Becoming PatientMan IV - It Is Well With My Soul

[PatientMan]

I am enjoying this discussion and have thus brought it over to my own thread. If you are not, let me know and I will cease.

PM, just a final word...or 2 and then lets allow Planet to get what he needs.

About the child running into the street, apples and oranges. You don't have to hit a child to keep him/her out of the street. You changed somewhere in there from physical violence to physical intervention.

I changed the term because the term you used offended me, and I am not easily offended. You very first response to the issue of spanking was:

"Physical violence is physical violence."

I took that to mean spanking and other forms of physically disciplining a child to be "violence."

I looked up the definition of the word "violence":

behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

Synonyms: brutality, ferocity, savagery, cruelty, sadism, barbarity

Do you understand why I would take offense to what I - and many - view as reasonable parenting being labeled as "violent"? Do you think those that responsibly spank (or use other physically-based methods) intend to hurt, damage, or kill their children using brutality, ferocity, savagery, cruelty, sadism, and barbarity?

Responsible parents correct out of love, not out of any of those words.

So yes, I changed the term to one I felt was much more appropriate: "intervention" or "correction", because I am certainly not "violent" with my children, by definition.

I never said I wouldn't physically intervene in an extreme circumstance but let's face it most of life isn't made up of extreme circumstances.

My point of you protecting your child from harming himself or someone else - taking the argument to its logical extreme - is a common test to determine the integrity of the argument being presented. As you agreed, physical intervention/correction is absolutely necessary and proper in certain cases.

We can change the terms you used to something other than "violence" and likely agree, or we can stick with the phrase "physical violence is physical violence" if we agree that, using your idiom, we are comparing apples and oranges and that phrase does not apply to responsible spanking and thus doesn't really apply to the thread.

I'm sorry for the abuse you suffered. Do you truly believe that hasn't affect your adult life?

Of course it did, as did so many other aspects any person experiences while growing up. Do you think I spank (which I have repeatedly admitted is extremely rare) because I was "abused", as you put it?

You didn't ask me if I think it negatively affected my adult life, to which my answer is "no." In fact, you didn't even ask me if I thought I was "abused" and "suffered." In response to a request you are about to make in the next quote, please don't mind-read me.

I'd ask that you don't speak for me or mindread me. I'm very capable of speaking for myself and I'm usually pretty clear about what I think.

Fair enough. I made a supposition to your answer so that I could further my point. It seemed like a more than reasonable supposition, but my apologies if you took offense that I presumed your answer. I was trying to speed up the process of making my point instead of waiting for what I thought would be your obvious answer.

There was no disrespect intended in that presumption. I value your opinion and know you are a reasonable woman with valid opinions and the conviction to share them candidly.

My views on this are out of the realm of opinion because there's a lot of solid research to back them up.

Agreed. Most notably, I encourage you to look at the crime and incarceration rates of young men who didn't have a solid father figure in their lives. Those were the statistics I spoke to.

I am certainly not disagreeing that there are numerous parenting methods, some of which include no physical correction, I just disagree that those methods are ideal solely for the reason that they don't include that physical contact. Correlation does not imply causation.

I hope that clears my position up. I am not "violent" with my children, but you are certainly entitled to your own opinion and to disagree with me there if you truly think otherwise.

You have raised tremendous young men. I am raising tremendou young women. We are utilizing slightly different parenting tactics in very rare moments in the context of parenthood. Clearly there is more than one way to skin a cat.

-PM