You all certainly speak like people with no experience with children, especially your own.
You can make that assumption, sure, but it doesn't make it true. First I'm speaking from personal experience as a child. Which is to say, beatings never made me want to behave better but they did make me want to get better at not getting caught. Second, I'm speaking from personal experience as someone authorized to use corporal punishment on my younger siblings who I was quite often left in charge of. Third, I'm speaking from personal observation of corporal punishment and its results.
It's a short-term solution, you might end the behavior right there (or you might cause a huge tantrum in the middle of Wal-Mart) but it certainly isn't going to prevent the behavior from occurring in the future unless the punishments are particularly draconian.
ed: Also, in my house a beating, or a whooping, was a spanking with an object, such as a spatula or belt, not drunken physical abuse.
^agreed on many points.
My parents originally tried spanking, grounding, taking items away, etc. and the one thing i gathered from it, it did not work, just made me want to not get caught.
however I actually explained to my parents why teaching children WHY something is wrong is far more effective than any physical or psychological punishment. (shocking aint it?
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so i have to say that if you think beating/spanking a child, or taking something away actually helps, you are quite misconceived.
@OP, i think unarmed combat classes would just lead to more stupidity, judging by how people who learn eastern martial arts for 'self-defense' apply their knowledge.
unrelated; I personally am a self-taught fighter, and actually aim to kill whoever im fighting. but i never start fights, they are pretty stupid.
I see fighting as a matter of survival, but most teenagers around my age see it as a social tool, to gain status in their school/group of friends.
teaching them how to fight would simply make these 'social status' fights deadly/dangerous, instead of pitiful prissy fits.
I'm not advocating corporal punishment solely, it should be used with positive reinforcement.
^ Not every behavioral issue comes with a pacifistic resolution, especially with already-malevolent children that are hellbent on being shits.
sadly, there are quite a few children 'hellbent on being shits' around the world today, it seems to be caused by pampering from the parents who fold to every whine, but thats just my observation.
it may also be a leading contributor to the number of horrendously inhuman creatures who inhabit most online communities today, when people grow up getting everything they want, they tend to lose many key life lessons.
now if somebody believes this is somehow wrong based on me being a teenager in high school, i stopped being a teenager mentally quite some time ago due to trials in my life, it taught me that going through hard times and not getting what you want everyday makes you a better person, i see many people who get a new Iphone every other month, since they cannot take care of them, and their parents are perfectly happy to shell out hundreds a year for it, in general these people tend to have quite poor social skills (real ones, not the ability to make friends) and consider themselves higher than others.
As a person in high school I support the physical discipline of children.
Its common terminology here to say that someone making threats don't mean nothing if they can't back it up. (The YOU WONT DO NUTTIN taunt) I'm a good kid, but I've met my fair share of assholes who think they're untouchable and frankly any kind of physical behavior enforcement from above would have been a good thing for em.
while this is a slightly different way of stating it, it does actually go with my point above, frankly that feeling of invincibility is a combination of hormones, and being treated like demi-gods by their parents.
now physical punishment simply breeds resentment and causes whole hosts of other problems, honestly it depends on HOW the child is punished, some parents employ spanking effectively, but they do so by explaining why what the child did was wrong afterwords. if a child is simply beaten/spanked without an explanation, it makes them angry, even if they are aware themselves of why it was wrong.
(Im also a good kid, but ill still jam my elbow in someones chest for acting big and tough to me.
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EDIT: it may be a good idea to point out that several posts were made while i was writing this wall of text, just in case it seems rambling, it is.