French MPs vote to ban physical abuse of children. - Sensationalist Headlines

People fail to realize that children aren't so dumb that parents need to be the ultimate arbiter of action and consequence. A good anecdote would come from one of my friends who's parents physically disciplined her on occasion that one time when she was ice fishing with her mother she got her gloves wet and her mom gave her a spanking for that. And on a logical plane it was truly fucking unnecessary as nature itself would have provided provided a punishing learning experience. Tho one thing I'm kinda on the fence on is if its okay for a parent to physically discipline their child if the child directly fucks with the parent. Like if in the anecdote in question my friend would have thrown her mothers gloves in the ice-hole or if a child intentionally hurts their parent. As those would be cases where a parent provides the role of a natural arbiter of action and consequence for what happens when you intentionally provoke someone.

Because shouting can and will fuck a child up. Imagine being a tiny child, being constantly shouted at by a large, intimidating, threatening man three/four times your size. This is your father. Imagine now that your mother does the same whenever you do something they don't like. Now imagine any kind of standing up for yourself, werether it's right or wrong will infuriate said man that has no care to control the sound of his voice and will shout at you with the same intensity as if he were shouting at a robber. If this man is fed up, he doesn't bother shouting. He briskly walks up to you while stomping his feet and will harshly tug your ear, forcing you to double over. I personally still don't deal well with people raising their voice in an argument. Completely throws me off and fucks me up, even years later.

The pigs are firing head height at journalists and news reporters. Fuck off with this shit, man.

If something is illegal to do to strangers it should be illegal to do to your own children.

There's a difference between physical abuse and discipline. I see nothing wrong with giving a twist of the hair or a flick on the forehead and they are very common methods here in Finland. Shit like belting, coat hanger, punches etc is just pure abuse. Unnecessarily high violence that should very much be illegal. Stop beating up your kids. A simple forehead flick or a hair twist though is fine. My parents did it, and no joke everyone I know with children does it, both friends and relatives. It's "illegal" in Finland. But outside the big cities, life is more conservative and old fashioned, families raise their children with proper discipline and teach them to not grow up into little shits.

Except in society we have people authorized to use the necessary force to make you behave. It should be the same thing in your house. There's an acceptable force that can be used with a misbehaving child.

Honestly this is one of those subjects that I have very mixed feelings about. On one hand I believe that all children need to be taught discipline and that there's consequences to fucking up, on the other hand you should never go overboard. I was abused for eleven years by my father and those scars are still fresh ten years later. He completely and utterly destroyed my confidence and self-esteem. He destroyed my own identity and every second week when I lived with him I learned that my only real safe haven was inside my head for he could never take my ideas, dreams and thoughts away from me When I was finally free (mom assumed full custody of me) it took a long time to recover. Five years, three shrinks and a whole lot of support and "you can do this"-attitude later I started to grow into my own person. I still have trust issues. I still find myself hating my own face because I look just like him. I still tremble and fear the thought of becoming like him. If you ever get kids, just, think things through. Don't make decisions based on anger or annoyance. Be firm but loving.

Absolutely shouting can fuck a child up, but it isn't physical abuse though, which the French voted to ban, hence my question. I didn't really seek an answer for it, but absolutely I agree with you.

I get your point, seems like a badly worded thread title, second paragraph in the article states: The civil code will be updated to state that parental authority must be exercised without violence and that parents may not resort to“physical, verbal or psychological violence, nor to corporal punishment or humiliation”.

Ah, of course. It's all very serious abuse that leads to no good.

Having that said though don't you think it'd be better to just not even do that? What purpose does giving a twist of the hair or a flick on the forehead serve? Roughly grabbing your childs arm or something I can understand in a situation where it's necessary like if they're about to break something or run out into the road and you have to stop them somehow, but as a form of punishment I don't think physical abuse of any kind is good.

you are totally clueless

Just reading through this thread is giving me anxiety attacks... I was spanked as a child. I was also raised in a dysfunctional family. The worst part was when my Dad spanked me because he didn't hold back. Every time I got spanked by him I'd be left gasping for air because I couldn't breath from how much it hurt. He didn't give the same treatment to my brothers. He'd only lightly tap them (i.e. not cause any pain) and told them to pretend to cry, but it was always a different story in my case. It was pretty fucked up how my parents always told me that they were spanking me because they "loved me". What sort of message did this send to me as a child? It told me that to love someone is to physically hurt them, this is wrong on so many levels. The spankings (i.e. physical abuse) were only a symptom of the problem. They were also emotionally abusive. Now I've got depression, anxiety, self-hatred, immense feelings of shame, poor social skills, an eating disorder, financial difficulties, insomnia, mood instabilities, poor hygiene, etc. Thanks Mom and Dad. You reap what you sow. Stop child abuse.

Loved getting my arse slapped at school

It's a negative consequence that comes as a result of not listening/disobeying. Just like how going to jail is a negative consequence of not listening to the law and disobeying. However, I do believe it's a situation by situation basis and you should try to understand the why before doing anything.

How about no TV time that night, or no week money, or no candy, or forced to help extra with chores? I can think of tons of ways to punish your kid in a more humane and mature way than causing physical pain.

Doesn't work. I swear I've had this exact conversation on Facepunch before, but for a number of years my parents believed that a smack would make me more obedient and learn to follow the rules. Not at all. I loathed them for it, I resented it, and I grew distant from them, which sort of set off a domino effect because when, around the age of 16, I started to develop mental health problems and began to genuinely consider things like suicide, I was certain there was no way in hell I would tell my parents. I wasn't afraid of them, per se, but I was afraid of not being understood, as their ridiculous smacking methods just screamed 'unrelenting traditionalist'. So I didn't tell them, and I dug myself into a rabbit hole for three years, ultimately culminating in two attempts on my own life. My parents still don't know, and I'm not sure when I'll tell them how I never saw them as the same people after they resorted to physical violence. It's the same reason I'll never agree with violence solving conflict, because in resorting to violence you'll forever change how people look at you. Very rarely in a good way. If you want to teach your kids to fear or not trust authority, smack away (please don't actually).

Those can cause scars as well if taken to extremes. Take daddy o five smashing the kids xbox as an example. No physical harm done to the kid but sure damaged him emotionally. Punishment, no matter the form, can always be taken to an extreme where it's considered abuse. Even if you ban physical punishment, parents who abused their kids that way will just do it another way with the same effect. The issue is not the physical punishment, but the way the punishment is given. If a kid feels the punishment is unfair, they will feel resentful or depressed.

That's why I said that even if you avoid using physical pain as punishment you can be a shitty parent.

I don't feel that you can ever get enough data to prove one way or the other is the best. Different kids respond differently to different punishments. I feel the ban might be heavy handed, but I admit I don't really have enough information to prove otherwise. Also, to turn that last question around, do you think banning your husband/family member from using their computer or not giving them week money is okay either? I don't think either is okay because they're adults, your equals, and are more than capable of having a civil discussion about things.

Well no because with peers and adult family members it'd be impossible to ban them from using their computer, or whatever other means you could use on your kids instead of inflicting physical pain. Even with dogs or any other kinds of pets, it's much more effective to use psychological strategies that don't involve beating them or pulling their hair. At what age do you consider a child old enough to handle a beating without reacting with hostility, like a dog would? What are you teaching the child at that point? At what age are they too old to be diciplined with violence?

You may feel that way, but the fact of the matter is that you can get enough data to prove it one way or the other. Also yes, different kids do respond differently to different punishments, that's why it's important to have a large sample pool so that we can account for the variability. This is the essence of doing studies. You get enough data to prove a point one way or another while ensuring that the data is comprehensive to the point of making the results predictable. There'll be outliers to the data of course, this is almost always a certainty because life doesn't always happen as we expect it to happen. I'm glad you admitted to not having enough information. Perhaps now is the time to go out and find more so that you may be informed regarding this topic. I hope you keep your confirmation bias in check. Losing privileges aren't even remotely similar to physical attacks. Your question doesn't account for two things: Who owns the computer? Who's giving the money? You're allowed to ban your husband/family member from using the computer if you own it. You're allowed to stop giving weekly money if it's your money to give. These are called privileges that pertain to boundaries. Boundaries can be placed around your own possessions (i.e. restricting access to your computer or not giving away your own money). You're NOT allowed to hit your child because you think you "own" them. You talk about computers and money as material things, but I think you failed to realize that human beings aren't even remotely similar to these objects.

You keep using the words "beat" I'm not sure which context you're using it in. If you're using it beat in a negative abuse sort of way, I'm completely against that. I don't consider ~5 thwacks to be a "beating". I also don't think thwacking after every screwup is a good thing either. It's best used as a last resort. As for what age they're too old to stop being disciplined with physical punishment, I'd say the same age as when you'd stop using "taking away their toys" as a punishment. The issue is, there are tons of things that can skew the data heavily one way or another. Like, where the kids are from, what the culture/regions thinks is acceptable punishment, how the parents perform the punishment, do abusive parents tend to prefer physical punishment over other punishments, how you even sample that data, what the terms for "better" is etc.

1 thwack is enough to be a beating in the context I'm using the word.

Indeed, there's a lot of data to account for. However it's just that, these things can be accounted for. The results to expect would probably be pertaining to adult health. Take me for example (I talked about this previously): My parents were emotionally and physically abusive. The physical abuse, while not as extreme as other cases, involved me and my other brothers lining up in the kitchen to have our asses hit by my mother or father. Each one of us would run out of the kitchen screaming and crying, one after another. It was almost ritualistic in nature. The emotional abuse is a bit trickier to describe, there was a lot of psychological manipulation at play, so I'm sure you can understand how I can't make much sense of it at the moment (I'm still working through these issues myself). To describe it more generally it was pathological bullying, shaming, name calling, humiliation, yelling, etc. In one of my previous replies I noted these problems that I have now: depression, anxiety, self-hatred, immense feelings of shame, poor social skills, an eating disorder, financial difficulties, insomnia, mood instabilities, poor hygiene, etc. So how would my data be accounted for? Well I'd assume that they'd put my data on a bar chart or something. It'd be titled something like "People's Current Health Conditions After Physical and Emotional Abuse", x axis would be for the illnesses/symptoms, and y axis would be for the number of people. There'd be multiple bar charts in this hypothetical study of ours. There'd be ones for individual abuse types and ones for mixed abuse types like in my case. Now this is all just an example to help you see that gathering this sort of data would be possible and that it has value. We can learn the ramifications of abusing a child and hopefully learn not to do these things, or better yet we can learn to be better than our parents were. To beat someone is to cause physical harm. To thwack someone is to cause physical harm. I think this is just turning in to an argument of semantics. At the end of day, physical harm is being done in either case no matter how you describe what happens. I think the question you and MrJazzy are trying to answer is this: At what severity does it become abuse? My answer, from personal experience, is when it happens more than once. It's the regularity that's important, not the severity. It's when the abuse becomes apart of your daily life that it is in fact abuse. When it started happening doesn't matter. The fact that it's simply happening is what matters.

Yeah I can definitely agree with a lot of that. Though it does extend to even non-physical punishment as well. My elementary school was pretty strict and it felt like every day I'd get in trouble for some stupid thing. The punishments weren't physical, but some of the punishments, such as no recess, made me rather get my ass spanked than that as it was quick. I think at this point it's less about the kind of punishment but how often punishment is doled out instead of defusing/talking the situation over.

is it still okay if its really fucking rough and im basically being thrashed around so that i legit as a 5 year old kid am thinking about shit like "is my neck being damaged?" ?

I agree, physical abuse is only one type of abuse. The other major ones are verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse. There's a fine line between abuse and punishment. This is why I think an outright ban would be preferable because more often than not an abusive parent will skirt the line between abuse and "punishment". That's probably why abuse often goes unnoticed, because people can't tell if it's just simple punishment or if it is in fact abuse. I think the missing piece of the puzzle to see whether or not something is actual abuse is to see how often it's done. I'd say people are most susceptible to abuse from the people they see the most regularly, e.g. their parents while growing up. Regarding your preference for punishment (losing privileges vs physical harm); I don't think you fully realize what you're asking for, and there's nothing wrong with that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'd probably change your mind if you experienced it first hand. In my case I probably got spanked once a week fairly consistently. It was usually because we went out in public (e.g. for grocery shopping) and my behaviour pissed off my parents in some way, so I got spanked as soon as we got home. The spankings ended up stopping at some point and I'm not entirely sure as to why. Either someone found out and confronted my parents about it, or we all grew up enough to point of being able to fight back. But of course they had other tools at their disposal and were only emotionally and verbally abusive from then on. Agreed.

How to properly discipline a child: Child must know the rules ahead of time - don't do this, do this, why, etc. Otherwise, how will they know what they are/aren't doing is wrong and know not to do it? If the child knows something is wrong and does it anyways, you need to explain it again. Either you didn't explain it properly, they didn't understand, or they aren't aware of why it's a big deal. If the child is warned and still does it, think about what motivation the child has. Is this improper impulse/emotion control? Is some need not being met? Is there some external reason causing their behavior? Understanding this can help you solve the cause of the behavior. Help the child deal with their emotions and impulses - if the child has proper strategies, he/she will be less likely to act out When punishments need to happen, take something they enjoy away - no game time, no ice cream, no TV. If they are out of control, they need a time out to calm down. When they do something good, give them positive reinforcement. Punishments must scale with the offense - taking a way a kid's TV time for a week because they dropped their food on the floor is unfair, and children know this, which can lead non noncompliance. Violence does not work. When you hurt a child in reaction to something they did, you are sending a complex message. "It's okay to hurt people who hurt you". "It's okay to hurt people if they do something you don't like". "If I mess up I'll get hurt". "My parents are stronger than me and can hurt me." This scales with the sort of offense and if they understand what they did was wrong - getting spanked because a child did something minor wrong that they had no idea why was wrong is going to confuse and scare the child. Human beings are complex, and just because getting spanked didn't mess you up as a kid doesn't mean that it was effective, nor does it mean that it works for other kids. Violence is the lazy parent's way of parenting, because a smack takes less effort than an explanation.

Very well said.