I have avoided this thread, but now think it's worth at least sharing the attachment parenting perspective that my wife and I have used. As an example of an alternative approach to spanking, I'll talk about when my daughter was born and my near 3-year son old pinched her and hit her at the beginning. At the root of this is the fact that it's ok for your child to be angry and jealous, what's not ok is how that gets expressed physically. I would take him away and sit him down and talk to him about why he was doing it, which boiled down to anger and jealously. In the heat of the moment he would not want to sit down and talk to me, but I wouldn't let him get up until we talked through the matter and he was calm again. We would talk about what he should do when he was angry or jealous, he could ask for help, he could stomp his feet, but he could not hurt other people. We would also talk about how mommy could spend special time with him latter, but it was important for her to feed his sister to keep her healthy as well. These type of actions and discussions were obviously repeated many times over the course of weeks/months.
Here we are 9 months and he has not hit or pinched her in long time. Just the other day he said he was angry and asked for her to stop nursing and said he wanted to hug mommy. This is something we infinitely prefer to him just holding in his angry and not telling us because of a fear of physical pain. We told him he would just have to wait a little bit, and that he could play with me until then and he was fine. He indirectly hurts her at times when he gets overly excited tickling or running around, and we talk through that at well.
Fundamentally it's our belief that acting out is an emotionally rooted issue. We don't see how physical pain could be an appropriate tool to address emotional issues. Yes it works with fireplaces, and knives, and other things that illicit physical responses, but emotions should not illicit a physical pain response. All of that said, parenting is a crazy journey, so while I feel comfortable contrasting different parenting techniques I would never directly judge another parent unless there was straight up criminal activity. I will not pretend to know the different ups and downs another parent may face. We're certainly not a perfect utopian family.
Here we are 9 months and he has not hit or pinched her in long time. Just the other day he said he was angry and asked for her to stop nursing and said he wanted to hug mommy. This is something we infinitely prefer to him just holding in his angry and not telling us because of a fear of physical pain. We told him he would just have to wait a little bit, and that he could play with me until then and he was fine. He indirectly hurts her at times when he gets overly excited tickling or running around, and we talk through that at well.
Fundamentally it's our belief that acting out is an emotionally rooted issue. We don't see how physical pain could be an appropriate tool to address emotional issues. Yes it works with fireplaces, and knives, and other things that illicit physical responses, but emotions should not illicit a physical pain response. All of that said, parenting is a crazy journey, so while I feel comfortable contrasting different parenting techniques I would never directly judge another parent unless there was straight up criminal activity. I will not pretend to know the different ups and downs another parent may face. We're certainly not a perfect utopian family.
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