Liberal parenting leads to brats?

Sweden, the first nation to ever ban the smacking of children, is apparently suffering entitlement blowback from its liberal attitude to child rearing:

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/li...nts-spoil-children-rotten-20131102-2wtjy.html

I administer smacks to my children - sparingly, and hard enough to sting but not enough to mark.

In some countries this would be considered assault. Even in countries where smacking is not banned, many believe this a form of child abuse.

Irrespective of this, there are plenty of people who maintain that smacking as a form of discipline just doesn't work.

To smack or not to smack?

Never had what's going on when I was in school and people my age got the **** beat out of us. Colombine happened during the last few weeks of my senior year and its been a common thing ever since

Even discipline is a form of love. To not discipline at all I think is a huge mistake. Kids are cruel and don't know anything and if not checked they'll become cruel adults, who don't know anything. Parenting is anything but academic.

I wouldn't smack my son but I don't judge those that do. My son responds very well when I take away his privileges, that's my way of disciplining him as well as a stern telling off.

Good parenting seems a thing of the past.
Now we have teenagers bringing up kids, people who are barely old enough to look after themselves. Respect doesn't seem to apply to these people or the children they raise.
I got the odd crack when i deserved it, didn't do me any harm.
I've never hit my son but have found that losing privileges works just fine.

Heisenberg said:

I wouldn't smack my son but I don't judge those that do. My son responds very well when I take away his privileges, that's my way of disciplining him as well as a stern telling off.

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Collectorcol said:

I've never hit my son but have found that losing privileges works just fine.

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Not even a single smack on the hand? Kudos to you two. My youngest is nearly four and she's been spanked on the butt twice and on the hand twice. I never feel good about it, neither does my wife. But in all those cases she has never repeated the offending behaviours.

My first kid responded well to losing privileges, but the youngest one doesn't give a s **t. She even takes herself to the "naughty corner" before we've opened our mouths. She watches me standing near the cupboard, about to stash her favourite toy in there for what she knows will be 2 days, and she shrugs her shoulders, like "fair enough, do what you gotta do, I got time".

To answer the question posed in the thread title..........yes.

Lejuan said:

Not even a single smack on the hand? Kudos to you two. My youngest is nearly four and she's been spanked on the butt twice and on the hand twice. I never feel good about it, neither does my wife. But in all those cases she has never repeated the offending behaviours.

My first kid responded well to losing privileges, but the youngest one doesn't give a s **t. She even takes herself to the "naughty corner" before we've opened our mouths. She watches me standing near the cupboard, about to stash her favourite toy in there for what she knows will be 2 days, and she shrugs her shoulders, like "fair enough, do what you gotta do, I got time".

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Different kids respond to different things.
I can honestly say I have never raised a hand to my 6 year old son.
He loves his comics, books, movies and games so removing them is very effective.
As said i, at times, was a little bastard and the odd belt didn't harm me physically or mentally.
Not enough respect in the world now and I fully believe that is down to either poor parenting or parents who don't give a damn as long as they get a quiet easy life.

Naughty step never worked for me either. He would take himself there and get comfortable

I don't know if it's the lack of smacking that leads to brats, so much as lack of discipline and order in general. I believe kids should feel somewhat autonomous and independent, but with very clear boundaries regarding acceptable and unacceptable behavior. I think they should feel the world is stable and predictable, and that includes there being rules that have to be followed consistently, with predictable punishments and rewards involved for breaking and following rules. There are different kinds of effective carrots and sticks, but no sticks at all doesn't seem like a good strategy.

Some people do take it too far. I've seen parents slap the crap out of their kids, Sometimes even slap them in the face really hard.

But I think the answer to this thread is Yes, Absolutely. This is getting kind of scary because kids are going to grow up thinking there are no consequences for their actions. we are going to end up with a society run by a bunch of psychopaths

Well obviously you're going to have dumb *** parents who don't know how to do anything but smack their kids. Kids who will often still lack discipline because their parents act arbitrarily and based on emotion instead of being rational. Poor folk do that. I've seen it in the Wal-Mart way too many times. If spanking happens, it should be a totally cold and rational move IMO. If anyone does it in the heat of the moment, then that is shameful because a parent is taking out frustrations on someone much smaller and weaker than they are, and that's pretty pathetic.

Kind of interesting, that the concept of "liberal parenting" is something I often see from "conservative" families, politically. Probably even more than from left-leaning families. In that sense, I don't think there is any real political connotation to this behavior. In terms of socio-economic status, I've seen the well off letting their kids develop feelings of entitlement and brattiness quite a bit.

I would say yes. I tell people all the time, my parents didn't have to spank me all that often to have an effect. Any time I would considering something I could get in trouble for there was a part of me that would say is this worth the spanking if I get caught.

karamazov80 said:

Well obviously you're going to have dumb *** parents who don't know how to do anything but smack their kids. Kids who will often still lack discipline because their parents act arbitrarily and based on emotion instead of being rational. Poor folk do that. I've seen it in the Wal-Mart way too many times. If spanking happens, it should be a totally cold and rational move IMO. If anyone does it in the heat of the moment, then that is shameful because a parent is taking out frustrations on someone much smaller and weaker than they are, and that's pretty pathetic.

Kind of interesting, that the concept of "liberal parenting" is something I often see from "conservative" families, politically. Probably even more than from left-leaning families. In that sense, I don't think there is any real political connotation to this behavior. In terms of socio-economic status, I've seen the well off letting their kids develop feelings of entitlement and brattiness quite a bit.

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I agree. Doesn't matter what your political beliefs are, there are ****ty parenting on both sides.

I don't think making your kids fear you is the way to go, personally. Having them earn trust again and priviliges is what I prefer. A kid doesn't need physical pain to learn a lesson.

My mom would take away my stuff for a while, put me on a chair and asked me to repeat what she said I did wrong, and to tell myself what the results would be and then asked me how I would make it up to people, either through apology or through extra chores and stuff.

But that's a kind of fear, right? A fear of losing your stuff or privileges, or having to do extra chores or whatever. I think there has to be costs to disobeying parents and breaking rules. Ultimately, it's basic psychological conditioning. Kids should have a little alarm that goes off in their head when they know they are about to do something "bad," and then they don't do it because there are costs. My point is, this doesn't have to be a physical cost, though that could be on the menu of options a parent has. For the most part though, I think kids can learn without that approach. But parents have to find things kids care about. One of the problems with my oldest daughter is that she sometimes just doesn't seem to care enough about anything. Once I told her I would throw her favorite dress in the garbage if she misbehaved a certain way. She did anyway, I through the dress away, and she was unfazed. But this was a weird situation.

But I do think of it like Cold War deterrence theory--you have to be resolved, you have to present a credible threat, but you have to be predictable and fair given the rules of the game if it's going to work. The biggest culprit for bratty kids may be "liberal" parenting, but the second biggest problem has to be the kinds of arbitrary and inconsistent parenting I see a lot of, which isn't just allowing kids to do whatever, but isn't enforcing rules in a way kids can understand and anticipate.

Xenophilius said:

I don't think making your kids fear you is the way to go, personally. Having them earn trust again and priviliges is what I prefer. A kid doesn't need physical pain to learn a lesson.

My mom would take away my stuff for a while, put me on a chair and asked me to repeat what she said I did wrong, and to tell myself what the results would be and then asked me how I would make it up to people, either through apology or through extra chores and stuff.

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Fear has its moments. A kid that can do wrong without even a twinge of fear is a kid that has lost all respect. There is a time for a healthy fear of Dad.

SnakeDoc

Im blessed with a 5yr old girl who 99% of the time has perfect behavior. Ive had to raise my voice maybe twice ever. Not anywhere close to needing any physical discipline. She gets upset if she just knows we're angry with her for any reason.

That being said some children obviously need stern/corrective discipline. And exactly what that discipline is can differ from child to child.

Personally I think some of the main issues are kids having kids.
Parents not practicing what they preach to their children and just generally not being good role models.
Single-parent homes also make it more difficult IMO. Good Cop/Bad Cop works great.

Last year we found out our third grade girls had cheated is school. One of our daughters had done the other's homework. They got busted by their teachers and it got back to me and my wife.

We weighed if this had been an attempt to help with homework or if there was real deception involved. After speaking with the teachers and getting the facts it was clear there was punishment required.

They were cut off from TV, computers, Ipods, videogames, or anything of the sort for two weeks.

We also made it clear that when they are stuck on homework they come to mom and I for help, they don't resort to this again.

The only time I've used spanking as a punishment was the one time one of them hit the other. One or two swats on the butt, not very hard. Spanking is humiliating enough without putting real pain into it, especially when they're young.

Uh oh........

Lejuan said:

She watches me standing near the cupboard, about to stash her favourite toy in there for what she knows will be 2 days, and she shrugs her shoulders, like "fair enough, do what you gotta do, I got time".

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My aunt and uncle gave my cousin their old car for his 16th birthday (it was a POS so it wasn't anything special), and he tried that attitude with them when they grounded him and took the keys away for 2 weeks.

He wasn't happy when he got home from school a couple days later to find out that my Uncle gave the car to a co-worker's son for free. When my cousin flipped out my Uncle told him he'd rather give the car to someone that appreciated than an ungrateful brat (I sanitized the vocabulary for your safety). My Uncle then proceeded to tell my cousin that if he wants to continue living in that house free of charge he better get his crap straight.