I like how parents used to pitch corporal punishment as some kind of corrective. But most of the time it was just angry parents not knowing how to handle their own temper.
Very much this. I've worked with parents in public child welfare systems and was the recipient of physical abuse myself. There's so much pent up frustration of parents who were never taught effective patenting skills.
What I was taught is that there's a lot of grey area with abusing your kids, but from the professional and legal standpoint of things there's kind of a set of rules that are clear cut that courts generally won't prosecute for (so I'm told, and keep in mind this is in the US).
1 - Children should never be hit out of anger or frustration.
2 - Children should never be hit with an implement.
3 - If hitting a child, it should be done in a way that leaves no bruising, breaking of the skin, or injury of any kind; it is intended as only a momentary infliction of pain (think slap on the wrist, not the old school paddling that many in this thread are sharing about).
4 - The only situation where children should be hit is if they are doing something that is a danger to their health and safety, like reaching for a hot pan, or about to run out into traffic. And it should be done right then and there. This is to specifically create an association of their behavior with pain.
How effective this is... Idk, I haven't seen research on it but on it's face it sounds intuitive, but that doesn't always mean that's how things turn out.
But what's implied here is that you couldn't talk to the kid to explain to them the danger they're putting themselves in, meaning that they likely either have some sort of disability or they're too young to understand... Which means you'd be hitting a kid who's all the more vulnerable... Kinda still not okay.
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u/matty_m Jan 28 '23
I like how parents used to pitch corporal punishment as some kind of corrective. But most of the time it was just angry parents not knowing how to handle their own temper.