Title says it all
And yes I'm piggybacking off another thread because it would have been derailed
Discuss :|
I do
I believe it depends largely upon the individual and upon the 'offense.'
Going back ten years to my college psychology class, the research at the time suggested that younger children would respond well to physical adjustments - abrupt physical contact to interrupt the action and force attention onto what the adult had to say. The effectiveness of this began to wear off as kids got older than about eight years old.
Of course - this is just what was in our textbook with some brief overviews. I didn't actually review the individual studies and their methods - so I can't comment as to those.
What I will say is that my own experience with myself and my brothers was that the most important thing is for a parent to be the parent (they aren't "friends" - they are mentors and authority figures). Specifically what actions taken are not as important as an explanation of why those consequences are being imposed.
My father never spanked me without a very clear understanding of why (he loved to lecture, as many of you can probably tell). I was never grounded without a very clear understanding of why.
Now - grounding me wasn't very effective. I could entertain myself by making my hand-spiders fight each other - so being grounded or banishing me to the corner was just designated brooding time. But for me to have made my parents so disappointed in me as to administer a spanking... it wasn't the physical act of spanking that got through to me - it was the fact that what I'd done was such that they were actually willing to cause pain to me. It was the expression of disappointment that got through to me.
My younger brother was somewhat similar to me - although he tended to respond better to grounding. He was used to having an older brother beat the hell out of him as a general course of existence, so the spanking wasn't as big of a deal as them telling him that he couldn't go places and do things.
My youngest brother was pretty much immune to spanking. He just got back up with that look of "wait until I'm bigger" in his eyes. What got through to him was making him go stand in the corner. He loved being the center of attention and being able to become the center of attention. When you stuck him in the corner - it was a rejection of his presence as a consequence of his behavior.
I do think that there comes a time when physical assertion is relevant to teenagers. At some point, a growing child is going to test the boundaries. The attitude of "make me" comes up to some extent as a natural consequence that someone becomes aware of his or her own ability to do things.
When the kid more or less says: "Make me" - then the parent needs to do just that and impose upon the child that there are such things as bigger fish in the pond that must be respected, if for nothing else, their ability to make it very difficult for you to do whatever you want.
There were times I pushed my boundaries and my father put me in check by putting me on the ground. It made me realize that I can't just do whatever I want - or, at the very least, that deciding to certain courses of action resulted in conflict that I had to deal with.
No parent is perfect in their application of discipline.
That said, I know why it was my parents were trying to discipline me - what it was they wanted me to understand, and why I should strive to achieve it.
That is the most important part of any discipline as it allows someone to continue developing even after they leave the sphere of influence of a parent (or the parent departs the world).