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& looking back now, how effective or ineffective do you think it was? How do you plan to discipline your future kids, if you want them?

My mom did all the punishing in our family because we're all girls and my dad was a youngest child so he's really like… forgiving and unwilling to ground/discipline me or my little sister at all. Poor guy. When we were really little my mom would make us sit in a chair facing the wall and read aloud from the bible. When we were "old enough to know better" she'd smack us in the ass with the big sauce spoon (we're Italian). She still uses that spoon as an arm extension even though we're all adults now. _

Reading to a wall is really effective when you're little but eventually you're like whatever, I'll just have to read for a bit if I get in trouble and it stops working out. The spoon is very effective lmaaooo I don't think I ever pissed my ma off twice with the same crime. We were admittedly TERRIBLE early/mid teens though, like my parents could have had me and my little sister committed and I would have understood. After some of the things my sister did I am surprised she is still with us today, because I'm so sure our mom wanted to kill her dead (like the first time she came back with a tattoo, that was a blast). She still does tbh but now she's 21 and they don't bother anymore. We broke our poor parents by the end of it all

Spanked with a belt for the first 8 years of my life until I realized "Hey, I can stop getting spanked by a belt if I stop acting like a little shit"

Proved very effective, since except for being sent to my room twice and being punished on a road-trip for shit that wasn't my fault to begin with, I was a good kid.

Spanking when I was being a shithead.

My mother sent me to my room and took away my computer / gaming things.

My father beat me (And everyone else who lived under his house) constantly as a punishment and one day got so horrible my little sister called the police, lost custody over me, and hasn't seen me once since that day.

Sent to my room, which (though my memory is of course hazy) might have happened half a dozen times in total. And then, around the time I left grade school, my family life became punishment enough for ten times the things I may have done wrong.

@TillsterRulz
Sorry, man. Hope you and your siblings are getting what you need.

Dad used his hands or wooden cooking utensils ((soup ladle)) to punish, plus a lot of yelling. I get nervous whenever people yell now as a subconscious reaction, also tend to jerk my arms up to shield my face.

Didn't quite work until I was a teenager. For school stuff which I got hit for the most I just figured out the rewards of doing good in school outweighed the bad. If I focused on my academics and got good grades, I could do whatever I wanted weekends and evenings and my parents wouldn't worry.

Outside of school though whenever we'd have house work and I'd do stuff in a way my dad didn't like and he'd hit me for it, the only reason I stopped was because I figured out that if I lied, and did what I wanted the way I wanted anyway, and said I did it his way, I could get away with it.

My mom would do the whole grounding thing but that was barely a punishment. I wasn't a social kid, and I didn't have anything in common with people at school enough to talk to them. ((Too fat to hang out with anime fan kids, too much into anime to hang out with the other fat kids into WWE and Mortal Kombat)). Soup I learned to stomach the taste of when I was still young, and my dad would force me to eat raw tobasco when he was drunk to make me build character, or spicy food as punishment was already out.

Basically, I don't think any method really worked until I was old enough to 1) understand basic human empathy, 2) understand the concept that consequences and actions hurt affected more then just me, and 3) actually gave enough of a shit to be bothered by punishment.

If you want to be effective at punishment, nothing is more effective/long term psychological scaring, then busting out the old "Parental Disappointment" card. Making them think their parents are disappointed, and thus think empirically less of them, when they're old enough to know what that means, will fuck those kids up and make them fall in line.

I got "privileges taken away" from me (like no TV for a week) for minor infractions, but since neither me or my 3 younger siblings did anything worse, they never did anything else.

What really irks me was, aside from a few incidents for the second oldest child, nobody else ever got punished. My parents got lineint with time, so by my preteens they had practically stopped, but still, it recieved 75%ish of the total punishments given, and they only finally stopped when I was sixteen (when my youngest sibling was 6). Being the oldest kid isn't always great.

I was a good kid so I was rarely punished, my brothers however were constantly in trouble.

I took a belt to the ass.

No TV/Video Games for a week and all of that jazz. But when I was young, I would be spanked occasionally. And when I was 3 or 4 or somewhere around that age, when I refused to brush my teeth, my mom would've pinned me down and forcefully brush it herself. She called it "the hard way".

took my video games away or was forced to stand in a corner for extended periods of time.

Punches in the stomac; spanked; grounded for at longest, 2 months.
Overall; made me to not be a sweggy fuccboi when I became a teenager.

Aside from being grounded, I was treated like a cockroach. i.e. I was hit with just about anything from a hand, a knuckle, a belt, or a wooden stick. When I was around 17 I think, I got so mad at my dad I punched the home mirror and it broke. My dad punched me right back.

How did that work for me: I significantly have less respect for my dad :D

Butthurt

That's how SEA Asian punish kids

Oh wow, after reading all these other comments, I feel like such a bratty jerk. Seriously, I kind of grew up with the impression that physical punishment was rare. I'm really sorry that anyone had to endure that or difficult homes or emotional abuse or whatever.

Also, if it's helpful at all, I remember in my one college psychology class that physical force should not be used, except in the face of grave danger, like if your kid nearly got run over by a car because they weren't carfeful. In that case, yanking them out of the road is justified (as long as it's nog done violently or with excessive force) as long as you gently explain why it was so dangerous afterwards. You'll probably end up scaring the kid a little, but not enough to give them a complex, and in such dangerous situations a bit of fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. But in any other case physical force as a punishment is a bad idea, because then they are more likely to end up learning that authority is associated with physical force.

My Mom would suspend things I liked

My Dad would beat me with anything he could find:Staplers, coat hangers his bloody hand

I had to live with him for 14 years and that turned my Brother into a violent person diagnosed with APD, I'm left with scars on my face that will never heal and my mother is still recovering from the trauma and debt he left us in.

My parents only really were home at night (around 8 or 9 ish) so it was mainly my grandma.

Generally my parents would go through the general round of spanking and taking away video games, but sometimes they'd beat my ass with a bamboo stick.

One time I recall missing the bus to school, so my grandma made me hold my arms over my head for an hour. Doesn't sound too bad until you realize how sore you get.

I generally wasn't a bad kid so I didn't get punished for doing something terrible, but I did get punished for bad grades so there's that.

Getting scolded by mom. My dad rarely scolds me.

Yelled, spanked, belt, thin stick.

When i was younger, i was welled at by dad to do better next time, pinched by mom on arm till it broke skin when i fucked up a little bit at social events, spanked with a belt, shoe, stick. i didn't get it as bad as my sister's though, they got the shit beaten out of them.

Spanked, yelled, prohibition to go out and play, study till late in the night, thanks to this my parents teached me a thing called, respect for the others.

something certain people in this world lack.

Spanked with anything in the hand,yelling, grounded,took the things i love,can't go outside play and can't play videogames all that for being a shithead and asshole.

My parents beat the crap out of me with anything they could lift, same as their parents.

I have embraced this tradition and plan to continue it should I ever have kids. Hahaha.

Honest confession here: Normally as a kid, I was punished by the standard yelling, spanking, grounded sort of stuff. But when I was extremely young, I was very attached to two homemade blankets, Linus van Pelt style. Whenever I fucked up anything, my mother cut off a piece of one of my blankets. I freaked out whenever this happened, and I always dug into the trash to get the pieces back. Fortunately, the blankets were eventually sewn back together.

I got whooped by the legendary Black Beauty (a thick leather belt), and if that wasn't available, the nearest thorned Switch would do.

I got yell at, had video games taken away, denied TV time, and although my parents threatened to hit me many times I can count the times I was actually struck with my fingers.

Those bastards took away my video games.

My shame at having my own bad behaviour noticed by others punished me more effectively than my parents ever could. Hmm…maybe a therapist trip is in order.

Well, I was physically slapped, usually with a hand, but sometimes a belt or a stick if the incident was particularly bad.

I don't really have a problem with physical punishment, especially since in some cases it can be the only option (such as slapping a hand away from an electrical socket). The problem was that my parents would constantly call me crazy over most minor infractions in an attempt to try to curb bad behaviour.

The problem was that I have autism and a few other comorbid condtions, one of which is pretty serious, and… well, when you're told that you're crazy all the time and have other problems that are pretty serious, it really fucks you up. Especially since most of the issues were me just not understanding what was wrong with it because of aforementioned autism.

Please don't do that to your kid; they may actually have serious issues and it makes it extremely difficult for them to get help for them in adulthood. It also makes them much worse. I'm not normally someone who comes out and say these things but it's just asking for serious trouble, especially if they already have serious problems. In addition, if there is a psychological problem with your child you should see a doctor instead of trying to deal with the problem yourself.

Later I realized my dad was an asshole because he kept physically doing shit to me in my adulthood over minor infractions or issues outside of my control. It's not exactly appropriate to beat your 20 year old daughter after she lost her job and the dog pooped on the floor, just saying. Thankfully my mom isn't a complete asshole so we're good lol

When I was little it was spanking and hitting with hands and at the worst a flimsy sandal so I was never really abused and after a certain age it stopped. Well, not entirely it still occasionally happens (pretty much just my mom and it was always mostly my mom, I'm 16 now if that helps) but I'm just done with it I have too much self-respect to just take my mom's hits (that don't even hurt at this point). At this point I just stop her hand before it gets to me, she gets furious and feels like her life is spiraling out of control and threatens to call my dad because "I'm using violence against her" AKA getting her not to hit me but it stops pretty fast.

As a teenager it was always grounding. Like I have been grounded for entire summers, it was the pits. It was effective at first, but then it only ended up working very short term or not at all. They still do it all the time I swear my mom in particular just likes to get power trips because the only real power she's ever had in her life is over her kids. Like I've been grounded or threatened with it for things you would not believe like refusing to take a picture of something or being 15 minutes late for mowing the lawn, and they're usually a month at minimum. At this point though my parents have learned it doesn't work though like they tried to lock me up this summer but gave up aftr a week or two and finally clicked that it's mostly just them getting personal revenge and doesn't actually work as a parenting technique, at least with me. Forgot to explain but it's grounding from internet and games I can still go out, and it's even encouraged because I never went out ever before and even now that people invite me to stuff it's rare and usually far away

Oh yeah and my mom loves yelling she like perpetually yells I notice she got it from her mom, my grandma and also living with 5 other loud women just like her for all her childhood. She also loves insults like cretin, retarded, and imbecile among many others (and all in portuguese) while my dad likes brain-dead, retarded, stupid, and dumbass (he rarely yells though). Like it's hard to talk to my mom in a calm state if you happen to be in her family, especially being her kid. She's also completely and blissfully unaware of her yelling. Like just the other day she was talking about how her mom always called her names and yelled and how she grew up that way and how horrible it is and I pointed out to her she does literally the same thing and she started getting defensive and denying it. I need to record it next time, won't take long since as I said it's pretty regularly.

My mother is like… the nicest soul on the planet, and I didn't really act out too much when I was a kid because of it. Not because she had a tiger mom flip side, but because I never wanted to see her sad. It's a very cunning but very effective form of punishment to see her, sad, because then I get all sad and it's just a big ol' pity party.

Dad, however, likes to yell a lot. He never hit me or spank me as a child, but my dad just feels like more of a friend than a parent to me, and I care a lot more for friends than others. But he could also yell and be quite a big dick when he needed to. Dad has a massive thing about lies and embarrassment, so either of those can set off major red flags.

My parents always do the more cunning punishments than direct ones.

Christ, this is all quite heavy. I guess it's funny story time. When I was little I was misbehaving in a store. Don't even remember what I was doing, but my mom told me if I didn't stop she would tackle me to the ground.

I didn't stop.

I'm usually yelled at. Sometimes I'll get beaten by hand and very rarely my internet and gaming privileges are taken away. I definitely didn't get hit as much as my other siblings, so I guess I'm lucky.

Effectiveness? Never worked. May temporarily stop bad behavior in my siblings but they continue to do the same things over and over again. It made me nervous and fearful of talking or saying certain things to people in fear of making them angry or getting myself hurt. I suck at communication.

At home, my parents only yelled at me or took away my stuff, nothing really serious. One time, I said "puto"; my mom heard me and scolded me, and, let's say that ever since, I rarely say swears in spanish, however, in other languages, such as english, I swear a lot.

There was this other time in the kindergarten. I can't remember exactly what I did but it probably involved not finishing a work in time (or not doing the homework, I don't know), and the teacher denied me from going to play in the school's park. I wanted so much to go out and play with the other kids, the result? I started to get desperate. I broke my pencil with my mouth for some reason but in the end, I did manage to finish whatever work I was doing.

That might have been a reason why I developed claustrophobia over time, but nowadays? That fear no longer exists in my brain.

Spanks, or wooden spoon to the ass Little did she know, she was fueling my future sadomasochist fetishes

Eventually my ass fought back and snapped the wooden spoon once struck. After that I started receiving non-violent treatments such as curfews, fines, chores and groundings

Things my mother did to me when I was young (I think she's considered the dad of my family):

Physically: spanked with shoes or belt, head banged on the wall (happened to me when I had a wound near my ear drum and my mom kept on nagging that I should leave the house immediately so I'd go to the doctor, and that shit happened).
Verbally: emasculated, humiliated in front of friends, older brothers/sisters butting in to support her.

Can't blame her because my grandma did similar things to her when she was young, especially the time she was humiliated in front of my dad when they were still dating back then.

Bonus: I get to witness some kid years and years ago whose mother slapped his back very hard while he was already crying and vomiting on the ground.

My dad belted me.

Never ask KYM about their family life ever. Noted.

A lot of you aren't explaining how effective it was/what you plan to do to your kids tho, that's the part I was actually interested in, especially those of you who were actually beat. Ya'll all told your stories and ignored the actual discussion part again.

& also, I specifically avoided using "beat" because I don't feel as though I was being beat, if we're going to go into this in depth like I hope, we're gonna need to know if anyone was saying beat when they meant spanked, or maybe there is no difference to you?

These tell a pretty clear story to me.

An analysis of anecdotes that uses the word "potentially" in its title tells a positively clear story to you?

I don't think I said beat but just in case I did I mean spank because I never felt genuinely beat on.

As for the effectiveness, I felt like I wrote a lot about that, maybe even too much that's a nasty wall. For what I'm going to do with my kids, currently I don't plan on kids but I'm 16 so that could change any time and is a really flimsy choice not set in stone, but hypothetically, I'd try more positive reinforcement. Like if they do good rewarding them emotionally and/or materially. Like I know of a method to where the only punishment parents give is being very nice most of the time (which is easy for me since it's my personality) and then when the kid fucks up the parent's disappointment alone is enough to shame the kid into not wanting to do bad anymore.

Of course though that's a flimsy tactic which depends on the personality of the kid, they could just not give a shit, my back-up is actually my parents' method of taking things away (but not for months as they do to where it's pointles for the kid to improve anyways because they feel eternally fucked). Even though I feel it didn't work for me, I know it works for lots of parents and maybe the way I do it will be more effective?

"analysis of anecdotes"

I have no idea what you read, but it's certainly not in either of the links I posted.

{ "Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses," write Dr. Joan Durrant }

How do you measure aggression? What if they were predisposed to aggressive behavior? What if childhood bullying or some other outside factor is the cause of aggression? How often was each child punished? What level of bad behaviors were they being punished for? How intense was the punishment? Was it always a hand or was an object used in some cases?

Psychologists. smh

There are also psychologists who say you should absolutely use physical punishment when children do something seriously dangerous, like run out into the middle of the road or get lost in a mall.

So in your mind, posing a bunch of questions about the study (I'm not even sure which one you're referencing, as the trial discussed in the second link, which is the only one you've mentioned thus far, had to do with training parents not to use physical punishment) without actually examining the study itself in any is somehow a rebuttal. Interesting.

But anyway, here's some more.

Your second link in the first post was an analysis of 20 years of studies, one piece of which was training parents not to use physical punishment. Psychologists like to conclude things without actually doing all that quantitative science stuff.

I did read it, that's how I know it was an analysis of studies and not one study including a method which would have answered my questions.

The one you just linked me to, the first paragraph says

{ Adolescents who were abused and neglected have less gray matter in some areas of the brain than young people who have not been maltreated, a new Yale School of Medicine study shows. }

and we are talking about spanking vs. beating here, are we not? Nobody who could be considered abused or neglected is being spanked, they're being beaten.

Lisa makes some good points, and I'd like to add the first link (in your third post) made a LOT of assertions. Several of the claims had no sources, despite it acting like it was pure fact.

As for myself, I was spanked when younger, but very sparsely, as my parents have very high regard for my behavior how they got that idea I don't know. My younger siblings were spanked, but for some reason despite them still sticking to the belief that it's a reasonable form of punishment NEVER do very much of anything. They're now annoying as all get out. Love them to death, but annoying.

As for what I'll do for punishing my children, if I am to keep my current beliefs by the time I have children (haha yeah right lets be real here) I'd keep spanking as a last resort. I do think using other consequences may be a better option. After a while, what's spanking but a little temporary pain? Doing something like deleting their game save files, or selling their computer (after several warnings, if it got really bad), that'd motivate them if they're anything like me. Of course, customization is required. Extra chores for the lazy, grounding for the extroverted, etc.

@lisalombs

So first it was "anecdotes", but now it's "studies". You are aware that those are two completely different things, right? Also, what you describes certainly sounds like proper scientific procedure to me. I'm aware that psychology is quite an impure field, but that doesn't mean you can just write off its findings wholesale. It's necessary to actively critique the specific techniques and methods of drawing conclusions on a case-by-case basis, just like you would do with physics, biology etc.

and we are talking about spanking vs. beating here, are we not? Nobody who could be considered abused or neglected is being spanked, they’re being beaten.

1. What, if it even exists, is the objectively determined standard to separate instances of inflicting pain on a child into these two classifications?
2. Assuming there is one, how do you know that the difference between one and the other is significant in regards to its long-term neuropsychological effects?

I never really had a real punishment.
My mother always put more emphasis on positive reinforcement than negative.
If I did good, I'd get rewarded. It could be something as simple as a "good job, I'm proud of you". And if I did something wrong, she'd ignore me like I didn't exist until I apologized or some time had passed.
She was with me almost constantly as a kid, but stepped back to give me some space as a teenager. As a teenager, my only real rule was I couldn't let anyone in the house or leave if no adults were home. I have no idea what the punishment would've been, because I never broke it.
I think it was pretty effective. I'm pretty well adjusted. I'm helpful and I make a point not to hurt, or even inconvenience others.
If there were any drawbacks, it would be two.
I don't do well under pressure. Too much on my plate and I freeze up. It's probably because I never had to deal with negative repercussions.
And I have very little respect for any authority figures, because I didn't have a very imposing authority figure growing up.
Especially police officers. I don't hate cops, I just don't trust them. They have too much power. It's not right.
And for the last question, I'd definitely imitate her reward>punishment strategy.
I'm not as good at mind games as she is, so if I ever have kids, I'd have to go paddle shopping.
They would have to fuck up really bad to get it though. And I mean really bad. Spanking would be a last resort for me.

A lot of you aren’t explaining how effective it was/what you plan to do to your kids tho, that’s the part I was actually interested in, especially those of you who were actually beat. Ya’ll all told your stories and ignored the actual discussion part again.

Alright, answering this question.

I don't think the spanking did anything but make me whine, bitch and resent my parents. Let alone listen to them or respect them. I usually would end up misbehaving more out of spite.

I did love and cherish my parents, but I attribute that to the constructive environment they raised me in, not their punishment methods

Spanking was only effective at stopping misbehavior by temporarily making me pause everything in order to b'awwww. But that effect gradually weakened, the harder my butt got.

Disciplining me by banning me from games or other boredom tactics was a punishment I feared much worse and made me realize I couldn't just have whatever the hell I wanted

I believe spanking is an archaic form of punishment that only works as a desperate last resort to make a kid stop immediately. But in terms of making kids behave, hostile punishments will just make hostile kids

I've seen enough episodes of Super Nanny to see how potently you can train kids through non-violent restriction of liberties and leisure and it's those means that I would employ as a parent (Not that I have any intention of being one)