Hitting babies

[blas87]

I'm watching Montel right now. His guests are a husband and wife who disagree on the discipline of their children. Fair enough, but here is the kicker.......the husband admits to HITTING his 7 WEEK OLD BABY!

For cripes sakes.......if CPS isn't after him the second he gets back home after the show, you bet they will be within weeks.

The ideals of spanking and discipline aside, it is absolutely ABSURD and even DIMENTED and mascochistic to hit an INFANT. That is a BABY. Do you think a 7 week old has any idea what is right or wrong yet?

I hope this guy gets put away for a long time.

[DesignFox]

No no no...you don't hit a 7 week old baby! They don't have a sense of right and wrong yet. I mean, what can a weeks old baby even DO that warrants getting spanked??? That's horrible! What will this guy do when the kid is actually old enough to get in trouble and do bad things?!

Now, THOSE are the people you call CPS on!

[squall]

Well....what he says on the show is admissible in court so.....

[Rubystars]

When I was in my college Psychology class the instructor, who was, unlike most other instructors, a conservative who agreed with mild occasional spanking, told us that basically a child under 1 year can't be 'spoiled' too much and should not be punished or ignored because it can do long term damage.

[Barefootgirl]

I don't know about being a conservative (thats fighting talk around here), but I don't think a light smack for a serious offence is the end of the world either. That said, a baby (i.e. a child under one or one and a half) cannot deliberately be naughty. They just don't have the intellectual capacity to be naughty. So hitting them is just abusive, especially because you can really damage a small baby without too much effort. And what sort of moron goes on a national TV show to boast about hitting a small baby?

Finally, before i run out of breath, WTF is the mother doing while all this hitting is going on? Is she just sitting back and smiling sweetly while this happens? Because she should be prosecuted for neglect as well.

[blas87]

To be honest, she didn't say much. At. All.

They had some kind of psychologist or doctor type to analyze the situations, and she even told the father that infants do not have the cabaility to understand right from wrong....and that no one should EVER hit an infant, especially one under 1 year.

The smirk on that guy's face and the way he was so sure what he was doing was right just irked me to no end. I wanted to go into the TV and beat him senseless. He was even asked, where did he "learn" that it was ok to try and teach a 7 week old infant to not cry and to not do things. He admitted that he didn't, and that he was "training" his baby.

This sounds too sick to be true, but it was on the TV today. I cannot believe that even made TV; it's too sick for words.

[squall]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/06/ba....ap/index.html. Check this out, really shocking.

[Myra]

You think that is horrid? Some fundamentalist christian families practice what has been dubbed "blanket training." What this is basically, is where a baby of crawling age is put on a blanket. Should the child crawl off the blanket (which babies are prone to do) you are to whack the child on the arm with a wooden spoon. Eventually, the baby stays on the blanket out of terror of getting hit. Then the mother is "free" to go to housework, or whatever it is that fundamentalist christian mothers do.

I tried to find a link to the site I found that had the instructions on it, but so far, Google has failed me. I've found milder versions which include yelling at the baby, but the more forceful abusive one, I've not found yet.

[Rubystars]

I tried to find a link to the site I found that had the instructions on it, but so far, Google has failed me. I've found milder versions which include yelling at the baby, but the more forceful abusive one, I've not found yet.

Hopefully that was a parody site and not a real manual! Even if so it's pretty sick. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says to abuse and neglect your baby though! How terrible! Are you sure you didn't read that on one of those Landover Baptist pages or something? That's not a real church btw.

[Myra]

If I remember right, it was a blog by a fundamentalist "quiverfull" christian. (The Quiverfull movement is a sect of fundie christians who do not believe in ANY form of birth control, and they all have a herd of kids. The Duggar family in Arkansas are Quiverfulls.) I also saw it mentioned in a book that promotes hard-core corpal punishment on Amazon.com. Tried to find that too, but alas, my memory went when I got preggo.

[rahmota]

OH for the love of the gods. Some people just should not be allowed to breed. Sad to say you dont know who they are until its already too late.

Kids under 3 should not be spanked at all and under 5 only for the heaviest of issues like major thigns that could get themselves hurt or worse.

Myra & Rubystars: I have heard of the blanket traning thing from my BIL back when we still talked to each other. He's a nondenom christian fundie priest so its apparently a common idea among that sort of people. Unfortunately there was nothing in print I could refer you to as he was attempting to tell the wife and I how to raise our children. He did not mention the wooden spoon thing though but I would not be surprised if there wasnt someone out there doing so.

And no the bible doesnt say to use a wooden sppon to smack your kid aorund with but then again the bible doesnt say a lot fo things the christian fundies say it does too.

[Rubystars]

.

I think people need to use the common sense that God gave them rather than finding the most twisted interpretations of Scripture and using them to hurt others. I consider myself to be a non-denom Christian because I've never felt comfortable allying myself with a particular denom seeing as how I disagree with bits of all of them.

As for the Quiverfull movement, I have a split opinion on that one. On the one hand, I don't have a problem with large families per se. I think people have the right to have a large family if they want to, as long as they can support the children financially and otherwise. If the kids are raised to be decent, productive human beings, then we need as many people like that as we can get!

I have two major problems with the idea though.

One is that people with that philosophy tend to believe it's a woman's duty to pop out child after child after child. This can cripple a woman from having her own life and being able to pursue other interests besides just children. Any well rounded individual needs to be able to do more than clean up vomit, break up fights, etc. all day and night. If Andrea Yates had only had one or two children, she would have had a more balanced life, and probably wouldn't have drowned all of them.

The second problem I have is that a lot of these families with lots of kids end up on social assistance, such as WIC, food stamps, etc. If just one of the kids ends up needing expensive medical care, the state will probably end up picking up the cost. I think before someone deliberately gets pregnant that many times, that they need to be able to have the finances to support the babies without government help. I don't mind so much when people have a child and need the help, but multiply that times 8 or 10 or more and it gets downright ridiculous. Deliberately planning for children you can not afford is not a Christian ideal IMHO.

[rahmota]

Well after having studied religion, comparative religion and the bible and quoran thats what made me aethiestic. But thats a topic for another thread. As for a higher spirit officially I suppose you could say I am agnostic as I do not believe that humanity could even understand the true concept of a diety much less the needs, wants or whims of one. It would be about like an ant understanding a 747.

That having been said I'll agree with you that more common sense needs to be used and less harming others regardless of whatever excuse the person uses to do that harm. be it nationalism, religion or simple stupid us vs them attitude. There is only one race and that is human.

As for quiverful all I'll say on this thread as a more in depth discussion on that would require its own thread, is that what consenting adults decide to do with their own lives and if they can support and handle it then so be it. Though I'll agree with much of your concerns there.

[Ree]

I think hitting a small child like that is disgusting and criminal.

A baby cannot understand why he's being slapped. All he feels is pain.
That couple should have had the child taken from them.

I wasn't raised in the most functional of families, and I certainly don't claim to be an expert on raising children, but I do know that hitting children is not really the way to get results.

When my daughter was old enough to toddle around, I actually paid attention to her and didn't just leave her to her own devices.

People wondered at all my nice little knickknacks and tea sets that I hadn't put way and commented that my home wasn't baby-proofed.
Well, when my daughter started to touch things, I physically moved her with a firm, " No."

Yes, it was a lot of work, and it took a lot of tries before she came to associate being moved and the 'No" with learning not to touch, but I figured that was my job as her parent to teach her.

Sometimes, it was necessary to give her a swat on her bottom with my hand, but it was never direct contact with her bare skin, nor did I ever use an object to spank my daughter. It was always with my hand through a diaper. The goal, after all wasn't to hurt her so she associated pain with discipline. It was kind of a "wake up and pay attention" kind of thing.
Also, using your hand, you know the degree of pressure. If it's hurting your hand, then obviously, it's hurting the child. With a wooden spoon, belt, strap, paddle, or any other object, you cannot control how hard it's hitting and you have no concept of how much it hurts.

Leaving welts on a baby or child isn't really teaching them a very good lesson, is it?

Children aren't like little robots with computer chips that you program for instant results, but sadly, we have become a society who does want instant results, and many parents are too wrapped up in their own needs and wants to remember that there is time for that stuff after the child is raised.

That may sound like a radical comment, but I truly believe, if you are going to have a child, then it is your duty to take care of that child. If that means putting your own life on hold for a few years, then so be it.
I am not saying to spoil the child rotten so she grows up thinking she's the centre of the universe, but a child needs to know there is stability and support.
There can be balance so parents get their outlets as well, but that involves priorities. Too many people buy into the myth of superparent that they can have it all, do it all, and still raise a child.

Too many parents will plunk their child into a playpen or swing, and then let the toys and mobiles, or any number of devices meant to stimulate and exercise a baby's brain, or as they get older, DVD's or TV shows, and then spend hours on the internet or watching their own TV programs.

Don't even get me started leaving babies with daycare strangers to babysit while Mommy goes off to the gym or some other hobby or pursuit.
I think I have mentioned this before, but I recall once, listening to a child psychologist on television. He said that we would never simply hand over the keys to our cars to a stranger for a day and expect them to look after it, but many people do that every day with our children.

Anyway, perhaps that's a topic left to another thread, but it's definitely something I feel strongly about.

As a foster parent, I see so many children damaged by what happened during those first few months of life.
They didn't know nurturing and love. They were an intrusion into their parents' lives.
They cried and instead of being cuddled by a parent, possibly feeding them a warm bottle, they were left to cry, shouted at to shut up, slapped because they wouldn't stop crying, or left with a bottle propped up on a pillow just to shut them up.
Studies are showing how neglect and abuse during that crucial stage can impact on a person's life into adulthood, regardless of intervention by outside forces who remove the child from that environment.

Sadly, too many people are just popping out babies as a by-product of sex, and do not have the first clue how to parent that baby.