About discipline and children's disorders

Most of us on this board disdain children, in part because of their obnoxious, loud, rude behavior and the unwillingness of parents to control them. Mercurior's thread about the chyldren sitting in the grocery store fridge made me decide to start this new thread. I've been thinking about kyds' behavior a lot lately after seeing the following:

In the "Car Talk" syndicated column (the same guys as do the radio show by the same name) quite some time back, a duh wrote to ask what he could do about eliminating the tire noise heard inside the family minivan. It was making his young autistic son scream loudly at certain speeds. The van was quiet overall, but duh's explanation was that autism can cause sensitivity to noise. The child would suddenly without warning emit an ear-splitting shriek. (This would obviously distract the driver and endanger the family at highway speeds.)

In the local paper a moo writes periodic articles about her autistic son, who supposedly cannot talk normally except when around trains. He would say, "James boom" for "I spilled", etc. Everybody including himself is "James", "boom" replaces all verbs, and so forth. Only near a real train can he say normal sentences. But when she had to take one of his toy trains away becuase it was made in China and had lead paint, he clearly said, "I hate you, Mommy!"

Now my point. We hear a lot about autism today, not to mention such conditions such as attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, etc. Some cultural and environmental factors probably are to blame for the rise in these disorders. But these were broadly unknown 50 years ago, yet you have to assume that some children somewhere had these afflictions. Autism and hyperactivity are not brand new diagnoses; they've been around a while, but only recently have they become common. What has changed?

Here's my hypothesis. Many years back parents viewed these conditions as behavior problems, not medical issues, and the children were punished for them, often physically. A child who emitted an ear-splitting scream as the one in the minivan above would have received several smacks in the mouth for it, and autistic or not, he would have learned to shut the hell up while the van was booming down the road at 70 mph. A child who could choose to speak normally at certain times, such as the train kid above, would have been punished and even spanked or smacked for reverting to non-normal speech. He, too, would have learned to speak normally at all times soon enough. In such ways, autistic children learned to function normally in society, and probably no one knew they had any problem. They were punished and disciplined out of it. They got over it.

Asperger's children who can't stop blurting out inappropriate things? Smack! "Shut up!" Problem handled. Hyperactive or ADD children? They would have received some corporal punishment to quiet them too. A close relative was "hyperactive" (the word for ADHD in the 1970s) but always seemed to manage to stop the foolishness after a solid thwack on the rear or three. Attention deficit disorder? Smack! "Pay attention, you little mutant!" It seemed to work!

Another factor before the 1960s is that many children had to work on the family farm or otherwise work around the home. A child who wouldn't work, unless he had obvious mental retardation or physical problems, would face punishment for being "lazy". No autism or ADD excuse here. The kids were kept too busy for that once they reached a certain age. If they acted "stupid", pow! was a frequent parental response. Discussing old-school discipline is pretty unpleasant to many people these days, but trust me, once all of this was common practice. It seems funny that these disorders were broadly unknown back then.

Now, a few pahrents will try to say that they can't spank their chyldren because they'll call child protective services (CPS) or 911. This is a copout, as CPS in most states does not view reasonable spanking as abuse.

But the overwhelming majority of pahrents view their kyds as their friends whose self-esteem must not be damaged in any way by actually attempting to control them, let alone punish them. I think this has a lot to do with the prevalence of these disorders today. Today we cater to these problems, and I think it simply magnifies them and encourages the kyd to continue with the behavior. Hence the epidemic of ADHD, Asperger's, autism, etc., etc.

Maybe my analysis has some truth. But maybe I'm being crude and out of line, and if some of you find my comments offensive, I apologize in advance. But what say the rest of you?

I agree. I wish parents would smack their kids across the head these days, autism or not. Parents of autistic kids want to coddle their widdle snowflakes and make sure everyone else in the world does the same, but when Junior gets to adulthood, all the excuses that flew during his childhood and teenage years won't fly with friends and employers, and especially won't when Mommy and Daddy kick the bucket and can't defend their pweshus against the big bad evil world.

Autism was definitely viewed as brattiness in years past and it was dealt with as such. No Ritalin, no therapists, no "but he's got auttttiiissssmmmm" for an excuse...and it seems those with autism who got smacked around turned out as good as the normal kids who got smacked around.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but a small part of me wonders if autism is even real...or if it's some medical condition thought up by therapists to try and make money off gullible, lazy parents. Since it's become less looked down on to go to a professional therapist/counselor, perhaps the profession thought they could cash in on the rapidly laxing parenting styles. Or perhaps, in our ever-growing world of political correctness, rather than allowing those doing the most important job in the world to be accused of raising their baybee wrong, the signs and symptoms of a grade-a brat were gathered in a big cluster and an '-ism' was slapped to it.

And don't get me started on the other branches of autism - sorry, but if a kid had 'oppositional defiant disorder' twenty years ago, they got cracked in the face for it. If they had 'sensory integration disorder' and couldn't eat anything but sliced cheese, they went hungry.

People's jaws usually drop when anyone now even suggests hitting the pweshues widdle angels - can you imagine the shit that would hit the fan if anyone suggested striking an autistic kid? I know on a health forum I occasionally visit, I have advised parents to wail their autistic kids' asses and I always get the response that 'you can't hit an autistic kid because they don't understand discipline'. Bullshit - even retards understand what it means to be disciplined.

While I am rabidly childfree (no, I'm not a troll), I must say that I disagree with the use of corporal punishment. I cannot see how it is a productive thing to do to hit your child when it is causing you problems. Yeah, it may shut the kid up for the time being, and it may even scare enough crap out of it to prevent it from ever acting up again (which is convenient for you, right?), but I think it can have some really negative effects on the kid, and I think that a lot of people who do exact such punishments can take it too far. My basic concern is, by hitting the kid, you are basically teaching it that physical violence is the answer to all of life's little problems (I mean, come on, tell me this isn't so.) And then we, as a society ask, "How did things (like movies and video games) get so violent?" We're breeding that violence! For every overly permissive parent, there's another one out there who's beating his kid senseless. I do think there's a middle ground that doesn't require corporal punishment. I know well-adjusted, productive adults, who turned out great, and were never hit by their parents. On the other hand, my dad beat us all the time, and I still have PTSD from it. No shit.

it depends what you call punishment, with my parents it was 3 fingers slap across the back of the legs.. it was more a short sharp shock. a what.. it left no lasting damage but it worked. guest you are doing the same thing as people in the so called abuse industry do.

people quite frequently think a smack across the legs is the same as a punch in the face. its quite different. (theres even reports that some adult corrective games.. spanking in love making can be called assault) they cannot differentiate them. a smack is a punch and a punch is abuse so a smack is abuse.. QED.

without the negative trianing, the aversion to doing certain things then that leads to children running wild, doing what they want. its a carrot and a stick if you give them carrots all the time then they wont know the stick at all. just imagine children are dogs, sometimes they are rewarded sometimes they are smacked, they will learn and become nice.

technically i have aspbergers, and so does rowan. there is autism, but.. we as humans fit into that.

it is an excuse by these parents by these doctors (doctors make money on ritalin), parents excuse bad behaviour my kid has autism.

i truly beleive too much power has been given into psychologists hands, they determine everyone must be sick, therefore pills and potions and long time psychotherapy. thats why they adore autism, as everyone can be called it. as there is a whole spectrum of forms from minor to major.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/autism/complete-publication.shtml

i used to have a speech problem, words would get jumbled up from my brain to my mouth, to me they sounded right but they werent. so my dad recorded my voice and played it to me, and within 6 weeks, i went from a low reading age, to a teenager reading age. and yes i over compensate for it now, as can be seen by my posts. but when i get really upset and angry, they come back, i stutter, words get jumbled again. to me they are fine, but to others they are gibberish.

once i was diagnosed as profoundly deaf, they took me to the ear nose and throat clinic and put headphones on and played noises, i didnt hear it, so i was deaf.

unfortunatly they never asked me, my mum asked why i didnt do anything i said oh they were just being silly so i ignored them.. they knew my hearing was good because i could hear whispered conversations 2 rooms away.

(Possible Indicators of Autism Spectrum Disorders
Does not babble, point, or make meaningful gestures by 1 year of age
Does not speak one word by 16 months
Does not combine two words by 2 years
Does not respond to name
Loses language or social skills

Some Other Indicators
Poor eye contact
Doesn't seem to know how to play with toys
Excessively lines up toys or other objects
Is attached to one particular toy or object
Doesn't smile
At times seems to be hearing impaired

They may resist attention or passively accept hugs and cuddling. Later, they seldom seek comfort or respond to parents' displays of anger or affection in a typical way. Research has suggested that although children with ASD are attached to their parents, their expression of this attachment is unusual and difficult to “read.” To parents, it may seem as if their child is not attached at all. Parents who looked forward to the joys of cuddling, teaching, and playing with their child may feel crushed by this lack of the expected and typical attachment behavior)

i hate physical touch, i cant stand it when people kiss my cheek, or shake hands, not even my family, i cant stand hugs. so technically i must be autistic.

but thats the whole thing, everyone will fit into that spectrum at one point in their lives. does it mean we are all mentally ill, according to some yes we are.

i am not denying the major forms exist, its the mild forms, that are over analysed.

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

". Yeah, it may shut the kid up for the time being, and it may even scare enough crap out of it to prevent it from ever acting up again"

Problem solved!

Well, to take this line of reasoning a step further, I find the response of hitting to be what's easiest on the parent. It's not necessarily responsible punishment. It gets the kid to shut up pretty quickly, but I still think it teaches violence. Parents choose this route for one reason, and one reason only: because it requires the least amount of effort on the parent's part. It's the cop-out route. The parent cares more about his/her own convenience than what kind of kid he/she is raising and what kind of person (perhaps violent) the kid is going to turn out to be. Like I said, my dad wailed on me and my sib. We weren't even poorly behaved, but he was sadistic and enjoyed taking it out on us. To this day, I am afraid of my own shadow. He made me afraid to defend myself, and so most of my adult life, even though no one is hitting me anymore, I still tend to have trouble standing up for myself. He beat us down that badly. I guess there are degrees of abuse, and a mild spanking may not be so bad in some situations, but I still think it's a slipperry slope, and I challenge parents to explore effective options that aren't simply the easiest way for them to deal with their kids. After all, THEY, the parents, are the ones who made the choice to drag the kid into this world, so why should things be made easy for them?

I work for a child/adol social worker doing outpatient therapy whose patients run the gamut of disorders like (and these are all real) Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Undersocialized Conduct Disorder, Child Truancy Disorder, Solitary Stealing , Tantrums, Socialized Conduct Disorder/Delinquency, Shyness Disorder, Sibling Rivalry, Selective Mutism (they refuse to talk to someone they don't like), Academic Underachievement Disorder.....on & on. Of course ADHD is in there too. Some of the patients he sees for years & years. And of course many are also on meds/Ritalin. (I leave out learning, math, & reading disorders since sometimes it's their brain or linked to mild retardation rather than laziness).

I also work for a psychiatrist who sees kids & adol admitted into the hospital for serious conditions like psychosis, eating disorders, suicide attempts, bipolar, OCD, Major Depression, etc.

And every year, the first list of softer "disorders" gets bigger, while the list of more serious conditions hasn't changed much in about 10 years. I know that this kind of therapy may help prevent a kid from developing a more serious condition like Major Depression, or shooting up his school, but I still think there's a definite overuse of these disorders.

Even insurance companies are catching on to this. Many now have 2 levels of mental health benefits, a high level for Major Depression, Psychosis, Bipolar, etc and a lower benefit level for the above softer "disorders".

Once reason I feel these are overused labels is because some parents just drop their kid off at the therapist's office & aren't involved, don't return his calls, or an ex won't even know their kid is in therapy. Don't they want to know what's going on? THEY are the ones causing the problem.

Some parents are very involved & their kids may be patients for a few months, but it's funny how many parents I see that are always angry, bitchy, bitter & whiny. It's always their kids who are the worst off & going to therapy for years.

My natural father was sadistic and abusive for no good reason, too, and I have little to do with him today. That's not what I'm talking about. Strong discipline and punishment, including corporal punishment, were in legitimate use until the 1960s, and parents handled "hyperactivity", "autism" and other psychobabbleishly-named "disorders" as behavior problems by their free application. Hence the problems were not totally unknown, but were then certainly uncommon. By the way, law enforcement training for self-defense and emergencies teaches that (reasonably applied) pain results in compliance. Works for rugrats too.

If you spank or smack a child for a legitimate reason, the child usually knows or can quickly figure out what that reason was. During the times when I was disciplined for a reason, I certainly knew why in advance. In situations such as the minivan kid described, because the whole family would be imperiled by a child suddenly shrieking uncontrollably, repeated smacks to get the message across to the kid to shut up are within reason, given the possible consequences if the driver is startled and distracted by the noise.

i know some people who were abused and i dont say they werent, but there is a big difference between a sadistic father or mother, than someone giving reasonable chastisement to a child.

if i saw an adult attacking a child for no good reason, i would step up , abuse is evil, i was punished by a little smack now and again and i turned out ok i think.

my parents told me i did wrong what i did then punished me, thereby linking doing wrong and punishment.

yes grizzly i agree that the major forms do exist, and can have a such bad effect on the child and society, its the lesser forms, the child truancy disorder. i knew a lad he hated school and the teachers.. he wasnt clever, he just was bored and got into trouble.

another lad was very very intelligent, far far smarter than me, and he hated school as they talked down to him.

shyness, i suffered from that, i coped by creating other martins, work martin, not like MPD or DID, but it wasnt me that was shy, it was the core martin. and so on.. a lot of these new disorders have been discovered recently. as kman said in the past we learned to cope, if we didnt like people we would work in filing and warehouses. so did they have problems yes.. but did they let people say i cant do this i need this medication.. no.

theres this new discipline of quantifying everything giving everything a label, if you label it you can reduce that person into a thing..a statistic. rather than a living person. if you can reduce a person to a figure, then its easier to say for x they need ritalin, for y they need this. when everyone is different.

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

I agree, and disagree, with all of you...what's new, right?

Anyway, I think the primary reason for the rise of disordered children, of every stripe, is a distinct LACK of parenting. Breeders do not take any sort of corrective action when their children are acting up, for whatever reason, and as a result children never have the opportunity to learn proper public behavior.

Many disorders are actual, and one of the reasons for the rise is that people are made aware of them, it's finally gotten a name or a drug company figured out a way to drug it. That said, it is possible for parents to train their disordered children to behave as well as they possibly can. Unfortunately, it involves parenting, which is something that breeders are unable to do.

Children are stupid, they need to be taught how to behave and treat others because one just doesn't learn that on their own. Pain does result in compliance but it doesn't always result in education. Yes, when a child touches the stove and learns it's hot, it won't touch the stove again and that's great for it's personal safety, but it doesn't come anywhere close to teaching a child how to behave in society with other people. In my estimation, that is the purpose of parents, to teach their children how to behave in society with other people. Beating a child might get it to stop acting up, but will it teach the child what proper behavior is? Doubtful.

My question is more, why have more and more parents become simple breeders?

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

You can hate kids all you want to, but I still do NOT believe they deserve abuse, physically, verbally, or emotionally. This will produce screwed-up adults that we really do not need in our society! And screwed-up adults in turn become screwed-up parents as well, producing even worse children than ever.

In additional, domestic abuse also causes children to run away from home and end up homeless, in prostitution, and on drugs, too. So no, abuse isn't good for teaching kids wrong from right.

But - a (one) sharp smack across the buttocks if a child does something wrong or dangerous is quite acceptable, I think. That should teach the child that it is wrong - FAST. That is also good parenting.

And yes, there is a whole world of difference between cruel, abusive parents who lock up their children without supper (some parents actually KILL their own kids!) and clueless parents who spoil their brats and just let them do whatever they please - without ever touching them at all.

My opinion regarding the "epidemics" of ADHD/ADD, autism/associated disorders and other behavioral and psychological problems has not changed over time. While all of these are, for the most part, real disorders with real symptomatology, my training as an epidemiologist does not convince me that the illnesses have reached epiidemic proportions by any means.

I think there are a few things at work here that no one wants to admit or discuss:

1) The misuse of these diagnoses to gain more attention and resources by breeders, teachers and other professionals;

2) The complete lack of documentation as to any causative factor, and the use of junk science to support outrageous and blatantly false claims; and

3) Fundamentally horrible parenting, discipline and self-entitlement poisoning which underlays all of it.

Whether it is the absolute bullshit of "indigo children", the stupidity and pseudoscience behind the anti-vaccination trash or the dangerous support of these factors by idiotic leeching "mental health professionals", I see no sound epidemiological studies confirming the supposed causes of these "epidemics". Color me a heartless bastard and a major skeptic, but the breedertrash and their apologists have gone too far on this one.

If the kid needs a good, solid smack on the face and/or ass to get it to behave properly--do it.

DrDanCorelli Wrote:
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> If the kid needs a good, solid smack on the face
> and/or ass to get it to behave properly--do it.


I totally agree. Even if the kid is a teenager, a solid smack across the face will do wonders. Anyone ever try talking or reasoning with a nasty know-it-all teen. They are the worst. While working on the AT&T Wireless account years ago, one teen cunt just said, "Fuck you, Mom," when her mother called about issues with the phone not working. The caller kept on talking as if her daughter never said such a thing to her. The mother should have asked me to hold, smack the girl across the face, and then come back to me announcing to cancel Cuntleigh's phone. I bet that would have stopped the nastiness. I can only imagine this girl is now a college student with major entitlement mentality. Imagine the not-so-lucky employer who hires her later on. I know many black people who got "whuppins" when they were growing up. All of them claim that getting smacked did not turn them into heinous criminals.

This reminds me of what I read somewhere, an account of a guy whose moo was schizophrenic. This was quite some years ago.
This guy stated that when his moos' schizy behaviour got so out of hand that his duh couldn't take it anymore, he'd haul off and SOCK (not slap, sock) moo in the face.
He stated it was amazing how well his moo could control her crazy behaviour.

I agree. Kids are little people who have lots to learn, and if a well-placed slap in the face is going to accomplish it, do it.

No, I don't agree with beatings for minor offenses or out right abuse, but kids need a good whack every now and again when they are being defiant little shits. Warnings, time outs, threats just don't cut it. They have to know there are serious consequences for misbehaving.

There's a big difference between punishment and abuse. Smacking a kid on the ass or the leg for behaving like a brat is discipline and it's worked for many years. Coming home from a bad day at work and beating the shit out of your kid for no reason other than to relieve your own anger is abuse. Yeah, people abuse their kids, but abuse is not synonymous with discipline.

Of all the people I've known who got spanked or otherwise punished physically, they are all polite and just good people overall. I've known a couple people who were brats and who never got spanked - one such kid began killing neighborhood cats by the time he was four. I know there's always exceptions, but I think history has proven that corporal punishment is successful...because we as humans live to do that which feels good. We are pleasure-seekers by nature, and we avoid things that cause us pain. So, if a kid does something bad and you smack his ass for it, his little brain will make the association that doing XYZ Action = pain. Kind of like when you spray a cat with water to discourage scratching of the furniture.

Corporal punishment shows that you're being serious, because come on - I can't take a parent seriously who says, "You need to sit on the time-out chair now please, hunny".

The Medical Profession and the do-gooders have a lot to answer for with the children who are diagnosed like they are. Children always misbehaved to some extent if only to see how far they could go and get away with it, but No child was ever labelled as these children are.

They are simply (on the whole) monsters who are totally undisciplined and a menace to everyone else in society. This labelling is to make the parents feel better, and the doctors get their pills prescribing system into place.

It is nothing to do with food, it is to do with lack of parenting skills and not around to deal with the children in their early years.

I think it's a good idea to spank but only infrequently. When children are too young to explain shit like when they run out into the road. I remember a woman tearing after her very young son outside a restaurant. She started yelling “Sawyer!” When she reached him, she pointed in his face and was saying something like “We don’t run where there are cars. People get hurt.” He was just smiling away like it was a game. I would have turned him over and started wailing on his backside.
I don’t think a child should be slapped in the face. There’s something demeaning about that to me.

At least one Louisiana preschool agrees with many of us:

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=7613338

Parents Upset about Paddling Marks Left on 4-Year-Old

Posted: Jan 11, 2008 06:59 PM EST
Updated: Jan 16, 2008 09:45 AM EST

"A mother has pulled her toddler out of a Livingston Parish school after he was paddled, reportedly by his teacher. To make matters worse, the little boy is autistic and his mother says he can't get the care he needs at home. The family is weighing its options. 'I couldn't believe he had this mark on him,' says Ashley Andrews. She says she discovered large whelts on her four-year-old son, Austin Andrews' bottom, while undressing him after school last month. 'I'll ask him who gave him a bo-bo and he repeats bo-bo and doesn't want to talk about it.'

"At first glance, Austin looks like your typical toddler. He enjoys watching cartoons, playing video games, and taking an occasional spin on his scooter. However, Austin isn't your usual four-year-old. He was diagnosed with autism a couple of years ago. He is non-verbal, which means except for repeating what you say, he doesn't speak very well. Austin received occupational and speech therapy at Live Oak Elementary School. He was a pre-schooler there. His mother says sometimes he swings things and can even become violent. He's even been suspended from school for his behavior. So, Andrews says she and her husband, Bill, went a different route.

" 'On December 6th, we signed for him to have a paddling to see if it would change,' she says. Andrews says she agreed to a spanking or two, but nothing that would lead to the marks she saw. 'I didn't send him back to school. He hasn't been back since the 14th and I want to find out what happened to my son.' Andrews says the school principal tells her Austin received several swats on the day he came home with the whelps. Now, she wants to know who did this and why.

"Livingston Parish Assistant Superintendent John Watson says the board is investigating the incident. However, because it is a personnel matter, he says he cannot comment further. However, Andrews says the school system is working to have her son transferred to another school."

Reporter: Cheryl Mercedes

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You just can't get good reporting these days (note misspelling of the word welts). What did the pahrents think was going to happen once they gave the school permission to use corporal punishment? But I'll bet it stopped the misbehavior. A number of autism sites condemned this action, with one commentator saying that obviously the school did not have the proper behavior specialists. I'd say the school handled this sprog just fine.

Some of those antidiscipline advocates need to look into the research of Ivar Lovaas. He received good results from using what is now called "aversion therapy" on autistic children, including spanking. It was virtually the only way to stop the disruptive and destructive behavior many of these children displayed, including inflicting self-injury. Here's an interview with Lovaas from Psychology Today in 1974:

http://neurodiversity.com/library_chance_1974.html

He wasn't afraid to fight fire with fire, and some institutions employ aversion therapy to this day. And to reiterate my previous point, I suspect many milder cases of autism, Aspergers, hyperactivity, etc., were cured by firm discipline and punishment at home many years ago, before pahrents decided they wanted to be their kyds' friends and therefore sought to justify bad behavior with medical labels. In other words, parents back then used a form of aversion therapy with success.

By the way, on a number of websites parents of autistic children complain that others—including even professionals—will tell them that "all their kid needs is a good spanking". Too bad they don't take that advice to heart. But that does explain why you might see some chyld in a public place screaming and acting out while the pahrent seemingly ignores it: the chyld has autism and "can't be disciplined". But get this: such pahrents also post that others should ignore the chyld's bad behavior and say nothing about it; they even say that the kyd's noise and disruption in public are "nobody else's business". This explains a lot of what the rest of us see with chyldren in public all too frequently. "They're disaaaaaabled! Don't try to control them! They won't understand!"

Oh, but they will understand a spanking. I'll lay odds on that.

Everybody wants to label a badly-behaved kid with some kind of "disorder" just because the pahrunts don't want to take responsibility for their shitty parenting and to make sure everyone "treads lightly" around little Johnny. He's got pwoblems, you know.