by JustTickledPink 28 Replies latest jw friends
"bring 'em to the bathroom to beat 'em." love that... that is just classic!
It pains me for little kids getting hit... I also remember that some elders counseled mothers on how to TRAIN their kids to sit through meetings, to have them sit still at home every day for an hour until they were TRAINED to sit at meetings.
my parents were great.. we didnt get yanked out of the hall and spanked. we'd get taken outside and talked to.. (i'd rather have had a spanking) we did get spanked at home up till around 6 yrs old or so.. at that age they would put us to work if we were bad.. their thinking " if you got time for mischief you have time to clean your room, work on the yard etc" and my dad was good at talking to you.. he'd ask questions and you'd get a talking to till you answered correctly and understood why you were in trouble. the biggest blessing is never having got hit in anger. spanking was punishment, you heard w hy you were getting spanked, allowed to "try' to defend yourself ( i mean really how could i defend roasting marshmellows under the porch?) i too never got a spanking i didnt deserve. the older i get the more i am thankful for having good parents!
Can you imagine what would happen if your supervisor used corporal punishment to "control" the employees at work? At least it would be one adult against one adult.
Blondie (go for it whyiamhere)
I was raised in a military family and both my father and mother whipped the living sh** out of us (especially me) so when I had kids and was a JW I whipped them too. I was commended more than one time for the severe spankings I gave my daughters. All my kids are grown and have turned out reasonably well but resent the heck out of me for the whippings they got. In hindsight I feel very bad about the corporal punishment I meted out. Would do it differently if I could go back in time.
FM
It was always so weird how they expected small children to sit for 2 hours of boring talks. Seriously, I can't sit through 2 hours now as an adult!
That may be true, but with 3 meetings/week, there were a lot of kids that managed pretty well. I cannot get my little ones to sit still and/or keep quiet for very long at all. If I were still a JW, I don't think I'd be able to bring them to a hall for at least another couple of years.
Some of the kids talked about here may be young, but from my memory, there was something the parents were doing that got them to be mostly quiet and mostly stay put. Maybe the spankings did sink in. My children aren't spanked. We also dread taking them out to a sit-down restaurant. They don't sit still and if they're in a bad mood, they will let the entire restaurant know about it. I couldn't imagine bringing them to a KH. Yet there are JWs that take their kids to meetings all the time and their kids behave better than mine would. Or am I just remembering it all wrong? I didn't have kids as a JW, so maybe I was oblivious to how these kids were really behaving. Maybe it's just my kids.
I think the concept of negative reinforcement has its place. Spanking is physical pain. Yelling is mental pain. Both are scaring the child so it doesn't continue doing what it's doing. Up to a certain age, a child is not going to understand what you are saying. You can't talk them into behaving differently. You can either let them run free, doing anything they want (no matter how much danger that presents to them, like running out into the street), or you can try to train them. If you choose to spank or yell, both are negative reinforcement and I'll bet every parent has used one or the other.
I'd rather do the yelling than spanking, but I'm not so sure that works with every child. My 1-year old son is a biter. I've yelled at him in my scariest voice and he thinks that's funny and continues on trying to bite me or my wife or his sister. My wife has tried pulling his hair or his ear and this seems to work a LOT better.
And when I was a kid, I was spanked. I don't think it was ever excessive and it wasn't a first resort. My parents usually told us to behave first, then threatened a spanking, then did it. If we were really bad, they threatened to pull our pants down in front of everyone and spank us. It never happened. After a long period of rest from the belt, I remember doing something bad and my dad got out his belt. Now, I had grown up a bit and my dad had gotten older (he was in his mid 50's and I nearing my teenage years). My dad started spanking me and to my surprise, it didn't hurt. But, I figured I'd better act like it did or else they'd find a different way to punish me.
WhyamIhere . . . good for you! You probably did more to help that little girl than you can imagine, hopefully her mom thought long and hard after you had a talk with her
I once saw a JW father pinch his four year old on the leg to make her stop squirming. I didn't do anything about it and I regret it to this day.
When I was somewhere between six and eight I saw a woman shake a (approximately) ten-month-old in the little cloakroom/sitting area just inside the ladies' loos in the KH.
She made three sharp shakes then held the baby tightly to her chest (handling it roughly to turn it towards herself, etc). There were other mothers around who didn't seem to bat an eyelid.
I "witnessed" more abuse of children at kingdom halls and assembly halls than anywhere else in my lifetime. We were forced to sit still and listen to the boring brainwashing all day at Dodger Stadium, in the worst of Los Angeles summer heat in July. It was unbearable, but don't move at all, or you'd be like the other kids in the back, getting beaten with belts and wooden spoons. The assemblies would last for five days, and I remember dreading them worse than anything else.
I feel very sorry for the children of JWs. JWs choose to live miserable lives, but their kids have no such choice. It is imposed upon them by their mentally enslaved parents who heed the commandments of the corporations they serve. It is even more despicable that the WTBTS corporations encourage their parents to force their children to become "slaves" of that corporation, marketing the corporate cult from door to door. The WTBTS is responsible for de facto slavery among the children of the Great Crowd of Pigeons. Hopefully, the governing body and their supporting cast will one day get their karma for all the harm they are responsible for.
Do you remember being told "not to spare the rod" in disciplining children? Do you remember being that kid that got beat?
I had forgotten until just now!
Kwin
that "spare the rod" scripture is a free pass for unlimited hitting, slapping and abuse cloaked in the guise of "loving discipline". even when i was getting hit i knew it wasn't right 'cause it felt so bad. i guess finding creative, insightful ways to teach your child right from wrong is too much work for some people ...
