No, my approach would be using other forms of discipline. There are plenty of them. Sorry, there is nothing cool, manly, or responsible about using size and strength to discipline a child. What lesson does that teach them? That's beating people and using their size/strength over them is right? And what happens when a young man tries to apply the same concepts they learned from their folks to a young woman?
Beyond that, what's with the ridiculous stereotype post? Your lack of intelligence is showing.
I would just ask this question: When a situation arises that results in violence, have you ever exited the situation with more respect for the other person as a whole? I know that I have not. Respect is key IMO.
I agree completely that corporal punishment is not the best parenting technique. I'm making excuses because what Green did might not have been abuse a generation or two ago depending on degree. Furthermore its likely that most other people in his life were raised this way. You know these days you have to be culturally sensitive or you're a racist.
70% of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Al Harris.
I think the most likely scenario is the girl was refusing to do what she was supposed to do as a condition of her living in the house, Ahman started nagging her, and the girl got sassy and he finally snapped on her. Hitting a child because they pushed your buttons is not disciplining the child under any definition. It is simply losing control.
She was punished for being disobedient, not just because he was an angry maniac lashing out blindly. We wouldn't expect him to fly off the handle and smack his kid if the Packers lost for instance. Discipline and losing control are not mutually exclusive although I agree that they definitely should be. I doubt much corporal punishment is administered by cool-headed parents.
70% of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Al Harris.
An angry maniac thrashing around blindly is not quite what I had in mind. The hypothetical scenario I was envisioning is someone who has been seething quietly for a while and, when the kid finally says something insulting about his wife (I'm assuming they're married; she is not the daughter's biological mother), he gives her a hard backhand, breaking her glasses and bruising the side of her face. That isn't discipline.
70% of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Al Harris.
Well, let's see, what exactly would that kind of reaction teach a child? To do the dishes when told? That her views and needs are unimportant in comparison to those of others? To fear her father because he's likely to hurt her if she makes him angry?
I say hitting a child in anger is not discipline because it sets a problematic example, and because the child is likely to be responding to anger and fear over anything else. Generally speaking humans don't learn well in those situations.
This is no mystery. It teaches a child that their behavior resulted in a negative outcome among other things. You're not going to get me to defend the practice of getting physical with children, as you say there are much better ways that set a better example, are much more instructive, and cultivate a better learning environment. But poorly executed discipline is still discipline. If this wasn't, very little of what has ever been called discipline actually was. There are probably people on this site that were hit by teachers in school. This type of stuff was a completely normal part of the human experience for thousands of years. I remember reading somewhere that in the medieval legal system kids would be beaten to act as a record for litigation; the idea being if you beat them they'll pretty much remember anything for later testimony. That's pretty much the same conventional wisdom that survived until a blink in history ago.
BTW, the only reason I push on the semantic of discipline or not is because it informs his intentions here. Its the difference between the alcoholic who beats his kids for his own sake vs the parent who does it as an uninformed disciplinarian.
Last edited by 3irty1; 06-29-2017 at 04:17 PM.
70% of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Al Harris.