User: DoneThat

I did not take the poll because there are so many variables in children. I am not a believer in spank first and ask questions later. Nevertheless, I have been a parent and have blistered a few bottoms. Hence, I offer the following observations.

The 4-year-old and the 11-year-old are doing normal kid things. 4-year-olds in particular seldom have malice. They are, however, fond of games. Their biggest problem is not knowing what is dangerous and what is safe. The 11-year-old may be bored in school. She might simply have wanted to find out if anyone would miss her. It might be wise to see things the way she sees them. Some teachers are not very good. Bullying is rampant in some schools. The testing associated with No Child Left Behind can a killer of young minds. All things being equal with either child, I would say, "Never again" like I mean it and include the very real possibility of a spanking if they wander off by themselves without telling a responsible adult where they are going. I would expect to eventually wind up spanking the 4-year-old for repeating the behavior. The 11-year-old might learn her lesson without needing to be spanked. The notable exception would be if she believes that a superficial "I'm sorry" entitles her to a free pass.

The 14-year-old and the 17-year-old did not get that way overnight. In many ways, the 17-year-old is like the 11-year-old. The difference is that, while something is obviously wrong with their approach to schooling, the 17-year-old's level of behavior didn't begin with this episode. There were signs at home as well as at school. Somewhere, much earlier, there was a failure on the part of teachers and parents to connect. All too often, teachers call it "slipping through the cracks." Bad parents are quite adept at blaming the school. In this situation, there is a triangle. The school. The student. The parents. Within the confines of this triangle there is a solution.

Likewise, the 14-year-old did not begin her behavior suddenly. I would begin by asking what model to her parents set. Do they smoke? Does she live with a single mother with a history of boyfriends? Where her actions differ from the rest is in her refusal to do as told by ME at an age when she should know better. At that point, as her parent or guardian, I become responsible for enforcing my rules. My strategy would be to first find out WHY she disobeyed. If a reasonable answer were not forthcoming at her age, at that moment I would simply give her a choice of whether she would rather take her pants down or prefer for me to do it before she got a good hard paddling. Then, we would address the other issues.

Do people make things up? Of course they do. Then, a lot of girls get spanked at 14 and a lot of those think they shouldn't be spanked at that age.

Years later, when they become moms with 14-year-old daughters who don't listen, they put them over their knee and spank their bare bottoms. It is a story that is repeated generation after generation. Girls were talking about this long before there was an Internet.

Although I am not in favor of leaving bruises, their presence does not necessarily constitute abuse. A few years ago, a father popped his 13-year-old daughter once. In doing so, he unintentionally left a bruise. The girl did not think it abuse. Her mother did not think it abuse. The state in which the girl and her parents happened to live thought it was abuse and tried to send the father to jail. Other states would not have given a single instance a second thought.

I would define abuse as beginning the instant a spanking becomes about what the adult wants rather than what the child needs. I would also include verbal abuse, such as tell the kid that he or she was worthless while being spanked as abusive.

To grow up with healthy attitudes toward life, younger children need to be put over someone's knee spanked on their bare bottoms with a hand. What they don't need are beatings or beratings that simply make the adult feel better. Although controversial among New Age child savers because boys and girls are not treated the same, older girls benefit from moderate spanking using a hand or hand-like implement.

It seems strange that concerns over the sexual dangers of spanking have accompanied a widespread use of sex in advertising and entertainment. Even when society was sexually repressive, the spanking of bared bottoms by either parent was not considered unseemly. Instead, the rise in concern paralleled the explosion of sexual content in other areas of society.

If spanking were made illegal, could the prohibition be enforced? Would the "cure" be worse that the "disease"?