The Venerable Jai
Rumored to be alive...
I've noticed in the media a lot of attention about new laws going into affect that ban corporal punishment. Essentially, they want to make it illegal to physically discipline your children.
I have mixed feelings about this.
At this time, I'm going to share a bit of insight into my own childhood. You might not agree with everything that was done to me, but it made me a better person and I can't deny that in anyway.
As a child, both of my parents had completely different ideas of how to punish me for ill behavior. My father was a fan of physical punishment. If I f'ed up as a kid, dad took out his tough leather belt (affectionately named "Hubert") and gave me a "whupping" for my err in judgement.
Mother was more of a fan of grounding. Except, she wouldn't just send me to my room where I could play nintendo or talk on the phone like other kids. No. She'd take my toys, television, video games, comic books, and basically anything else I considered "fun" out, lock it in the attic, and leave me in there with nothing but my bed and school or educational books.
So who had the better method? My mother, of course.
I was so glad to hear my father was going to punish me when I was a child. I'd get a spanking, it'd hurt for 5 or 10 minutes, and then I got to go on with my life. With mom, I'd be stuck in Hell for 2 days to 2 weeks, depending on how severe whatever I did was.
My father, seeing that this was working, stopped spanking me and decided to use mom's idea of punishment.
By the time I was 10 years old, I was one of the most well-behaved children anybody in my neighborhood knew. I still had little mistakes, here and there and I'd still be punished, but mostly, I was a responsible child.
My parents divorced when I was 11 and at first, I went to stay with my mom. She taught me how to cook and clean for myself, because sometimes she had to work late and I'd need to wash my own clothes or make dinner for myself.
I stayed there a couple of years and finally returned to my father. He was remarried and I had what you could consider a proper family until he and his second wife divorced. Then he got married again for a year and they split up. My father's job took him out of state weekly, so by the time I was 14, I was pretty much on my own.
I had to clean and cook for myself, maintain the house-hold...basically do everything except work for the money to pay my own bills. After a couple of years, my father learned to trust me and started treating me less like a child. None of the other parents in the neighborhood liked this because their children used me as an example everytime they wanted more responsibility/freedom than their parents were willing to give them.
I don't think people should be allowed to physically discipline their children in public. My mother was a firm believers of "punish in private, praise in public." She never corrected me or said one cross word to me in front of anyone else...she'd wait until it was just us. My father, on the other hand, was tactless and didn't care. It was the source of a lot of resentment between me and him and really hindered our parent/child relationship when I was younger.
I was more likely to be disobedient to my father even after he switched to my mother's method of punishment because I hated being corrected in public and, when it happened, I always figured, "Well, I'm going to be grounded anyway, so why not raise as much Hell as I can now?" Mom never had that problem with me. It's only now-a-days I realize that the source of my anger was my embarassment.
The point of my story is parents should be allowed to raise their children however they want, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else. There's a difference between physically disciplining your child and beating them. And while I think physical discipline is FAR INFERIOR to other methods, if a parent believes it will work best for their child, they should be able to apply it without fear of the government interfereing.
I have mixed feelings about this.
At this time, I'm going to share a bit of insight into my own childhood. You might not agree with everything that was done to me, but it made me a better person and I can't deny that in anyway.
As a child, both of my parents had completely different ideas of how to punish me for ill behavior. My father was a fan of physical punishment. If I f'ed up as a kid, dad took out his tough leather belt (affectionately named "Hubert") and gave me a "whupping" for my err in judgement.
Mother was more of a fan of grounding. Except, she wouldn't just send me to my room where I could play nintendo or talk on the phone like other kids. No. She'd take my toys, television, video games, comic books, and basically anything else I considered "fun" out, lock it in the attic, and leave me in there with nothing but my bed and school or educational books.
So who had the better method? My mother, of course.
I was so glad to hear my father was going to punish me when I was a child. I'd get a spanking, it'd hurt for 5 or 10 minutes, and then I got to go on with my life. With mom, I'd be stuck in Hell for 2 days to 2 weeks, depending on how severe whatever I did was.
My father, seeing that this was working, stopped spanking me and decided to use mom's idea of punishment.
By the time I was 10 years old, I was one of the most well-behaved children anybody in my neighborhood knew. I still had little mistakes, here and there and I'd still be punished, but mostly, I was a responsible child.
My parents divorced when I was 11 and at first, I went to stay with my mom. She taught me how to cook and clean for myself, because sometimes she had to work late and I'd need to wash my own clothes or make dinner for myself.
I stayed there a couple of years and finally returned to my father. He was remarried and I had what you could consider a proper family until he and his second wife divorced. Then he got married again for a year and they split up. My father's job took him out of state weekly, so by the time I was 14, I was pretty much on my own.
I had to clean and cook for myself, maintain the house-hold...basically do everything except work for the money to pay my own bills. After a couple of years, my father learned to trust me and started treating me less like a child. None of the other parents in the neighborhood liked this because their children used me as an example everytime they wanted more responsibility/freedom than their parents were willing to give them.
I don't think people should be allowed to physically discipline their children in public. My mother was a firm believers of "punish in private, praise in public." She never corrected me or said one cross word to me in front of anyone else...she'd wait until it was just us. My father, on the other hand, was tactless and didn't care. It was the source of a lot of resentment between me and him and really hindered our parent/child relationship when I was younger.
I was more likely to be disobedient to my father even after he switched to my mother's method of punishment because I hated being corrected in public and, when it happened, I always figured, "Well, I'm going to be grounded anyway, so why not raise as much Hell as I can now?" Mom never had that problem with me. It's only now-a-days I realize that the source of my anger was my embarassment.
The point of my story is parents should be allowed to raise their children however they want, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else. There's a difference between physically disciplining your child and beating them. And while I think physical discipline is FAR INFERIOR to other methods, if a parent believes it will work best for their child, they should be able to apply it without fear of the government interfereing.
