If Shouting Is The New Spanking
Then the move to ban it can’t be too far behind. NYT:
“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”
…
Numerous studies exist on the effect of corporal punishment on children. A new one came out just last month. Led by a researcher at Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy, the study concluded that spanking children when they are very young (1-year-old) can slow their intellectual development and lead to aggressive behavior as they grow older. But there is far less data on the more common habit of shouting and screaming in families.
I dunno. I think beating them does that.
One study that did take a look at the topic — a paper on the “psychological aggression by American parents” published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2003 — found that parental yelling was a near-universal occurrence. Of 991 families interviewed, in 88 percent of them a parent acknowledged shouting, screaming or yelling at the kids at least once (though it didn’t specify how many did it more often) in the previous year.
“We are so accustomed to this that we just think parents get carried away and that it’s not harmful,” said one of the study’s lead authors, Murray A. Straus, a sociologist who is a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. “But it affects a child. If someone yelled at you at work, you’d find that pretty jarring. We don’t apply that standard to children.”
Psychologists and psychiatrists generally say yelling should be avoided. It’s at best ineffective (the more you do it the more the child tunes it out) and at worse damaging to a child’s sense of well-being and self-esteem.
Met any psychiatrists’ or psychologists’ kids lately? Get the sense of them might benefit from a smart whack, or at least being yelled at?
I’m not talking about taking a belt or a stick to a kid, telling them to wait till dad gets home to administer a painful sentence. Verbal torture in the form of stern lectures, along with grounding them, requiring them to apologize, depriving them of privileges and/or assigning work does a better job of teaching kids responsible behavior than beating them. My quick theory. Limited spanking is an attention getter and a show stopper. As is, on occasion … OK, maybe a lot of the time … yelling. None of which should be done in public venues, because that’s humiliating for them and embarrassing for you, and indicates a more serious kid-control problem that needs to be addressed.
Yelling at your kids, however, can make them aware that person who is running things is saying something that is importnat and should be heeded. Because they don’t always get that. Especially if the person who is purportedly running things’ primary concern has been the child’s self-esteem … in which case it is likely the kid is the one who is actually running things.
Yelling at kids, and occasionally swatting them, goes deep into prehistory, if the behavior of chimps, gorillas, big cats and other higher order mammals that possess the ability to swat and/or roar is any guide. Years ago, having lunch with some gorillas and their keeper at the SF Zoo, I saw two adolescents acting up, running wild, bothering the females and the little ones. What did Bwana, the alpha male do? Cuffed them. They bolted. No more trouble. Here’s what it does. It informs the juvenile of the species there is a pecking order, and there are expectations of appropriate behavior, and it is advisable to observe and align the two.
What a waste of newsprint … except that it is always worthwhile to pay attention to what kind of idiocy is ascendant. Scribbler takes a stab at a more-or-less common sense ending.
Ms. Merrill, a travel consultant in Rutherford, N.J., finds that the threat of yelling can be a convenient stick, much the way the threat of a spanking was in her childhood. Even her husband has taken to using it to encourage good behavior, she said, issuing the warning:
“Don’t make mommy mad.”
Emphasis on the “more-or-less.” The kid doesn’t fear dad’s wrath? Bwana wouldn’t put up with that kind of crap. Still in line with higher-order primate behavior, but it sounds like that family might be based more on the bonobo model … female dominant. And contrary to the hippy peace-love propaganda, quite capable of aggression.
Topics: kids, moms and dads, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:05 pm on Thursday, October 22, 2009
4 Responses to “If Shouting Is The New Spanking”
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October 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 am
Just use common sense. Who in their right mind would administer a spanking to a one-year old? But there’s an age when kids seem to require it (three to five?) Just once is all you really need, but it has to hurt. Pick them up by an arm, let them dangle there a moment and then let them have it. It doesn’t matter if you’re out in public or not. Kids will choose a public venue because they know you don’t want to be embarrassed by them. All it takes is a sharp slap on an unprotected behind to show them how wrong they were. Later, you don’t have to do it again because they know what you’re capable of. Sets limits. They won’t even remember that you spanked them when they get older, let alone get any emotional scars.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 am
What Roque said on the age range part.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Yup. That toddler age Rogue mentions when they start the constant push to find their boundaries is when a smart, non-damaging smack to the bottom is sometimes needed. It doesn’t have to be used often, just when other techniques don’t work or there is danger involved (like playing with an electrical outlet).
I understand that some people think that all spanking should be outlawed just because there is a very small number of people who are too violent with their children, but that makes no sense. Those people will do it anyway, and they’re doing a lot more than just a simple spanking.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Agree with all above. As an example, I offer my own grandchildren. My daughter and son-in-law raised their children the way I raised mine, and they are bright, polite, healthy, happy kids well on the way to a productive adulthood. My son and daughter-in-law raised their children according to the “theories” of university-trained “child experts”, and what they have are a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old who don’t know how to behave appropriately in a restaurant.