Spanking Children in Buddhism

[BasementBuddhist]

As I progress closer and closer to the age where I feel ready to adopt a baby/small child, this issue weighs on my mind. On the one hand, I find the idea of spanking so antithetical to Buddhist ideas that the idea horrifies me. On the other hand, I have directly experienced an "out of control child" and that situation is very harmful for the kid as well. Perhaps more so than spanking.

I think that children require unyielding but compassionate discipline. Whatever form that takes. You cannot be wishy washy when it comes to discipline. Clear rules must be set, those rules must be for the protection of the child and NOT the convenience or ego of the parent, and those rules must be CLEARLY explained and understood by the child in some form.

I think its important to choose punishments that won't lead to unwanted behavior in the future. For example, if you discipline your child via chores, then that child will come to see chores as something to be avoided and will become lazy. You have to pick a punishment that is undesirable even if it is not a punishment. Spanking fits the bill. Still, it hurts and harms and causes all sorts of pain. It to has its negative lessons.

I think it is a very hard question, if one wishes to do what is best for the kid and not just raise their child for their own gratification like most parents do.

[binocular]

I think it is a very hard question, if one wishes to do what is best for the kid

What is best for the child -- in what sense?

What is best for the child if he/she is to become a successful upper class person?
What is best for the child if he/she is to be happy and have a sense that life makes sense and is worth living?

There are more options, of course. I'm juxtaposing the two above because at some point, they become mutually exclusive.

What is best for the child?
To learn, early on, that might makes right?
To learn, early on, that the Darwinian struggle for survival is as good as life gets?
To learn, early on, to settle for feeling miserable deep down while pretending to be happy?

[BasementBuddhist]

What is best for the child if he/she is to be happy and have a sense that life makes sense and is worth living?

This of course, from the perspective of a Sangha member, this is all that life is about.

[Santi253]

As usual, you refuse to actually engage in discussion ...

Does it harm children for them to be in time-out with their hands above their head? It's a very common form of discipline in Asian countries.

[Circle5]

When I was going to kindergarten and to school (ages 6-15), our teachers beat us. They beat us even more if we fought back or tried to flee. I think what they were really trying to teach us was:
1. Might makes right.
2. Unquestioningly obey people in positions of power and you will do fine in life.
3. The struggle for survival is as good as life gets, don't hope for anything better.

In my country it's a national sport. The idea behind it is that the kid is a thug anyway and respects other thugs of his age. Therefore, he will respect the teacher just as he respects other thugs of his age. And it really has some truth to it. Kids, including me, respected such teachers because of this. And not in a shallow way, I really mean it in a positive way, we really had honest respect for such teachers. The kid really is a monkey, he doesn't now better at least until highschool. Some teachers were very direct about this in middle school, like: I'm the big monkey here, whether you like me or not, I'm the big monkey. You don't mess with the big monkey. I've had a teacher who once got a guy in hospital, and this was in 10th grade. Another teacher was once chasing a guy with a club around the classroom in 8th grade and the guy was complaining that he's using a club. The teacher then told him to go outside the classroom and do a 1-on-1 witch they did. While the teacher was kicking him with the foot, the kid managed to hit the leg he was standing, the teacher fell down and the kid run away.

But my craziest teacher was our painting teacher from middle school. He was respected painter in the city and an exccentric person, also a very bdsm-istic one. He loved to scare 5th grade kids but was cool in 8th grade. He spent the whole first hour of our 5th grade explaining how evil he is. He said things like "it's not at language or math that you will have problems, it's at painting that you will not pass the class". Or "today, when you go home, you go tell your parents that you're painting teacher is not the most cruel teacher in the school, not the most cruel in the country, but the most cruel and tough teacher in the whole wide world." And he repeated this kind of things for an hour. And he really was though. You could hear a insect fly at his hour, absolute silence or he would beat you up. He was so threatening that rarely he really needed to beat someone up. During breaks, the corridors were full of children and when he passed, all had to stop running around and stay with their back against the wall perfectly str8 like in the army and be totally quiet for the time he passed the corridor. One time, a girl classmate kept her knees a little bent, not perfectly straight while standing like that. And he beat her up so hard that she cried the whole break, plus an hour, plus the break after.

He was also drunk all the time and one time he beat another teacher (who was a woman) in the middle of a break with kids running around, 3 meters away from a big group of parents who were waiting for a meeting. The guy was also very tall and strong so not even though 8th graders could do anything cause he would just beat them up. And he would really not pass kids at painting if he had a problem with them and forced them to repeat the year, though that was rare. But nobody really had a problem with the guy, he was a cool guy and most male teachers are decently thuff. It's the teacher from highchool that got a guy in hospital (witch was not the first time he did such a thing) that was really bad, totally mentally disturbed.

.... and I was only at good schools. That middle school was nr 2 best middle school in a 300k city, out of over 40-50 middle schools. And highschool nr 4 our of 32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U

[binocular]

Does it harm children for them to be in time-out with their hands above their head?

What do you think?
Can you put yourself in the shoes of such a child?

[Santi253]

Does it harm children for them to be in time-out with their hands above their head?

What do you think?
Can you put yourself in the shoes of such a child?

Please tell me what forms of discipline that you think are effective. Is putting children in time-out something that you are against in all circumstances or is it the hands above the head part of it?

[binocular]

Please tell me what forms of discipline that you think are effective.

That depends entirely on what the parents want from their child (and why they had the child to begin with).
Effectiveness can only bea assessed in regard to a particular goal.

Is putting children in time-out something that you are against in all circumstances or is it the hands above the head part of it?

I'm not in particular against or for anything, because I think it all depends on what the parents want from their child.

Depending on that goal, some pedagogical approaches will be effective while others won't.

If, for example, the parents want to raise a child that will be a partner in a big law firm by the age of 30, they will need to apply different strategies than parents who want their child to first and foremost be happy in life.

[Santi253]

I would guess that we are much less strict than many Buddhist parents. In Singapore, South Korea, etc., it's common to spank your children with a cane, hanger, feather duster, etc., for not getting the right grade on a test at school. I could never imagine punishing my children for a grade at school, unless they were to fail a class for the entire semester.

[binocular]

I would guess that we are much less strict than many Buddhist parents.

Why are you calling them "Buddhist"? What, specifically, is Buddhist about them, other than being born and raised in a country that is traditionally considered "Buddhist"?

[Santi253]

I would guess that we are much less strict than many Buddhist parents.

Why are you calling them "Buddhist"? What, specifically, is Buddhist about them, other than being born and raised in a country that is traditionally considered "Buddhist"?

As parents, we follow the secular law of the United States, while practicing a much less strict form of discipline than what's common in many traditionally Buddhist countries.

[binocular]

I asked you:

Why are you calling them "Buddhist"?
What, specifically, is Buddhist about them, other than being born and raised in a country that is traditionally considered "Buddhist"?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

One will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Skilled parents never spank their children. The Buddha prescribed various punishments for monks who broke the rules, but none of them involve physical beatings, locking up, or withdrawing of food. A monk who has committed a serious offence such as masturbation must request a period of probation and rehabilitation from the Sangha. This involves temporary ostracism, and public confession of his offences. During the probationary period he must not sleep or eat together with other monks.

Making a child stand with the hands up is a cruel punishment that inflicts pain. Making a child stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap (like they used to do long ago) is humiliating, but it is not painful. Beating with canes or leather straps has rightly been prohibited in schools, and should not be used in homes either.

The UK law allows spanking or smacking. It is called "reasonable chastisement."

My personal opinion is that the current law is about right. Smacking your child is not the same as slapping your wife or husband, and not the same as assaulting another adult or someone else's child either.

The law is an ass and deserves to be spanked. Criminalising parents for smacking or spanking their own children is unreasonable. There should be actual bodily harm or psychological trauma to justify charges of child abuse.

[Santi253]

I asked you:

Why are you calling them "Buddhist"?
What, specifically, is Buddhist about them, other than being born and raised in a country that is traditionally considered "Buddhist"?

If someone claims to be Buddhist, I don't usually question whether they are Buddhist or not.

[Santi253]

Skilled parents never spank their children.

Someone who's never had children might not be accurately making that conclusion. If I could contact a Buddhist parenting organization located in an Asian country, that would be really great.