A Masterton man is one of the first to be convicted under the law against smacking after he spanked his eight-year-old son three times on the bottom.
Post updated 9:15PM
This man's crime was to get angry. You shouldn't apply discipline when you are angry. Instead, the issue is cast as "smacking". Do you see the difference?
Is it so paranoid to expect a zero tolerance policy towards smacking in the future? One where government social workers remove children from parents immediately if the child should be physically disciplined. We wont hear about such cases, because they will not go to court. Parents will trade silence for access to their children.
In the leftist mind, physical punishment is far worse a crime than removing children from parents and placing them into the 'care of the state'. In the leftist mind, they believe smacking inevitably leads to beating children to death. Is it therefore possible to extrapolate that State intervention inevitably leads to splitting families apart in a far more damaging way than the passing sting of a smack?
One day people will realise this lot will be responsible for causing far more long term harm by the mental torture they will inflict on parents and children in their zealotry.
Update: Already the media are providing mixed reports of this case. It is hard to trust anything without seeing the actual court transcripts. Going with what I have seen in multiple sources is this:
The eight-year-old boy suffered a bruised shoulder after his 33-year-old father pulled him onto a bed and bent him over his knee, smacking him three times with an open hand across the buttocks.
The man is effectively being punished for bruising his son's shoulder - but the focus is on his receiving three smacks. Sue Bradford says "great". The problem I have with this is that violence from anger is not seen as something distinct from administering physical discipline in love, with an absence of anger. It's like a parent locking a kid in a cupboard and Sue Bradford banning time outs to prevent this sort of thing. You can't ban anger, stupidity and carelessness. Banning smacking to get at people guilty of something else is only going to cast the net wider than it should be cast.
Many people believe that physical discipline is unnecessary and cruel, and therefore they want to ban it. That simply seems ignorant of how responsible parents can apply it in a safe and responsible way. It is of course, usually just one of several options, in the parenting toolkit. Can and does a child learn from a short, sharp smack? Yes, just as they learn when they burn their hand, or jam their finger, or scrape their knee from a fall after doing something silly. A physical reminder, transient and trifling in nature, is still memorable enough to help learn, and hopefully help the child escape the more serious physical lessons in life - like breaking an arm.
As more of these cases come to light, there will inevitably be shakier and shakier justification. We will finally see just how much damage state intervention will do to the family unit, and to many families that need a different kind of help.
We will see punishments outweighing crimes. Just wait until a kid, in their total naivety, make up a story that sees Dad paying a $1,000 fine and the kid in a foster home for two months as the parents 'lying to save their skins' try to reverse the actions of a Child Youth Family officer aiming to hit his targets of "10 children saved".
Related Link: Man convicted for smacking a child
And this is where I noted It has started
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Post updated 9:15PM
This man's crime was to get angry. You shouldn't apply discipline when you are angry. Instead, the issue is cast as "smacking". Do you see the difference?
Is it so paranoid to expect a zero tolerance policy towards smacking in the future? One where government social workers remove children from parents immediately if the child should be physically disciplined. We wont hear about such cases, because they will not go to court. Parents will trade silence for access to their children.
In the leftist mind, physical punishment is far worse a crime than removing children from parents and placing them into the 'care of the state'. In the leftist mind, they believe smacking inevitably leads to beating children to death. Is it therefore possible to extrapolate that State intervention inevitably leads to splitting families apart in a far more damaging way than the passing sting of a smack?
One day people will realise this lot will be responsible for causing far more long term harm by the mental torture they will inflict on parents and children in their zealotry.
Update: Already the media are providing mixed reports of this case. It is hard to trust anything without seeing the actual court transcripts. Going with what I have seen in multiple sources is this:
The eight-year-old boy suffered a bruised shoulder after his 33-year-old father pulled him onto a bed and bent him over his knee, smacking him three times with an open hand across the buttocks.
The man is effectively being punished for bruising his son's shoulder - but the focus is on his receiving three smacks. Sue Bradford says "great". The problem I have with this is that violence from anger is not seen as something distinct from administering physical discipline in love, with an absence of anger. It's like a parent locking a kid in a cupboard and Sue Bradford banning time outs to prevent this sort of thing. You can't ban anger, stupidity and carelessness. Banning smacking to get at people guilty of something else is only going to cast the net wider than it should be cast.
Many people believe that physical discipline is unnecessary and cruel, and therefore they want to ban it. That simply seems ignorant of how responsible parents can apply it in a safe and responsible way. It is of course, usually just one of several options, in the parenting toolkit. Can and does a child learn from a short, sharp smack? Yes, just as they learn when they burn their hand, or jam their finger, or scrape their knee from a fall after doing something silly. A physical reminder, transient and trifling in nature, is still memorable enough to help learn, and hopefully help the child escape the more serious physical lessons in life - like breaking an arm.
As more of these cases come to light, there will inevitably be shakier and shakier justification. We will finally see just how much damage state intervention will do to the family unit, and to many families that need a different kind of help.
We will see punishments outweighing crimes. Just wait until a kid, in their total naivety, make up a story that sees Dad paying a $1,000 fine and the kid in a foster home for two months as the parents 'lying to save their skins' try to reverse the actions of a Child Youth Family officer aiming to hit his targets of "10 children saved".
Related Link: Man convicted for smacking a child
And this is where I noted It has started
Insert Pantene Commercial Here