Posts Tagged ‘child abuse’

More on the Physical Discipline of Children

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

After reading and slightly editing my earlier post on the physical discipline of children, I feel the need to include further information.

The NZ tabloids spoke of the  laws that outlawed child smacking as causing a breed of children who didn’t fit socially into society very well, children who were often self centred and disobedient.

When I found the book by AH Chapman, I reread part of it, and in there he mentions that children who don’t have appropriate physical discipline can turn out to be self centred and unable to fit into society in socially acceptable ways.

So by removing the rights of spanking from a parent, we are deliberately breeding children who may not be going to be able to function properly in society as they grow older.

Another form of child discipline that was endorsed by this well respected psychiatrist:  Scolding “…strong disapproval of the child’s action, often expressed in an angry tone…[sometimes with threats of stronger physical discipline and lasts around]…2 or 3 minutes…”

A parent who scolds their child in Australia is also at risk of being arrested.

On another note, we hear of the child care worker who said that with discipline now so slack in the homes, having children in childcare is placing undue stress on child care workers, as some children are pretty well uncontrollable under existing guidelines

I listened to a psychologist who said one should not yell at children, because it is bad for them, and he then proceeded to list several time consuming techniques that a parent could use instead of scolding.

The first thought that came to my mind, was what parent can spend that much time using those techniques.  He even suggests that if the techniques don’t work, for the parent to do some time out of their own - not the child, but the parent.

Discipline was always suppose to be short and sweet, now it’s anything but that, and what one has to consider, is  that telling parents to do long winded type things to control behavior may not be int he best interests of the child.

And that is the point I want to make here - we are selling our children out for political correctness, and we may be turning them into societal misfits, who will never respect other people nor the greater society.

Our laws are therefore potentially an act of child abuse, that afflicts many children, but because they are the lawmakers, they get to decide whats right and wrong, irrespective of the wisdom of the parents.

I don’t endorse 10 hard smacks, I don’t endorse child abuse, but parents are best at raising children, and the government needs to stop focusing on all parents and start focusing on the ones that are genuine abusers.

Lets face it, the vast majority of us were  smacked or belted as children, and we turned out just fine.  A belting or a smack, or even ten hard smacks was not abuse, the abuse is denying the parents the right to raise healthy children - children are not adults, and should not have the rights, nor the responsibilities of being adults.

Why do I mention responsibilities of being an adult? Well, if children have the same rights as adults, then they also have the same responsibility not to misbehave nor to act inappropriately.

But children are just that, children.

And I’ll end it here with these words again:

Love, Limitations, and Let them Grow Up.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Question and Answers | No Comments »

On the Physical Discipline of Children

Monday, October 26th, 2009

The physical or corporal punishment of children is extremely unacceptable in many western cultures today.

In Australia, a mother who warned her daughter three times before smacking her, found herself on assault charge.  The child was not physically harmed, but an adult decided it was abuse and reported the discipline to the police, who determined that under current Australian law, it was assault.  Remember - the child was not physically harmed.

Around 90% of Australians were against the authorities for implementing such charges against the mother, yet the law is the law.

In New Zealand, where authorities made smacking and so on unlawful, the will of the people later prevailed and the laws after some years were renounced, allowing parents to once again punish their children.  One of the tabloids claimed that in New Zealand, the renounced laws actually caused harm to the social integration of children into society.

I remember in my university days, reading a book written by Dr. A.H.Chapman, Management of emotional problems of children and adolescents, 2nd edition, 1974, his famous words were : Love, Limitations and Let them grow up.

In this book, the psychiatrist ( who was formerly an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kansas School of Medicine),  firmly believed that hitting a child hard ten times on the bare buttocks with a stiff slipper or hairbrush was both safe and effective to control undesirable child behavior. You would expect to spank your child about 2 to 3 times a week to 1 every several months.  This was written only 32 years ago.

I recall reading elsewhere, that if the parent used a wooden spoon and hit too hard the spoon would just break, and if by some chance a bruise was left, it was just a warning to the parent that they had hit too hard.

Use a spoon now, and it may well be classed as hitting a child with a weapon. Leave a bruise and you are investigated for child abuse, and your record will likely confirm that you abused your child.

So where am I heading with all this?

Well, it’s an historical look at discipline.

Why have the laws changed? Why are children again being seen as miniature adults, with the rights of adults?

If we look at Australia, it was once said around the 1940’s or 50’s that child abuse basically didn’t exist.  But people saw things, people heard things, and their were child victims.

So, how has this changed so markedly over 59 to 69 years, with child abuse stats climbing through the roof.

I think there is a legal aspect, how can you protect an abused child, if parents can smack? What type of smacking leads to abused children? How can the law say one child being smacked is lawful, while another parent doing the smacking is unlawful.  So, government, being the “I have to be seen to be doing something” beast that it is, comes to outlaw smacking.

But when the physical discipline of a child isn’t allowed, how does a parent contain bad behavior - well, up to now, the preferred option was medical intervention of some sort, the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, and then the prescription of drugs, such as ritalin, to control the child.  Only trouble that they have found is that such behavior modifying drugs also can cause anything from schizophrenia to sleepiness.

Yes the use of child modifying behavior drugs has soared in Australia in recent years. But drugging your child is an acceptable form of child abuse, if you have a doctor on side.

So the hand or spoon, has been replaced by the drug in quite a few cases.

On the other side of things, when I take my child to school, I see that children are also very easily afraid now a days.  One child broke down crying, because someone had left a hypodermic needle out the front of the school.  Are we breeding children to be afraid?

The reason why that bothers me, is that under the anti-terrorism laws, the very real rights that the Magna Carta was the symbol of, were taken from us.

So we are now living in a time when human rights have been significantly turned back by hundreds of years, and by the will of the government, we are now breeding children who may well be unsuited to fighting oppression.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in *Me, myself and I* | No Comments »

What our ancestors show us - the overwhelming importance of family

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

In todays world, it can become quite confusing.  Morality is now a fine thread which is quickly defined and rearranged by individuals, often to suit their own ends, hence a sexual abuser can sometimes pervert their thinking to believe that “I was only teaching them in the act of sex”.

The bible too speaks of family and notes how even unbelievers adore and cherish their families, giving to family members and friends, but no other, and in so doing the bible makes comment on how what virtue is that for a follower of Christ - meaning, there is no greatness in looking after family and friends that you love and like and know, as the expectation of reciprocal looking after is ever present - rather the greatness comes from giving to others without expectation of return of any kind.

Yet, we see, family is vital - to both nonbelievers and believers.

For those of us in the Western world, the beliefs are clouded by words such as honor, duty, law, abuse …

A parent is encouraged to give up a son or daughter if they commit a crime or are called up for war, likewise a child is expected to rat out a parent if things go amiss in the family (not talking about child abuse, or abuse as such of one family member by another).

Things were not always so though.  If you look back through Scotlands history, there is a strong thread - even within the kingly lines -that ones promises and agreements with others were only to be kept when it inflicted no hardship upon family and those who depended on you.  Treaties were frequently made and broken to protect families and underlings from the English and so on.

(An interesting thread to this bit on Scotland, is that the Scottish Kings paid the Catholic church - the guardians of morality and spirituality - on condition that the priests and other of the Catholic robes to not sexually abuse Scottish parishoners, which had become quite rampant.  I transgress, but you would think after all these centuries, the church would have got it’s act right.  Anyway…)

You can see the difference clearly - now we are expected to uphold laws and governments, even if it means betraying family - yet it is the family and friends of the family that buffer the individual from the world that would take everything and give nothing back.  Laws, governments, rules .. these are constantly being changed and are transitory at best, and an act of oppression at worst.

Fact is, things do go amiss, and often authorities just react, place pressure on individuals, bad mouth them (report them) for supposedly very bad crimes, yet then nothing changes nothing happens.  The family is just left bewildered and in anguish, generating more stress.

To give an example that has upset me considerably.  I am still not allowed to comment too clearly about the events, I may not even have the facts myself, as the ‘criminal’ hasn’t been tried, so I will alter details, but the basis of understanding will remain the same, and is also a mix of another case I am aware.

The mother or father is reported by someone as a potential threat to their child.  The authorities react by investigating and interviewing the members of the family.  What does this do, it places considerable stress on the family - the uncertainty of future is made transparent, family members are expected to rat each other out.. Now, everthything settles - the memory remains - but things settle down, then the same person makes another complaint.  The authorities get involved again, putting the entire family through the ringer again.  This could keep going on and on and on.  For example, if one yells, it could be considered an act of domestic violence today, a few years back it was considered to be within the bounds of normal human interaction between husband and wife - see the law change - now a child hears the yelling, that becomes, by law, an act of child abuse.

That’s how easy it is to end up on the wrong side.  What’s more, you don’t even have to do anything wrong.  It could be your ex claiming they heard or saw something.

Now what does all this complaining and investigating do, it stresses people out no end, then when something does happen that breaks the camels back, a child or spouse or friend may be abused or killed, but the stress was put there much earlier - in essence the authorities have become the instrument of abuse - but he person who breaks down and does the crime, is the one that takes the blame.

Interesting that.  When you make laws too tight, you make everyone law breakers.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in *Me, myself and I* | No Comments »