What is child abuse?

No one has proposed allowing children to play with sockets. :loco: I raised childproofing as one of many different alternatives to striking children. Here’s the reality: millions of people raise children into functioning adults without hitting them. Parents who choose to hit their children anyways are messed up in the head. They’re hitting their kids because they want to, not because it actually helps the kids.

No one has proposed allowing children to play with sockets. :loco: I raised childproofing as one of many different alternatives to striking children. Here’s the reality: millions of people raise children into functioning adults without hitting them. Parents who choose to hit their children anyways are messed up in the head. They’re hitting their kids because they want to, not because it actually helps the kids.[/quote]

Sorry, but this sounds more like an opinion as opposed to actual fact. I can respect that you feel that way, but you cannot state that EVERY parent who hits their children is sick in the head and “wants” to hit their children. As if they’re just itching for their children to make some kind of mistake so they can grab their cane or yard stick and go to town on their kid? Thats just silly. I’m assuming you (Gao Bohan) was never “hit” or “abused” as a child, right? Because if you were, you would technically be admitting that your parents or whoever raised you are “messed up in the head”. Just in my family and close family friends alone, I can honestly tell you that they are NOT sick in the head and they certainly are NOT hitting their kids just because they want to.

No one has proposed allowing children to play with sockets. :loco: I raised childproofing as one of many different alternatives to striking children.[/quote]
It wasn’t my intent to put words in your mouth but to emphasize the need for education regarding hazards independent of imminent danger and to wonder if physical punishment could be more effective in this regard.

Through simple probability, millions of children turn into functioning adults despite doing stupid things and parental shortcomings. But I (and possibly other parents) don’t really think about what is necessary for my children to have a decent probability of turning out alright, I think about what is better.

I can agree that beatings, punching, hitting out of sadistic tendencies or loss of temper are all child abuse indicative of an unsound mind. But physical pain is already encountered in the environment as part of the natural learning process so I don’t see parents’ using it as an intrinsic wrong. My parents spanked me, and I wouldn’t say they were messed up or that they wanted to. They certainly had some degree of aversion to using it and reserved that punishment for more severe misdeeds. That they employed spanking I believe is a reflection of what they learned from their culture and religion. For myself I don’t envision using it in the future because I dislike the thought, but I’m not past considering if it has situational advantages.

It’s an artificial system though, and comes from emotional responses not from random .

Kids who don’t understand that roads are dangerous should be kept away from roads: they don’t have the cognitive ability to extrapolate what the meaning of the slap from the father means.

[quote=“Ermintrude”]It’s an artificial system though, and comes from emotional responses not from random .

Kids who don’t understand that roads are dangerous should be kept away from roads: they don’t have the cognitive ability to extrapolate what the meaning of the slap from the father means.[/quote]
Learning happens on many levels. I think humans are primed to make causal inferences and have the cognitive ability to associate concurrent events from very young. My daughter does not understand how dangerous roads can be nor is she safe near them alone. But in a previous post, I mentioned she has gone from seeing “Daddy and Mommy are afraid of moving cars” to knowing “moving cars are dangerous.” Within this sequence, there is also an inference from the observations “Daddy is afraid” and “a car is coming” to “Daddy is afraid because a car is coming.”

My emotional response of fear also has a rational basis. Education of children can have a rational or rational and emotional basis regardless of whether physical pain is involved. It’s the irrational that I think should be avoided.

6 posts were merged into an existing topic: Kaohsiung Mother gives Child Han Kuo-yu Haircut to Prevent Said Child from Leaving House in Pandemic

Do any of the parents here use corporal punishment on your kids? I’ve been debating if that’s wrong or not.

If you want to get into that discussion, let’s make sure we are in the same page.
How would you define “corporal punishment”?

Nothing like seriously injuring the child. Like spanking, hitting them on the hands with a stick.

My threshold for pain inducement is safety / danger. If they bolt for the road because:

“OMG ICE CREAM TRUCK!!!”

They’ll get tugged back to the curb, and reality.

It’s very context specific.

Otherwise I rely on questions, context, and a raised voice, but that is of course age specific.

-------For every heaven’s sake, absolutely be on the same page with your spouse regarding child discipline. Find a counselor who advocates for corporal punishment , find a counselor who advocates against. Get to know it. Otherwise you may wreck your marriage and your kids without knowing it.

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I couldn’t say it better.
100% agree with you there.

This will hopefully have a change of mind in some ‘traditionally’ thinking Taiwanese.

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The idea seems good, but the interpretation of the law worries me a bit…

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It is not finalized yet. I also hope it is clear and doesn’t leave things open for various interpretations.

Meh. You don’t fuck with Chinese culture. Pretend to make laws, sure, but don’t act on them.

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Impossible to make it clear, it’s always going to be interpreted by judges, same as domestic violence. There will be obvious cases of abuse, but also lots and lots of cases where the ruling can go both ways.

That’s interesting. The third grade 社會 textbook pretty immediately gets into “you should feel safe in your family”. They teach students to go to a teacher and they also list the number to call if you’re being abused — 113 (保護顯現). Seems stupid the 社會 class is supposed to teach the kids how to get out of a dangerous family situation (and yes, if your caregivers are hitting you or emotionally abusing you, that is a dangerous situation), but the law doesn’t even technically protect them.

Hitting children is still a cultural norm in Taiwan, says Dr. Frank Lu, director of National Taiwan University Hospital’s Child Protection Center. But he says government and society can do more to support parents and show them better ways of disciplining their kids.

I have to admit, my hand has slipped a few times over the past three years, nothing major, short outbursts of anger, a slap on the hand here and there. It’s so damn hard to keep your cool in certain situations. All the good advice is helpful and in a perfect world the kids will listen and understand what to do and what not to do, if you explain everything patiently and passionately. Sometimes you see your kid walking straight into a very dangerous situation despite being warned about the danger again and again. How to get your point across if everything vocal has failed?

If you are a parent, have you ever resorted to any kind of corporal punishment?

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What age?