BellaOnline Forums Family Child Abuse Is Belt Spanking Abuse?

This, to me, is one of the saddest topics on the planet.

"If the discipline we are using isn't working, we need to try something else."

Yes Skeeter, I absolutely agree with you. The answer is love, respect, tolerance, a listening ear, and recognizing no child is private property but a completely unique, separate individual with a voice, who is to be respected and treated with dignity.

If children receive this when they're young the chances of them acting out badly when they're teenagers is greatly reduced.

Savage teenagers are literally shouting their childhood stories of humiliation to us - through their behaviour.

I received belt spankings as a kid and I do not feel it is abuse, unless a line of actual serious injury is crossed. My folks wouldn't just grab a belt and start whaling away, we would stand on our tip toes, bend over our beds, and take the smacks. Always on a bare behind, so it sure hurt. But heck, kids get hurt more than that on a football field and nobody says that's "abuse."

I never got hit with the buckle. And I certainly don't think that all kids who aren't spanked are bad kids. Just that parents have a right to use physical punishment if that's what works best in their own house.

A belt is a weapon when it is used to hit other people and I believe it is a well documented fact that any physical contact to another person with a weapon is abuse. Kids playing football get hurt but they are playing a game and they are not being knocked over while playing by adults but by other children in a sports contest. I do not believe that physically punishing children is ever acceptable.

Legally, that isn't the case in the context of parents and their minor children, at least not in the United States. Of course, you have the right to consider anything you want 'abuse' in the conversational sense. But parents do have a legal right to spank their children.

Perhaps the question has less to do with the legality of belt spanking than it has to do with how disrespectful it is. If we want children to grow up and respect other people and not to be violent toward other people is it the best possible way to teach a child to behave with respect toward others when they have not been treated with respect as a child?

I think the question is - would a parent really feel that beating a child was the "best" way to discipline them? There are hundreds of other punishments which are as effective and meaningful. They just might take more effort on the parents' parts.

So are they taking the quick/easy way out?

I guess it depends on one's view of what "respect" means. I was always taught, and still believe, that respect has to be earned. You don't earn respect just by blessing the planet earth with your presence. If you screw up, your parents ought to respect you enough to say "you should've known better, and there will be punishment resulting." Whether that punishment does or doesn't involve spanking, I'm not sure I see a connection between that and "respect", because I don't know how the word is being defined.

I completely disagree.
Respect is something you should have from day one, for everything and anything that has as much right to live, breathe, eat, sleep and be protected as much as you deserve to be.
Whatever rights you believe you may have as a human being - to shelter, warmth, protection and nourishment, in whatever measure keeps you functioning - then other beings have that equal right.
And if you believe you have a right to be respected with regard to your opinions, politics, religion, gender and colour - then anyone else has that right too.
Regardless of age.
Respect for another being is a fundamental quality.

Now, that some people may either grow in your mind, and deserve a greater measure of respect, due to their words and actions, is one thing.
That some people may lose some of your respect, due to the things they say and do, is another.
But fundamentally, every human being has a right to Dignity and Respect.
And part of this respect means never laying a finger on them in violence or anger, and certainly never without their permission.

And furthermore, (excuse me) in addition to the above, if anyone can demonstrate to me a good, justifiable and valid reason, for why we should not respect the dignity and existence of another being, and thereby give ourselves the liberal permission to inflict physical harm upon them, simply because we want to - I'd be interested to hear it.

I was spanked as a child. I was never beaten. I never felt as if my parents were trying to hurt me. When I did recieve a spanking afterward I would always have a talk with my parents and they always told me they loved me. I know a few times that I was spanked; I cried but not because it hurt but because I was introuble, I knew I was wrong, I got caught, I disappointed my family.

I think that some adults just don't know the limits and boundaries. When spanking are you trying to really hurt the child? Or teach them a lesson?