I suppose I should know better than to post comments on some blogs. Shrug.
To prove something or other (figure it out for yourself), violetwisp posted a fragment of a comment I made on her blog. See punishing children. I suppose I could comment in some detail, but I won’t bother. Mostly, I will just post a few comments from this post: breaking news: more bible translation errors discovered also at violetwisp.
Why not say more? When I read their comments at punishing children, it quickly became obvious that the people whose opinions I care about think violetwisp is being absurd.
So here is my reply. We make choices. Then we deal with the consequences, but some people grow up thinking they are exempt from suffering the consequences of their bad choices. Those people try to shift the consequences of their bad choices onto others. The enslavement of others is an extreme example of such behavior.
Children who receive proper discipline know that it is not right to make others suffer the consequences of their bad choices. That’s the basic difference between a responsible citizen and one who isn’t. The responsible citizen accepts personal responsibility. It also seems to be a big difference between the Modern Liberal and a Conservative. Hence that is probably why Modern Liberals and Conservatives divide so predictably on this issue.
Anyway, violetwisp has given me a good excuse to post some Bible verses.
To our modern ears, the Bible can make discipline sound harsh.
Proverbs 23:12-14 New King James Version (NKJV)
12 Apply your heart to instruction,
And your ears to words of knowledge.13 Do not withhold correction from a child,
For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.
14 You shall beat him with a rod,
And deliver his soul from hell.
Beating a child with a rod sounds awful, but consider the alternative. The rod was for the child who would not listen.
Proverbs 29:15 New King James Version (NKJV)
15 The rod and rebuke give wisdom,
But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
Moreover, the point of proverb is to encourage parents to save their children, not hurt them. The point is to get a child’s attention so they will listen.
When I was little, I was a rascal. My mother was a small woman. Once she realized spanking me with her hand hurt her hand more than my butt, she began using a wooden brush. Still, I was trouble and had an uncontrolled temper. When I threw a toy gun (made with metal in those days) and hit another child, my father used his belt on my butt. After that, I finally began to understand the consequences of bad behavior.
Anyway (again), here is the first link (to my first comment in the thread) to the comments in the thread violet that violetwisp extracted a fragment of one of my comment on her post.
Here is the full text of the comment that the fragment violetwisp quoted came from.
@violet
We are works in progress. We each have to deal with our problems as we best know how.
Did I discipline my children as well as I should have? No. I have a temper, and the ability of my eldest when she was two to set it off scared me. So I would have been stupid to wait until I was furious. Did that once. Did not hurt the kid, but I was thoroughly ashamed that I was about to lose it. It is important to be meek.
Just the same, when my wife was home alone with two kids, she had to do something with the older child or she could not take care of the new-born. She finally conceded the necessity of punishment (spanking was not something she liked either). Mostly she just stuck the two-year old in the backyard (fenced) until the child agreed to behave. Even with a shaded patio deck, Houston, TX can be quite uncomfortable without air-conditioning. Watching that stubborn, wilful little girl cry hurt my lady more than it did my eldest. Still, it worked.
There are spankings, and then there are very disagreeable alternatives that are just as punishing. Frankly, I prefer what my wife did, but it takes more patience, and the weather has to cooperate.
Why was the oldest misbehaving? Part of the reason is that she had lost her status as the center of mommy’s attention. So mommy included her as much as she could in taking care of her sister. Still, two-year old children will act up, and sometimes the “reason” for their bad behavior is they just want to do something they know they are not suppose to do. Even a two-year old child can be a control freak, and that kid was smart. She is an MD now. (from => https://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/breaking-news-more-bible-translation-errors-discovered/#comment-30008)
Here is the first link in another thread on the same post that that also relates disciplining children.
https://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/breaking-news-more-bible-translation-errors-discovered/#comment-29896
I suspect these two comments are the ones that most irked violetwisp.
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“she disapproves of punishing children when they do wrong”
Absolutely! It’s all about setting good examples and providing reasons for behaving in a socialised manner that takes other people’s feelings into consideration. Children aren’t ‘bad’, they’re just clueless about social norms until they’re sufficiently exposed to them, and they have some very basic needs (food, rest, comfort) that people tend to overlook before they launch into counter-productive disciplining. And this is one of the reasons I can never accept the Christian god in the Bible – the caricature of this omniscient being punishing its puny creation is disgusting.-
@violet
Well, you just gave away the game.
It was never was anything about what insanitybytes22 actually said. It was about your perception, what you believe. It was about the fact Christianity offends you. Its mere existence offends you.
I was that way once. The notion of God dying on a cross caused me to roll up my eyes. I could not understand the idea of original sin, that we are born with an affliction that only the love of God can cure. And the idea of a God with so much power…… What was little Tommy compared to Him?
I have watch children grow. Brothers. A sister. My own. They are not entirely clueless. They waste no time learning the word “mine”. We are born with an insatiable pride. ME FIRST!
Only love can quench a child’s pride, but first we must get a child’s attention. Without a bit a of mild punishment that’s next to impossible. With one child? Maybe. We can hold a child until it is willing to accept direction, if you have the time. With two or more? No way. Not even the most devoted stay at home mom or dad has that kind of time.
If you love your kids, the choice between letting them run wild and smacking them on the bottom quickly becomes obvious. At least it does for people who raise their own kids.
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I don’t think violetwisp liked my explanation of her attack on
Right on the cue the Citizen pieces together the good, the bad, and the ugly. Nice Tom.
While reading here, perhaps the Violet’s of the world should consider what adults look like when they have their own way, when they have never been told ‘no,’ in ways that are more effective that the godless ‘go to the time-out corner,’ which teaches nothing worth remembering.
What do undisciplined adults look like? Well, some look like rotten kids who showed up at Berkeley recently, rioting and destroying property.
I would be willing to bet these were fine examples of weeds who were never taught about authority, disobedience, and consequences. They probably never felt the gracious rod. And I mean gracious.
If I would draw a distinction between ‘beatings’ and a good bodily lesson, I would say scripture is correct with the idea of a rod. The hand is apt to be reflexive and immediate, where the paddle is a barrier, and done in love, without anger. Truly, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you……..is a reality. Ask any parent.
If you have witnessed a parent in a store smacking a kid for God knows what, here is a good indicator of poor training at home. Usually it is for minor flaws, as opposed to maybe almost burning the house down.
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@ColorStorm
Thanks for the kind review.
I give the distressed parent in the store some benefit of the doubt. My eldest behaved well enough in most stores, but she thought clothing stores wonderful places for hide and seek. Took a bit of “doing” to convince to stop hiding from mommy and daddy.
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Sorry Tom, but I disagree. Spanking teaches violence. And some physical other punishments, even if one uses the term discipline, are just child abuse. Did your wife really make one of you children stay outside in the fenced area in sweltering hot summer Temps?
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@KIA
Your comment went into spam. Don’t know why.
July and August? Middle of the day? No, of course not. I put roof over the sand box so the kids would not burned by hot sand.
I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. No air conditioning. Even in July and August people some how managed to survive. However, given the choice between an air conditioned house and a muggy outdoors, even a two-year old can figure out it is more comfortable inside.
What I learn from being spanked was the exact opposite.
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My favorite in that conversation was the New Zealand guy.
According to him, he was a perfect little boy who grew into a perfect little man, who grew up in a perfect little family that lives in a perfect little town in a perfect little island nation.
And off course he’s also a perfect little leftist who has great little plans about how he and fellow perfects like Violet can manage everyone’s life with somebody else’s money.
Unbeeeeleeevable!
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@silenceofmind
You mean Barry, of course. Unfortunately, some people do believe him. It sounds so easy to be so smart. So the reason we must not be smart like them is we need their free mental health care. Frontal lobotomies, of course.
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Discipline and choices…hummm….
seems to me that discipline is by far the better option than being left to the willy nilly unbridled foolhardiness of self seeking pleasure….
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The rod was also used by the shepherd to fend off danger and to guide his flock. Both of which we need to do with our children. Unfortunately our world would rather let their kids fend for themselves and we know the results of that.
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@atimetoshare.me
….and we all know the results of that. Afraid so. It is probably the biggest reason our nation seems to be dissolving into chaos.
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Well said,Tom.
“For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.” “Those I love, I rebuke and discipline.”
“If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?”
No discipline, no love. Discipline simply means to teach and is the same root word as disciple. The bible speaks of the importance of being teachable. Are you teachable? If you are teachable,you are able to receive love from others. The modern world is just plagued by this insistence that our own will is vastly superior to anything else and that God (or anyone else,) has no authority over us. When that happens we become unteachable, unloveable, incapable of receiving wisdom, guidance, love.
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Now why would that be? I suspect your comment contains much of the answer.
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Death in the proverb was intended to mean that when an undisciplined child would walk on a crooked path in life, his spirit would not rest with his ancestors after he died
13 Do not withhold correction from a child,
For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.
14 You shall beat him with a rod,
And deliver his soul from hell.
In Chicago and many other cities, the proverb could well be interpreted to mean a much earlier physical death.
For example, a significant number of youths now being murdered in drug or neighborhood shootings are single parent children growing up without a father to help discipline the child.
In other words, undisciplined fatherless children join gangs and when they reach the ages groups off mainly of 15- 34, run a high risk of being murdered by rival gangs.
As for disciplining a child in Houston heat, I found when a child becomes overheated, he or she may become irritable or even have angry tantrums because they do not have the same amount of blood circulating to cool their bodies and brains as an adult.
When that happened, i found pouring cold water on their heads would calm them down.
My mother used to pour holy water on us and even our cat when we misbehaved or would not listen. Another tactic when we were small was to threaten to turn us upside down to get blood back in our brains so we would listen better.
She never hit any of us when we misbehaved..
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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“When that happened, i found pouring cold water on their heads would calm them down.”
LOL! That made me laugh. I used to have a strong willed child who would throw food on the floor and sometimes at me. One day I just calmly poured a glass of milk over her head and went on eating. She didn’t say a word, but later she told me I really shouldn’t do things like that, it isn’t very nice. You don’t say… 🙂
You make a really good point about violence in places like Chicago and how it relates to a lack of fathers and a lack of discipline. Kids actually crave a sense of belonging, rules,discipline, and so they go out and join gangs and often get themselves killed.
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@scatterwisdom
The rod just symbolizes some form of punishment. As an earlier commenter noted, the shepherds controlled their sheep with a rod.
Since I grew up mostly in the deep South, it never occurred to me that northerners would think the heat life threatening, even in the shade.
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It was unpleasant, at times, but two-year olds most cry when the don’t get their own way. Really, the thing I worried about most in my backyard was fire ants. Whenever those infernal things got in the yard, I did not waste any time getting rid of them.
Holy water. Well, I guess that why you have such a sweet disposition. Your mother exorcised all the demons.
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I think our cat went straight to cat heaven. She got dosed every time she tried to lay on the couch.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Lucky cat. Hope to see it up there.
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Me too.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Okay Tom, let’s think of it like this. You say that smacking children and punishing them worked for you. I’m telling you that not smacking mine, or punishing them, is working for me. If you met my children I’m quite sure you find them well-behaved, thoughtful, helpful and considerate towards others. Assuming this is the case, which path do you think is most sensible? If both sets of kids turn out well (albeit mine are only 5 and 2 at this point) is it best to hit them and make them cry to achieve this, or is it best to rely on gentle reasoning and positive role-models?
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