Corporal punishment or Corporate punishment?

So at dinner last night we came across the topic of spanking i.e. corporal punishment, the idea that you should use physical force to discipline your child. Needless to say there was a lot of buttons pushed and alot of words slung, Is it good? Is it bad? Are you going to raise your kids that way?

Corporal punishment 
–noun
1.Law. physical punishment, as flogging, inflicted on the body of one convicted of a crime: formerly included the death penalty, sentencing to a term of years, etc.
2.physical punishment, as spanking, inflicted on a child by an adult in authority. Origin:1575–85

Spank
–verb (used with object)
1.to strike (a person, usually a child) with the open hand, a slipper, etc., esp. on the buttocks, as in punishment.
–noun
2.a blow given in spanking; a smart or resounding slap.
Origin:1720–30; imit.

While one definition is severe the other is not, but are we really speaking of the same thing? That debate is very divided at both our dinner table and throughout the country...

A lot of people are shocked that this is still allowed in this country, laughingly because we think that we are so rights based that we would never actually allow this anymore. But we do, there are some very shocking cases of what has been deemed allowable as corporal punishment. There are many who are advocating the banishment of such ideals because the U.N. itself has said that it denounces such actions. Rightly so, there is too much variance in the idea of "reasonable" acts and the idea that anyone else has the right to abuse a child then call it discipline is highly controversial. However it is a bit far fetched to believe that if you lightly spank your child for misbehaving it should be compared to strapping your child or hitting it so hard you chip his tooth (Real cases, all deemed reasonably admissible as discipline).

The physical and mental harm from spanking is not reversible, but what is when it comes to parenting? Every choice, every action, every word is probable cause for turning your child into a horrible human being. It is not enough to think that because you show your child right from wrong that they are going to be great human beings. The intrinsic idea that if you show your child good behaviour he will in turn behave well I think is asking too much of someone too young to understand himself/herself.

Personally, and this is all opinion because I only parent my cats, I was parented in a way that now I barely remember, is that good or bad? I don't remember being abused or spanked, I do remember feelings of guilt, remorse, alienation from the usual one way talks of the things I had done wrong. Did this steer me to become a different person than if I had been spanked? I don't think so.

Every situation and every household has its ability to change a child into many things, some are blatant others less so. Abuse is a harsh word for the idea of spanking most people have, I think to relegate it to mean only the cases in front of the supreme court to be a convenient way of us taking up the fight to absolve something that in the long term means so much more.

In this time and age the idea of spanking is not a high factor in child abuse, in my eyes those that neglect their children, argue in front of their children, allow for t.v. to be a substitute for the encyclopedia, never read with their children, buy video games over Lego, feed them McDonald's over home cooked meals and never attend parent teacher meetings are far worse than someone who may spank their child. The idea that corporations have more control of your child's actions than you is a far more scary idea to me than the idea that you are spanking your child. I fear that they will only understand marketing schemes and how to get to the next level on a video game, that they will see aggression as something to look up to and not something that is used only to make you see that what you are doing is wrong. See when I was a kid, a raised hand meant, you better stop what you are doing...not abuse. It never even came with a resounding slap, just the raised hand was enough to know that action was taboo. Now the raised hand doesn't even resonate, you are killing people in video games, you are killing people in movies, and aggression is not something that you see at the movies, it happens in plain sight everywhere.

Everyone knows my stand on non-violence, I have seen enough (believe me) in my lifetime that has shown me it can come to no good but I think its a good time to take a look at the greater picture, we need to understand that crowding our ideals on small topics do not always show how it resonates to our greater ideals. You can say you are against spanking, I am too, will we never spank our kids?... that's to be seen.

I know alot of people who are fine human beings that have lived through actual abuse, not just spanking and I don't think anyone would say they are never going to spank their kids, are they going to abuse their kids? Point blank no. To live through it is to live with it, never underestimate the power of history, even in the most well balanced people it has a way of sneaking up on you.

Time out,

~Cosmopolitan

Mortality vs. Immortality

The slight of hand that takes a life,
The slight of mind that takes a life,
The sight of God that will reunite,
Cannot at end make it right.

The chances of violence occurring is more than slight, as this world is filled with a will to show how much we can destroy, not in war, but in our small part of reality, right in your backyard. Every day the stream of "news" is filled with murder, anguish and despair while we all tune in to it...so many of the headlines seem surreal but they are our reality. This is what our children have to look forward to, as this is what we are now living.

I got a text that told me something that I hadn't heard, that I hadn't tuned in to, and seeing as I now read the paper at my desk each morning and tear apart the CBC website everyday due to remote Internet access at work I was surprised that I hadn't heard about this. It might be my reluctance to watch the daily news where usually the snippets of everyday city life are torn apart for our viewing pleasure. I used to sit and watch and not know the anguish behind it all, but now I do, and I watch with half a mind on the people who have to sit through that also, to whom the news is life, where it cannot be switched off.

So to hear that another life had been taken within the community brings back too many memories that are still fresh and probably will always be, because how do you turn that part off, the reality of loss. It sneaks up every day, because to lose people through tragedy is never easy, nor is it something that you can lay to rest. It just sits their on the periphery of our conscience and doesn't take vacations.

So I sat yesterday and I texted back and forth and wondered aloud why? Why again? Why now? Why to them? ... The answer ultimately is why not? What have we done in this community to foster anti-violence? To foster healthy mental health? To foster a sense of community that is built on sense of self, and a preparedness to deal with the anger everyone feels, to see others as a creation as much as we are. I have not seen that, all I have witnessed is decades of anger, retaliation and the preparedness to terrorize ourselves with visions of fighting for a greater good without realizing that we are fostering a sense of war not only on a battlefield. This sense of war has now entered the minds of those who may have never stepped foot on our homeland, who take what they have learnt and started taking lives without any respect for the actual life they are ending.

It is easy, yes easy, to kill someone, but it is far greater to make it right, because ultimately they won't be able to, they can only run from the law, ultimately though they won't be able to run from the real law, the one that is going to force them to face what they have done. This is not going to come to pass for a long time, and in that time we will see the faces of many more that we will lay to rest but again what are we doing to make it right? The many obstacles that face us now cannot be brought down by education, wealth, or health, because here we have all of those things and a country where we are all equal, but we still allow people to perish.

The root cause of this violence is in each of us, it is in the stories we hear of our own families, our own histories, our own loss, but we alone can make this change. The next time you stand in a crowd where this idea of violence is brought up, because we know we have all heard it, take a stand for a moment in time and say, "What do we gain from this? What are we doing? Is this going to end with a loss of life?" Do not be scared to ask your fellow man these questions, because otherwise you will ask them, "How did this happen? How did they die?"

Use your voice to ask rather than be told.

Love never fades, it does not allow mortality, it will always keep us immortal.

~ Cosmopolitan