking in my house were incidents that often led to bruising. Lets not pretend this is abnormal in scale. My dad was not an especially violent person, or a drunk. He was a hard worker and a generally well rounded person. I did not even feel the way I do now back when I was a kid receiving these spankings. I certainly did not like them, and it made me fear my father, but I had no interest in the politics of it as I was just a kid. It was around the time my dad broke down in his old age and told me how sorry he was for it that I started to consider the actual issue and form my own opinion.
Honestly, it doesn't matter what I think, or what you think. People will do what they think is right when raising their kids. This can either be terrible or it can be good. But I'm only providing my point of view over what I think is right in this world made of shades of grey.
Child abuse isn't taken seriously? Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public.
Yeah, and then sometimes they ignore children being raped & beaten until there's a body and a new story. Underfunded, under-trained, over-worked--kind of tells its own story about the priority we put on it.
I don't think there's ever going to be a solution to the problem that comes from the government just due to their nature. Bureaucracies have an incentive to manage problems in perpetuity, not solve them.
The solution will happen when individual people stop turning a blind eye and stop making excuses for abusive conduct. The extent to which parents who abuse children can hide behind tradition, religion, law and culture to justify what they do is also the extent to which they avoid suffering negative social ramifications for their behavior. When people stop accepting those excuses as valid the problem will cease.
Yes, it can be.
That does not mean in necessarily is.
Your post could be read to mean you're a moron, but does not necessarily mean you're a moron. See the difference?
It's interesting that you choose to use the loaded terms "acceptable to hit infants," when "hit" includes slapping the child's hand in that study, and in order for it to support your coupling of "majority" and "infant" requires quite a stretch on what age constitutes infancy. Most people don't consider a 3-year-old an infant any longer, and the largest contingent of physical punishment used to make up that majority is slapping a child's hand. Your previous posts about hitting children at the age of 12 months is limited almost exclusively to slapping a child's hand (something you fail to mention), which is (admittedly, only my own observation) almost as frequently a reaction to get a child to immediately stop potentially dangerous or destructive behavior as it is a punishment.
So, while you could actually use that study's data to make reasonable points to back up your position, you instead spin it to make one particular part of it sound far worse than it actually is.
Your treatment of the facts raises serious questions about your ability to discuss this issue objectively.
I'm going to tell you boys and girls a story, and it's posted AC for the obvious reason (other than having lost my user/pass to a hard drive crash).
One of my mother's boyfriends used to smash my head into my brother's head, then he'd drag me off to my room by my head. On the way, he'd smash my head into the wall or a door, just for further punishment.
Just thinking about this makes me very, very angry. This same motherfucker also gave me tinnitus in both ears, because he used to DRAG me - a 5 year old boy - around by the ears whenever it suited him. I'm sure you can guess how that makes me feel,
I hate that worthless cunt. I recently found out that he's still alive, and still living in the same city as me. Now I'm 37, and I'm a big dude. He's still a skinny worthless fuck, and he'll be around 60. Should I choose to, I could revenge myself upon him with little effort.
I'm also quite sure that you can't imagine how tempted I am to do that. Whenever I think about it, my blood burns like fire.
The same dirty piece of shit went out of his way to ruin everything he could for my brother and I. I distinctly remember Christmas 1981, when he woke the pair of us up after 10pm, and made us clean our room up. He also told us, in the tone of voice that I still know to this day means a beating was coming my way, that we were to go and tell our mother what we were doing and why.
Why did he do this? Because she was wrapping Christmas presents. His goal was to ruin Christmas for us. Fortunately, because of my earlier childhood, I could live in my own little world of denial where what I knew was kept completely apart from what I wanted to be true.
Know what my mother did about the abuse? Absolutely nothing. That bipolar bitch also behaved abusively - she would sometimes beat us with a power cord if she was angry.
Does physical abuse permanently impact on people's lives? Hell yes. My life is a mixture of anger, depression, and escapism. I have a high IQ, but I spent my life being beaten up or knocked back by the woman who was supposed to protect me. I'm stupid, lazy, worthless, and so on. Resultantly, I'm essentially unable to apply myself for any length of time. Years of abuse have seen to that.
It wasn't just physical, though. It was mental, too. With her being bipolar, well, I hope it's sufficient to say that when my partner starts screaming in anger about anything, I snap and become extremely aggressive almost immediately. I won't hit her, although I do find myself falling into verbal abuse all too often. Some times I can stop that for a significant period of time. Then again, my partner once decided that she was going to make me angry. It took her three days of constant insults and screaming, a punch or five thrown my way, and all sorts of threats. I couldn't leave, because every time I tried to she would block my way out threatening to call the police and tell them I'd attacked her if I even pushed her aside. When I finally snapped, I think I destroyed half the furniture, computer keyboards, anything I could get at with ease - did I mention that I'm a very big guy? - inside the house in around 20 minutes. It took her days to clean up the mess, and she was crying and shaking when she realised she'd made me angry. She kept trying to calm me down at the time, but it was too late.
Once, I could barely make it through a day without suicidal thoughts. It took me years to break that cycle. Now, it still happens on a weekly basis, but I can swing back into daily. I've been out of it for a few months now, but as I type that, I think I'm heading into another bout in the near future.
I've just been promoted at work. A much higher level of responsibility, and a good deal of power and influence within the business. (I can actually decide the way things are done, what things need to be done, and often by whom. I just nee
if your father had instituted the timeout immediately after the infraction - without delay, had been standing behind you, keeping your head facing the wall, keeping you silent, and gave not before or during but after an explanation for the punishment, and then a directive for future behavior
I think one of the key points is "standing behind you". Most parents I have seen using "time outs" IGNORE the child for the duration, often even leaving the room, rather than standing with them. It's a dismissive gesture, and in my experience totally invalidates the punishment. Parents often use time-outs to calm themselves down, and while this is admirable, it is a sign the parent lacks the self-control to be in charge of another human life.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
(as defined by the PARENT, not the GOVERNMENT)
You say this as if government intervention is always a bad thing. However, the government does intervene at times. Such as in situations of child abuse (and I'm not talking about spanking here). A parent cannot legally do whatever they want to their child. There are limits.
As clearly your child is somehow disabled if it cannot withstand corrective negative stimuli rewards for negative behaviors.
Just like my girlfriend! I slapped her a few times as punishment for disagreeing with me, and she had the audacity to press charges!
Using force will never make your arguments more correct. If you punch everyone who says that 1 + 1 is anything but 3, you're not more correct just because they're scared to say it's anything else, and they don't even necessarily respect you (because you damn well haven't earned that respect).
I also liked your use of the word "it" to describe a child. This is a great attitude if your goal is to pump out children that never question authority and treat children like subhumans.
However, it's done for the good of the pack.
Sounds like awful thinking when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals. Hopefully society is more sane than that.
Mama Bear: To those parents that are completely anti-spanking... hey, good luck with that. Technically, a timeout is a short period of solitary confinement, which itself deemed torture, cruel, and unusual... So before you go overboard and compare a measured spanking to beating a child... just remember, you still torture them with solitary confinement, so what makes you parent of the year, eh? ;) I'm sure a few of these velvet glovers will turn out wonderful kids. I'm also sure they will put their child so high on a pedestal to scar their unique little snowflakes in worse ways.
Papa Bear: On the other hand, if a parent ever has to hit, leave a mark, turn something red, or use something other than the palm of their own hand, they're going to far. To that kind of parent: You are bigger, stronger, and in control. For you to use a hanger, belt, stick, wooden spoon, knuckes or other hard part of the body, or anything else on a child is abuse! You're beating your child to quench your anger, not teach a lesson.
Baby Bear: Appropriate measure and balance. My son will be 4 this summer. I'm adamant about teaching him not to grab from the counter, but let's say he goes to grab a knife. I will slap the back of his hand or his bottom (after taking the knife from him calmly, of course). This isn't time to "negotiate". My son permanently injuring himself will receive a swift sting somewhere. He's a small child. He's smart, but appealing to his intellect is completely wrong when it comes to immediate danger. He doesn't run into traffic in a parking lot. He doesn't grab at the stove. He doesn't put coins in his mouth. The key is being consistent, and rare. I think the more you spank, and the harder you spank, work against you. I don't want my child resenting me, or thinking I'm out to hurt him. If he does, then I've failed. But if he gets hit by a car, I've definitely failed!
Very rarely do I ever have to spank for another reason, and that's usually if he refuses to stand in timeout. It's measured, not harsh (I am rougher when he and I are rough housing and playing... so its more embarrassing than anything), and I give him lots of warnings. If I say what the consequence will be, I always follow up. Parents that threaten punishment, and don't follow through do their kids a huge injustice just as if they continually promised ice cream for dessert, and never deliver on that either. Parents that punish without explanation are causing more problems than if they did nothing.
Any form of punishment is followed by having him explain what he did that caused the punishment ("I got a time out because I didn't listen when you told me to put up my toys."), followed by me adding explanations for why what he did was wrong, followed by a big hug, wiping of any tears, a kiss on the cheek, and telling him to go up to anyone he was bad to and apologize.
My son, is healthy, happy, knows he's loved, and is a very sweet and polite boy. He's not mean to animals or other kids. Most of the time, I've found talking quietly and firmly to my son ends all that tantrum business while shopping.
I8-D
You interjected frustration on your own, I never stated that. Even in reflection, I would not state that it was frustration. Before I became a parent I read probably 50 books covering a lot of psychology as well as other aspects of parenting. Every single book mentions that children will test boundaries (it's how they learn and grow), and every single book said pretty much the same thing.
There are really two choices when children test the boundaries and ignore authority. 1. Be the person that says "Stop it" for an hour and gets ignored until the child gets bored. This does not teach the child the correct lesson. What they learn is that their ego rules. 2. Apply corporal punishment to get the action to stop, teaching the child that the boundary was exceeded and.. that authority should be respected.
We are living in a society full of egomaniacs and wonder why?
Let me give you another similar situation. Your kid gets pushed in school every day by the same person. Do the right thing as a parent, notify the school. School takes no action. Child comes home frustrated every day. Do you 1. tell your child to kick the kids butt? or 2. let your child get picked on every day for the remainder of the year trying to do what is deemed politically correct?
Without authority, and without consequences, there is chaos. Sometimes, not often mind you, but sometimes violence is the only statement that someone will understand.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Parental child abuse is taken seriously, but bullying isn't.