by Nurse Jenna
Times have changed. Things that were acceptable a few generations ago, or even when we were kids, are no longer considered kosher parenting. Corporal punishment is a good example. How many kids used to get “the belt,” or at the very least, were sent to their room for an indeterminate length of time (dinner questionable). A “time-out,” in yesteryear was something that happened during gym class or sports, not the child-friendly form of discipline it is today.
Looking back at the way in which my parents did things, they had some sketchy child-rearing tactics. My mom initially did try to teach me to swim using standard methods—swim lessons at the YMCA.
I, however, wanted nothing to do with any of that head-under-the-water game. After I strategically managed to get myself kicked out of swim class, my mom shortly thereafter tricked me into thinking we were going to spend a fun afternoon at the pool where I would flap around in the kiddy pool. No, it was actually baptism by fire… or water. She threw me right into the “big” pool, flip-flops and all.
Her defense to this day is, “Well, you came back up.” I don’t condone her teaching methods, though I guess I have her to thank for my SCUBA certification. Otherwise, I still probably wouldn't be putting my head in the water. Today, however, if you pulled a stunt like that at the pool, you'd end up with your mugshot on the 10 o'clock news.
Many of the things our parents did would be frowned upon in today’s society.
Are there things your parents did that would no longer be considered acceptable?
Comments (94)
The generation of parents my parents are from, dont know how to raise their children correctly. None of my friends are sane. I have a wide range of friends. Parents of this generation need to realize children are smarter than we think, a lot smarter. All of this manipulating and the way they are punishing these children is ridiculous. I try to find parents that dont complete fuck up their kids minds and I have long conversations with them because I like their energy and my mother, well I dont even want my children to feel her energy. Anyways im going to get completely off topic so im going to stop...
I guess these days it is considered unacceptable to wash a kid's mouth out with soap.
I guess I'd be considered unacceptable....
What scares me is to have other people telling me how to run my family. I WILL discipline my kids even if I have to put the fear of God into them myself.
Anything that causes pain (spanking, etc.), shame, fear or emotional distress to the child is not acceptable under any circumstances.
I suppose my parents pulling off to the side of the road and telling my sister or myself to get out because of our smart mouth would be considered a bad thing today. Our mom actually drove off on a few occasions only to go around the block and come back. Abandonment anyone? LOL
I can say that we stopped having a smart mouth in the car after a few times of being "dropped" off.
I always had the "belt" beating when I was being a bad kid. Although many people (maybe close to all) look at it as unacceptable today, I believe that it actually shaped me into a very well-disciplined person I am today. I may have hated it back then, but I surely thank my parents now seeing all these obnoxious disobedient kids running around, creating havoc and vandalism and all the other things in the news. Kids are taking advantage of this scare tactic to their parents and are getting away with doing such irresponsible things. I'm not saying that using the belt tactic is reasonable every time, but in the cases where the kids are refusing to listen and intolerant, it could help straighten them out a bit. People just need to know the difference between discipline and abuse. I know there's a fine line, but there is a difference. (I might also want to include that I came from a Chinese household where this form of discipline is normal.)
While I think that some parents these days coddle their kids. I think the jury is out if that's better than what our parent's did - the proof is in the adult.
@Amyld@xanga - So, does that mean you don't punish your kids at all? Just a thought. There has to be some form of discipline when your kids get out of line. I knew some kids that broke down when they were sent to the corner for a timeout.
I think you have to discipline your kids some - there has to be SOME curb. Abuse your kids - no, but if there aren't any negative consequences to things, they can get out of control.
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I got my share of spankings. And I will spank my daughter if it's an effective form of punishment for her. There is a big difference between discipline and abuse, and NO, spanking is not abuse. I plan on doing it. Get over it.
@Amyld@xanga - then what discipline do you do? Those exceptions are pretty broad.
@Amyld@xanga - Then what's the point in punishment? Fear, shame? Come on. I can recall plenty of moments in my childhood where I was embarrassed, for being yelled at in front of friends, siblings, close relatives, whatever, and I can definitely remember being terrified of the "horrible punishment" that would await me - though, looking back, it wasn't horrible. Occasionally I got spanked, but mostly it involved "sitting on the chair" or "writing", in which I had to write "I will not ------" a certain number of times until I could get up. Haha. Perfectly acceptable, and I love my parents dearly.
Kids need to be punished. No one likes that word, but what-the-f***-ever. That's how they learn. Call it discipline if you will, but in real life, you have to realize that if you do something bad, bad things will inevitably happen to you, and those bad things sure as hell feel like punishment. And as horrible as you may feel after punishing your child, you should feel so much worse when they grow to be horrible brats. Or just frighteningly sheltered people, the kind that can't adapt to anything real.
I think my parents did an excellent job of disciplining us. We use a lot of the same methods they did and most people would probably find them "unacceptable". Sad...
I do spank on occasion - whether it's acceptable or not to the general masses is irrelevant to me. I do not abuse my children. A couple of swats on the bottom is nothing like abuse.
We have alot of discussions. When my son isn't obeying he is sent to sit in a time-out chair for a few minutes and then we sit on the floor and talk about why he went to the chair and why his behavior was unacceptable.
@Amyld@xanga - I believe children should definitely feel shame when they misbehave. If they aren't ashamed why would they stop the behavior?
As a child I was punished in ways I'm sure would be frowned upon. Wooden spoon anyone?
As a teen my parents didnt even try reasoning with me. My father would take my door off it's hinges and put it in the garage - cause let's face it, what's worse than taking a teens privacy? And it worked. But in todays world I'm sure any internet savvy kid would find a way to spin that punishment into an 'emotional abuse' hell for their parents.
When I told my oldest son that my father used to do this to me, he was stunned and swore up an down that there was no way it happened. Then I called my dad and handed him the phone. Just the threat of actually losing his door has kept his smart mouth at bay...
Like my parents before me, I do what works. I don't much care who finds it acceptable. Unfortunatly we don't live in fantasyland; time outs and pretty words don't always work.
The pool story reminds me slightly of something that happened in my hometown years ago. Parents decided to teach their son to swim. I guess they had a boat but not a not a pool readily available to them, so they took him out on the boat and pushed him in...right into a nest of water moccasins.
He didn't come back up.
My mom was pretty lax with discipline. That generally worked for me. I think I remember us leaving a store once because I couldn't calm down when I was really young. 'Never anything that would have gotten CPS called on her then or even now.
Personally, I don't think spanking teaches anything productive. In the real world, when we, as adults, do something wrong there are, generally speaking, three punishments. 1.) We're talked to if it was a minor, first-time offense. Examples; traffic cops letting us go with wanrings, bosses doing write-ups. 2.) We're ticketed, made to pay restitution, and/or do community service. In a sense, we actually loose something that we enjoy; whether it's the extra money to buy something we want or our free time or both. 3.) We're jailed. What's the point in jail? You loose your freedom to do with your day-to-day life as you please and you're bored to bits. Under the threat of these consequences, the majority of us behave ourselves.
Similarly, it's been my experience that, scaled down, the same things work for kids. Wait! Wait! Please don't take me to be literal on 3! I swear I've never stuffed a kid into a dog crate as punishment! Honest!
But being grounded or sent to their room (even prisoners get dinner) that's not equipt with a TV, computer, and/or some version of a PlayStation? Accomplishes the same thing. And a short time out before attempting 1 so that the kid's had a second to take a breath, calm themselves, and actually listen when the talking-to takes place, tends to be beneficial.
Also, if we adults had a meltdown in a store, restaurant or other place of business? We'd be asked to leave and escorted out. On the same token, I think parents should remove their kids from these places if they're not behaving reasonably.
I thank my parents for their ways of punishing me. I remember times of being hit for disrespecting an elder or family member, and I knew never to do it again.
Living in NYC, I'd like to see some children more behaved, even if it means getting their ass whipped in the street. Kids are terribly disgusting at the mouth and have not learned a great deal of respect for elders and people in general.
Im not saying that ALL kids are getting out of hand, but the majority of those I have seen act out seem to not have enough harsh discipline.
Embarrass your kids once in a while, they'll learn to behave
Discipline is one of those areas where people have a wide variety of views as to what is right or safe. My mother in law once told me that there are more creative ways to punish than to spank. She's right I think - my son responds to losing TV time, time outs in the corner, and losing the chance to have art time far more than he does to a spanking.
My parents would spank me - a lot. They did it once in front of the whole church which would not do nowadays. I never minded the spankings since the punishment was swift but they could be very embarrassing in front of my friends.
I know a friend whose parents physically abused her - so she doesn't ever spank to break the cycle and constantly checks herself when she gets frustrated - so to keep from falling into past generations mistakes.
I go the belt a lot as a kid...not because i was inherently "bad", but because as a kid, i would test the waters to see where those elusive barriers lay. I found out that my parents' barriers were closer together than most of my friends' parents' barriers, but that's ok...a lot of them are in jail today, and i have only been as a visitor! My mother also had a philosophy that would definitely be considered child abuse by today's standards, which was, "If the mouth says it, the mouth gets it." The mouth in question got the back of her hand. It didn't take me too many times to learn to keep my mouth closed instead of giving her what *I* thought!
I tried that tactic with one of my kids (this was in '99), when my eldest son told me to "F*** off", at 11 years old! I was so stunned, i asked, "What did you just say to me??"...and he had the audacity to REPEAT it!! So i slapped him right in the mouth (which to this day i still believe he deserved), and the CPS came out and took both of my kids on the spot. (He had told school officials when he got to school that morning that i had slapped him in the mouth...they wasted no time in getting to my house.) They asked me if i had hit him, and i said, "You're doggone skippy i did," and proceeded to tell them why. I didn't leave a mark on him...so i couldn't understand what was going on. Four months later, it comes out in family counseling that on his way to school that morning (he walked at that time), he had bit his lip most of the way there to make it look really bad! Even after his admission, it took me three and a half years to get him back (for that one act), and two and a half years to get the younger son back into my custody.
So yeahhh, if anyone knows that today's standard's of what is acceptable is drastically different than in our parents' day (or for you younger ones, your grandparents'), i certainly do!!!
@moonlight58@xanga - Awful! The system is certainly engineered toward a knee-jerk reaction; for the right reasons I suppose (its impossible to tell the real abusers from the incidents of those w/ kids who try to game the system.
The way things are now, its fairly trivial for a kid to report a parent and then the burden of proof is really on the parent to back out of the situation, regardless of how its handled. Its definitely a fine line.
I find it difficult to subscribe to any school of parentling that doesn't on some level shame your kid. I think its completely ok if their friends at shcool find out they are the only one who doesn't have the latest video game, can't go to a party due to misbehavior etc. The idea that improper actions can have "severe" consequences must be learned at a young age. If not, they can learn it the hard way later (running afoul of the law, suspensions from school etc.) I'm glad my parents did it for me - losing little priveleges as a kid made me understand the boundaries of behavior.
I got the belt many times as a child. While I'm not sure I'd do that to my kid ever, I don't think it was really that bad for my development as an adult either. Overall, I think I was a pretty good kid, but it did instill a sense of authority and as I got old, the implied threat of a belt made me hold my tongue or stopped me from engaging in some stupid activity that would have "brought out the belt."
@hatcherbee@xanga - I really like the no door idea. My husband's bedroom at his parents house didnt have a door. (But as far as I know it is because it was broken from being punched too many times!) I will definitely have to remember that in case I ever need it...
I was spanked and I think I am a better person for it. I knew that when you don't follow the rules there are consequences. I have never been in trouble with the law, never been to jail, I am not messed up because of spankings either. Believe it or not I am well adjusted and sane. I know have a child and use a wide variety of punishments. I believe that the punishment should fit the misbehavior so sometimes I spank, time out, lose tv time, video games, etc. Punishment is not a bad thing and neither is learning that their are consequences for any action. The truth is I can punish my son now and teach him that and that there are boundaries or I could wait and let the legal system do it when he is an adult. It is my job as a parent to make sure that I do everything that I can to equip him to be a successful adult.