I'm against spanking. Spanking = ignorant & abusive parenting. That's like the easy, ignorant way to raise kids without reading any books about how to do it properly or learning anything about child psychology. I think spanking does cause a lot of harm and resentment and psychological problems. The problem is that there are too many idiots who have kids and know absolutely nothing about good parenting and never read any books on it. And then they act like they are gods to their kids and like they know everything. My father did spank me and verbally abuse me and I ended up having lots of psychological problems which ruined my life for a long time and I had to spend years on fixing myself, with great difficulty. I absolutely think parents who beat their kids should go to jail and kids who beat other kids should go to jail. This whole thing of it being OK to beat kids but not adults is a horrible double standard and it has to end. I think if a parent beats his/her kid, the kid should get a weapon and beat the parent. They shouldn't take the abuse, just like you guys wouldn't if someone beat you right now.

 

Here Mr. B we disagree.

 

Sorry B but here is where opinion is just that. No proof that what you say is so. I can only go off my own experience at being a father and spanking my boys. not beating if that is your definition. three swats across the bottom and guess what... 2 boys that grow up to be fine young men that are a credit to their community. Law abiding and tax paying. 1 that is 24 and owns 4 cars and his own house. The youngest owns three cars and pays for his rental house. Both workin the Nuclear business and are quite successul at what they do. My father spanked me and my brothers and guess what... we all turned out to be very balanced and successful in the paths we have chose. they in turn raised their boys the same and its looking real good for those kids so far. Their is a difference in spanking your kid and beating them. I have seen the effects of the ( time out) kids and that in my opinion does not work. So you do it your way and I have already done it mine. Mine worked! Yelling and screaming does not work. You have to take time and be a parent, not your kids best friend. You are a parent that is what we do. Theywill find best friends at school. And if reading books gives you the instruction you need to parent... thats because your parents did a lousy job. My father and I are close at the heart, though distance is over a 1000 miles. I have no regrets in how I was raised and for me and my siblings its been very successful.

 

I am happy to hear that you came through that and turned you anger and sadness and channeled it into something positive. Sadly many do not turn out as well as you

I have to respectfully disagree, here. One problem is that some parents beat their kids for the tiniest infraction. Instead of using some sort of elevating punishment scale. You get an “F” in class get whooped, missed the bus, get whooped, theirs no real alternative no increasing of punishment. Spanking in my house was for serious infractions, not to relive steam from my parents.

And spankings, mixed with being grounded, the taking away of privileges, etc is good tool these days. The thought of being punishment can be powerful. My grandmother raised 7 kids by herself. Shoe would never whip them right away. She’d wait sometimes day before she punished them. It was a powerful way from a single woman to raise 7 kids by herself.

Theirs a difference between spanking and beating. Unfortunately, too many cross the line. And they should be dealt with accordingly.

 

Not to turn this into the Dr Phil show, but I can't let Billionaire's comments go without rebuttal.
Let me preface by saying we're ALL former kids here - not all of us are parents though.

Parenting is a tough job - especially when done well. The main goal is to raise your children with love. A parent who loves their child will raise them like they're "loaned to us by God", and that we don't "own" them. After all, when we're done doing our job (no matter how good or bad), God takes them home. So even though they're our responsibility, they're never our property.
When a child is small, they don't understand psychology. They understand the simplest things, so establishing the groundwork for future respect is based there. A spoiled toddler becomes an intolerable child and an unruly teenager. Like building a house, the foundation has to be solid - established early. The child must learn to follow rules, and learn that there are consequences to breaking the rules.

Billionaire, words can hit harder than a fist. Spanking is not abusive. Beatings are. If you had your way, there would be very few taxpayers outside of jail to pay for the care of inmates.
So it's okay for a kid to escalate the abuse? One unnecessary beating should be repaid with a more severe one?
My Father hit me (probably far less often than I deserved), but that doesn't mean he should be in jail. Many times he'd feel bad about spanking me long after I forgot all about it. I can count on one hand the number of times I was spanked by my Father, and I can say the same about my children. I recall hitting my daughter once, and my son a handful of times (usually when he was testing the limits, making disrespectful comments to his mother). At no time was I beaten, and at no time have I beaten my kids.
Spanking is done to address a violation of rules. Beatings are a physical attack without basis or cause. There IS a difference.
I've spanked my kids (I have two - both grown now) when they were small. It was one crack on the @$$ and sent them to their rooms. I've never beaten my kids. I'm not an abuser or a bully.
Spanking is appropriate when no other punishment will be effective. The preferred punishment is to take something away that means a lot to the child. As adults, that "something" is freedom. As teenagers, it may be driving privlages, or access to a cell phone. As pre-teens, it may be "grounding", taking away TV or computer time, or being given extra chores. As younger children - without those privelages - it's spanking.
People who beat their children are abusers. They hit their kids repeatedly, without regard to administering a lesson. Abusers also beat their kids - psychologically - with their words, demeaning them, taking a "lecture" to abuse by changing the intent from correction to personal insults.

No one is doing their kids any favors by failing to administer corporal punishment when it's appropriate. Kids who grow up violating the rules and learning there's no "uncomfortable consequences" for doing so become intolerable and arrogant - like the kids in the video this thread began with.
My Father owed me nothing, but gave me his best effort, his love, consistant and fair discipline, and everything I ate, wore, saw, did and had.
I owed him everything and gave him my unending respect and love in return - despite the spankings (that I'm sure I deserved).
I couldn't imagine raising my fist - let alone a weapon - to him.

Billionaire - You need to find a balance in your approach to this topic. Your views seem to be a justification of your anger and frustration from what happened to you. There IS a middle-ground here. You need to find it.
[b]Books written by (supposedly) perfect people on raising perfect chil

 

It official, ALL of them will be tried as Adults.

8 Teens To Be Tried As Adults In Polk Beating Case

BARTOW - Prosecutors raised the stakes in the videotaped beating of a Lakeland girl with their decision today to try eight teenage defendants as adults and with crimes that include kidnapping.

The defendants, one as young as 14, now face a penalty of up to life in prison.

The mother of one of the suspects said she can't understand the prosecutors' decision.

"Look at their ages, they're not adults," Christina Garcia, the mother of Mercades Nichols, said. "They still have a teenage mentality."

All eight are scheduled for a first court appearance Friday in Bartow to face the kidnap charge and a charge of misdemeanor battery, said Chip Thullbery, spokesman for the state attorney's office in Polk County. Three of the eight also face felony charges of witness tampering.

Tom Scarritt, a Tampa defense lawyer who is not connected with the case, said he wasn't surprised the defendants are being charged as adults but did consider it unusual that all eight face a kidnapping charge.

"There's going to be some ringleaders and some followers," Scarritt said. "There will be different degrees of culpability."

John Trevena, defense attorney from Pinellas County, called the decision "extraordinarily harsh and unfair to the defendants."

"The reality is, despite how the video may sensationalize what happened, that girl was not seriously injured," Trevena said. "But because there is a video, there's political motivation to capitalize on that."

The father of one of the suspects agreed.

"Grady Judd is a big showboater," Robert Schumaker, the father of Stephen Schumaker, said, speaking of the Polk County sheriff. "He's got this blown out of proportion and nobody's happy about it."

Attorneys and others involved in the case are prohibited from speaking publicly about it under a gag order issued Wednesday by Polk Circuit Judge J. Michael McCarthy. McCarthy cited what he viewed as excessive publicity.

The beating on the night of March 30 was videotaped for posting on the MySpace and YouTube social-networking sites, Judd said Sunday. It was meant as retaliation for trash talking online by the beating victim, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, Judd said.

The sheriff's office made the arrests Sunday and released a three-minute clip of the video Monday.

Six girls, all students at Mulberry High School, are accused of taking turns beating Lindsay. The three who also face charges of witness tampering Brittni Hardcastle, Brittany Mayes and Nichols, all 17 – are accused of driving Lindsay around afterward and threatening to beat her again if she talked to law enforcement.

She was later dropped off at an intersection.

The other three girls are April Cooper, 14; Kayla Hassell, 15; and Cara Murphy, 16.

Two males, Shumaker, 18, and Zachary Ashley, 17, are accused of acting as lookouts.

Thursday, a spokesman for YouTube said the company is removing copies of the beating video from the Web site as well as any videos that provide personal information about anyone involved in the case.

Darlene Ashley, a Lakeland woman, said Wednesday she received a number of threatening phone calls from people who mistakenly thought she was the mother of Zachary Ashley. Darlene Ashley's phone number and address, along with those of the defendants in the case, had been posted on YouTube.

Robert Schumaker and Christina Garcia told News Channel 8 that their families have also received threatening calls.

"We've been getting death threats here, all kinds of phone calls all the time," Schumaker said. "Our nerves are just shot."

Garcia said, "Oh, we're getting death threats. I called the sheriff's department. When the deputy came out, he told me he wasn't going to do anything for me because my daughter is the suspect and not the victim."

Lindsay tol

 

Hopefully justice will prevail. My vote would be nothing less then life in jail. Then they will get to see how tough they really aren't...

 

Based on the thread above I decided to post from my Pointman study we did last year:

This week we will talk about how to raise masculine sons and feminine daughters.

I. Fathers should raise their children in fairness.

If there is one verse in the Bible that talks about raising masculine sons and daughters it is:

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4 is the compass that enables a father to give his children correct guidance toward finding their sexual identities.

I have used the term compass in my posting regarding the Bible being my compass for my morals, value system, and spiritual direction for my life. Without the Bible, it is very difficult to have spiritual truth in your life because you have no reference plane so it very important to know truth so you can discern truth from evil. Sometimes evil disguises itself in partial truths and that is what makes it difficult to see the evil for what it is. As an example, look how many people fell for the false television evangelists over the last couple of decades. Not all are bad but many have been. Enough about that, just make sure that knowing the Bible (God’s truth) by reading it will give you the truth in your life.

With television and programming like MTV, our children see celebrities who distort the differences between male and female identities. The problem today is the tendency to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of maleness and femaleness. This is affecting our children, and a generation of young men and women who are still learning what it means to be a man or a woman. The negative outcome is more divorce, more homosexuality, and more sexual abuse, more promiscuity, more social awkwardness and even suicide and that is why it is such a big deal.

If we will function as the loving heads of our homes, respect, and love our wives, and follow the guidelines of Ephesians 6:4, our children will not grow up to be homosexuals.
Homosexuals are not born, they are made. They are bred because of some controlling contribution from parents and society. Don’t underestimate your role as a parent as models for the behavior of your children especially when they are young. If you are not sure as a parent what constitutes appropriate male and female behavior, your children will also be confused.

Many homosexuals were raised in Christian homes, but either the father was passive and the mother dominant, or the father was so harsh and brutal that the son was driven away.
He then identifies with the tenderness of the mother and then his compass for his life has just been misdirected.

The problem is that between TV and many different cultural messages it becomes very confusing as to what is the definition of a male or female or the proper behavior.

In the gender role development, the evidence points to fathers as having the more important influence, not only in fostering a male self-concept in boys, but in femininity in girls. Mothers do contribute to their daughters’ adoption of the feminine role, but have little influence on the masculinity of their sons. This is exactly why the enemy wants to pull the father out of the family, because when he does that, the family is destroyed. The family often runs amok and becomes dysfunctional.

[i]“Another part of the political agenda of the homosexual movement is the ability to teach homosexuality in public schools, the ability to get a license from the state to marry, to adopt children, and to be counselors of youth groups.
In Provincetown, Mass., the school board has voted to begin teaching preschoolers about homosexual lifestyles and to back hiring preferences for "sexual minorities." Susan Fleming, superintendent of Provincetown schools, said "The whole question is making gays and lesbians, whether through visuals or

 

I agree lock em up throw away the key and set an example to all the other misfit punks out there.
If todays parneting is working so well with no spanking in the house holds why then are we building more prisons than schools.
I live in the Christans bible belt and we have more sickos comming out of the wood work than carters has liver pills.

So lets not be elitests here,and use religion as the key to everything in life.We where given minds so to use them and make our own minds up and not have people make them up for us.

Isnt it sad how the families may loose it all becuse of such selfish acts of a few.Maybe if they had raised their children instead of just having them to procreate this would not have happened.

No disrespect but I am Jewish so I guess Im not included in all this "good christan" talk.
I read the bible but dont force it on any one else.I believe you have the right to your own beliefs,but to justify them to everyone in every way possible seems a bit much.

Dont we all have a right to discussion with out religion always being dragged into the conversation?
There is a time and place for that,its called church?
Same as spanking take it too far and its beating and that isnt right,but a slap on the butt to remind the child of his or her limits is more than justifibale.

This stuff all started to happen as the family unit was told not to spank your child,but its ok to let him watch sex and violence on Tv nightly.
This stuff never happened back in the day to the degree it is now happening.If you want to save your kid pull that TV out of their room and limit time in front of the idiot box,and be a parent not a buddy!

 

Man you need to chill. If by being Jewish you think you are not in involved with this discussion you need to look again at where Jeremiah got most of his quotes. straight from the Torah. We as Christians call it the old testament. And yes there is a time for Christian talk or Jewish talk. It should be a part of every conversation you have or areflection of all that you have learned. That is just the attitude that confuses folks outside the faith. So Bill I hope you interject more of your Jewish thoughts and life lessons for us so we can learn from what you have experienced. That is always helpful for us to understand where we stand and our similarities despite the fact of differeces in belief. So join in the convesation and do add your beliefs to it. So who you are and why you believe what you believe is relevent in any convesation. I'm not sure why so many take offense and use the term Bible belt as a put down. i too am in the Bible belt and think its just fine and use the term as a term of endearment. There are good and bad in all forms of humanity. Try to find the good and overlook the bad." Elitest" I think not, look at what Jeremiah posted... no look close. He put words of wisdom and love there. Take it in the form it was given. Not what you think it said with all your preconcieved ideas. Then you will see it for the good it was intended. Find true Christians before you bunch us all together in a group you think less of and talk to them. And you will not see the ideas you are seeing in your mind, but a GOD loving person who is trying to make it on this earth every day and trying to put the teachings of JESUS CHRIST into their everyday life. Not perfect... just forgiven.