In addition, I also want to say that this is NOT an anti-spanking post. I promise. Each family is different, and each child is different, therefore the discipline methods that work from family to family, and from child to child, are different.
Having said all that, I'll commence my rant.
Can we please stop with this...
and this?
I see both of these on Pinterest and Facebook all the time, and honestly, it drives me nuts. I know I'm not the only one.
Here's why. If a child grows up in an environment in which baggy clothes, cigarettes, and gang signs are the norm, accepted by both peers and parents, then that child is going to grow up to be an adolescent who wears baggy clothes, smokes cigarettes, and throws up gang signs. Spanking is NOT going to change that.
And, if you are a teacher and you believe that it will, you are either working in a utopian school district or you are delusional. Or, you've never met any of your students' parents, because you know that the apples usually don't fall very far from the trees. You also know that the parents who come into your classroom dressed the way the young boys you just saw are dressed, are also the ones who tell you that if their kid gives you any trouble, just take them outside and whoop 'em. At least, that's been my experience.
The second one bothers me for different reasons from the first one. I find the caption to be rather cruel.
If you look at the instances of school shootings in recent years, you will notice a few things. The shooters were either mentally ill, came from a family/culture of violence, or were at the point of not caring whether or not they, themselves, lived or died.
I don't know what discipline methods the shooters' parents used, but I can tell you that spanking does not cure or prevent mental illness.
People who live in environments in which they learn that the way to resolve a problem with another person is to shoot them, get spankings, too.
I am not defending or excusing the heinous actions of people who would shoot children. I can't defend or excuse the actions or mindset of a person who would shoot anyone. I'm merely pointing out that smacking a child on the rear end is not going to prevent them from becoming a violent criminal if he or she is mentally unstable. To suggest that it will is ignorant.
It is also ignorant to assume that being spanked as a child will make a teenager adopt your social norms, rather than the ones he or she has seen all his or her life.
I saw another one on Pinterest recently that was even worse, but I couldn't find it again to incorporate it into this post. It's a picture of a thick, leather belt, with a caption that reads something along the lines of how being beaten with said belt was the reason no one had ever opened fire on a school until recently.
OK, I have to jump in here. No one has ever hit me with a belt in my life, and I have never had so much as the smallest desire to shoot another human being. Believe it, or not.
I'm inclined to use hyperbole and other figurative language, myself. But, come on, people. Think before you post something like this. There's a fine line between being hyperbolic and being downright ridiculous.
(P.S. Whether you spank or not, please stop judging people who don't discipline their children the way you do. You have no idea what works for their kids. Thanks!)
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