You seriously think that righteous anger in response to an heinous act byh a child ENCOURAGEs the child to do more of the same? lololol
I’m not talking about behavior modification. I make no pretense that you can scare the hell out of a kid to keep him/her from doing it again. In fact, when I was little, “behaviorists” were dominating psychology – behaviorists only look at external, observable actions. While we learned quite a few things from them, most psychologists now consider the “behaviorist” domination to not only be over, but are kind of the “dark ages” of psychology. Learning to deal with behavior as completely external, without considering the workings of the mind, is how my entire generation was brought up in school.
Have you ever heard of “
Little Albert”? Yes it’s possible to scare a child into practically any behavior.
I just called “nonsense” because YOU called “nonsense” by assuming things that we didn’t know about the hypothetical situation. When you automatically assumed that what you thought was a heinous act of violence may have been no more than just an experiment to the child, depending on the child’s developmental age. Whether “anger” is an appropriate response to the child also depends on the child.
‘Johnny, where is your sister?’
‘In the hospital, dummy, where she needs to be after I hit her with the rake.’
Dad smiles, ‘Well, Johnny, I think we need to have a little talk…’
‘Not now, Dad, I just hit 35th level and it is a really hard one…’
‘Dad shut up already! You’re messing me up!’
Oh for God’s sake don’t get stupid about it. If you think this is what I’m promoting then you should probably never read another thing I write.
But no, I’m not “angry” that you wrote that.
I spanked my daughter maybe 3 times tops, and my son about a dozen. One time I spanked him in anger for something that was extremely wrong and I punished him further. I later took him on a trip and spent some quality time with him after he redressed the problem, and reassured him that I loved him no less.
It sounds like this worked well for you, and I’m glad you had the good time and were able to explain how you still love him. I say that we can avoid the anger in almost all cases, but what you are describing is also a good path. Because you made it clear that the anger doesn’t mean they are loved any less. I have nothing negative to say about your story.
My second son had a friend in high school who was raised in a foster family that would sometimes kick him out and he’d stay over at our house because he had nowhere to go in the middle of the night. One time he was not feeling well and the “parents” were very angry; he got sick in his morning cereal, and the foster parents made him eat it anyway. That’s because they were motivated by anger instead of love. Guess what though – that kid ended up starting a restaurant in a neighboring state, and hiring my son to work with him! And he’s the nicest kid you’d ever want to meet.
After he turned 16 I never had an issue with him, and despite his ADD he graduated high school on a low dosage of meds for his ADD, and stopped taking it altogether a year later.
My daughter has turned out well and even my father in law has told me and my wife we have done a great job raisng our kids, and we are both very proud of them.
That’s awesome!
But the two central axioms we raised them by was 1. as parents our job was to prepare our kids for life, not to make sure they have fun or be their friends. We were not their friends we were their parents/trainers/teachers. 2. We never faked anything with them. If we felt an emotion we expressed it, if we had a thought we told them about it. They never suffered from a lack of praise and love and never were given a shallow faked reaction about anything.
Honesty is crucial in being parents so that the kids have no doubt that mom and dad will do exactly what they say they will and mean what they say when it is said.
You sound like you actually have a very balanced approach. In fact, I saw one study that indicated that children who grew up in emotionally troubling circumstances may actually have social advantages over those who don’t. And I like being honest with them. But after 29 years and raising six children while emotionally psychotic with severe bipolar disorder, including two engineers, one seminarian, and all of them both socially well adapted and straight-A students, I conclude that angry demonstrations were very seldom needed, and becoming angry myself was not.
So I’m not telling you not to punish your children; I’m just saying that being angry is not required to accomplish that. I’m quite an expert on emotions from my own personal experience; I’ve gone the “full range” and I agree with Jesus that anger is destructive, and if I speak to a brother in anger that is actually a “pro-life” issue. (Matt 5:22-23)
So yeah, you’re going to get angry from time to time; like you said even Jesus lost HIs cool a couple times. But do not “give them the keys” to your anger; I know kids that even learned to use the parents’ anger against them.
But when you jumped to the assumption in the “Little Jimmie” story that because he did something destructive, he needs adults to show him anger. That’s just teaching him more of what Jesus came to teach us we could be free from – becoming angry due to others’ actions. That is the standard that I believe all Christians should strive for, because that’s what Jesus said to do. “Be perfect.” Are you going to fail now and then? Yes. But if you justify anger instead of learning to become not-angry then you’re missing out on a lot of what Jesus could help you with.
