Missouri schools are reinstituting corporal punishment against kids with a paddle. This violates the rights of the kid and it sets another precedent against bodily autonomy. The state is claiming the right to hit your kids.
Missouri schools are reinstituting corporal punishment against kids with a paddle. This violates the rights of the kid and it sets another precedent against bodily autonomy. The state is claiming the right to hit your kids.
What really concerns me is that the children who will be subjected to this will not be the ones with parents who are willing or able to deal with conflict in healthy ways. How many of them, I wonder, saw school hours as an opportunity to be safe from physical harm but no longer have that security? How much additional suffering will come from that, knowing what we do about the role of physical safety, bodily autonomy, and generally not feeling under threat as they relate to educational success. What guarantees or recourse are available to the parents and children who don’t opt in but are still among those who find it acceptable and appropriate to hit a child?
Those of us who were on the receiving end of emotional or physical abuse from adults we trusted know all too well how these types of behaviors can change the entire trajectory of someone’s life.
I’m not sure framing this in terms of ability is particularly accurate. Nothing is forcing those parents to abuse their children. Absolutely nothing. They are choosing that. They are perfectly able to choose not to and to try to find a way that actually works and isn’t incredibly cruel. ~Strawberry
I agree with you, but also respectfully disagree at the same time. I agree because they are perfectly able to choose a path that isn’t cruel, (that’s always an option) but disagree because sometimes they aren’t entirely - whether due to a lack of experience in healthy resolutions, or problems in their own lives, or some combination of those or other factors. It doesn’t excuse the abuse, at all, but they are contributing factors in the patterns of it.
Just as an example: my severely alcoholic grandmother used to beat the snot out of my father, and he never learned any healthy parenting skills from her or my grandfather. He didn’t use coat hangers to beat me like she did to him, because that was barbaric, but belts were acceptable tools in his mind. He quite literally did not have the framework to understand that it was essentially the same thing from other people’s perspectives, or morally unacceptable; he didn’t have the toolkit to manage his stressors and build better behavior patterns for most of my childhood. Having seen his journey (and my own) I find that I’m empathetic for the effort it takes to break this kind of generational cycle of violence even as I find the actions of abusers reprehensible.
I’m saddened that Missouri has chosen to normalize and promulgate more violence against children instead of investing that kind of effort into actually improving the lives of its citizens. I’m editing my parent comment to add something that I hope will show that I understand the agency that these parents, educators, and lawmakers have when making these decisions (because you’re right, they do).
I guess that makes sense? Maybe? I don’t quite get how someone could purposely hit children with anything and think it’s okay. I don’t get the thought process there. It’s certainly not “well my parents did it so it must be fine”. It seems so obvious and yet… I don’t know. I don’t get how it could take a lot of effort to not hit children. It’s an active choice, not a passive one, and it doesn’t seem like a difficult conclusion to come to. I’m confused more than anything. ~Strawberry
I understand why it’s confusing, but trauma changes how the brain works and once those neural pathways are created reinforcement becomes much more likely. Once everything is a fight-or-flight event it’s very hard to break free. Even now, decades later, I have a habit of over explaining as a defense mechanism just to proactively defuse potential misunderstandings (not always perfectly but I’m glad we’re having this conversation) both online and afk. Not everybody gets the opportunities to adapt and recover the way I did, so it feels important to respond with empathy for them.
For some more context, when I was in my 20s I decided I’d never have kids because I didn’t want to have to spank them. My dad always said if you truly love your kids you’ll spank them to keep them from sinning. His parents beat him, and in his mind he was doing it right and not being abusive.
I have a lot of issues and it took a lot of time to unlearn that mindset. I have a daughter now and she’s great! She’s also exhausting but we’ve never spanked her and never will.