0:01 - Introduction to Spanking Debate
9:28 - The Purpose of Discipline
17:39 - Understanding Child Behavior
26:24 - Differentiating Discipline from Abuse
32:09 - Modeling Self-Discipline
34:43 - The Role of Parental Behavior
In this episode, I delve into the controversial topic of spanking as a form of child discipline, referencing an article by Jared Pingleton that's sparked renewed debate, particularly in light of recent legal cases involving child abuse by public figures. I begin by exploring the core purpose of discipline in parenting: teaching children self-discipline. I argue that effective discipline should empower children to reproduce desired behaviors independently, equipping them with skills rather than relying on physical punishment.
I critically examine the philosophical underpinnings of using spanking as a disciplinary measure. If the goal is to teach self-discipline, can a method that involves hitting truly teach a child to control their impulses or manage their behavior as they grow? I draw parallels with teaching skills, highlighting that if a disciplinary method cannot be replicated positively by the child in the future, it fails to meet educational standards. Each example I provide reinforces the importance of modeling behaviors that children can observe and imitate in their lives.
Furthermore, I challenge the rationale of "mild spanking" as a corrective measure, questioning how any form of physical harm could align with the objective of fostering positive behavior. I dissect the common arguments that absolve physical punishment from being categorized as abuse, emphasizing the inconsistency between discipline rooted in love versus discipline enacted through fear or aggression. I argue that true authority in parenting must not rely on physical power but rather on building a foundation of respect and understanding.
Throughout the discussion, I highlight the necessity of differentiating between mere compliance that stems from fear and genuine respect that fosters self-discipline. The episode then transitions into a reflection on the impact of generational cycles of behavior. I invite listeners to consider how their childhood experiences shape their parenting techniques, suggesting that a commitment to raising children with greater compassion and understanding can lead to improved outcomes, breaking the cycle of abuse and harsh discipline.
By advocating for a model of discipline centered on love, clarity, and example-setting, I argue that effective parenting does not require physical punishment. Instead, the focus should be on nurturing positive behaviors and providing the tools children need to thrive independently. As I conclude, I call upon parents to consider the long-term implications of their disciplinary choices on their children’s development, emphasizing that personal improvement is key to fostering a non-violent, constructive approach to parenting.
[0:00] Hey there, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. Hope you're doing well.
[0:02] So, a little article here, spanking can be an appropriate form of discipline, of child discipline, by Jared Pingleton, who I think is a writer and a minister. And this is from a little while ago, about 10 years ago, in 2014. And I wanted to just put forward some of the philosophical objections to it. Got the truth about spanking, which goes into a lot of the science and sort of outcome things. You can also look at my interviews with Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff for the reasons why spanking is sort of counterproductive based on studies. Oh, sorry, big bug. So this writer writes, NFL running back Adrian Peterson's recent arrest for allegedly abusing his four-year-old son have once again sparked a debate over whether spanking is an appropriate form of discipline.
[0:49] So discipline, an appropriate form of discipline. So the word discipline here is really, really interesting. Now, I think we can all understand that one of the main purposes of parenting is to teach children self-discipline, right? To teach children self-discipline. Now, if you are trying to teach a child a particular skill, it has to be a skill that they can reproduce in their own lives, right? So, when you are a dad, you teach child how to ride a bike, right? Sort of a big thing that parents do.
[1:30] And you teach a kid how to ride a bike, and you show the kid how the bike works, you show how you ride the bike, and then you get the kid on the bike, you hold the seat, you know how it goes, right? Because the purpose of transferring the skill of riding a bike is achieved when the child can competently ride the bike independent of the adult. In other words, when the child has recreated the skill in his or her own body, right? So, you say it's an appropriate form of discipline. Well, the purpose of discipline is to teach self-discipline. So, if you want your child to brush her teeth every morning and night, then you explain, you show, you demonstrate, and you remind, and maybe you supervise a little bit at the beginning, and the purpose, of course, is for the child to brush her teeth independent of you, right? Because, right, at some point, often in the not-too-distant future, children are, in fact, independent of you. So, the purpose of discipline is to teach the child self-discipline.
[2:43] Now, because I already said that the purpose of knowledge transfer is to have the child be able to reproduce the behavior in, I'm just going to say, because I have a daughter in herself, I know, you know what, I think boys are considered more aggressive, so let's make it a male. I have experienced raising a girl. I have experienced being a boy. So hopefully those two will come together that way. Right. So, the purpose is to have the child deploy self-discipline. Now, if I were to teach a child a skill that the child could not reproduce himself, that would be considered bad teaching, right? So, for instance, if I were to try to teach a child how to sing a very low note, and that child happened to have a very high voice, or vice versa, then the child could not reproduce what it is that I was doing. The child could sing a low note, but if they're a tenor, they won't be able to sing as low a note, of course, as a basso profondo, right? A profound bass.
[3:48] So, we want to make sure when we teach children skills that they can perform those skills themselves. Themselves there's no point teaching a deaf child a jazz soft jazz music appreciation right because they won't be able to reproduce it themselves because they can't hear the music so the question for me with regards to spanking is or at least one of the questions for me with regards to spanking is.
[4:16] If you hit a child in order to teach discipline, are you expecting the child to hit himself when he needs to be disciplined in the future, right? So, in other words, when the child has an impulse that is unwise, will you expect the child to pull down his pants and smack himself on the bare buttocks if he, say, for instance, picks up a candy bar when he's, you know, 20, he picks up a candy bar in a store with the intention of stealing it, right?
[4:49] Will he punish himself in order to discipline himself? Will he pull down his own pants and smack himself or even just smack himself on his closed pants? Will we see him hitting himself if he's doing something that is wrong, right? Is he going to, if he doesn't want to study for a particular test, is he going to yell at himself or hit himself in order to get himself to study for a particular test, let's say, in law school in his 20s? Well, no. So is it an appropriate form of knowledge transfer if the child later cannot or will not reproduce the behavior in order to achieve the desired outcome. So if, for instance, you taught a child to drive by constantly holding the wheel, then the child would not actually be learning how to drive. Or a young person, right? If you tried to teach a child to shoot a bow and arrow by constantly shooting the bow and arrow for him, then you're not transferring the skills. So if you say that discipline is achieved by hitting.
[6:05] Then you're trying to say to the child that when you get older, you hit yourself in order to achieve this thing called discipline.
[6:16] Now, of course, that's not how it works. That's not how it could possibly work. And therefore, we know that the parent who is hitting the child is not giving the child any skills that the child can use to enact discipline, self-discipline, in the future. Now, of course, how do we transfer self-discipline? Well, of course, self-discipline is complicated because it falls to the Aristotelian mean, right? Which means an excess of self-discipline is severe asceticism, self-punishment, and leads to a rather joyless and self-totalitarian environment, right?
[7:00] Rather, and of course, a deficiency in self-discipline leads to licentiousness and obesity and STDs and drunkenness and no savings. In the same way that saving money is good, but too much saving money and you become a miser, too little saving money and you worry spendthrift. So, self-discipline is complicated. And the best way to transfer complicated information is to model the behavior and then transfer the reasons. So, if you model self-discipline, right, then the child will copy you, because that's what children do, they imprint and they copy, right? So, if you model self-discipline, then the child will copy you, and then you transfer the reasons for the self-discipline.
[7:48] So, I have never nagged my daughter to exercise, but she sees me, you know, three or four times a week exercising, sometimes we're chatting while I'm working out or whatever, but I don't have to tell her to exercise. She's just grown up with it and it's just any more than I needed to nag her to learn language or whatever, right? She just grew up learning and speaking it and so there's no particular issue that way. Now, of course, you get your child or your child will automatically copy your behavior and then, of course, you provide the reasons behind what you're doing so the child can make the behavior knowledgeable on his or her own terms, right? So that's the first thing. Is it an appropriate form of discipline? Is it good to teach a child a skill that the child will never apply in that manner in the future? The child will never say, I have an urge to do X, Y, and Z, but in order to counter that urge, I'm going to hit myself. That would be considered.
[8:57] Weird and unhealthy and pathological and whatever, right? So, that's important. We won't do the whole sentence with this level of detail. So, it says, though some contend any form of physical correction equates to child abuse, there is a giant chasm between a mild spanking properly administered out of love and an out-of-control adult venting their emotions by physically abusing a child. Okay. Any form of physical correction.
[9:28] Now, physical correction is a euphemism. So if you've ever had a personal trainer, then the personal trainer will offer you physical corrections, right? So if you're doing bicep curls by throwing your back all over the place and not isolating the movement into your shoulders and elbows, then a personal trainer, at least a decent personal trainer, will probably say that you should try to not throw your back all over the place. It doesn't really matter how much weight you lift. What matters is that you do the form correctly. So physical correction can be adjustments, right? When I used to do an hour and a half of Ashtanga yoga back in the day, then the yoga teacher would sometimes correct my posture.
[10:12] Then I would offer to marry her. No, I'm just kidding. So, the yoga teacher would correct my posture. So, that is physical correction. But she didn't hit me for getting it wrong. So, that is... And whenever people are using euphemisms, you know that their conscience is not their friend, right? They're not doing well with regards to their conscience, right? Okay, there is a giant chasm between mild spanking properly administered out of love. Okay, so mild spanking. So then what they say is, it is tap or a very mild spanking over clothes and so on, right? But the problem is, of course, that if you are attempting to change a child's impulsivity, then a light swat on.
[11:01] Say, the buttocks through underwear and trousers or pants is not something that's going to bother the child. child. It has to be something that hurts enough for the child to stop what they're doing, to have, the disapproval of the adult impressed upon their mind and body, and to remember it in the future, right? Because if we say to a child, don't do X, right? And then the child keeps doing X, it's because the child is not remembering repeated instructions, right? Now, if the child is not remembering repeated instructions, then the hitting of the child, the spanking of the child, must be enough to overcome the child's lack of memory. In other words, it has to deeply imprint itself in the child's mind in a way that repeated loving concern and advice does not. So, this is what generally happens is they say, well, no, it's just it's a mild spanking properly administered.
[12:03] If the child is forgetting, and of course, no reasonable parent, even pro-spanking parent, would say that you hit a child the first time the child does something wrong, like you have to repeatedly explain it and the child keeps doing it, which means the child is unable to remember or unwilling to remember verbal instructions, right? Don't run at the road, don't grab things from the stove, that kind of stuff, right? So, because the child is unable or unwilling to remember verbal instructions, repeated verbal instructions, then hitting must be enough to break through the child's indifference to advice and imprint permanent changes in the child's decision process. So, the idea of a light swatting is to say that a light swatting is far more memorable to the child than significant parental disapproval. But of course, children are largely programmed to please their parents. And we say, ah, yes, well, what about the defiant children? Well, no, they are, in fact, pleasing their parents because the parents want to hit them so the children act out so they can provide value to the cruel parents through the exercise of cruelty, right? So, they're still providing value, still doing what their parents want. It's just a little less obvious, right?
[13:19] So, mild spanking properly administered. Well, that doesn't make any sense because if it's mild, it's not going to be enough to change the child's mind, which is the goal of behavior, right? All right, at Focus on the Family, we believe that parents have been entrusted with the incredible privilege and responsibility of shaping their child's behavior in a positive direction. Unfortunately, each of us enters this world with desires that are selfish, unkind, and harmful to others and ourselves. Right. Selfish, unkind, and harmful to others and ourselves. So you see, let's drop over selfish for the moment. Being unkind and harmful to others is bad. However, spanking is being unkind and harmful to others. So, it's really hard to say that we have to cure children of being unkind and harmful to others by modeling unkind and harmful behavior, such as spanking. Now, of course, people would say, ah, yes, but it's not unkind. It is, in fact, loving. But.
[14:20] Goes very much against the preference and integrity and peace of mind of the children, so they perceive it as unkind, right?
[14:28] So, if you're going to say, well, we can't be unkind and harmful to others, and so when my child is harmful and unkind to others, then I will be harmful and unkind to my child, right? That's just a fundamental problem with that from a logical standpoint. Now, with regards to selfishness, well, that means acting to your own benefit at the expense of others, right? So, a thief is selfish because the thief takes something that someone else has worked hard to create or provide or purchase, takes it for themselves, so they are benefiting themselves at the expense of others, right? So, if you are acting to benefit yourself at the expense of others, well, that's what spanking fundamentally is. Now, you can say it's to the benefit of the child, but the child certainly does not experience it that way because it has to be painful and unpleasant and humiliating enough to break through the indifference that I mentioned earlier, right? So, the parent is saying, well, I think spanking is good and spanking comes at your expense and it is to my benefit, right? I mean, that's how the child is going to perceive it, that the parent wants to spank, the parent thinks that spanking is good, and the child suffers the pain of being spanked, right?
[15:52] So, that doesn't work either, right? Okay, so, spanking then can be one effective discipline option among several in a parent's tool chest as they seek to steer their children away from negative behaviors and guide them towards becoming responsible, healthy, happy adults. Well, that's just the positive-sounding word salad that we've talked about before. It is vital, however, that spanking be administered within proper guidelines. All right, so Peterson, this guy who was reported to have harmed his child, yeah, a child should never be abused. Spanking is most effective as a deterrent to undesirable behavior for younger preschoolers, but never for infants. That's because reasoning and taking away privileges often simply don't work with kids in that age range. Right, so children are punished for things that they cannot understand, right? So, he's saying here, spanking is used against children when children are too young to understand what is happening.
[16:57] Younger preschoolers, but never for infants. And he says spanking should be phased out completely before adolescence. So that's not actually, as children age, spanking should become less frequent as other types of consequences are utilized. Spanking should be phased out completely before adolescence. Interesting, of course, and not coincidental, as we've heard about in countless call-in shows, that somebody here is saying, ah, well, you see, interestingly enough, the moment that children get big and strong, oh, oh, oh, spanking is bad, right? That's always the case, right? So, reasoning and taking away privileges doesn't work with kids in that age range.
[17:39] And I guess my question is, if you have, if you model consistent behavior in the face of children or when you're in charge of children who love and respect you, right, if you model positive behavior around children who love and respect you, why would they act differently? Foundation, I mean, there'll be some variation, of course, right? But if you consistently use the word for tree around children who love and respect you, then why would they end up calling a tree anything but a tree? If you model consistent behavior around children who love and respect you, how would they fundamentally end up doing things that are different?
[18:21] Well, it's kind of impossible to know. And that's sort of the general theory, right? So if the child is too young to understand reasoning, then the child is simply being hit, like you would hit an animal who can't understand reasoning, and I wouldn't even recommend hitting animals, but you are treating the child, you are correcting the child's behavior, right? You're correcting the child's behavior when the child is too young to understand reason, morality, cause, and effect, right? Right? So he's saying that, what have we got here? He says that, well, what we really, really want to do is make sure that we guide them towards ultimately becoming responsible, healthy, happy adults. Right? So we want to teach responsibility to children who are too young to understand the concept of responsibility. Well, it makes no sense to me. If the child can't understand morality, how can the child's behavior be punished?
[19:22] I mean, I don't speak Japanese, so if I fail to follow instructions given to me in Japanese, well, that's not my fault. Even though I may, in fact, want to follow the instructions given to me in Japanese, even though I may desperately want to follow them, they may be life-behaving instructions. But I do not speak Japanese, and therefore, how am I morally culpable for failing to follow instructions in Japanese, right? If I don't know how to do, I don't know, I don't know how to apply a defibrillator or something in some emergency, someone is yelling at me in Japanese how to do it, well, I don't know Japanese, so I can't follow their instructions. So, why would I be punished for something which I cannot understand? And if I'm capable of understanding it, then why do I need to be punished, right? If I'm capable of understanding behaviors, cause and effect consequences and the behaviors have been modeled for me already, and I understand the reasons behind it and I'm gaining a stronger sense of morality as I age and so on.
[20:18] I'm capable of understanding morality and reasoning, then I should be reasoned with, right? If I'm not capable of understanding reason and morality, then being punished is an oxymoron, right? It makes no sense. Sorry, he said redundantly. So, generally speaking, we advise parents that corporate discipline should only be applied in cases of willful disobedience or defiance of authority, never for mere childish irresponsibility. Okay, so willful disobedience or defiance of authority. Right. So, if authority is willing to hit you, should it be respected? Right? Because the only authority in the case of hitting a child is that the parent is larger than the child and stronger than the child and willing to use violence because of that size and strength. So, authority cannot mean, as particularly in moral education, which is what this guy is talking about, moral education, authority in the education of morality, cannot simply mean willing to hit someone, willing to use size and strength to use violence, right? Otherwise, we would let off every giant guy who beat up his tiny girlfriend, because he would claimed that he was morally educating her and she was defying his moral authority. And it's like, well, the only authority you have is you're bigger and stronger and willing to hit. That's not moral authority.
[21:48] Willful disobedience. Well, the problem with that is that falls prey to the sin of pride.
[21:55] Look, we know that there are a lot of children badly raised in the world, and we also hope, I would like to think, and I know for a lot of people that is the case, I would hope that people would try to raise their children better, right? I was talking to my daughter the other day about how a lot of my parenting was invented to some degree on the fly. Obviously, I had a lot of principles behind my, but because I was raising my daughter so utterly differently from how I was raised, I had, I'm in some trouble. And there were mistakes that I made because of all of that. Like when you're learning a new language, you're going to make mistakes, right? You can't be perfect at it. And so we absolutely want to raise our children in a better manner than we were raised. We're not aiming to just recreate our own childhoods. We're aiming to improve the childhoods of our children. Now, because of that, because of that, I mean, because anyone who doesn't say that is saying that they were raised perfectly without any possibility of improvement. And that's just not true. I mean, that's a sin of vanity or it's a sin of pride. There can always be improvements that can be made, right? So, if we are aiming to raise our children in a better manner than we were raised, that's good. But what that means is that our children are going to end up with perspectives that we ourselves did not have.
[23:20] Our children are going to end up with perspectives that we don't have because, let's say that you were raised too violently, like even by this guy's metric, let's say that you were raised too violently. Well, then when you raise your children less violently or hopefully non-violently, if you raise your children non-violently then your children are going to have perspectives that you yourself don't have.
[23:44] Same way, it's like teaching a different language. If I was raised speaking English and I raised my daughter speaking Japanese, she's going to have thoughts and concepts and language that I myself do not have. Because I learned Japanese later, she's born with it, right? And that's something as objective as or fairly objective as a language set, right?
[24:05] So defiance of authority means your children disagree with you. But if you're raising your children in a better manner than you yourself were raised, then your children are going to disagree with you because some of your perspectives are going to be the residue of having been raised less well than they are, right? It's like if you only know DOS and then your children know Windows, they're going to tell you to do things in a different way than you did, right? They're going to tell you to move your mouse and click rather than uncover your keyboard and type. So your children are going to have a different perspective than you, or from you, because you're raising them better than you were raised. So, defiance of authority simply means your children disagree with you, and it is, of course, entirely the sin of vanity to say, if my children, who are experiencing different conditions and better conditions than I experience in being raised, if my children disagree with me, they are wrong and bad and must be punished. That's the sin of pride. You want to raise your children so that they have a different experience, a better experience than you did, which means they're going to disagree with you at times and be right.
[25:18] So, for instance, if you were raised, as I was, as a young child, in a violent school environment where you could get, you know, punished or caned and so on, right? And then disagreeing with your teachers and going against what your teachers say would be quite hazardous and would provoke a lot of anxiety because you don't want to get caned or hit or whatever, right?
[25:41] But if you raise your children and they go to school without corporal punishment, then they're going to have the capacity to defy teachers in a way that you didn't have, and that's healthier thereby. Now, if you say, because of your own history and experience, you say to your children, you must always obey the teacher because that's what you had to do because the teacher could hit you, and your children disagree with you, well, that's because they're being raised better. So, is that defiant of your authority? Anyway, he goes on to say, and right, spanking, and it should never be administered harshly, impulsively, or with the potential to cause physical harm. Well, that's not true, because all spanking must require physical harm.
[26:25] Now, I'm not saying, of course, he's talking about, like, I don't know, breaking their legs or something like that. And that is, of course, right? But all spanking is with the goal of creating pain. And pain is a sign of physical harm.
[26:43] Pain is a sign of a physical harm, right? I mean, if you're peeing, what do they call it? Pissing fishhooks, if you have some sort of STD, right? So if you're peeing and it really hurts, that's a sign of some sort of physical harm, right? So a bruise is a sign of physical harm, right? And again, I know he's not talking about bruising kids, but spanking by its very definition has to cause physical pain, and pain is a marker of physical harm. So that doesn't make sense. It should never be administered harshly, impulsively. he says, along those lines, we caution parents who have a hard time controlling their temper to choose alternative forms of discipline. There's never an excuse or an occasion to abuse a child, right? So they're dividing hitting into corrective discipline and abuse, right? So you've got to find just a sweet spot for hitting. Too little and the child will just laugh at you too much and the child goes to hospital, right? And then you go to jail, right? So parents who have a hard time controlling their temper, right?
[27:38] So, hit someone because they're doing wrong, but don't be angry. Hit someone, hit a child because they're doing wrong, they're defying you, but don't be angry. Well, why would you want to put forward a child, quote, discipline method if you, that that would only really be enacted by those with a failure to control their temper. See, earlier I mentioned if you want to transfer knowledge to a child, you model the behavior consistently yourself, and then when they're old enough, you explain the reasons why. So if someone has the degree of self-control that they can hit a child without being at all angry, then they're already modeling self-control, and the child will copy that anyway.
[28:26] Children grow up, I mean, if you've ever been around, like in England, there's like 5,000 different accents, right? So children grow up and they copy the accents of everyone around them. It's interesting, though, of course, if you have an accent and your kid goes to school, they'll copy the accent of peers, not parents, because that's their future, right? But, you know, if you go to Scotland and there's some kid who grows up in a Scottish village at the arse end of the Outer Hebrides, then that kid is going to speak with that accent. They copy. They copy often the religion of their parents. They copy some of the physical mannerisms of their parents. They just copy-paste, right? So, if you have the self-control to hit your children without being angry, then you have the self-control and are modeling the self-control to the point where the children are going to internalize that self-control and you won't need to hit them. All right just do a bit more for parents who do choose to spank the proper philosophy and approach is extremely important to begin with as with all forms of correction the concepts of punishment and discipline are absolute opposites punishment is motivated by anger focuses on the past and results in either compliance due to fear or rebellion and feelings of shame guilt and or hostility on the other hand discipline is motivated by love for the child and focuses on the future and results in obedience and feelings of security. Right. So what they're saying is you should apply extreme negative stimuli to the children, but the children should never experience that as punishment.
[29:55] Come on. Oh, I mean, how disconnected and dissociated you have to be to say that and not notice that's a complete contradiction. So you have to apply extreme negative stimuli because, you know, you've already reasoned with, you tried maybe raising your voice, you've tried being sharp, you've tried to, you know, bribe or promise rewards, or you've threatened other forms of punishment. So you finally get, right, it's the last step, right? You finally get to hitting the children. And the children, of course, experience the hitting as an extreme negative stimuli. But apparently, the children are not supposed to experience extreme negative stimuli as punishment. I mean, my gosh, it's like wiring someone up to spell words, and when they get the words wrong, you send a significant shock through their system, and you tell them not to experience it as punishment. I mean, my God, what do you even say about this? Of course the children are going to experience this punishment.
[30:58] Obedience and feelings of security. So, after you hit your child, they're supposed to feel secure in their relationship with you, though you can, of course, or you do have the right to claim the right and enact the right to inflict extreme negative consequences on them, painful negative consequences on them. Okay, so it says, this is because the term discipline derives from the root word disciple, which means to teach. Parents have an ongoing opportunity and responsibility to teach our children how to love well and live life as effectively and healthfully as possible. What we want children to understand is that the gentle sting of a spanking is connected to the greater and often long-term pain of harmful choices. Simply put, prevention is easier than cure. Right, so this is like going to the dentist, they scrape your teeth, that's better than getting cavities or gum recessions. You, I mean, I don't even know what to say about vaccines anymore, but you go into, you know, going to the gym is less comfortable sometimes, but it beats, you know, long-term decay of your body, that kind of stuff, right? Well, I mean, the gentle sting of a spanking, I mean, again, this is, it's not gentle, because it has to be enough to imprint itself in a permanent fashion or semi-permanent fashion on the child's mind.
[32:09] So, it has to be strong enough of a negative consequence that the child remembers who is in a state of chaotic, pre-remembering mental state, right?
[32:19] A child should always receive a clear warning before any offense that might merit a spanking and understand why they're receiving this disciplinary action. If he or she deliberately disobeys, the child should be informed of the upcoming spanking and escorted to a private area. The spanking should be lovingly administered in a clear and consistent manner. Afterward, the lesson should be gently reiterated so that the child understands and learns from this teachable experience. Learns what? What do they learn? What does the child learn from being hit? Well, the child learns that the parent is willing to hit the child. The child learns that the parent is bigger and stronger and is capable and has the legal right and society approves of this hitting. And so what is the child learning? Is the child learning a moral lesson? Nope. The child is simply learning that the adult is bigger and stronger and willing to inflict pain and that nobody in his society has any issue with that. In fact, they approve of it. That's all the child can learn, because the child is too young to learn, reflect on, absorb, and enact moral lesson. All right, so many parents today view themselves primarily as the child's friend and recoil at the idea of administering discipline. Children, though, desperately need their parents' love and affirmation, as well as their authoritative guidance and correction. Disciplining our sons and daughters is part of the tough work of parenting, but it will pay dividends, big dividends, in the long run. oh yeah so of course again you get your children to enact self-discipline by being self-disciplined yourself so that they copy your behavior.
[33:44] And you then, at an age-appropriate time, transfer to them the knowledge of why this self-discipline is important. In the same way that your children will absorb the words you use for common things, your children will absorb those words, and then later, when they're older, you can teach them the spelling, the conceptual definitions, and the adjectives, the adverbs, the predicate, and all of that, right? You can teach them the parts of language when they're older, but they will copy the words that you use because they want to be able to get things and use things and manipulate things in the world. So your kids will do all of that just because you're using language.
[34:27] And then you can teach them the concepts later on. So you want to teach self-discipline, which means being self-disciplined yourself. And also they will see that adults have trouble with self-discipline too. right? Do you have self-discipline as an adult? Do you exercise? Do you eat well?
[34:44] Are you overweight? Are you physically strong? Do you say the right things in terms of moral honesty? Do your kids see you lie, right? Do your kids see you when you don't want to see your aunt say that you're feeling a little under the weather? Or do your kids see you lie? Do they see you eat too much candy? Do they see you not exercise? Do they see you get snippy with your wife or your husband? Do they see, you know, all of the foibles which, you know, plague and stimulate mankind as a whole? And do they see you exercising self-discipline in a consistent fashion? I think it's not perfect. I don't know what perfect would mean. But do they see you exercising self-discipline in a consistent fashion? Or do they see you not doing that?
[35:33] And if you make yourself do something, like you get up, you got a headache, you don't want to go to work, but you go to work, do they see you spanking yourself in order to do that? Well, no. So then again, you are asking them to enact a form of discipline that you and they will never do later on in life, which is obviously somewhat odd, right? So I would say it's an interesting article and I appreciate the arguments being put forward in one central direction but it's a lot easier to hit children than improve yourself but if you improve yourself and your children benefit from your example you won't need to hit them at all all right freedomain.com slash donate thank you so much for listening, and supporting the show freedomain.com slash donate take care my friends I'll talk to you soon bye.
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