[Fun Poll] How satisfied are u with ur child(ren) results?

[Chenonceau]

Over the past few days, I have received messages from parents who DO cane... and regardless of whether I write about my experience, they WILL cane anyway. These parents want to know why caning, if ill-used, is a Fukushima in the making. This post is written for parents who DO cane to provide a different perspective on how and why and when caning can be used. You don't have to agree with me. This is just my own view and hopefully would add to the cross-pollination of parenting ideas.


For Me, Caning is Not an Expression of Anger

One person asked me \"How to cane if not in anger?\" For me, this is a no-no. Hitting someone as an expression of anger is not something I can accept. I think that throwing a punch in a bar because one is angry is not acceptable. To me, caning a child because one is angry is the same expression of anger visited upon a smaller and weaker human being, with no defences against his/her parents.

Anger is a beast that needs to be tamed because at its worst, it cannot be controlled. Physical violence is a tool that causes too much damage in the hands of Anger Uncontrolled. I find it best to tell my Anger that the cane will never be its tool.


For Me, Caning is Not a Punishment

How bad/important something is, is not my reason for caning. Attitude... moral values... etc... may be more important than academics, but I have never caned for these because I have been able to find other ways to successfully change these aspects of my children and help them internalize healthy attitudes and the values our family holds dear. Since other methods have worked very well, I've never even had to consider caning.


For Me, Caning is a Tool for Re-Conditioning Highly Ingrained Behavior

The MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Inventory) is a well-known personality type instrument. It comprises a bipolar dimension labelled Sensing (S) -Intuition (N). Just as one is born either left or right handed, the MBTI theory posits that one is BORN with a preference for either S or N.

Short and Easy Definition of S - People who see the trees but might miss out the forest. I once told an S manager that his organization had a list of 36 management competencies. This manager sat down and counted the list of competencies in the handout I gave to him, then he smiled at me and said \"You're right\". Details and facts are important to S people. However, S people can be accused of having no imagination.

Short and Easy Definition of N - People who see the forest but might miss out the trees. N people are the visionaries of the world, adept at seeing realities that don't yet exist. They see patterns in a mass of numbers, spot social trends. These are big picture people who have no head for details, and can be accused of being highly impractical. MBTI research shows that careless children/adults tend to be N.

In truth, we all use 2 hands. We just prefer one, is all. No one is completely left or right handed unless you once met Captain Barbosa on the Black Pearl, and the good pirate chopped off your other hand. So, S people CAN see the bigger picture if they try just as you can write with your other hand if you try. Similarly, N people can see details if they try.

It so happens that we have an entire family of high-N personalities. And all of us have the tendancy to be careless. Till today, I am still careless. It is effortful for an N to be NOT careless, just as it is effortful for you to write with your other hand. Since carelessness is so closely tied with personality, it is relatively immune to reason and logic. Problems of attitude and morals are NOT immune to reason and logic. Conscious beliefs shape attitudes and morals. If I wait for the right teachable moment, I am able to successfully mould attitude and values by shaping beliefs. Carelessness lies just at the margins of the child's conscious control. He/she needs to put in a lot of mental effort to even exert some small control over carelessness. I know this because I, myself, am careless.

I've noticed that my son loves milk just before bedtime, and he is always especially cuddly after his glass of milk. This could have something to do with his BEFORE-BEDTIME-BOTTLE-WITH-CUDDLES when he was a baby. He has formed a positive association with milk that lies just beneath his consciousness. He knows that milk gives him that warm cuddly feeling but he does not know why.

I used the cane to CONDITION a negative association with carelessness. If you've ever been badly mauled by a dog, you will have an unreasoning fear of our 4-legged friends. Your reflex would be to avoid dogs. The word reflex is important to note. It is something you don't THINK about. You just do it. I was trying to create the same reflex for avoiding carelessness. Some parents have suggested that as the child matures, repeated exposure to exams wherein marks are lost to carelessness will fix the problem. This is very likely because the emotional pain of losing marks creates the negative association over time.

Now, since I use the cane as a conditioning tool, my DS never felt it as a rejection. He was emotionally never hurt by the cane. As a psychologist, I am far more wary of emotional wounds than physical ones. The marks left by the cane go away in one day. In contrast, you can't even see emotional wounds well enough to heal them. When my son was bullied in school, I deliberately allowed the bullying to go on at the risk of my son getting physically hurt (punched, kicked in the groin), because I wanted to build emotional resilience. In today's world, how strong you are physically is less important than how strong you are emotionally and mentally. The highest qualities of the human condition (kindness... magnanimity... love) all arise from emotional and mental strength.

Since I use the cane as a conditioning tool, it is no problem to sit down with my son to explain why I needed to cane him. Would you submit to heart bypass surgery to save your life? How many women go under the knife to get a thinner nose, fuller lips, bigger breasts? My son submitted to caning to excise his carelessness from his psyche. He wants badly to do well. In all, I have caned him twice for carelessness (2 sessions of 2 strokes each). We had been having discussions on and off for about a year before he actually agreed.

The agreement of the child is important to ensure that the experience leaves ONLY physical marks. It is a moment of sharp fleeting pain... nothing more. Other things that protect the child's emotional wellbeing are...

(1) Presence of a witness to ensure that there is no excess pain other than what was agreed upon. Human memory can be unreliable. A witness gives the subject the assurance that nothing more than what was agreed upon will be administered.
(2) In the privacy of the bedroom so the child feels no shame
(3) Pants down so one can cane REALLY hard. Do a thorough job of it so you don't have to do it often.
(4) The decision to cane is submitted for approval by a 3rd party... in this case, my husband.
(5) The pain is inflicted by the person whom the child trusts and believes. If you don't ALREADY have a good relationship with your child. Don't cane at all.
(6) In any case, if your child and you don't have a rock-solid relationship, it is unlikely you will get his permission to cane him. So don't.

People don't have to agree with what I did. I have proposed the caning option again to my son, but we are nowhere NEAR caning yet. My DS has not agreed, and it is likely that he will propose to do the Magneto thing. We will revisit the caning option after SA1 next year IF and only IF the Magneto way does not work. DS is by now sufficiently averse to carelessness that I think the cane is unnecessary. But the option is still worth talking about because the very idea itself deepens the negative association between caning and carelessness.

This post is not meant to encourage parents to cane their kids. Those who have survived parenthood thus far, without the cane, are unlikely to be convinced by me to use the cane. You would already have plenty other methods that work for you. This post is meant for parents who do already cane their kids, and they wanna know how to avert Fukushima.

Plainly, you avert Fukushima by structuring the intervention in a way that leaves NO EMOTIONAL PAIN behind. Any emotional wound that does not heal could well lead your child to hate you and abandon you in your old age. In my book, physical pain is NOTHING LIKE emotional pain. Emotional wounds heal poorly but they cannot be easily seen. Do they fester? You don't know. Are they still raw after 10 years? You don't know.

EDITED: I forgot to add that in order to be an effective conditioning tool, the link between Undesirable Behavior and Stroke has to be very clear. There can be no ambiguity. The association must be repeated, agreed to, endorsed, approved. There should be no excuse for the child to misunderstand that the stroke is linked to anger. Then all the child will learn to do is avoid making you angry. One of the ways to avoid making a parent angry is to HIDE and to LIE. You don't want that.

[Busymom]

Thank you, Chenonceau, for your sharing once again. Always learn much from you.


I haven't caned my kids, and I don't want to, preferring to use other methods. Every child is different and I don't think caning will work on my DS for instance, although one of my friends actually have a different opinion and think I should cane him when he misbehaves badly.

[silverhorse]

LKVM:

Chenonceau:

Over the past few days, I have received messages from parents who DO cane... and regardless of whether I write about my experience, they WILL cane anyway. These parents want to know why caning, if ill-used, is a Fukushima in the making. This post is written for parents who DO cane to provide a different perspective on how and why and when caning can be used.

:goodpost: wow its extremely nice and eye opener.... :salute:

I agree its a good post. Thanks for sharing with the moms here. But why do parents cane their kids for poor results? I do not understand....

[peapot]

So that the kids will do better the next round?? I m not sure.

[peapot]

I do not cane if Child gets poor result because of carelessness but I cane when she hits my maid or being very rude to the elders.

[peapot]

Actually I saw some kids in public behaving as if the whole world owes them a living, I will cane them for sure If they were my kids. But the parents are nochanlant about it which I cannot understand why. Do they want another Michael Fay?

[coolit]

I do cane when they are rude but I find it effective only till a certain age. Kids older than 10 years should be reasoned with. When I caned my ds when he was 11 for something really bad that he did, he would not talk to me for 2 days. I learnt the hard way that talking to him and getting him to open up is better at that age.

[vlim]

when my boy was about 3 yrs old, we brought him to a shop selling household items and we were looking at a bunch of canes....Then he said 'I want the blue colour one..'.... :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: ...so funny..

[peapot]

I also realized the boys in my gal’s school start to use the word "fuck" as early as P2. I wonder if the parents know about it.

[Chenonceau]

I only use the cane for HIGHLY INGRAINED behavior that arises from just BELOW the consciousness. This is the case of attention to detail.


I don’t ever cane for rudeness… for disobedience… for attitude. These things can be explained and talked through consciously. I agree with CoolIt that getting them to open up and discuss is far better. So I have never felt the need to use the cane. The habit of carelessness is situated below the consciousness.

If rudeness is an expression of unhappiness, I try to find out what is bothering my child. If rudeness is an expression of ignorance, then I advise my child. If rudeness is an expression of a negative attitude, then it helps to find out the roots of the negative attitude, and address it there.

IMHO