Child-rearing

Punishment of Children as Domestic Abuse . . .

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

Punishment of Children as Domestic Abuse . . .

Authors: (of the above graphic, as well as the original descriptions of the phases of the cycles below, not in ALL CAPS) Melinda Smith, M.A., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D.  Last updated: December 2012.

Well, I’m just throwing this out there. Honestly, I haven’t spent the time and thought on this that I have with most of this project. It’s a bit of a reach perhaps, but one may have to admit there are some parallels between the domestic violence pattern and the pattern nearly all of us have been part of as normally punished children. It makes sense that any mental gymnastics one would use to justify dishing out unpleasantness on people, and making one’s self believe that from this bad can come good might follow a predictable form, so I’ve added, in CAPS (or in red CAPS), the ‘other’ cycle of domestic abuse to the above graphic, the Cycle of Parental Punishment:

THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE IN PARENTAL PUNISHMENT

The cycle of violence in domestic abuse

PARENTAL PUNISHMENT FALLS INTO A COMMON PATTERN, OR CYCLE OF VIOLENCE:

Domestic abuse falls into a common pattern, or cycle of violence:

Abuse – Your abusive partner lashes out with aggressive, belittling, or violent behavior.  The abuse is a power play designed to show you “who is boss.”

PUNISHMENT – YOUR PUNISHING PARENT “IMPOSES SOME UNPLEASANTNESS” – THREATS, INTIMIDATION, CONFISCATION OF YOUR PROPERTY, OR RESTRICTION OF YOUR FREEDOMS. IT IS A POWER PLAY, INTENDED TO TEACH YOU RESPECT FOR THEM AND ALL AUTHORITY.

Guilt – After abusing you, your partner feels guilt, but not over what he’s done.  He’s more worried about the possibility of being caught and facing consequences for his abusive behavior.

GUILT – AFTER PUNISHING YOU, YOUR PARENT FEELS GUILT, BUT NEVER QUESTIONS THEIR USE OF PUNISHMENT. THEY’RE MORE WORRIED THAT YOU’LL RESENT THEM, THAT YOU WON’T LOVE THEM ANYMORE, OR ALSO THAT OTHERS WILL FIND OUT ABOUT THE FIGHTING IN THE FAMILY.

Excuses – Your abuser rationalizes what he or she has done.  The person may come up with a string of excuses or blame you for the abusive behavior—anything to avoid taking responsibility.

EXPLANATIONS – YOUR PARENT RATIONALIZES WHAT THEY HAVE DONE, RESTATING YOUR MISDEED AND EXPLAINING WHY YOU NEEDED THE PUNISHMENT, AND WHY IT’S GOOD FOR YOU. THEY MAY SAY THEY DIDN’T ENJOY IT, BUT THAT YOU MADE IT NECESSARY.

“Normal” behavior — The abuser does everything he can to regain control and keep the victim in the relationship.  He may act as if nothing has happened, or he may turn on the charm.  This peaceful honeymoon phase may give the victim hope that the abuser has really changed this time.

NORMAL BEHAVIOUR – YOUR PARENT DOES EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO REGAIN CONTROL AND KEEP UP THE APPEARANCE OF A HAPPY, HEALTHY PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP. THEY MAY ACT AS THOUGH IT NEVER HAPPENED, OR THEY MAY BECOME ESPECIALLY SWEET FOR A TIME. THIS PHASE LETS THE CHILD KNOW THAT WHEN HE BEHAVES, THE PARENT IS HAPPY AND NON-VIOLENT.

Fantasy and planning – Your abuser begins to fantasize about abusing you again.  He spends a lot of time thinking about what you’ve done wrong and how he’ll make you pay.  Then he makes a plan for turning the fantasy of abuse into reality.

CONSISTENCY AND DENIAL – HAVING EXPLAINED TO YOU AND THEMSELVES THE REASON FOR THE PUNISHMENT, AND SATISFIED THAT YOU’RE BOTH HAPPY AND LOVING ONE ANOTHER AGAIN, YOUR PARENT HAS REASSURED HIMSELF THAT HE’S DONE THE RIGHT THING, AND IS OVER HIS MOMENTARY REMORSE AND READY TO DO IT AGAIN, THE NEXT TIME YOU MAKE IT NECESSARY.

Set-up – Your abuser sets you up and puts his plan in motion, creating a situation where he can justify abusing you.

VIGILANCE AND CONTROL – YOUR PARENT PLACES A LOT OF RULES AND RESTRICTIONS ON YOUR BEHAVIOUR AND WAITS FOR THE NEXT TIME YOU BREAK ONE, SO THEY CAN HAVE A CHANCE TO PUNISH YOU AGAIN, AND SO “TEACH YOU HOW TO BEHAVE” AND “INSTILL SOME RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY IN YOU.”

Food for thought . . .

Abuse with an Excuse – Doctrine in short form . . . Part #3

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

C. Childhood Misbehaviours are Irrelevant

1. When we are punishing our children to teach them not to cause any harm in our lives, not to break anything, not to hurt anyone, we are causing permanent harm in our attempts to avoid short term and material harm. The damages of abuse and corporal punishment are long lasting, while the damages of childhood misbehaviours are, for the most part, either material or temporary, sometimes both.

Temporary damages are bruises that result from infantile violence or carelessness, or simply missed or disrupted adult social occasions; material ones are broken dishes, damaged or stained clothing or furniture – of course material damages can be either permanent or temporary; a loved glass heirloom is forever, a coloured wall until the next painting. Things like painting the wall cost labour and money, which, if it happens to a modern person living in debt, may be a permanent harm to their finances. Young children can cause real harms, but again, as in the previous section, this would only justify the damages of punishment if those damages were small and temporary, and they are not. The damages of corporal punishment (and it is my position that there is no other kind) are long lasting and impact every aspect of life. This, again, is well documented.

2. Childhood explorations and mistakes, when they go bad, can cause some damage, things get broken, caregivers and other children get bruised and inconvenienced, but for the most part, these are individual, one-off incidents, that is, single incidents, with a single instance of damage per case. If we consider that each instance is a learning opportunity, each instance can teach a child a single lesson such as the fragility of pretty glass objects, or the fragility of human relationships (when one toddler hurts another, and the other expresses his feelings somehow), we can see that trading any one such lesson off against a lifetime of suffering the damage of having been punished is a bad bargain. The long term damages of punishment would only be justifiable by considering that the damages of the child’s misbehaviour is also long lasting. In reality, the occurrence of a misdeed or a mistake by a child will rarely be habit forming. These things, dish-breaking, punching other children, do not become chronic if they go un-punished. In reality, punishing increases defiance and misbehaviour in the long term.

Abuse with an Excuse – Doctrine in short form . . . Part #2

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

B. The Cognitive Damage

1. Punishments/penalties are all artificial consequences, contrived ones. It is not really a simple ‘cause and effect’ phenomenon when some active agent chooses the effect for a cause. In this way, our contrived consequences are substituted for the real world, natural consequences a child may experience when he explores or misbehaves, and therefore any real world learning experience is circumvented. This is the function that is in play when we note, through many good studies that corporal punishment hampers cognitive development.

When standardized punishments are substituted for the nearly infinite number of random real world consequences of childhood exploration as well as misdeeds, the vast and varied learning that may have happened is severely lessened, and the only learning that does happen is artificial and contrived. This is definitive of serious arrested cognitive development. It follows that the resulting impairment of thought will vary, of course with many factors, but certainly with the degree to which a child is controlled. A child who has more real world learning experience will be better able to process information regarding the real world than one whose learning years held few real world mistakes and learning opportunities.

2. Of course, parents need to protect their children from extreme danger. Life and limb certainly take priority over individual missed opportunities for real world learning. These safety hazards are not the most common situations parents and children face, however, and this is not a valid argument for the use of punishment generally.

Some may say that children need to be punished to learn to obey in every situation, so that their obedience will be guaranteed when there does arise a hazard, a real threat to life and limb, that a child needs to be conditioned to obey so that he may be ordered away from a street or a river and will comply immediately. This, I would say is a valid argument only if this sort of conditioning didn’t have a serious down-side. I believe that the damages that result from punishing, and certainly from the all-encompassing environment of punishment that this argument implies, brings a terrible cost also, up to and including a considerable cost of life and limb, in the form of violence, crime and suicide, along with the many social costs that are not as visible, that result from the cognitive hobbling that is produced by these methods.

Abuse with an Excuse – Doctrine in short form . . . Part #1

Jeff/neighsayer51 Comments

A. Damages
1. Abuse in its several forms damages people. The forms are these: physical, mental (cognitive), emotional and psychological. The damages have the same forms. This is well documented.
2. Corporal punishment also damages people, and the damages take the same forms: physical, mental, cognitive, emotional and psychological. This is well documented. The corporal punishment of children is being outlawed in much of the world, driven by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

3. Non-corporal punishment cannot actually exist, it’s a logical fallacy – an oxymoron, in fact. The argument goes like this:

– punishments are unpleasantnesses, they are by definition, something the punished person would not want, and so they are necessarily imposed, forced upon the punished person, against his will. Anything forced, anything imposed, involves either direct physical means, or at least the threat of physical means.
– punishments are employed when reason and talk – non-physical methods – fail, or are presumed to fail. This is often true, that these non-physical means fail, babies and young toddlers can’t be reasoned with, and even for older children who can be, punishments are usually only considered when any child is being unreasonable in the first place. When non-physical methods have been attempted and then ruled out, then logically what remains is physical, either directly or in potential.

Therefore punishment is impossible except that it’s physical. The only possible exception to this logical proof is in the case of punishments that are purely mental, emotional, or psychological, and these sorts of punishments are also universally considered to be unacceptable and abusive.

When children submit to their non-corporal punishments, this is not a disproof. It is only that the child is making a choice, the child is either remembering his baby or toddlerhood punishments, the physical ones, or more likely the child knows that if he resists, that the punishments will escalate and become corporal punishments, or most likely both, some combination of the two.

4. Conclusion: there are no non-corporal punishments. All punishments require force and physicality. Therefore all punishment is corporal punishment, therefore all punishment cause the damages associated with corporal punishment.

Following Your Heart

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

Sometimes, although the belief in punishing is present, people’s hearts aren’t in it, that is to say, many parents don’t punish, or at least don’t punish much, despite sharing the normal belief in it, despite that they don’t condemn their own parents punishing practices. Many simply don’t have the stomach for it, which is a good thing. Many of today’s parents have intuitively seen through the sham, even if not many have in a cerebral way.

I personally know of a family, which has a lot of the characteristics of a classic abusive situation, where there was drug abuse by both of the parents, with alcoholism and much anger, frustration, and ambivalence regarding his own parents on the part of the father, and co-dependent issues. The kids, though, seem to have survived it fairly well, at least there doesn’t appear to be substance issues or violence; they are in their early twenties now and seem to be making lives for themselves. In many ways, it appears that the marriage is a clone of the father’s parents’ marriage. There is the dad’s alcoholism, frustration and anger, and there is the mom’s co-dependence and compensation (some would say ‘over-compensation’) strategy, but the newer generation of kids seems to have suffered much less damage. The kids of the previous generation in the father’s family were pretty messed up. The difference is in the use of punishment, as far as I can see.

Whenever I mention this book to the younger mother, I get in the usual arguments, arguments I get a lot on this subject; she doesn’t see either that anyone punishes, or that there’s anything wrong with parents wanting or getting it all their way, depending on the particular point we’re discussing – but she never hit her kids, and hardly grounded or anything. There may have been a certain amount of compensation or co-dependence in that, an attempt to provide the kids a nicer life than they got from their dad, but he was forbidden any sort of physical punishing as well, that was her line in the sand. The upshot seems to be, despite all the typical elements of abusiveness – he was verbally and emotionally horribly abusive – there was very little in the way of punishment. That is the contrast from one generation in this family to the next, while the grandmother denies her punishing, or denies any extreme punishing, she punished, and her kids were badly damaged. In the younger generation, while the mother professes not being opposed to parental rule and the parents’ right and duty to do it, she didn’t punish, and the kids appear to have survived much better. All the while, the grandfather and the father appear identical, except the younger man was forbidden to use physical punishment.

This case seems to make a very clear case that the alcoholism and the verbal and emotional abuse being common, the outcomes were very different, and the difference was in the use of punishment. With no punishing, the children seem to have survived an abusive situation, while the generation that were punished show all the expected signs of abuse.

This is anecdotal, to be sure . . .

Pre-verbal Rage

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

For not punishing to help anything, it has to start at birth. Not much sense in abusing someone early and then removing the restraints. That is where we’re at now, that’s why the world looks like it’s all going to Hell in a handcart. We control our babies totally, train our toddlers with punishment and “non-violent” means, and then stop when they’re old enough to tell anyone about it! So we piss them off while they’re pre-verbal, and then beg and whine against their infantile rage later, neither them nor us understanding why our teenagers hate us. Ask them what’s wrong, they can’t tell you, and it can’t be cured, the rage comes from the pre-verbal period. That’s another huge part of the puzzle that seeing punishment as violence miraculously solves.

Punishment is a last resort, or it should be. Punishing a human being is the end of communication, it’s where we say ‘I’m done talking to you, have THIS instead.’ The implicit breach of personal trust and caring that comes with every act of punishment creates the situation for the next one. Once we’ve abandoned communication and resorted to physical aversives or “non-physical” aversives that are supported and facilitated by either physical means or intimidation, we’ve lost the better options.

Christianity: the Revolution that Never Happened.

Jeff/neighsayer29 Comments

This is the revolution, intended, I think, as a revolution in Judaism, that didn’t happen. You’ve heard it before, this below, from Matthew:
Matthew 5 (King James Version)
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

 

Here, Jesus refers to the Old Testament scripture, the traditional model for Hebrew law and punishment, and then issues the new Way, the revolution. He is making a case here, as in many other places, for a more forgiving and less vengeful God. More to the point for me, I think he made a case for a less vengeful and more forgiving Man.
(Jesus was surrounded by zealots, freedom fighters, or at least the leaders who talked them up, the hawks of his day, plus he was contested and marginalized by the orthodoxy, and the Herod clan. These conservatives had a good case against him, he was politically hamstrung by the occurence of his birth while his mother was still in “virgin” status, so Jesus was dealt the position of moderate, and moderator. The conservative, orthodox church leaders, if not the king, Herod, were to some degree aligned with the zealots against the Roman occupation, and so Jesus, pitted against them by his unauthorized birth, was also set up against the zealots, and so, found himself in the role of peacemaker.)
http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/index1.html
And so, this new, more civilized code of punishment.

 

I think Jesus announced a model of peacemaking with these great words, and set a new model for society in general.
It seems that the Christian concept of a more forgiving God caught on; God is now seen as gentler, and far more loving that the punishing, jealous God of the Old Testament.
But the more forgiving Mankind?
Punishment is still the rule of the land, all lands. In the Western world, we no longer take eyes, or teeth, true, that has improved – but we certainly haven’t made it all the way to ‘turning the other cheek also.’
Not even with our children!
Jesus’ time was a high water mark for civilization, one of the few times his message of peace and rejection of punishment could have had a chance in the long, rough history of the world, but old habits die hard. It’s still Old School, Old Testament, when push comes to shove.
It may have taken two thousand years to hear Jesus’ message, but we are arguably at another high point of civilization, and it’s one of those changes, like quitting any bad habit, it’s always going to be a good change to make. The message is, get hurt, model peace. Prioritize peace over ‘security.’ Security annihilates peace. Take some lumps. Show the bad guys what it looks like to NOT fight, show them what it’s like when someone DOESN’T hurt someone.
At least show your CHILDREN these things.
Turn the other cheek.
Viva la Revolution!

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World.

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

The ‘legitimate’ abuse that has a thousand names, punishment, correction, discipline, consequences, training, spanking, timeouts, quiet time, penance, detention, etc., this practice is done by nearly everyone. People of many races, religions, nationalities, creeds, sexualities, income levels, education levels, and both genders, most people hold with punishment’s basic, unquestioned, unacknowledged premise, that you can improve people, their behaviour, their development, their character – by hurting them. By somehow making life less pleasant for them when they stray from the caregivers’ idea of what is done and what is not.
Now, for me, this seems to contradict a great deal of psychological thinking, which developed, to some degree, by tracing suffering people’s lives to the unpleasantness that damaged them to the point of seeking a doctor’s help, in the early days, damaged them to the point of being committed to a sanatorium. For a dysfunctional patient, often after other causes had been explored, physical ailments, etc., often the next, or maybe last logical step might be the psychoanalyst, and psychoanalysis has had some success, making connections between mental trauma and social dysfunction.
Of these two apparently opposing ideas – punishment and psychology – the latter seems the more logical, dare I say, scientific. So with this argument, and the ones in the preceding chapters, I’m going to push on, taking as a given at least as my premise, that unpleasantness, only different from trauma by a matter of degree, damages people rather than improving them.
OK, the use of punishment has looked like it works, you punish someone and the unwanted behaviour appears to stop – but does it? Do we think a punished child becomes a model citizen forever afterwards? Do we think a punished adult ceases his criminal behaviour and goes on as a saint? I don’t think even the most energetic of my unconvinced audience thinks that, do they? So again, unpleasantness makes people worse, less functional, rather than improving them. Having said that, I want to extrapolate that whomsoever punishes a person the most, does the most damage.
If one’s parents are active participants in the practice, the culture of punishment, then I feel I must say, that the parent who does the more parenting, very often the most punishing, must be the parent causing the most unpleasantness, the most trauma, the most damage. And, sorry to say, in my world, probably in most of the world, it’s Mom doing most of the parenting. Certainly many fathers are responsible for horrible trauma, perhaps the more serious punishments are administered by the father in some families, but basically, day-to-day parenting and punishing, falls to mothers. This is especially true during the earliest years of the child’s life. Uninvolved fathers are bad in many ways, of course. Neglect is a form of abuse, there is the lack of male modelling, but there is the other side too: if parenting means punishing to the mother, and if she overdoes it, then Dad’s neglect is downright dangerous, he can be rightly accused of not protecting his kids from some hands-on abuse. Also, if he’s not helping, then the mother can become stressed out, also not a good thing for a parent who already thinks punishing kids, that is, hurting kids, is good for them. So yes, that is what I’m saying: in the culture of punishment, your mother is probably doing you more harm than your father. Dad’s no saint, don’t get me wrong, he’s letting her do it, often participating . . . but the myth that needs busting here, is Mom’s sainthood. Having said THAT, the other ramifications of this are the more important thing. Blame is even, one does it, one allows it, and sometimes they trade off. I don’t make this point to place blame; this isn’t about the trauma of children.
This principle, that mothers raise the children, that mothers punish the children, this is the root of misogyny, the root of violence against women. We love our mothers, we love our system of punishment, we all hold the family unit as a sacred, ancient tradition, but that is the surface of it all. That is only what we say, what we think we feel, but the dark side is this:
We all know who punished us, we know who damaged us. Violence against women is a trend, a tendency, it is far more prevalent than the incidence of extreme abuse would indicate, the expression of infantile rage against the one who hurt us, that is the great secret. This is another piece of the great puzzle of life that falls into place when you work from the premise that punishment is violence.
The culture of punishment in which we live has turned the most natural, organic beautiful thing in the world, mother love, into a violent act, and one which brings a terrible vengeance to the half of humanity we should all hold sacred, our mothers. Now to blame. Women, putting the blame for misogynist violence on men isn’t working; stop spanking your sons. Men, you’re not fixing it either. Stop making your women “correct” your sons. This is the issue. Violence breeds violence.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Women, your safety, the safety of your daughters and grand-daughters is in your hands. Hurting kids, dishing out unpleasantnesses, damages them, it doesn’t help them, and it doesn’t help women. Help your kids, help yourselves, give up your punishing ways. Love looks like love, and it doesn’t invite revenge.

Love Looks like Love

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

People usually punish with the best of intentions. As children, we receive most of our punishments from those who love us.
Of course, it’s those who love you that are interested in correcting you, who want you to grow up as a happy, healthy, productive member of society, and so when you misbehave, they try to steer you on the right path. Unfortunately, most peoples’ choice of tools for such work is rather limited, and all too often, the tool that gets used is punishment; in fact, for some, that’s the only tool in the box. No-one thinks this,’ that it’s the only tool I’ve got, so I guess I’ll use it.’ They believe in it, it’s the only tool they think they need, a kind of wonderful, all-in-one tool that is all you might ever need to correct anyone, anywhere, anytime. The fact that they are trying to correct you, trying to set you up for a happy, productive life, this is believed to make you feel, well, loved. If they didn’t love you, they wouldn’t bother, right? They love you and they’re trying. That’s what parents tell themselves; it breaks my heart to tell them all.
I’m sorry, but it’s not true. Love looks like love.
Don’t be fooled by imitations. Love looks like love. Punishment looks like . . . well, it looks like what it would look like if you couldn’t talk about it, if you couldn’t explain it away. It looks like the opposite of love.
Love looks like patience, like thoughtfulness. Love looks like communication, difficult, cautious, slow communication. Communication with a lot of checking, a lot of error correction, a lot of testing, to make sure the communication is getting through, that the last thing got through before the next thing begins. Whereas punishment is a cheap, shoddy shortcut, whose results are highly dubious. An act of punishment marks the end of communication. I’ve said earlier, punishment is when attempts at communication are abandoned and the teacher, the parent simply resorts to the use of force, of negative incentives.
Love looks like love. It will be a sad realization if we have to face the truth of this. Unfortunately, many of us may really not know this, and it means, well, maybe we just haven’t seen enough loving correction to recognize it. Maybe we’ve been told how the punishment was good for us for so long we believed it, and started to think that was a sign of love, and perhaps the only sign of love we ever got.
Ouch. That hurt me, and I’m the one who said it! I’ll let that be it for today.

Punishment helps to teach kids right from wrong – not.

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

. . . everyone thinks that normal stuff. It’s a silly myth if anyone thinks there is some huge group of people out there who thinks “aw, screw it, I’m just gonna let my kids do whatever the hell they want.” Most people believe what you’re saying, that we need to use some kind of disincentives, to teach right from wrong – and still, this is the world we get. A world where we all seem to perceive ourselves as evil, naturally bad, and requiring some force or control to whip us into line, a world where high school kids torment one another to the point of suicide. A world where even the good people of the world seem to feel killing “bad” people is OK.