If you are a baby boomer who grew up in the 1960's, you lived through the age of rules. Rules that were enforced by your parents with a firm voice and an even firmer hand. In fact, if your parents were raising you now, in the 21st century, they would probably either be in police custody or your kid would be in the care of Child and Family Services.
The way discipline is handed out has changed a lot over the last 50 years. In the 60's you were given a slap on your hand or butt or even the back of your head. And it hurt a lot. It was supposed to. That was the repercussion for doing something bad or wrong. The pain was immediate and gave you reason to pause. Pause and think about what you had done to deserve such treatment.
This was a child's way to figure out cause and effect. Smack my brother in the face and I will get no supper and will spend the rest of the day in my bedroom. A bedroom with no game boy, or television, or even a comic book to read. It gave me a lot of time to think about the joy I got smacking my brother and compare it to having no supper, no fun and no friends to hang out with for the rest of the day.
At the time it seemed a little much. I mean I figured it out in about ten minutes that it was a bad choice I'd made but I still had to stay in my room for the rest of the day. And after the anger of being ratted out by my brother had subsided, I was, again, still stuck in my room. My evil parents had found a way to condition me to NOT hit my brother. Damn.
Then I would talk to my friends at school about it. I would hear about other evil parents and how they would "discipline" my friends. No bike riding for a weekend. No ice cream when the ice cream man came by on his tricycle of awesome treats. Getting a spanking on your bare butt! "No way! They can't do that!" But there was no talk of child abuse back then. Nope.
When I was a kid there were no really rude kids. At least not outwardly and to your face rude. If I was rude to an adult neighbor, they would just mention it to my mom or dad and that was it. "In your room until your dad gets home. Then you're gonna get it. "
Well that got my attention. And I thought about what I had said to my neighbor and how it was not worth the waiting to get a spanking from either of my parents. Lesson learned. Won't do that again. Repercussions. They work. For me it was hearing the change in my dad's pocket making noise as he came up the stairs to "talk" to me. Scared the hell out of me. Or when my mom would come up the stairs with a wooden spoon, her rings hitting the banister as she walked up the stairs. Again, very scary.
Now fast forward to 1999. My son comes home from Kindergarten's first day to tell me that his teacher had some advice for him. If your parents spank you, you should tell that teacher and she would have me arrested. This is a five year old kid saying this.
I had to tell my son the repercussions of telling your teacher that I spanked you. I would go to jail. Your mom would lose the house that we live in. And you would go to a foster home. A place where someone gets paid to watch you instead of having your parents who love you, watch over you. Tough choice for a five year old? Not really.
He got a few more swats on the butt after that and I never went to jail. And I'll be damned if he didn't turn out pretty awesome. He is smart, hard working, fair minded and respectful of most people. I'm pretty happy with the way he turned out.
I mean, he could have ended up like the horrible kids that make up AntiFa, had I gone the route of time outs and counting to 5.
Only to never get to 5.
And I believe that the hoodlums that are Antifa were all kids that were given time outs instead of consequences. It's too obvious that they have been given no direction growing up. Those parents let the school system do what it wanted with their kids, without paying attention to how they were being indoctrinated. How they were taught that you don't have to debate but just go to a safe space and play with some play doh. If someone disagrees with you, hit them and shut them the fuck up. Preach tolerance and and show none. Wear a mask because you will be breaking the law.
There are a lot of things that we can blame for the way our kids act now. Marxist thinking teachers and professors have taken away the power of the parents to bring their kids up in a proper and respectful way. I've seen too many kids flip out on their parents at the grocery store only to have the parent beg the child to stop. Or worse, give the kid a treat to stop the tantrum! Craziness!
But until the disease of liberalism is defeated, we will have to live with the disrespectful,violent and intolerant youth that are coming out of higher education with absolutely nothing learned and nothing decent to add to our world. Sad.
I agree with your observation. I disagree with your solution, strongly. There is a middle ground between raising a child without any direction and raising a child with the threat of pain and violence. It's not as if the generation that still knew spankings as a legitimate source of character formation turned out that great.
You wouldn't hit someone who's stronger and bigger than you when he misbehaves, why would you do it to someone who's much much smaller and weaker than you are and whom you profess to love more than anything in the world?
Excellent post and even better points! One of the reasons I pulled my kids out of school and homeschooled. One thing that made me laugh... when you talked about getting sent to your room. One day as I thinking about that, I thought, wait a minute... they got TV, video games, a stereo- how much punishment is this really???
I spanked my kids- as a last resort, when nothing else worked. One of my favorites was making them stand with their nose on the wall for a while- it put some teeth in "time out." I was fortunate, I guess. Four kids, two of each. One son got spanked 4-5 times. The other once. Out of both girls only one got a spanking- 1 time. They all turned out OK, thank God!
Nice. It only took a few smacks on the butt to straighten my son out too. He kept running in front of a city bus that went down our street. First time was the warning in his ear- "if you do this again I'll spank your butt." The second time was the one that got the spanking. As soon as he saw the look in my eyes he knew he went too far. lol But no more running in front of the bus though. Thanks for the comment .
My oldest started spitting on other kids on the school bus... First came the gentle fatherly explanation. Then "The Room" Third time- nose on the wall. Fourth time got him a good wailing on the butt! Followed.