Should Parents Intimidate Their Kids?

If necessary then it’s better than no boundaries and hefkervelt. But it’s not ideal or healthy, on a regular basis, especially today.

Its not about making them obey ,its about molding them to be able to be a productive member of society

Do Dovid HaMelech, Tanach and the Halacha in Shulchan Aruch were wrong or questionable?

by yelling or hitting you might succeed getting your children to listen and obey, but you are causing them to have a negative attitude to that thing you wanted them to listen to. you want to educate them in a certain behaviour but by yelling and hitting or even forcing them to do something you are accomplishing the exact opposite. plus it creates a distance between parents and children. parents must learn other ways how to educate children.

Look at that.
Even as a presumably adult, knaidlach , is unable to follow simple clear instructions.
I specifically asked don’t give me advice on what not to do. Don’t tell me why or what the negative results of wrong behavior will be /do / cause.
And what does knaidlach respond?
the negative aspects of hitting yelling and coercion.
And this vague amorphous statement
”parents must learn other ways how to educate children.”
Well genius I’ll ask you again.
Obviously you’ve figured out ”some other way ”because for sure you are not yelling or hitting or coercing your children.
So how’s about you share some of your tricks for those dumb ones like me who can’t seem to figure it out.
I’m trying to learn but all im getting is don’t do this don’t do that this won’t work that is bad.
Is that the positivity you are giving your kids??
Don’t don’t don’t?
How about you teach some adults how it’s done, while doing it in the fashion you are advocating parents do it to their children

And as to the second to last statement of yours
”plus it creates a distance between parents and children”
I think as a Torah Jew, that is a good thing.

Klugeryid
1) anyone here can post whatever they want. no one is obligated to respond the way someone else wants.
2) when I wrote my comment, your comment was not yet shown. so I responded to avocado’s original question about hitting and screaming.
3) what I meant that it creates a distance between parents and children, was a much greater distance then according to torah. the torah wants a distance based on respect and awe. I’m talking about a distance that the child is scared to discuss things with parents, to open up to them, to love them, to care for them.
4) for NOW, I will tell you another thing you should not do. you took apart my comment, made fun of me for writing some things. DONT DO THIS TO YOUR CHILDREN. your children might respond to you, not in the way you want them to, DONT MAKE FUN OF THEM, all you have to do is, repeat the question in a soft tone. talk to them in a way that they should want to talk to you and discuss things with you.
5) it’s late now, maybe tomorrow or after shabbos i will come back here to give you posotive thing to do.

1. Come nicely into room and tell child it’s time to get up and start their day
2. After five minutes go back into room and inform child it’s time to start the day

Consequences of which child is fully aware will take place, begin and take place the first one after five minutes, all the rest, after three minutes each. After the sixth consequence nature takes it’s course and no further consequences have ever been required

3. Lights are turned on
4. pillow is removed
5. blankets, sheets and anything else making the bed comfortable to sleep in is removed
6. all available younger sibling are sent in to roust the recalcitrant

Knaidlach

1) of course one can. My point is I don’t believe that one can write off the negative side of instruction and still be effective. I don’t believe there are answers that suffice. And your comment as posted in that order seemed to reinforce my point. So I wasn’t taking you to task. Rather pointing out from your comment, that it can’t be done. Sorry if it came across too forceful.
2) understood. Valid point
3) OK misunderstood
4) valid to a point. There are times when necessary. When you have let us say a teenage child who resists desisting from a specific negative behavior, and constantly depends themselves with the same tripe, there comes a time when a parent can and should sit down with the child and say shayfeleh, you know what. Let’s have a discussion. You will tell me why you do this and I will explain why it’s wrong.
I will give you opportunity to say whatever you want and we will do it over ice cream in the ice cream store. No anger no yelling and no punishment for your beliefs or feelings. But I will clearly explain why it’s wrong.
In that setting , there is nothing wrong with proceeding to do as I did which is to shred every argument so they have to admit even for a moment that you are correct and they are wrong.
Of course you can only do it if you are actually correct.
But it’s an illustration of the debt that most things, even supposedly negative ones, have a place in a parents arsenal

Mariana Santos
Al of which are classic bullying
I don’t see why bullying is better than screaming
The only thing I can hear as being better is natural consequences. Such as if the child doesn’t get up when you tell them to, you won’t wake them up and they will be responsible to go to school on their own. Which may result in the child staying in bed all day cause they won’t care. Which will result in a spoiled illiterate child when carried to its extreme
Besides which you have just replaced one negative with another.
Now who needs to put the sheets. Back on?
The parent? So you are punishing yourself and likely will not last especially if you need to work
Or you can make the child put the linen back on which starts another battle and who says the child doesn’t resent putting on linen more than a tongue thrashing?

Winnie, I agree with everything you said. That is what a great parent should be doing and when done correctly and with patience (which admittedly is difficult) that usually works.
However let’s revisit what the original question was

”How about screaming at them so that they will obey, if they otherwise wouldn’t? ”

(hitting was also brought up)

So the question in simple form is, is hitting and or screaming
At your children ”verboten ”
I don’t think it was a question of
Is the right way of parenting to be a raging tiger to your kids.
So we return to the question.
If after trying all the wonderful and correct ways Winnie so eloquently laid out your child still won’t confirm, what do you do now ?

Oh Klugeryid, you entertain the living daylights right out of me and if I’m not careful I’ll end up spending my entire day engaged in trying to finally get one over on you.. which will probably not happen so I should probably attend to my other responsibilities first.

My eldest son was the most stubborn, go his own way come heck or high water kid on the face of the earth and my own parent’s wish come true when in exasperation they said to me, “I hope you have a child just like yourself some day”. If there was a more stubborn, kicking, screaming and protesting harder way to do anything my son then it was my son who signed the artwork on it. Fortunately, his mother had already signed the copyright on the book to it.

Parenting isn’t about winning. It’s about being grateful for the gift of a child, loving that child unconditionally and having respect for that child. It’s taking a leap of faith and because the day will come when you run out of answers, it’s about placing your trust in Hashem that His hand working through your hands and His voice speaking through your voice is going to see this kid turning out alright even after having the most imperfect parents possible.

My son turned out just fine. Better than fine actually. He is 23 and married to a girl he knew all his life. Together they have a daughter and expect another baby later this year. I tell my son the same thing my parent’s told me, “I hope you have a child just like you”. What I don’t say out loud is that along with finally understanding your parent’s pain comes the understanding of your parent’s blessing.

p.s. he still hates getting up in the morning, not my problem anymore, he has his own house and a baby he loves more than his bed… sometimes things work out perfectly

Maria – I love your last post! Rings a bit familiar…maybe we both authored similar books?

Avram
Hypothetical

Syag ,
You quoted me as saying
”For example:
. Let’s have a discussion. You will tell me why you do this and I will explain why it’s wrong.

think about that as an opening line of a conversation with ANYone about ANYthing. Not very inviting, not very validating. ”

Now while that pull is totally accurate, it’s clearly ignoring the context.
Go back and look where it was placed

When you have let us say a teenage child who resists desisting from a specific negative behavior

, and constantly depends (SHOULD HAVE SAID DEFENDS) themselves with the same tripe,

there comes a time

when a parent can and should sit down with the child and say shayfeleh, you know what. Let’s have a discussion. You will tell me why you do this and I will explain why it’s wrong.
I will give you opportunity to say whatever you want

so let’s reconstruct
We are responding to a question of when a child has not responded to most or all other methods, and you have already gone through the issue verbally many times. The child knows you don’t agree with their position. What you are now doing is saying, shayfeleh, let’s sit down and I will explain to you why I am telling you what you need to be doing.
Yes I am telling you.
I am your parent and you need to listen to me no matter what.
But I will gladly explain it to you rationally as well.
And I am even willing to explain to you rationally why your position is wrong even had I not been your parent. However yes, underlying it all is the context of, I am your parent and you need to listen to me because that’s what the Torah says.

As to your comment on staying in bed all day….
OK I was to terse.
I meant to say
When a child knows that there is ultimately no real negative outcome to their actions, In their terms (remember a thirteen year old doesn’t always care that they won’t learn what’s being taught if they don’t attend school), then they will just do what they want. Ultimately leading to a very spoiled adult tree used to doing what they want without thought of consequence.

A great book is Make Me Don’t Break Me by R. Moshe Gans. Please don’t take anecdotal advice from unknown entities. Find an experienced mechanech who can guide you from his extensive experience and research.
Corporal punishment works. It also has many negative effects. Some experts will say NEVER (R. Sholom Wolbe, R. Ginsberg and others, while some will say under extreme circumstances. If you hit in anger you are transgressing “pen yosef” that you may not hit someone.
When I was an inexperienced parent I sometimes hit my kids. I now create charts and rewards and at times will punish but never hit.

Yes, i agree with your point about that conversation and i understood and agreed with the context. I was trying to point out that no matter how right you are, or hoe respectful your tone, if those words were part of the presentation to the child (instead of just a description to us) than you “blew the whole thing”. That opening will not elicit a real conversation of the type you described you would be having with the outcome of making changes.

Of course not.
The mature of kids being raised by their parents, gives the parents an inherint respect and obedience. U can only loose that in todays day and age by hitting them. There are much better methods of raising kids well today and if u hit ur kids as a method of gaining respect or disaplin u have very big issues to deal with and more ur own than ur kids.

Spare the rod, spoil the child. There is nothing wrong with disciplining him or her in a loving manner. Many of my friends told me that I was too strict with my toddlers (stopping/ scolding them for misbehaving) and should just let kids be kids while they were all running around. By the time my number a few years older, they were also the only kids that consistently obey their parents.

If they are too old for this, and you know you’re going to have a problem getting your son out of bed in the morning, start the night before. Explain what the consequences will be if they cannot do when we get up, and then follow through with it. This way they’ve made the decision knowing what will happen.

I do not wish to be vehement or toxic with anyone as I genuinely like, appreciate and enjoy everyone posting here in the Coffee Room

I did have to get physical with my eldest son, twice, after exhausting all other avenues. The first time he was around three or four and would not stop playing with matches. We spoke with him, removed and hid all the matches in the house, put the matches in protective custody… he waited for his opportunity, pushed a kitchen chair to the stove, climbed onto the stove and onto the top of the fridge where he accessed the matches from their plain box within another another plain box from behind a box of old mail in the cupboard behind the fridge near to the kitchen ceiling. He then waited for me to get busy with something else and sneaked himself off downstairs to the fireplace where he thought himself well and truly out of sight for his nefarious little games.. Thankfully he forgot to factor in the smell factor and I laid a spanking on him with my own hands that neither one of us has ever forgotten. I had to. I was so afraid he would seriously injure or kill himself by setting himself or his clothing on fire that I had to make sparking up matches for his amusement entirely un-amusing and making the consequences sufficiently not worth the risk of continuing to defy us.

The second time was a chilly, windy, late autumn day and he got it into his head he wanted to go swimming. No. Tired of being thwarted he took off out the backyard gate and hit the sidewalk with the announcement he was running away to a place where he could go swimming. Ya. Not in my house. That’s not how we do, we don’t run away in search of greener pastures when we don’t get our way, we deal with it until it’s dealt with. I didn’t spank him but I didn’t walk him back home any too gently either. I guess he was around five at the time. There is a dangerous world out there just beyond the backyard gate and you don’t just get to make a run at it when things don’t go as you think they should. He learned.

Klugaryid:
I want to tell you what worked for me. In the morning when my son didn’t want to get up after I tried getting him up, I sat down and said tehillim asking Hashem that my son should get out of bed until he got up. Sometimes I started before it was time to get him up. I no longer have a problem getting him out of bed in the morning BH.

Bingo!!
We’ve brought up the elephant that I did not want to be the one to bring up
I think all would agree with Mariana and Winnie
So it comes out that there is always a line,past which smacking is justified.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill
We both agree, we’re just haggling over price.

So now the question is what’s worse
A child playing with matches or a child being מחלל שבת?

klugeryid,

“We both agree, we’re just haggling over price.

So now the question is what’s worse
A child playing with matches or a child being מחלל שבת?”

Nope. I agree with WinnieThePooh, but couldn’t disagree with you more.

The use of physical force in each scenario WinnieThePooh described is intended to stop the dangerous act as quickly as possible, not to provide chinuch. Smacking the hand away is the quickest way to prevent it from getting burned on the stove. Yanking the kid away from the street is intended purely for protection, and physically separating fighting siblings is to prevent injury.

klugeryid,

“Hypothetical”

Whew. Because it seems that the assumption in your hypothetical is that a parent child relationship is purely transactional, and that is not healthy.