So my hometown made it into Yahoo News...

[ssbmchamp]

Long story short I think most the problems among the younger generation is directly attributed to the "lack" of discipline nowadays. In this particular situation I think this was a really dumb idea for a punishment and accomplished absolutely nothing. But back to the topic of discipline in general, I would love to see more very strict/severe punishments implemented in society. This is a tad bit extreme of an example but bringing back the "eye for an eye" system I think would help turn our country's discipline problem around. People can argue all they want but the fact of the matter is the more severe a punishment, the less likely a person would commit an offense. The problem now with something like that is that everyone would complain "that's cruel...etc" instead of manning up and and facing the consequences of their actions.

[adlp]

this doesnt have anything to do with Bible values what are you talking about dossar

and this was a stupid punishment

[funmonkey54]

Originally Posted by Choofers

the fact that a "christian counselor" exists is gross lmao

Is this just a stupid joke, or?
Explain yourself.

[Arch0wl]

I don't think that the "positive reinforcement is best" approach takes into consideration innate personality types. IIRC, personality was something like 50% hereditary. The environmental aspect is also likely to aid continuation of similar personality attributes to the parents if the person doing most of the environmental management is the person with similar hereditary dispositions.

My mom, throughout most of my life, was very high on the positive reinforcement thing. She was also primarily the one who raised me. However, having been in environments where reinforcement is mostly negative, I feel like that's a more effective kind of reinforcement for someone like me. What would happen with positive reinforcement is that I would just forego the initial reward and negotiate larger and larger rewards until I was able to get something disproportionately rewarding to the task I was doing. If I didn't get larger a reward I wouldn't do it at all, even if the reward was a small one. So that's when negative reinforcement comes in, and I was pretty persistent about that too. It takes increasingly higher levels of negative reinforcement until you're basically scaring the shit out of me.

My dad can be terrifying when he's angry, and I listened to him much more as a kid even though he hardly asked anything out of me by comparison. However, my dad is also a lot like me, so he intuitively hones in on what naturally works.

It may be that this particular type of reinforcement is good for this kid, but not for others. If I've been publicly embarrassed by something I will never do that thing again. I do know people, though, who would break down in tears and just regard the incident as traumatic on the whole and hardly learn anything from it.

[ReikonKeiri]

I was spanked as a child and I turned out great, that shit hurt so I rarely did stuff to deserve it. So glad I never got grounded, that's just a cruel elongated punishment imo. I would rather be spanked 100 times than grounded for a week.

My parents were awesome.

if this punishment was done on me it would only work if it was cold outside, otherwise who the fuck cares what random people ive never met think of me.

[eastsideman09]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

It may be that this particular type of reinforcement is good for this kid, but not for others. If I've been publicly embarrassed by something I will never do that thing again. I do know people, though, who would break down in tears and just regard the incident as traumatic on the whole and hardly learn anything from it.

In the article, I believe positive punishment is being used, not reinforcement, but whatever. Regardless, operant conditioning alone would simply be addressing the behavior itself, instead of the reason for the behavior, which I think is the -real- problem in this situation (not being able to handle the grief she feels over her dead uncle). Punishment alone tends to work short-term, but it's been shown that it needs to be more severe to achieve the same effect over time, and in the long-run, the behavior itself tends to worsen.

Punishment can work, but not by itself. Discussion and reinforcement need to be there, you've got to make sure the child isn't learning to 'not be punished', but is learning what is appropriate behavior. Nothing in the article suggests to me that the child is being engaged in actual discussion. I don't think she's getting anything positive out of her parents disciplinary strategies.

Originally Posted by ReikonKeiri

I was spanked as a child and I turned out great

I attended the Southeastern Council for Family Relations last month, and this was literally the title of one of the presentations I saw there lol. The gist of that presentation was that, sure, you might have turned out okay, but it's not because of corporal punishment, it's because

Originally Posted by ReikonKeiri

[your] parents were awesome.

That's to say, it's because everything else your parents did was positive; you had a good relationship with them, communication was good, they loved and supported you, etc.

There's a study I read that said as long as parents are warm, loving, supportive, and communicable, children actually approved of their parents decision to spank/etc. However, it's not the spank itself that's teaching the lesson, or fostering the relationship, it's everything else.

Originally Posted by ReikonKeiri

otherwise who the fuck cares what random people ive never met think of me.

Yeah, but try telling that to a 13 year old girl lol

[Mollocephalus]

So much cancer in that page lol

I don't want to make a long-ass post so i'll just say that a parent can be firm without resorting to any kind of humiliating punishments. And also, this punishment is very related to christian mentality cause a lot of christians are indeed obsessed about guilt and punishment. Which is beyond retardation and shows nothing more than some pretty bad mental disbalance. Just my 2 cents.

[MrMagic5239]

Thats kind of like the time someone robbed the bank in my hometown for $1 in an attempt to get into federal prison.

Anyone remember this? It hit front page yahoo news a few months back.

http://news.yahoo.com/police-pa-bank...155744273.html

[demonllama6124]

not too far from where i live.

[Garquillex]

This type of punishment is some of the most illogical around, and belongs in the goddamn iron age.

This doesn't teach anything directly. They're not even addressing the problems. Teach them WHY NOT to do things, not that you'll humiliate them until they stop doing something. When they're older and you can no longer do this, what's to say they won't revert back, since you never actually taught them anything and just crossed your fingers and forgot about the problems?

It's basically them humiliating their children because they failed to either raise them reasonably, failed to address issues earlier, or failed to seek professional help.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

what the FUCK

the comments on that page are so absurdly stupid and uneducated, I don't even

it's extremely depressing and frustrating to read...

[Garquillex]

Originally Posted by ssbmchamp

but the fact of the matter is the more severe a punishment, the less likely a person would commit an offense.

do you want people to refrain from bad things because of repercussions, or because they understand why it's bad to do it?

[igotrhythm]

Originally Posted by Garquillex

This type of punishment is some of the most illogical around, and belongs in the goddamn iron age.

It's basically them humiliating their children because they failed to either raise them reasonably, failed to address issues earlier, or failed to seek professional help.

Given the recent loss of a family member (while on duty overseas, no less), you'd think that grieving and depression would be logical conclusions, but nope, she's lazy, better give her a sandwich board and humiliate her in public. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Renee took that counselor completely out of context with regards to the sign idea. While I do not approve of the use of the "kids will be kids" defense that allows all sorts of unsavory behavior to go unchecked, I agree with everything else in the quote below.

"It makes me sad to think that this young girl had experienced such a painful loss recently and because she was acting out (as many, if not most young people do for a time) in response to that trauma, she was put on public display for her sins rather than receiving professional help/intervention," commented Katherine Rebecca Newlin. "How would her parents (or any ONE of us!?) feel if they were made to stand on a public corner with any number of THEIR sins plastered all over a sign for the world to see?"

In defense of the parents, they did try grounding first. Electronics was a non-option, as she never had any, and church activities were supposed to be instilling Christian values.

[Reincarnate]

My point is that any upside you can list under "spanking" also exists under alternatives that come with none of the correlated downsides. If we're talking dominance principle here, it is an inferior method in every way.

edit: And yeah public humiliation = example of positive punishment

[adlp]

spanking is effective and ya best be bettin that my kids will have red bums from time to time

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by eastsideman09

Discussion and reinforcement need to be there, you've got to make sure the child isn't learning to 'not be punished', but is learning what is appropriate behavior.

This is well-put, IMO.

Originally Posted by adlp

spanking is effective and ya best be bettin that my kids will have red bums from time to time

Effective to what end? The punishment has to make sense, and it needs to be done for the right reasons, if it's to be done at all.

One of the main reasons punishment never worked on me is because my father would beat me for no good reason. Spill some milk on the table by accident? Fail to be asleep 5 minutes past bedtime? Neglect to pick up your brother's dirty dishes? Didn't finish every single morsel of food on your plate? Do poorly in your football practice? Use the computer for homework when you were told to stay outside? Listen to music a touch too loud? That's a deck across the face and a belt-lashing for you, in return!

It became a textbook example of learned helplessness. It just made me fear my father, and for a long time it made me a very passive/manipulative/isolated person. I never learned how to ask people for things because my parents would just shut me down without consideration, no matter what. I found that punishments were less frequent if I just holed myself up in the room or stayed out later at school, so all I tried to do was just not get caught / stay out of my father's way as much as possible. Needless to say, I did not mourn him one bit when he died, as I had nothing but negative memories of him.

My father basically tried to raise me to be a jock-type, whereas I was the complete opposite: A cerebral computer-nerd who valued education. This, to him, was punishable. My point here is that the punishment has to fit the crime, and the crime has to actually be a crime -- and if there is a better way to get the same result, then by all means use that instead.

An interesting article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/f..._who_made.html

[Choofers]

when my mom tried to spank me when I was a kid I laughed at her

[Choofers]

Originally Posted by funmonkey54

Is this just a stupid joke, or?
Explain yourself.

lol

[25thhour]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

One of the main reasons punishment never worked on me is because my father would beat me for no good reason. Spill some milk on the table by accident? Fail to be asleep 5 minutes past bedtime? Neglect to pick up your brother's dirty dishes? Didn't finish every single morsel of food on your plate? Do poorly in your football practice? Use the computer for homework when you were told to stay outside? Listen to music a touch too loud? That's a deck across the face and a belt-lashing for you, in return!

It became a textbook example of learned helplessness. It just made me fear my father, and for a long time it made me a very passive/manipulative/isolated person. I never learned how to ask people for things because my parents would just shut me down without consideration, no matter what. I found that punishments were less frequent if I just holed myself up in the room or stayed out later at school, so all I tried to do was just not get caught / stay out of my father's way as much as possible. Needless to say, I did not mourn him one bit when he died, as I had nothing but negative memories of him.

My father basically tried to raise me to be a jock-type, whereas I was the complete opposite: A cerebral computer-nerd who valued education. This, to him, was punishable. My point here is that the punishment has to fit the crime, and the crime has to actually be a crime -- and if there is a better way to get the same result, then by all means use that instead.

An interesting article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/f..._who_made.html

-wipes tear-

That's terrible... I had a similar sort of childhood...

But yeah, the punishment definitely has to fit the crime, spanks every now and then are a good ass-whopping for something you won't stop doing even though you know you are not allowed to do will usually smarten a kid up.

[G.S.M]

Dumb parents are dumb.

as for other things: I don't think light spankings are bad at all... anything that goes on for minutes or even if a belt is used is just completely unnecessary.

Yes I was spanked but I did deserve them as I did dumb shit sometimes (they were very very rare, mostly getting grounded). My parents/grandparents are the best, nice people, not dumb but sometimes a spanking is needed as long as it is not physically/emotionally damaging... wasn't for me

I understand there are people that were hit on hard and frequently by their parents but that wasn't me.

Sorry for anyone that had it rough

[adlp]

@reincarnate

sorry about your pops

i dont plan on beating my kids. spanking kids just cause i want to doesnt sound right it's gonna have to be a last resort thing