The term "Peaceful Parenting" should be relatively self-explanatory, but it basically means that you, as a parent, are the grown-up in the relationship with your kids, which means that YOU are the one who must take responsibility for their emotions and teach them how to grow into balanced adults, and therefore -- you don't hit them.
Seems easy enough, right?
But it's not.
Speaking anecdotally, my younger sister would hit her boys when they were infants, meaning under 12 months old. I would assume that even parents that agree with spanking would say that this doesn't make any sense. A baby has no clue how to reason, which means they don't understand at all why they are being hit. All that it does is create hormonal changes in the bodies of these kids to align with a perceived environment of hostility.
It means that they will be physically wired to treat the world as a hostile, dangerous place, where they are likely to be attacked and must always be on guard. This will carry through to early friend and romantic relationships, and later into the workplace and marriage, then even further -- it will carry through into parenthood.
The truth is, according to a nationally representative survey, 76% of men, and 65% of women aged 18 to 65 years old, agreed that a child sometimes needs a "good hard spanking." [*] About 94% of parents of children ages 3 -4 in the US report having spanked their kids in the previous year. [*]
I once had a little tuft on Facebook with a woman who was very pro-spanking. She was so diluted that she accused me of being verbally abusive to my own wife and child simply because I said I use reason and compassion to discipline my child rather than physical punishment. I guess in her mind the fact that I used words to teach my kid when he was misbehaving meant that I was manipulative and abusive to him. That's the sign of a brainwashed mind, if you ask me.
And It went even further, with another person in that conversation trying to claim the classic refrain of: "Well, there's evidence for your side and there's evidence for my side (spanking), and we'll just present the evidence that supports our own beliefs". This is the "it's all relative" refrain -- which I hate.
I don't hold positions because I "believe" in them. I hold positions because they make sense.
So, I asked this fellow to go ahead and provide any researched evidence that showed that spanking was a net-positive disciplinary practice in a child's life. He proceeded to share two links that he obviously didn't read, because the first one didn't mention corporal punishment at all, and the second one had the whole bottom half of the article dedicated to how spanking is a damaging and inappropriate way to discipline a child.
When I pointed that out, he suddenly wasn't interested in the conversation any more. And that's really annoying. It pisses me off that people just proclaim to have a wealth of data supporting their views when they actually don't have a fucking clue. I hate having to do research on other people's views simply because they are too ignorant to do it themselves... but I digress.
To this very day, I have yet to see a researched paper on why spanking is a good thing for children. People have their anecdotal reasons for doing it, but they fly in the face of the actual evidence and research that shows that spanking does nothing good for children, and is in fact the cause of a lot of adult delinquency, antisocial behavior, psychological problems, and drug and alcohol abuse.
So what are we supposed to do with these crazy kids?
Well, we should expect them to act childish.
Because they're children.
Have you ever tried something new? Well, for example, think about when you first started on Steemit. There is no instruction manual for how to do things around here. Most people are coming in blind and have no idea what they're doing. There is a process of trial and error, and some people learn to fit in somewhere, and most don't. Well, as a child, that's how every single thing is for every day of your life up until about 30 years of age.
Children have no idea what they're doing, and they take the first answer they are told as gospel.
I can't stress that enough. From the earliest ages, your children are observing every little thing that you do as a parent. And they are learning how the world works from you. And if you are hitting them when they make mistakes instead of taking the time to understand what their needs are and to teach them how to meet those needs, how do you think they are going to see the world?
What you are supposed to do with an unruly child is to recognize that they are a child, and their emotions to little things are BIG because they only know a fraction of the things that you know. Like, in an RPG, the monsters in the first dungeon are hard because you have no experience, but if you go back to the first dungeon when you've progressed to the end of the game, the monsters are a breeze.
That's what the world of children is like compared to you, the adult. So act like the adult in the relationship, because you are, and don't respond to their emotional outbursts in kind, because what you are inevitably teaching them is that you don't even understand any more of the world than they do.
Children need guidance with their discipline
"Because I said so." is not going to cut it.
I don't care if that's what your parents told you. Don't ever let that be the final explanation to your kids.
Your kids need guidance from you. They are struggling with things that they don't understand. You DO understand these things -- or at least you understand them better. So when your children do things that they aren't supposed to do, you need to help them out of their panicked mindset by being calm and creating an environment where they can accept guidance. Hitting them will do the opposite of this.
When it comes to my own son, there have been times where he is completely out of sorts. It seems like he's gone insane and just doesn't respond to things. In these instances it's important for him to know that whatever he's feeling is ok, and to give him the time and space that he needs to express that feeling so he will be ready to receive measured guidance.
I can tell you that from my own experience, raising my son with Peaceful Parenting has made him very understanding, curious, and compassionate. And his outbursts are very, very minimal. Well... I supposed I can't just say it's because of this parenting approach, but from what I've read and the research I've seen, his behavior is quite symptomatic of a child raised in peace.
Now it's time to share!
What do you think about what I've said? Do you believe in spanking? If so, why, and in what instances?
Let's get a conversation going.
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