marinus18

I do wonder, did they make it clear to you why you were spanked? I feel that in discipline with children the punishment itself doesn't matter that much. What matters is being clear on exactly what they did, why they did it, why it was wrong, why the punishment is appropriate, why they can't keep doing this and what they should have done instead. The punishment itself is merely just to give those things weight as otherwise the child will just ignore them.

This bothered me so I actually asked me mom and she greatly questioned why you would spank a child. Waking up in a wet, cold and clammy bed is unpleasant to begin with and so if you don't undo that by being too affectionate the child already suffers for it. If you really feel like it you could have them wash their bedding every time it happens. Making them clean up their own mess. For her at least if the child does something bad the first thing is understanding why they did it. Also fifth grade? Aren't you already 10 at that point? I think a child wetting themselves at age 10 means there is something wrong with them. I do really feel for you if your parents did that while you had no control over it. It feels like they felt spanking was a fix-all solution to every problem rather than actually trying to solve it.

Well my point more is that it all seems to be so all or nothing. Either it's corporal punishment or no discipline whatsoever. I was punished when I truly refused to listen and obey her but those instances were very rare. Usually when I was whining about chores the threat of it's value being halved was enough for me. When I did keep trying to get out of it the reminder mom would give about all the fun things I could have been doing usually made me do the chore. After all it was clear she wasn't going to give up and that whining only made things worse. I usually wanted to do something fun and so mom saying all the fun things I already ruined was a strong motivator. It also not strictly negotiating, my mom was also perfectly capable of being unmovable and if she felt we did earn a punishment she would do it. It's not just that though, it's also region. My parents didn't suffer corporal punishment either. Of all my grandparents only my paternal grandma did and it only was one teacher who did it like 3 times that she can remember. Also I don't remember anyone ever going to the principal for discipline. The deans did all that, the principle rarely directly interacted with the students. I don't know how it's organised in America but here the students are all organised into classes led by a teacher known as a mentor. Each class has a code which is based on the year like class 5E or something. All classes of one year are part of a wing headed by a dean who coordinates the mentors, decides things like trips and large projects. They also talked with all the students on how things went and how well they are on track for the year. In discipline if the teacher couldn't do it you were sent to the dean. The principle usually only came into play when permanent expulsion was considered which the deans can't legally do. Only the principle of the school can expel students and if things went so far that the dean would ask the principle almost always said "yes". The principle usually was busy full time managing the school, making up lessons plans. Denying or approving the plans of the deans, managing the budget, filling out legal documents, solving all kinds of problems that come up, keeping an eye on performances and anything else that came up. They usually didn't even interact much with the teachers as they usually they talked to the deans who then in turn coordinated with the teachers. Being a principle of a school is pretty much the same as being director of a company. Company directors also don't have much direct involvement with the workers, they have subordinates who handled that for them.

That is not good. I mean how can you trust her if she doesn't trust you? Also did she explain exactly why you shouldn't move so much in church? And what about that money? Did she try to trace where you spend it on and why?

That whole idea of discipline this way is just really foreign to me. My dad spend most of his time working so I was raised almost exclusively by my mom. She treated rearing as really a skill and she was not afraid to be firm and punish us though she was against corporal punishment. However she treated bratty kids more as a sign of incompetence by the parents than softness. Spanking is the same as she treated it as lazy parenting. Something you use because you are not willing to put in the effort to understand it better. My mom felt that if you had to resort to spankings it meant you already failed somewhere earlier down the line. When I asked her about it she did say she would respect other parents who felt differently but she prided herself that she could keep everyone under control without needing to do that. Everyone always talks about spankings but that is not the only rearing technique available. I think you should have different consequences for different things. For example making a mess means cleaning it up. If for some reason the child is truly not able to clean their mess up then they need to be given a chore that demands a roughly equal amount of labor. Not playing nicely is best dealt with, with a time-out while they are looking at the others having fun. A technique my mom used for mandatory chores was to have 2 chores in our free days, a big one and a small one. If we whined and complained about the chore it's value would be halved and if we did the chore out of our own initiative it counted as double. So if we did our small chore ourselves we only needed to do another small chore instead of a large one. However if we whined about it then we needed to do another tiny chore as well. Equally so with the large chore, if we whined we needed to do another small one while if we did it ourselves we could skip the small chore altogether. Also mom would make it very clear how much time we wasted whining and also name up several things we could have been doing during that time instead. If we had done something bad that our mom couldn't think up a reason for then she wouldn't do anything until she understood why. She could push pretty hard but she would get our reasoning out of us one way or another. Usually when she did our reasoning was pretty stupid and she would really point that out to us. However in those sessions the emphasis was on the reasoning. We were also allowed to talk back if we did so in a calm manner and what we said made sense. She would listen to backtalk but she wouldn't listen to whining. Punishments are mere a reinforcement to get the kids to pay attention. They shouldn't be the end goal. Punishments with me were very rare. Only when we refused to listen. I remember her also being very transparent in her rearing techniques. Often explaining them to us. After all if we had to explain our actions it was only fair she would have to do so as well.

My mom's solution to that was educational. Swear words often have complex origins and she had a rule that we weren't allowed to use words that we didn't understand. So if she heard us say a bad word she would question us rather we knew what it really meant. With swear words we never did so she educated us on it. That really took all the fun out of it.

Bedwetting with me mostly stopped at age 5. Which is actually older than all of my siblings (I have 3, all of which are younger). Though when I was 8 it suddenly started again which confused my mom greatly. After all why would I wet the bed? It's quite cold and uncomfortable. She eventually bought me pull-ups out of necessity since the mattress was starting to get really damaged. My little brother was still in diapers and my little sister was still wearing pull-ups to bed. However the idea of them laughing at me never even came up. In many stories you see the siblings laughing or trying to use it as blackmail but that thought never even arose. They were mostly uninterested and my second younger sister was really my older sister. She mostly was sharing in mom's confusion. They did install rules like no drinking after 7 and always go to the toilet before bed. She never treated those as punishments and mostly just as annoyances since it meant she had to be involved in my bedtime more. I also didn't like the pull ups because they felt awkward and it took me a while to get used to them. However I did grow to like them and I think this is where my love for diapers originated. The bedwetting went on for around 4 months before disappearing as quickly as it came. We kept pull-ups around for another 2 years in increasing sizes before mom felt confident enough to stop buying them. However the mattress protector was kept all the way until I left the nest. When I turned 15 and got an adult sized bed we also bought a fitting mattress protector. It worked wonders for my dust allergy and was also useful against sweat stains. My point is that with me it was treated as a purely practical problem. The idea of punishment or that it was even humiliating never came up. I mostly treated all the measures as just obnoxious.