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Friday, May 26, 2006
Should employees, kids be spanked?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recently a California jury awarded $1.7 million to a woman who was paddled on her rear-end during team-building exercises conducted by the company she worked for.
According to the Associated Press, a 12-person jury equally divided between men and women, found that Janet Orlando, 53, of Fresno, who worked for Alarm One, Inc., a home security company had suffered both sexual harassment and sexual battery, from the 2004 spanking she received in front of her peers.
Sales teams at the company were asked to compete with one another and the losers suffered several humiliations, including being spanked with signs from their competitors.
Many people may find it humorous or abhorrent that an employer would spank their employees’ under any circumstance. However, many people still think that spanking their children is okay.
Some proponents of spanking their offspring cite that the Bible says to “spare the rod and spoil the child” and use this as the basis for justifying corporal punishment.
The Reverend Arthur Allen Jr. of the Atlanta based House of Prayer preferred serving jail time rather than to renege on his strong belief that the children of his congregation should receive corporal punishment, administered by Allen.
However, there are those equally opposed to hitting children under any circumstance. They cite numerous psychological studies that purport that hitting children only teaches them that violence is okay. Moreover, they believe that spanking children reinforces that physical dominance against those smaller and weaker is desirable.
Many opponents of spanking believe that instead of spanking, that children should be taught how to control their emotions and make wise choices for their lives.
The Center for Effective Discipline, based in Columbus, Ohio, features on its home page ( www.stophitting.com) a poignant quote by the late pediatrician and best-selling author Dr. Benjamin Spock:
“If we are ever to turn toward a kindlier society and a safer world, a revulsion against the physical punishment of children would be a good place to start.”
When I was growing up, my mother did spank my brothers and me on occasion — and we all survived. However, I think that my mother used spanking not because she enjoyed beating us; but because — like many parents of her generation — spanking was mostly all that they had in their parental tool box to address any unruly behavior of their children.
If my mother had been aware of “time out” and “groundings” and other methods to redirect misbehavior, she would have preferred (for her sake and ours) alternative methods of correction. Like many people often say, “you do better, when you know better.”
Our homes and workplaces are the two pillars of most people’s lives. I think that these places should be free of physical and emotional violence.
For me, there can never be any justification for hitting in the workplace.
Moreover, I think today’s parents should focus more on modeling good behavior for their children; than on spanking.
Do you think there any situations that may require hitting someone in the workplace?
Should parents ever spank misbehaving children?
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