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The Slapping Debate.
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If the child feels abused, they have childline....
Wow!I'm more being a nitpicker about assigning causality here (you can blame my academic training for this). There's a large body of evidence against smacking as a form of punishment, and I don't dispute that, I'm just curious about the exact causality here. Are genetic causes that make one more likely to react to a situation by smacking a child those that make it more likely that the child will react violently more often later in life? This obviously wouldn't be purely a genetic thing, but it could be like a set of dominoes where the genetic predisposition is reinforced by being smacked as a child etc. (Not that this would be an argument in favour of smacking children if it bore out to be the case or anything)
Good questions nesf, and I'm sorry I can't hang about for longer to write a longer post in reply. But the causality one is a difficult issue. The crux of the issue, to my mind, is that the genetic element is less likely because the behaviour is modified by stopping the smacking.
There may be a genetic susceptibility to violence though. Insofar as if an adopted kid of a placid parent was hit by their violent adopted parent, they may be less likely ti become violent in response to it than the adoptive parent's natural kids.
But I think what you were getting at was whether the kid would have been violent anyway, just because of inheriting genes from a parent who has this propensity for violence (ie hitting their kid). If that were the case, then changing discipline wouldn't be expected to stop the kid's violence.
But, to give some weight to your general point, yo usually engage the parent in other techniques aswell when trying to get them to stop smacking. If I see a parent in clinic who hits their kid I'll talk to them about it. But I'll also introduce things like positive reinforcement of good behaviour, which yields fantastic results at almost any age, because kids LOVE praise.
So, stopping smacking isn't usually done in isolation. But even if it's not 100% responsible for the increase in violence in smacked kids (and I think it's responsible for a lot of the violence in these children) there's other reasons not to smack. The main one being that it's no more effective than other methods of discipline.
So, given the choice between disciplining a small child without resort to violence, and doing the same by hitting them, there should be an obvious choice. Though I accept it's not so simple.
I would say to "sickened" above, too, that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Everyone does something they regret. My parents were so against violence, and would never lay a hand on us. But one day my dad slapped me on the back of the legs, out of frustration. It's a one off thing. Happens to lots of parents. But you know it was wrong, and that's the main thing. So, you're unlikely to do it again. In the unlikely event that it does keep happening, you can talk to your GP if you felt it was getting out of control. But you seem like a very conscientious parent
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tallaght01 wrote: »Good questions nesf, and I'm sorry I can't hang about for longer to write a longer post in reply. But the causality one is a difficult issue. The crux of the issue, to my mind, is that the genetic element is less likely because the behaviour is modified by stopping the smacking.
There may be a genetic susceptibility to violence though. Insofar as if an adopted kid of a placid parent was hit by their violent adopted parent, they may be less likely ti become violent in response to it than the adoptive parent's natural kids.
But I think what you were getting at was whether the kid would have been violent anyway, just because of inheriting genes from a parent who has this propensity for violence (ie hitting their kid). If that were the case, then changing discipline wouldn't be expected to stop the kid's violence.
But, to give some weight to your general point, yo usually engage the parent in other techniques aswell when trying to get them to stop smacking. If I see a parent in clinic who hits their kid I'll talk to them about it. But I'll also introduce things like positive reinforcement of good behaviour, which yields fantastic results at almost any age, because kids LOVE praise.
So, stopping smacking isn't usually done in isolation. But even if it's not 100% responsible for the increase in violence in smacked kids (and I think it's responsible for a lot of the violence in these children) there's other reasons not to smack. The main one being that it's no more effective than other methods of discipline.
So, given the choice between disciplining a small child without resort to violence, and doing the same by hitting them, there should be an obvious choice. Though I accept it's not so simple.
I would say to "sickened" above, too, that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Everyone does something they regret. My parents were so against violence, and would never lay a hand on us. But one day my dad slapped me on the back of the legs, out of frustration. It's a one off thing. Happens to lots of parents. But you know it was wrong, and that's the main thing. So, you're unlikely to do it again. In the unlikely event that it does keep happening, you can talk to your GP if you felt it was getting out of control. But you seem like a very conscientious parent
The change in the form of discipline showing good result regarding violence wouldn't rule out genetic factors at all. At most a genetic factor will be a predisposition towards violence, it won't be a cast iron fate for the person. i.e. in simplistic terms, kid A has the gene kid B doesn't: both children are slapped by their parents, kid A would have a much higher chance of exhibiting violent behaviour as an adult than kid B who is still most likely not to have violence problems as an adult. In such an instance slapping itself is not the causal factor of the violence in that it is not a sufficient condition to bring about said violence only a necessary one. If you start factoring in that a change in a parent slapping will not happen in a vacuum and that it could also precipitate other changes in the relationship between the parents and child and you have a very complicated picture.
Looking at the evidence I would most certainly not rule out genetic factors as a layman with an interest in genetics etc.0 -
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