Child buttock-battering for the purpose of gaining compliance is nothing more than an inherited bad habit.

Its a good idea for people to take a look at what they are doing, and learn how to DISCIPLINE instead of hit.

I think the reason why television shows like “Supernanny” and “Dr. Phil” are so popular is because that is precisely what many (not all) people are trying to do.

There are several reasons why child bottom-slapping isn’t a good idea. Here are some good, quick reads recommended by professionals:

Plain Talk About Spanking
by Jordan Riak,

The Sexual Dangers of Spanking Children
by Tom Johnson,

NO VITAL ORGANS THERE, So They Say
by Lesli Taylor M.D. and Adah Maurer Ph.D.

Most compelling of all reasons to abandon this worst of all bad habits is the fact that buttock-battering can be unintentional sexual abuse for some children. There is an abundance of educational resources, testimony, documentation, etc available on the subject that can easily be found by doing a little research with the recommended reads-visit http://www.nospank.net.

Just a handful of those helping to raise awareness of why child bottom-slapping isn’t a good idea:

American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
Center For Effective Discipline,
PsycHealth Ltd Behavioral Health Professionals,
Churches’ Network For Non-Violence,
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Parenting In Jesus’ Footsteps,
Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment of Children,
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In 26 countries, child corporal punishment is prohibited by law (with more in process). In fact, the US was the only UN member that did not ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“You did?”

“Yep. Non-core activity. Not value adding.”

I don’t want to romanticise our ‘primitive’ past, but growing up in larger families in a group setting is probably how our species evolved, which makes the present day nuclear family with very small families quite unusual. It puts a lot of pressure on often a single relationship between adult and child in circumstances where there are too many other calls on the adult’s attention. It seems the Norwegians have developed patterns of interaction which retain features that are more appropriate to the growing child.

Back @ 22 Naomi mentioned the importance of positive engagement with toddlers and the importance of putting in the time especially with play as the basis of discipline.

I was going to make the point there that the time and work put in prior to age two is important to what happens thereafter, but I didn’t want the thread to track onto the child care issue, which is not irrelevant.

I guess that I was coming in at an oblique angle, and you have countered with something equivalent!

Agree with all of what you are saying, by the way. Self-discipline and an internal locus of control are great goals, and emotional development through intersubjectivity makes excellent sense. Induction of pain, stress and fear leads very clearly to communication breakdown in adult relationships, and one could scarcely imagine the frightening impact on defenceless and dependent toddlers and young children.

The thread seemed to have revolved around the way parents try to “discipline” unruly behaviour in their children, and whether they should be using CP or not. There was a lengthy analysis of the faults of a study of CP and cognitive ability. It seemed to me that we were analysing methods of fighting a war rather than how to avoid war in the first place.

My first oblique attempt was to endorse from first-hand experience @48 your notion @15 that some societies (e.g. Scandinavian) seem to manage bringing up their kids to become responsible members of society without using CP. There appears to be another approach that works for these societies, which avoids the wear and tear of warfare.

The second oblique attempt, was to make a stab at a possible original cause, rather than treating the symptoms – unmanageable kids and desperate parents using CP.

The suggestion was, perhaps even before we get to unmanageable toddlers and CP, there is simply unintended neglect due to the way our modern society operates? It is clearly much milder than what happened to those unfortunate monkey babies and the Romanian orphans, but in the same direction.

Having lived in Sweden and Norway for more than 6 years, and seen how they integrate family and work commitments, I really do sincerely believe that our Aussie society has become child-unfriendly. Aussie children wind up on the periphery, collecting the crumbs of attention after work has devoured their parent’s energy. We wind up outsourcing them for much of their waking hours, from when they are tiny bubs.

Aussie parents (mums and dads) are NOT given enough parental leave with their new-born babies in the critical first year, work creches are the exception rather than the norm (so very young bubs don’t see their parents for what must seem a frightening eternity), and we tend to leave small bubs in prams and separate bedrooms from birth. It may not be the best answer.

Generally, Aussie parents both work, typically some of the longest hours of the OECD countries, come home exhausted from a possibly often stressful day, and have to somehow tend to the kids while cooking, cleaning, paying bills etc, in the residual time before bed. One could easily speculate that Aussie children feel increasingly emotionally neglected by their tired and overworked parents.

I look at Australia from the alterred perspective of those years in Scandinavia, and wonder how on earth Aussie parents manage these days.

Some small changes in the way we do things could make a huge difference, both to the parenting experience and the emotional needs of our next generation/s.

You are right, Brian, I was coming in at an angle to the arguments about CP, but still trying to address an underlying problem hopefully?

The effect of CP, I think, is to use an external control of the child’s behaviour through the induction of pain, stress and fear. To me this has two negative effects (at least).

Firstly, it does nothing to internalise control and discipline. Early childhood specialists, from what I’ve seen, consistently try to teach kids through explanation and modelling to control their own behaviour in ways that are prosocial and bring their own intrinsic rewards. In this sense, the adults try to make themselves redundant.

Secondly, the pain, stress and fear will certainly interrupt and negatively affect the quality of interaction between adult and child. You only have to observe someone who is gifted in interacting with children to realise that smacking is about the last thing you’d want.

I think we grow personally through intersubjectivity, an interpenetration of personalities open to each other, and so become truly human, rather than as hard-shelled isolates firing bits of communication across the void.

In the end I suspect the consequences of CP are even greater for personality development than for cognitive ability as such.

Certainly endemic CP does little if anything, I think, to foster self-discipline in a child and hence does not make itself redundant.

I’m not defending this, BTW.

desipis @ 75, the authors discuss the problems of sample taking in this area. they are aware, and I’ve already pointed out that the 6.6% who were not hit during both sample weeks may have been hit at other times.

As to your ‘quality learning time’ point, the principal concern is with the 2-4 year-olds, who were then tested four years later. So the maximum age we are talking about is 8. Formal learning during these years is mostly at school. The main concern here is that CP might interrupt the quality of talking between parents and kids. That’s a no-brainer, I would have thought.

It’s not possible to comment further on the cognitive ability test used without seeing it, but it’s difficult if not impossible to get a test of cognitive ability that is uncontaminated by formal education.

Apparently there are a lot of studies that show emotional neglect &/or abuse result in emotionally damaged brains. Maybe CP could be related to emotional neglect or abuse?

The early evidence of mental disturbance apparently came from a breeding study of a colony of monkeys at Uni of Wisconsin (1950′s). The baby monkeys were reared in isolation, in immaculately clean cages, supposedly to minimise the spread of disease. They grew up deranged, and were unable to interact socially, were hostile and lashed out in vicious acts of violence towards the other monkeys, as well as tearing themselves apart – one ripped out its fur in bloody clumps and another gnawed off its own hand.

The Romanian orphanages (1960′s) showed a similar trend in childhood behaviour, with hostile behaviour, violent rages, abusiveness towards each other and inability in even the most basic social interactions.

Studies of neglected toddlers from “families in stress” (1980′s) have shown that they lack normal emphathy and are prone to attacking other children, whether they have been physically abused or not.

Apparently the “mirror neurons” (which allow people to feel empathy) and the amygdala (which propagates aversive emotions) don’t develop normally.

Maybe initial emotional neglect &/or CP of small bubs results in emotional damage to the brain causing a difficult child (with tendancies as described above), which causes more parental “correction” efforts, etc, in a decending spiral of negative reinforcement?

When attempting to understand any subject matter, observation will only get you so far. It’s only when attempting to control things and interact that many misunderstandings and assumptions are brought to light. While asserting control over child discipline technique might be considered unethical, anyone proposing policy to do just that has clearly already accepted such control as ethical.