Comment by noodlesUK | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noodlesUK | Hacker News Reader

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I definitely echo your comments about this point:

> The fear of God had been put into them by nightly news and the understanding that an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS. But walking alone to school or playing outside alone is not neglect. Giving your kid an iPad and letting them rot their brains with Cocomelon is neglect.

But I don't at all agree that the logical conclusion to this is that we should encourage corporal punishment. I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten or had their mouths washed out or such similar things. I would say that as a proportion, many more of the badly-adjusted people I know in adulthood experienced corporal punishment or similar.

We can give children rights, agency and protections from abusive behaviour without locking them in a padded room and melting their brains with iPads.

I really think that overexposure to technology is a huge part of this. It's doing something negative developmentally, stripping away children's agency and curiosity. I often feel addicted to tech, but I grew up in a world without nearly as much of it.

> I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten

It is probably not a popular opinion, but I think it is fairly absurd that people consider "spanking" and "beating" to be the same thing

To me it's like saying that telling a kid to go to their room is the same as putting them in jail

It doesn't matter if you think of them as different things. The umbrella term is corporal punishment, and some countries prohibit child corporal punishment. A few examples from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_corporal_punishment_laws :

Austria - "corporal punishment of children became explicitly banned through a new law stating that "using violence and inflicting physical or mental suffering is unlawful"

Colombia - On 23 March 2021, the Senate of Colombia unanimously voted to approve a bill that prohibits physical punishment, cruel, humiliating, or degrading acts, and violence as forms of correctional approaches for the upbringing of children and adolescents in Colombia

Nepal - "Children have right to a non-violent upbringing. Corporal punishment, psychological violence and other degrading educational measures are inadmissible."

South Africa - "In 2017 a decision by the Gauteng High Court held that corporal punishment in the home was unlawful,[68] and that decision was confirmed for the whole country by the Constitutional Court"

If you were like me, you were taught that your father spanked you because he loved you and wanted you to learn right from wrong.

How is that different from other abusive situations? If I using spanking as punishment on my wife because she messed up cooking the dinner, and said I did that because I loved her and wanted her to do better .. sure sounds abusive to me.

As for your "go to their room" example, perhaps you are not aware of alternative viewpoints? https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/6855333... was discussed on HN last year at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39250304 :

> "Shouting, 'Think about what you just did. Go to your room!' " Jaw says. "I disagree with that. That's not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away."

> And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. "When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like 'I'm starting to get angry,' we're training the child to yell," says Markham. "We're training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems."

> In contrast, parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same, Markham says. "Kids learn emotional regulation from us."

You can't drink in the Arab world either but I'm not about to resurrect the temperance movement just because some other countries ban alcohol. I was not hit to learn that it's wrong to harm others or that it's right to turn the other cheek. It's obviously fine to defend yourself or shoot a home invader. I was hit (again, just the once ever) to show that violence begets violence and to expect aggressive behavior to be met with aggressive behavior. That is good guidance.

In those terms, "spanking" is to "beating" like 2.4% beer is to doing shots.

Children should have neither, and few countries lets 2 year olds drink alcohol, with or without a temperance movement.

I was spanked more than once. Was it my fault for not learning as quickly as you did? Was it my parent's fault for not spanking me the right way? Or, hey, let's skip the entire conversation of how to spank the right way and simply ban corporal punishment, since other child-raising methods demonstrably work.

If you read a child developmental psychology book you will soon notice it is not whether punishment is corporal or not that makes the difference. It is the causal connection between bad behavior and punishment that makes the difference. That is one reason why CPS is so incredibly bad for children.

A violent dad (or mom) can be a far better parent than someone who never touches their children. It is simply not what matters (except in absurdly extreme cases, things that do permanent damage)

It's a mistake to think I advocate for encouraging corporal punishment as a first-line treatment for misbehavior. It's like a nuclear weapon: it should always be an option, but almost never the one exercised. I pointed out the single time in my life it was used, which I think was justified.

> which I think was justified.

With all respect to your parents, given you were 3, I don't think it was justified. You said yourself you were imitating Looney Tunes. Who lets a 3 year old watch Looney Tunes?

Even keeping corporal punishment on the table without engaging in it can encourage the mentality of needing to "strike down" children who defy orders. If not physically, then metaphorically.

Source: personal experience. I was only physically punished a single time, but the continued emotional abuse sustained over a decade (which they learned from a guy who preached a "spare the rod"-type mentality) left me with scars that are unlikely to ever fully heal.

And in my case, I was lucky enough to remain capable of being a good student. That kind of baggage, and the expectations on top, only makes the effort to succeed in school/work an order of magnitude harder to sustain for years and years. I can only imagine how many people in my situation weren't able to accomplish what I was able to.

If for example I hadn't finished college instead, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people just blanket labeled me "lazy" like so many others, without taking into account my upbringing.

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