From: arodgers@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: 20/20 and Spanking
Date: 8 Nov 92 19:00:48 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London

[This got bounced back by the network when I tried to post it before.]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

In <1992Nov6.014758.2757@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
dsc@gemini.tmc.edu (Doug S. Caprette Bldg. 28 W191 x3892) writes:

>Let me jump in with an example relevent to the spanking other people's 
>kids as well.

>You perhaps, have had the privilege of raising one or more children from
>an embryo.  

Yes.

>In this case a three year came under into my care, raised by 
>others.  Joey soon found that running into traffic was an effective way of
>getting attention.  Evidently he did not grasp the concept that he could
>be seriously injured or killed by this action.  There were no fortuitous
>accidents resulting in injury or death to serve as a lesson to him. (:-)

I'm glad you raised this problem, because it introduces a new dimension
of reality into the argument (which I have previously tried, perhaps
unfortunately, to do by jumping straight into arguments about the
general state of society, war, law and order, and so on).

>If you think it is possible to continuously restrain a three year old while
>trying to get groceries from a store to the car, care for other children etc, 
>you've never tried it with Joey.  

No, but I've tried it with Dean, and I was a hopeless failure.

This was a case of a boy, also aged about 3, who had been raised *very* 
badly. Already, he had been badly beaten up by his older half-sister's
father, whom his mother had tried to pretend was Dean's father too; he
had been persecuted by that same half-sister, and his own twin sister
had joined in the persecution; the whole lot of them had been neglected
by their mother; they were constantly, and I mean *constantly*, fighting;
Dean had already become depressed and strangely withdrawn, and alarmingly
violent, with apparently no awareness of danger to himself or others. A
couple of years later he was talking to me about suicide.

I had no idea what to do with him. Depressed myself, I couldn't cope
with seeing another life go down the tubes. I just stood by and let it
happen. Great.

I wish that someone like Eric Lee Green had got hold of him in time. Dean's 
in a special school now, where he's getting that sort of discipline; but
I fear it's too late. He's been in trouble with the police (aged 10), and
the way he talks about violence now, so casually, frightens me. He seems
unreachable; and I don't think he's ever had love from anyone. Yet when
he was younger, and still *letting* himself hurt, he was still reachable.

So, what do you do with such a child, inured to violence? I have no
idea, any more than I know how society at large should cope with
violent adults, long past the age where a policy of non-spanking
has any direct relevance.

>Lots of quality time to satisfy his need for attention, reinforcing his good
>behaviour, reasoning with him when he as older, timeouts--all of these things
>eventually worked fine.  They were the long term solution.  Punishment does not 
>produce good behaviour it only discourages specific 'bad' behaviours.  The
>problem I was faced with was assuring his survival in the short term.

>Spanking stopped him from running around in parking lots, right away.  It was
>not the first thing I tried or considered, see above.  It was the last because
>it worked and it worked right away.  There have been times when I have felt a-
>shamed for wrongfully, or wrongly punishing children--such as scolding when it
>turned out they were telling the truth.  But I would never have forgiven myself,
>nor should I have been forgiven by others, if Joey had been hurt or killed
>because I had continued to use ineffective methods of disipline due to a
>personal philosophical rule:   'never never spank someone else's children.'

I feel you did the right thing. You can't undo the past of a child you
didn't raise yourself; and sometimes, I fear, the best you can do is to
act sufficiently like the adults he has known in the past to get his
attention, but sufficiently unlike them to show him that things don't
always have to be that way. And this may include (mild) spanking.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
Angus H. Rodgers  (PhD student), | arodgers@dcs.qmw.ac.uk  
Dept. of Computer Science, Queen | [ +44 | 0 ] 71 975 5241   
Mary & Westfield College,  Mile  | "But what is contact? No two points
End Rd., London E1 4NS, England  | are in contact." -- A.N. Whitehead.
Newsgroups: misc.kids