We recently talked about corporal punishment after a bus driver slapped an unruly child on his route and some people defended him while the majority said he was out of line considering his job. Well, you may have heard the story of the 60 year old Idaho resident who slapped a two year old on a Delta flight from MSP airport. Well, it appears he has lost his job as his company doesn’t tolerate that sort of behavior from its employees.
Let’s ignore the claims of the child’s parents that the Idaho man used a racial slur and concentrate on the fact that a stranger felt the need to punish another person’s child for screaming on a plane. A recent new commenter on the bus driver thread posted the comment below (I have not yet verified their e-mail address however):
Sorry that corporal punishment is frowned upon and law makers have made it a crime. The little unruly kids need to be spanked, slapped or popped. I was and I am no worse for it. Did not turn into a monster nor did I brutalize my son but if he got out of line with me, he got spanked or popped in the mouth for it and he is a model citizen. Not using corporal punishment now a days is to the detriment because the little bastards feel this is the way to behave and they grow up into nasty, unruly, no respect adults. When I was growing up, never saw too much of kids acting up, being rude and disrespectful because your parents were called and you got your butt spanked. And if you spoke back to your parents or any adult and your parents heard about it, you got popped in the mouth. Now its normal for kids to be unruly and outta control. And that stupid TIME OUT crap crap does not work. When you tell a child to stop being rude, outta control, etc. And she or he continues, his/her butt needs to be spanked..plain and simple. Kids today have gotten worse since this “don’t hit kids” thing. If you popped them more often they would be better behaved people.
Even if the two year old on the flight was truly unruly, I am not sure the Idaho man was going to solve any problems in the short or long term by “popping” the child as he did. I was spanked (infrequently) as a child and am no worse for wear but I currently choose not to use corporal punishment on my children mostly because I am able to control them in other ways, including very effective use of timeouts which are in direct disagreement with the comments above. Now, whether or not this will work into the future, with The Koala, or if it works with The Rooster because of his personality, age, or the fact that he is a product of no daycare, I don’t know. However, for now, I will continue to avoid using corporal punishment until the time I feel it is necessary to do so.
This all said, the use of timeouts are even frowned upon in our society. The Rooster was at Target with me and he refused to say thank you or hello to the cashier, I forget which, after they talked to him. I have asked him many times to be polite when spoken to. As a result, he went to timeout right there in Target, against the nearest wall until he would respond. A woman waiting to checkout asked me in an accusatory tone if that was really necessary. While I had choice words for her own parenting based on what she was putting into her cart, I felt it most definitely was necessary; I am not going to raise a rude child who is uncontrollable. The fact that people feel like the safe and politically correct alternative to corporal punishment is now socially unacceptable is scary. What do we do next, simply put up with a society of children who rule the world because it’s mean to put them in timeout?
Do you approve of either timeouts or corporal punishment? Do you have any qualms in telling a child (or their parents) to calm down? Would you provide your own form of punishment to a child who was not your own? How much does age factor into the equation? Do you think a two year old on an airplane should be “popped”? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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February 18th, 2013 at 7:23 am
I was never spanked, that I can remember. I spanked my oldest exactly once until my wife pointed out to me that spanking was a cop out, easy for me to do and teaches the kid nothing except Dad and be just as bad as I can.
Hitting a 2 year old on a plance however, bullshit. The guy should go to jail for assualt clearly hes a bully. Racist aside he was also compalining that the kid was too big to sit on Mom’s lap and needed his own seat.
Bottom line mind your own f’n business.
February 18th, 2013 at 8:17 am
I realize this is not a scientific study. I know three people near and dear to me.
One was spanked as a child. Since he was a very active and curious child he was spanked frequently. He grew up to be a very respectful adult to other adults. However he was verbally (never physically) abusive to his own children, one of whom took the insults so much to heart he has not been able to function up to his ability in school or in jobs.
Person two was a stay at home dad who used time out consistently and effectively. His children are respectful and creative, seem to feel secure and are doing well socially and academically in school.
Person three used time out very occasionally and never used physical punishment. Her children are doing well in their careers and relationships.
As I said, this was not a scientific study but having been a child and family therapist myself I always taught correct use of time out and found it very effective when parents used it as taught and when combined with loving play experiences between parent and child. However, time out is more than just getting angry and putting a child in a chair or a corner to get them out of the way. When used correctly the child will understand what they did, why it’s wrong, that their parent will not allow that behavior, and that their parent still loves them.
February 18th, 2013 at 9:03 am
1) What Sank said.
2) If a guy on a plane struck my kid, I would be headed to jail and he would be headed to an intensive care unit.
3) Bill, I hope you gave it to that woman in Target and gave it to her good. I would have utterly destroyed her.
I don’t have a definitive opinion on what’s right universally for every parent/child. I don’t use “corporal punishment” with my kids, although I did one time for one of them in an extreme circumstance. It was followed up with some discussions for perspective.
The people generalizing that time outs don’t work are flat out wrong and, my guess is, ineffective parents themselves or just not parents at all.
February 18th, 2013 at 9:18 am
Taking outright child abuse out of the conversation, which is of course always wrong, there is no real right answer to this one. It really has everything to do with how much the parent knows his or her child and understands what works and what does not for the individual child they are hoping to correct.
I’ve got two adult children. They are both in college, getting good grades, have no issues with chemical dependency, treat people well and they comfortable saying today that my kids are people any parent should be proud of.
I have no idea if the parenting provided to them by us is the reason why. They have never been physically disciplined and there were times when they were growing up where I thought maybe the punishment for whatever they did wrong might have been too light. It took a fair amount of trial and error when they were young before we learned that making one go to bed 30 minutes earlier than her sister (either way) was a punishment worse than any other. Even the threat of that was enough to keep them from doing the worst thing either one ever did, which was borrowing clothes from each other without asking.
Some kids might react the same way with the fear of getting smacked on the ass as a motivator to keep on the up and up, and I suppose that won’t make them beat their wife when they grow up. Certainly not as much as watching Dad beat up Mom while growing up would make them do that.
On the other hand, making the threat of punishment so severe that a child will do anything not to get caught is way worse. That my then 18 year old daughter knew to call me one MORNING to have me drive her home from a friend’s house because she didn’t want to drive under the influence of alcohol while also knowing I wasn’t going to ground her for a month (or beat her or whatever) for underage drinking is oddly one of the moments that I am quite proud of.
I’ll probably get flamed away for that last one, but she’s 21 now and I can confidently say that I know she has never driven drunk in her life. I can say the same for her younger sister too.
February 18th, 2013 at 9:23 am
One of my pet peeves is one person telling another person on how to parent their child; I get extremely agitated/angry when other people judge/suggest to me on how I parent my child. I’m with MSPD, if someone did that to my child, I know I would probably go to jail after I was through with them. The fact is that I know my kid (soon to be kids), have an excellent chance at being a upstanding citizens from the fact that I’m around, spend time with them, and care about them enough to discipline them.
I think the most effective discipline tactics are the ones where your child knows what he or she did wrong, and understand why they were disciplined. I use both spanking and time-out. Both are effective when used properly and in the right situations. To Bill’s point, I firmly believe it does depend on the personality of the child to find what discipline works best. With #2 on the way, and being a girl, I’m hoping I won’t ever have to resort to corporal punishment.
I’m sure there are things I said in this comment that will make some people angry, but you know what? I don’t care, I believe I’m doing the best I can for my children, and that I want to raise them better than how I was raised.
February 18th, 2013 at 12:34 pm
“popping” a crying child will sure get him to stop crying, brilliant!
February 18th, 2013 at 4:09 pm
I learned long ago that you never tell someone how to parent their kid. And I’ve wanted to, boy have I wanted to. But not because they gave the kid a timeout, or let them cry it out on a plane, or watched their kid have a tantrum in a store. It has been the not looking both ways before crossing the street, pushing the baby stroller right in front of a bus. Or the grabbing the kids arm and screaming at their two year old “if you don’t fucking shut up I’m going to fucking kill you. Fucking stop crying you fucking bitch.”
But maybe some people are better than me and NEED to tell people how to parent. But you sure as hell never, never, never slap, spank, physically correct another person’s child unless you have explicit permission to do so. And you absolutely don’t do it while using a racial slur. Fuck that guy.
February 18th, 2013 at 5:36 pm
I approve of timeouts and if necessary corporal punishment. Thinking hard though I can’t think of why I might o.k. corporal punishment vs some other type of punishment. I guess I see corporal punishment as the easy way out. I much prefer timeouts for young children and then removal of privileges for older children.
Not sure about the time out in the Target personally. I could see a child feeling some level of humiliation in that situation and i don’t think humiliation is necessarily effective at behavior control.
If a child is misbehaving and causing me or my family a problem, and a parent isn’t around, I have no problem in asking that child to knock off. If the parent is available I’ll tell the parent to get control of their kid. A kid has to be pretty seriously annoying for me to feel they are causing me a problem. At no point do I feel it is right for me to put my hands on someone’s child unless I’m preventing the death or injury of that child or protecting my family or property.
I believe that age has a huge thing to do with how you interact with children. Much of the battle of parenting is won or lost in the first 2 years. After that, it is much harder to correct bad behavior. Time outs go out until whatever age you need to start punish through restriction of privileges. The importance of that is you need to have provided some privileges to the child to restrict.
As far as making sure the child understands why they are being punished, I think it is important to vary that with age as well. For example, in general, I feel that the only think a young child needs to understand is that if mom or dad say they need to do something, then they need to do it, no questions asked. And if mom or dad say not to do something, they should not do it, no questions asked. As the children mature, they will be better able to understand why mom or dad say must or must not, but trying to explain this to a 2 year old is pretty much pointless and it’s important that early on they simply listen to their parents without question. I don’t want my 2 year old wondering why daddy said not to touch that hot pan. I want my 2 year old to immediately not touch the hot pan, without question.
February 18th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
1. Discipline means teaching, not punishing.
2. Don’t do anything in anger.
3. Children are perfectly capable of learning rules/good behavior-they’re reallyl smart.
4. You don’t touch other peoples’ kids.
5. My kid responded to reason from an early age – I understand that all kids are different and might not do this, but it’s necessary to make the intellectual effort to figure out what motivates your child to cooporate in a positive manner.
6. Sorry, Bill, I’m with Mikeh on the humiliation at Target; it’s a no-go for me, as well. There is a difference between teaching manners/respect and marching them around, expecting them to perform/obey like robots. Humiliation is out, as well.
Maybe a quiet conversation in the car afterwards, to find out why he didn’t want to talk to the cashier-you might be surprised by what the Rooster might say about that and the two of you could advance the manner in which you communicate and learn from one another. If he was obnoxious about it that’s one thing, but maybe he had some reason for his actions that an adult would never guess about! If something comes out of the conversation that warrants punishment (?), then maybe less play time or a timeout at home or putting a favorite toy on the shelf for the rest of the day – but ONLY if he understands what he did wrong, first!
Here’s discipline for you:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200632637004101&set=vb.1405357648&type=2&theater
February 18th, 2013 at 6:53 pm
Go to full screen mode if you can’t see the video.
February 18th, 2013 at 9:51 pm
I was never spanked as a kid, but then again, I was reasonably terrified that my parents might follow through on their threats to do so, so I would usually respect their authority.
February 19th, 2013 at 11:35 am
I have to be the dissenting voice – Bill, you handled the Target situation the way I would have. I found that if it didn’t immediately correct the behavior, it didn’t seem to stick. I had to nip it in the bud wherever/whenever it happened, not talk about it later. That seemed to do nothing, like reprimanding a dog for peeing on the carpet 4 hours ago.
When kids are little, usually manners aren’t something that usually comes to them naturally, being in a me-me-me mode. It did feel very robotic for a long time, me CONSTANTLY reminding them to say please and thank you and they’d parrot it back. But…eventually it became automatic and as they grew they realized the meaning behind the words. Now it’s second nature.
I don’t enjoy seeing kids get smacked though and I have stepped in. There’s a fine line between myob and abuse and a mom had definitely crossed the line. Nobody else was doing anything (as usual). It was not a good scene but I’d do it again if it was needed and will continue to try to diffuse the situation. It’s a tough judgement call. :(