Along The Way was found following Lorna’s link. These are both fine … deep and well written.
Lorna’s comment brought up the difficulty of talking about physically disciplining our children. There is so much muck to get through that it is one of those very, very hard topics to address with the fine tuning one needs.
Anyway, Amber Buriff’s posts are full of thoughts that I can really identify with, and judging from Lorna’s post, she feels the same way.
Some of the discussion on how to raise children is going to go cultural on us. I have a cousin whose Danish wife has an absolute horror of spanking children…yet, they raise beautiful children.
We have all seen irresponsible and spoiled children whose parents live in dread of them, from perfectly nice homes, as well.
No one believes abusing other people is good, but we all see the necessity of disciplines, that take different forms throughout life.
We are told that God disciplines us out of love. And some of those things seem quite harsh. I am in an in-between place on child discipline. The earlier children had more phsycial discipline than these younger ones… I can’t remember the last time I spanked anyone, but I have found times when that was the only good form of immediate restraint. A child who likes to run into the street? I ‘d talk to them, pull them back, yes. But I would also underline it with spanking. To make people really angry I guess… after losing more than one dog to country roads where the drivers drive too fast and don’t look …. I used a disciplinary procedure that included spraying them with cold water. Never did that with the children, but I thoroughly trained them to stay away from the road.
And I still had the occasional infraction or two. They were a stubborn lot ( where they got that?! ::rolling eyes:: )
I never see any reason or excuse for wife beating. Ever. That isn’t discipline, that is terrorizing. I think ability to understand the situation enters into the matter… although on the other side of the spectrum I do not believe it is ever right to punish a child below the age of 18 mos. with any sort of physical discipline.
So now that the can of worms has been opened…
I really meant just to turn your attention to some good blogs.
Absolutely no physical discipline for a child under 18mos. whatsoever? I don’t have a problem with a light slap on the hand for a child who’s started walking (and getting into things), and some children begin walking as early as 10mos. I have a nearly sixteen month old great-nephew, who’s been responding well to a “slap on the wrist” since he started walking – abt. 12mos old then.
Some people argue that you shouldn’t ever tell a baby/young toddler “no;” that redirection should be your only “discipline.” I would not like to babysit for those people’s children.
Not like it’s a hard and fast ruole, but having raised a family all well past that stage, and having lots of babysitting experience and Church nursery experieince I would say that spanking is unnecessary for children under 18 months. My idea of redirecting is taking that child and physically removing either him from the situation or the situation from him. Physical discipline requires the child to have some understanding of the infraction.
The opposite side of the equation is when parents require a child to have more mental understanding and ability to control themselves than is practical. I think those are the kids you find becoming a handful.