Child abuse?

[Fino]

Spanking is typically the go-to, but it could be any form of physical punishment such as slapping, hitting, etc.

 

[Suzanne]

There are some children, who can be reasoned with by gentle talks. There are some children who only respond to not so gentle rebukes and there are some children who respond if they get a good smack on the bottom or hand.

I consider, slapping the back to be physical abuse or the head.

Evidence supports that no discipline is dangerous.

 

[Aspychata]

I didn't to this. I talked to my child. Then l never had any issues. But my child was homeschooled and this was less stressful then public school.

 

[Greatshield17]

Spanking is typically the go-to, but it could be any form of physical punishment such as slapping, hitting, etc.

I think there might’ve been times in my childhood where I would’ve rather been spanked than yelled at.

 

[Luca]

I’m of the unpopular opinion that physical punishment is *very often* abusive, but I was pretty severely physically abused as a child, by people who were not my parents.

I think a lot of kids in the foster care/childhood mental health system or who don’t have parental figures experience physical and sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.

Maybe that’s less often the case nowadays (hopefully) but when I was growing up (90s and early 2000s) there wasn’t as much investigating being done as there absolutely should have been… especially at “therapeutic” residential schools and child psychiatric facilities.
But I’m still hearing a lot even in the present day about how much abuse happens in those places

*Edited to add that lots of children are abused by their own families too!

 

[Crossbreed]

Spanking is appropriate in some extreme contexts for NT children.
My ASD1 dad used it effectively with me [ASD1], but probably in a more limited fashion.

My dad remembered a story when I was little and unknowingly on the verge of some inappropriate behavior.
Dad: Do you want a spanking...?
Me: No, not at all. (What a strange thing to ask...

)

With my own children, I found it to be unreliable for neuro-diverse children
and completely ineffective for children with severe cognitive deficits or certain types of mental illnesses.

It had very minimal effect when my ASD3 daughter bit into us.
We would slap her on her thigh,

she would open her mouth to cry and
we could pull our arm away from her mouth.​

We did not keep hitting her and it would not have worked on more complex offenses, like raiding the pantry for sugar, etc. (We just put a lock on the pantry.)

My choice, "It Depends," was not available on the OP's poll.

 

[SusanLR]

Never having had children, I am not experienced with this except from my own childhood experiences.

Physical punishment never did anything to help me. I only got angry and would physically respond
back.
Being yelled at also created a feeling of anger or resentment.
It still does to this day. The person I live with enjoys yelling and name calling put downs to me and
other people over things that are so trivial.
I am not used to living this way and usually shut down for at least 24 hours stuffing how it makes
me feel inside. Not good for my health.

Just a logical talk worked wonders with me.
If I understood the wrong, I was OK with it and agreed.
I don't know if many children on the spectrum are this way or not.
I do agree with @Crossbreed and his experiences.

 

[Owliet]

As a child, My parents would respond with physical punishment. I only was left feeling anxious. Any hand raised I flinch back. Sometimes even now there’s threats to be physical. Most recently at Christmas time from my sibling. I think it’s more important that when tensions are high and are increasing is to allow time to cool down.

 

[Kalinychta]

No. No way. Teaching a child that you can humiliate, dominate, and cause them pain if and when you disagree with them is always wrong. It’s lazy. And it teaches children to shut up and conform.

 

[Gracey]

I bit my grandson back once.

Four months of talking with him about it meant I still got bruised limbs each time he went ahead and bit me.

When he broke my skin, I bit him back.
From that day forward he'd open his mouth as if going to bite,
pause,
and then close his mouth again and back off.

I wouldn't recommend trying this at home because the guilt is pretty overwhelming but:

1) Nobody gets to bite me.
2) He's not a bliddy dog !
3) He's not holding me to ransom (like he does his parents) through the fear and pain of being bitten.

By the time he broke my skin I was pissed. Enough was enough.

 

[Crossbreed]

I bit my grandson back once.

Unfortunately, the lesson did not extend to others.
Like your grandson, my daughter reconsidered before biting me, but did not hesitate to bite her teachers who would not/could not get so physical with her.

(Her special ed. bus driver did pinch her back [for pinching] once in our presence, but we could tell that she wasn't being mean-spirited about it. )

 

[Mary Terry]

We raised three children with virtually no spanking. Parents need to get control over the kids when they are young and before they attend school. If parents fail to impose discipline (and it doesn't have to be physically hitting them) and gain the kid's respect as the "superior" and authoritarian person in the relationship, then the kid's and the parents' life are going to be hell down the road.

We used time-out techniques like making the kids sit in a chair facing the wall, knees touching the wall, for a time period consistent with their age. For example, if a four year old was misbehaving, we'd make him/her sit in the chair facing the boring wall, knees touching the wall, with no toys or books for 3 or 4 minutes. By the time they were six years old, we'd impose a time-out period of 10 minutes. That feels like a lifetime to a child and they don't forget it.

The only form of hitting, and we rarely used it because we didn't have to, was a swift and somewhat painful open-handed swat to their bottoms. I think the kids respond to the public humiliation of being spanked rather than pain from it.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth of advice. The survey needs an option for "it depends" like Crossbreed suggests. Every child is different.

 

[Nick000]

This seems like a loaded question to me because extremes in either direction are bad. People need to rear their own children and use any "reasonable" necessary means. It does not take a village to raise a child, it takes caring parents who do what is needed to raise their children to be decent human beings. Everybody responds differently to different things, and I've seen a lot of children who are completely out of control and would probably really benefit from a good wack on the ass. I have literally told parents of very obnoxious and out of control little monsters in stores that if they didn't reign their little brats in I would smack the (crap) out of them (the parents).
Children don't have reasoning skills from birth, that is a learned skill. When I hear parents trying to reason with their out of control children who don't give a care at all what they are saying it really drives that point home. These idiot parents also like to make excuses for their terrible children and bad parenting skills claiming that they at least "Did the right thing" by never spanking them under any circumstances. Those types of children are the ones who grow into nasty, arrogant, entitled asshole adults because they never learned boundaries or respect for others.

 

[Shamar]

Spanking is typically the go-to, but it could be any form of physical punishment such as slapping, hitting, etc.

Having been beaten by my father many, many times, for reasons ranging from bad grades to his having had a bad day at work, I understand what physical punishment can do to a child. That having been said, it may sometimes be necessary.

When my son was very young, maybe about 2, he discovered that spitting on people created a very amusing (to him) reaction. I told him no. I told him it was inappropriate. I threatened him, but he continued. I finally decided to up the ante, and the next time he spit on me I slapped him across the mouth. I did it so fast the spit hadn't even landed yet. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to shock. He never did it again, and I had no real problems with him for the next 19 years (and counting). That once was (thankfully) enough to get the message across.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I’m really not sure mostly because while I was slapped a few times by the woman that helped raise me as a kid over very minor things, she really didn’t hit me that often until I got much older and wasn’t a child anymore. It’s a really complicated situation in my case as part of it could have been caused by the mental health issues she had herself and never actively sought treatment for. She kept me close by and gaslighted me into thinking I needed her in order to survive in the world because she needed to feel needed by someone else. Slapping me was her way of making me think that I deserved it and proof that without her, I could never do anything right. I don’t agree with hitting children but I am also not the person who should tell parents what they should do with their kids either.

 

[Suzette]

Parenting is hard.
Reading though these responses I can see that there is no right answer. I never had to try to calm a biting child, I can't judge the actions of anyone in that scenario.

My mother would spank us over any infraction. Spanking didn't teach me anything but how to take a spaking. So I never hit my son. I wasn't a great mom. I didn't always know what to do. But from these answers I can see that I am not the only parent who just did her best.

 

[PinkPhilodendron]

I can remember both times my mother smacked me as a child. It was when I had a tantrum or a meltdown, I don't know.
First time was when I did not manage to draw a heart (I think I was 4), I had problems with getting the curve drawn. My hand did not want to follow my thought. So I went berserk. And she hit me in my face. I stopped screamin and crying.
But I saw in her face that she did it because she was overwhelmed and did not know what else to do. So it was helplessness and not discipline. And so I do think that it was not ok.

I do not have kids, but I do not think that physical discipline is necessary or good because it teaches Kids that hitting somebody can be ok and allowed.

 

[Kevin L.]

My father beat me once when I was a small child--because of my autism--and I waited until his back was to me a few days later and I shoved him down a flight of stairs.

I was 8 years old.

He didn't end up in the hospital, but he was in pain for a long time and he had a concussion.

My parents had told me never to talk to strangers under any circumstances . . . and I was punished because I refused to talk to a substitute teacher at school. I had never seen her before, so she was a stranger.

I never wanted to do anything violent, but those were the parameters laid down by my parents.

I told them it was an accident, and they believed me because of my clumsiness.

 

[Bolletje]

For me, the answer would be a firm “no”.

I’m not a parent, but speaking from my own experiences as a child I remember a time when my dad accidentally hit me (he reached out to grab me as I jumped toward him at the same time) and it left me scared of him for weeks, event though it wasn’t his fault.

The only physical discipline my parents ever engaged in was a gentle but firm tap on my hand when I tried to get my grubby fingers on something I wasn’t allowed to touch. It’s basically the same I do with my cats: just a gentle tap. My parents were more of the “explain why x and y are not okay and express disappointment” sort.

I have a good, loving relationship with my parents and I think physical discipline and punishment wouldn’t have had the same outcome.

 

[Binary_Bark]

Reading here, is interesting. Personally, no, I do not think spanking/hitting children is a good idea.

Growing up, being hit with wooden spoon, buckle end of belt, stick, slops, shoes what ever was close by. If it wasn't used to hit, it was used to throw.
This only stopped after one day I grabbed the hand halfway through the swing and twisted. Only then I think it was realized that it ain't going to fly any more.

Also need to remember, there are more types of abuse other than the physical.