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What did Dovid HaMelech mean when he spoke of hitting a child?
What did the Mechaber mean when he paskened about hitting a child?
What would you do in the two situations described by Mariana?
The little I know,
“Translating this into the vocabulary I chose, there are times when compliance is so critical that teaching is secondary to compliance. This doesn’t teach the child safety, which still needs to be done.”
I agree with this 100%.
“Bottom line is that discipline rarely teaches. It controls. And in instances of safety risks, that is appropriate.”
I think you and I have very different definitions of “discipline”, which we’ve hashed out in another thread before.
@avocado- my children don’t always obey. I meant they were far more obedient than some of their friends whose parents would say “do this again, and we’re leaving”, but not take their kids home. I had a friend that instead of saying “wait till tatty gets home”, said “wait until I tell your teacher”. If you set clear boundaries for your children, they are less likely to consistently push the boundaries because they know there will be consequences.
I consider them well adjusted, happy, and loving. They know that they are allowed to question things they are told as long as they do so respectfully, because if they understand why I’ve made a decision (or their teachers, etc), it is not blind obedience, which I believe leads to further issues.
One of my children has a medical condition, and as a result some issues with learning, low confidence, mental stuff, etc. While her esteem is low, I am frequently told by teachers that she has no problem saying that she doesn’t understand a lesson, she will ask a teacher for extra help- a problem with low confidence would not do.
I’m not saying they’re perfect, that they are happy with every decision we make, that they get up every single morning without issue. They are kids after all.
I completely understand the concerns about obedience. No amount of therapy will ever “cure” me from some of the things my mother did when I was younger because of the expectations she had of me and the fears she gave me. When my oldest acted out recently, my mother said I should remove every item from her room, let her sleep on the floor without blankets until she comes around. I explained to my daughter why I was unhappy with the way she acted and why she needs to act differently (the situation was beyond her control because of her illness). She went to bed angry, but in the morning she apologized and now tries not to repeat her mistakes. Good discipline is when there’s growth at the end of the situation. My only goal is to raise my children better than I was.
“the difference between playing with matches and being mechalel shabbos is this:
Playing with matches is a sakanah to the kid’s life and has to be stopped immediately.”Being mechalel Shabbos is a sakanah to the kid’s spiritual life — which is much more important than his physical life — and has to be stopped immediately.
If physical discipline won’t work for being mechallel Shabbos, it won’t work for playing with fire.
I don’t need kids to have happy feelings about matches
i do need them to have happy feelings about shabbosAren’t you worried that if you slap your kid for setting fires he’ll have bad feelings about being physically disciplined for lighting matches, thereby he could go off the normal derech and become an arsonist…
not in the slightest
So you’re not in the slightest worried that providing a child with corporal discipline for playing with fire may result in negative feelings leading him to become an arsonist but you are worried that providing a child with corporal discipline for being mechallel Shabbos may result in negative feelings leading him to become a mechallel Shabbos?
Oh give it up. There’s no connection. You’ll have to find some other lame excuse for beating your kids, or getting over the thought.
Thank you for your well thought out, explained and rationally expressed opinion. There’s probably someone out there that will be convinced at that strong argument that you so well laid out and reasonably substantiated.
The opinions of more than just me *were* thought out, explained and rationally expressed. And then you tried to connect two unconnectable points, which wouldn’t even be a thought by anyone who didn’t have a previous agenda. There.is.no.shaichus.
You’ve certainly demonstrated exactly why those two points are “unconnectable”, since no one else has so demonstrated, haven’t you? Or do you simply mean “There.is.no.shaichus” because, well, that’s simply your impulsive feeling.
Joseph, the need for physical intervention is due not just to the seriousness of the action (getting burned, run over by a car) but to its urgency- something has to be done to keep the kid from harm NOW. As has been pointed out, it’s not a matter of education, although the drama of it may make an impression on the kid so they do not do it again. In terms of chillul shabbos, no one is saying that spiritual danger is not important, but the response need not be a knee-jerk immediate take-action or else. I can see where it would be appropriate if a child is reaching towards a light switch to turn off the lights on shabbos, that a parent can push away his hand. But that is for the purpose of preventing the action, the physical force comes before the action, not as a punishment afterwards, it’s not done to educate the kid on the importance in keeping shabbos. That needs to be done through talking, showing by example, making shabbos beautiful and meaningful etc, and not by fear of a beating.
Winnie, if c”v a kid ran into a busy road with cars swirling by, after the parent swiftly dragged him back to the sidewalk she would be correct to give him a good smack wear it hurts even though, as you put it, the urgency has receded and there’s no particular requirement to keep the kid from harm NOW.
Indeed, for her to do otherwise may very well be grossly negligent.
Yes, it’s a matter of education, reminder and discipline.
Joseph when did i say i was worried about the child turning in to a Mechallel Shabbos.
I was just pointing out that I need my child to have a positive emotional connection to Shabbos and Hashem.
Therefore i need a different approach to how i discipline a child for spiritual danger and physical danger .Joseph: one who needs to smack their child to teach them the seriousness of some dangers has to because the child is too young to understand and it’s important to make sure they don’t do it. Smiras Shabbas is not required by a child too young to understand therefore there is no need to smack. If a child is old enough to understand and is still doing dangerous stuff they need help not a smack. Same applies for Shabbas.
Joseph,
“So you’re not in the slightest worried that providing a child with corporal discipline for playing with fire may result in negative feelings leading him to become an arsonist but you are worried that providing a child with corporal discipline for being mechallel Shabbos may result in negative feelings leading him to become a mechallel Shabbos?”
You’re like a carpenter with a toolbox that only has a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail to you. The purpose of the extreme reaction by the matches is to convey, palpably, how scared you are by the act. If a young child tries to touch a hot pot and the parent says in a singsong voice, “oh honey, let’s not touch that pot, it’s hot”, there is no sense of danger, and the child’s curiosity will push him to test the limit. But if the parent lets loose a primal scream, slaps the child’s hand away, and yells, “HOT! DON’T EVER TOUCH POTS ON THE STOVE!”, the child will associate a fearful experience with the stove. It’s then up to the parent to help the child process that experience, telling him how scary it was, and that he yelled not because he was angry, but because he was scared for the child.
Shabbos is very different. First of all, young children have no understanding of melachos or muktze, and they have to be gradually taught what to do. You wouldn’t punish a 2 year old for not knowing how to drive a car, right? Because it’s a gradual process, children already know from experience that they won’t be injured if they play with an electronic toy, draw a picture, or flip on a light. So trying to make it into a scary experience or spanking them is counterproductive. If you want to utilize a strong reaction to demonstrate the seriousness of chillul Shabbos for a child who is old enough to know, burst into tears.
Avram, Winnie, Syag, flowers, places, avocado, et al:
What do you make of the fact that Tanach, Dovid HaMelech, Chazal, the Mechaber in Shulchan Aruch, the Achronim and everything in between and beyond implore Klal Yisroel to use corporal discipline on our children and strongly advise us we’ll destroy our children if we refrain from using corporal discipline.
Joseph,
Where in Tanakh, Dovid HaMelech, Chazal, and the Shulchan Aruch are we IMPLORED to use corporal discipline?
And, do you have a response to my latest post?
Avram: See Mishlei 13:24, 23:13, Shulchan Aruch OC 551:18, YD 245:10, 240:19-20, Rama, Pischai Tshuva and Birchai Yosef and Rambam Dayos.
And Ashkenazim permit hitting a child until the age of 22 (unless married.)
חוֹשֵֹ֣ךְ שִׁ֖בְטוֹ שׂוֹנֵ֣א בְנ֑וֹ וְ֜אֹהֲב֗וֹ שִֽׁחֲר֥וֹ מוּסָֽר
אַל-תִּמְנַע מִנַּעַר מוּסָר: כִּי-תַכֶּנּוּ בַשֵּׁבֶט, לֹא יָמוּת.
אַתָּה, בַּשֵּׁבֶט תַּכֶּנּוּ; וְנַפְשׁוֹ, מִשְּׁאוֹל תַּצִּיל.Joseph if you really want to know the answerr, and are not just trolling, why don’t you look up the sources that The LIttle I know always quotes- today’s gedolim and poskim who surely are familiar with your sources but know better than you (or us) what they mean and how they apply.
Avram, regarding your long post…
The purpose of the extreme reaction by the matches is to convey, palpably, how scared you are by the act.
You should be at least as scared of his Mechallel Shabbos R”L as you are scared by that act of his.
If a young child tries to touch a hot pot and the parent says in a singsong voice, “oh honey, let’s not touch that pot, it’s hot”, there is no sense of danger, and the child’s curiosity will push him to test the limit. But if the parent lets loose a primal scream, slaps the child’s hand away, and yells, “HOT! DON’T EVER TOUCH POTS ON THE STOVE!”, the child will associate a fearful experience with the stove.
The same can be said regarding a child being mechallel Shabbos.
A child should be as fearful of Mechallel Shabbos as he is fearful of playing with matches.
It’s then up to the parent to help the child process that experience, telling him how scary it was, and that he yelled not because he was angry, but because he was scared for the child.
Same with mechallel Shabbos.
You wouldn’t punish a 2 year old for not knowing how to drive a car, right?
We’re discussing older children, not two year olds.
If you want to utilize a strong reaction to demonstrate the seriousness of chillul Shabbos for a child who is old enough to know, burst into tears.
Why don’t you suggest limiting the parental response to playing with fire or playing on the road to that as well?
Winnie, none of today’s Gedolim disagree with any of the halachic sources I cited from Tanach, Shulchan Aruch and others. If you feel otherwise please provide directly sourced names and quotes of who disagrees with what rather than hearsay claims that unnamed modern day gedolim disagree or godol A disagrees without providing verifiable sources, as have I.
And if you do find a source or two that disagrees, they are disagreeing with the strong halachic consensus I cited from the Tanach through Chazal through the Achronim. You’ll have to cite more than a random voice or two.
Joseph,
You have failed to demonstrate with your sources that we are IMPLORED to hit.
Joseph:
Your error here, among others, is that you are pumping the hitting thing as the preferred method of intervention. Your primary source, which I believe you are abusing, is that חושך שבטו שונא בנו a recommendation. That is clearly inaccurate. Rather, it is that the total withholding is problematic. The second half of the posuk, unknown to many but still present in all present publications of Sefer Mishlei, is ואוהבו שיחרו מוסר. You may consult again with Rav Wolbe ZT”L to see the simple explanation. Discipline is NOT the primary approach, and several of us here in the CR have presented our simple explanations. It is sad that your approach is to begin by proclaiming that this spanking thing is the primary tool, and that you now need to find a way to justify it.
Many of us reviewed your citations. NONE of them push the hitting agenda as the preferred tool in chinuch. You confuse the עיקר and the טפל. It is not right to attribute this to any of the resources you cited. Try some that I have cited multiple times, and approach the question with an open mind. Let the Gedolei Yisroel answer the question.
So Joseph, what do you make of the fact that the Torah permits a man to divorce his wife? In some circumstances, a man is required to divorce. And a perusal of the sources reveals some pretty small reasons that can justify a divorce. Based on your logic, therefore, would you say that the Torah IMPLORES us to divorce, cv”s?
“You wouldn’t punish a 2 year old for not knowing how to drive a car, right?
We’re discussing older children, not two year olds.”
no, I don’t think we are. How many parents are smacking an 8 year old for running into traffic? Really now.
The reason it isn’t worth my energy to give “long rational answers” is because, as winnie and Avrum pointed out, you are either just trolling, or you are so incapable of seeing anything other than a nail that nothing we say makes a difference. My personal third reason is that there is nobody other than you who is even wondering. That’s how obvious it is.
When the Steipler was on guard duty on shabbos in siberia someone left him a coat hanging on a tree. The steipler chose not to take the coat even tho it was below freezing. Someone wondered how the Steipler could ch”v be “more frum than Hashem”. Why would he refuse to protect his life by taking the tree when Hashem clearly allowed it to be done and we are required to be responsible regarding our health.
The answer is because the Steipler knew he had a heter, and perhaps a chiyuv, to take that coat when he felt that the cold was dangerous to his health. In his piety, and with Hashem’s help he never quite got that cold.
Having a choice to do something to address situations does not obligate us to see that situation everyday all day.If that is too hard for you to process, just call it denial.
***DING***
Round one goes to WTP, Avram in MD and SyagI cited the halacha among Ashkenazim that you are permitted to hit an unmarried child until age 22. No one has yet explained under what circumstances they forsee a 21 year old child being given petch. Can one of you please name a few examples in that regard for a 21, 18 and 16 year old warranting corporal punishment from his father? Or do you disagree with the halacha.
I’m asking for specific examples you’d find acceptable to hit children at those ages.
Avram , the posek in Mishlei that I quoted falls pretty much in line with imploring. Otherwise the parent must hate his child according to Mishlei. You can nitpick the verbiage but that is a fair way to put it.
You also didn’t respond to my responses to your long comment.
Now back to our 21 year old, please. I eagerly await y’all responses about that emancipated child who may legally purchase alcohol.
“The older children are not touching hot pots…”
So which/when 21 year olds is Halacha telling us there are appropriate times to use corporal discipline on?
Interesting topic. To answer the original question, what to do if a kid doesn’t want to get up in the morning. My advice (for whatever it’s worth, 25 years of parenting all ages) First make sure the kid is in bed on time. Do something that the kid wants to do when he is ready for bed to make it happen pleasantly. Secondly, have a talk with the kid to rule out a good reason for not wanting to start his day, e. g. is he being bullied? etc. Thirdly, if the kid went to bed on time, and you ruled out a valid reason for his reluctance to get up. Use a consequence if he isn’t ready to leave when he should be ready. Wake him up and give him 1 or 2 reminders as needed. No nagging. Then stick to your consequence. A consequence I used with a preteen that worked well, was missing a mid winter fun day if she misses school for no good reason.
Joseph:
Your comments are increasingly bizarre. I feel badly for you, to have so little supporting your position while you are unwilling to let go and admit you’re seriously wrong.
You persist in contorting the posuk in Mishlei to meet your needs to make parenting and chinuch into a career of violence and subjugation. Nothing can be farther from the truth. If you want to trash דרכיה דרכי נועם, go right ahead. But don’t expect anyone else to believe you and accept your derech. It is antithetical to Torah, and would make Shlomo Hamelech quite angry to see his words distorted to the opposite of his intent.
You make a valid point, wondering just what sorts of infractions by a 21 year old would warrant corporal punishment. I ask the same question regarding the young child. And when I find the answer to what behaviors warrant the potch for the child, I must then consider the other variables to determine whether I may administer it.
You also wrote: Avram , the posek in Mishlei that I quoted falls pretty much in line with imploring. Otherwise the parent must hate his child according to Mishlei. You can nitpick the verbiage but that is a fair way to put it.”
If the implication wasn’t so tragic, I might have laughed. I will try to explain it while hoping bor brevity. I must say that I suspect you will accept none of it because it disagrees with your compulsion to hit children.
Nowhere does the posuk say to hit a child. It says חושך שבטו, which refers to the complete withholding, and the exclusion of it as a tool. The expression is clearly NOT about pushing the agenda to hit. There is not a single posek or chochom known that extolled the virtues of hitting and recommended it to be used as a main tool in chinuch. References you shared earlier say nothing of the sort that you wish to blame on them. The second half of the posuk refers to the loving of the child that uses “guidance”. Do you dispense with that half because it doesn’t support your agenda? No one is nitpicking the verbiage, just translating it as it states, and with the full support and backing of many, many generations of Gedolei Yisroel.
Lastly, you might decide that love of one’s children is nowhere in the Torah lexicon. Here, I send you to Chumash Bereishis, where Avrohom was identified as loving Yitzchok, Yitzchok as loving Eisav, Rivka as loving Yaakov, and countless times throughout תורה שבכתב ותורה שבעל פה.
Next time, begin with an open mind on a subject, look up references, and do not pasken or draw conclusions before consulting what Gedolei Yisroel said. You failed miserably at that here.
Little:
Your twisting דרכיה דרכי נועם into purportedly meaning you can bend out of shape and reinterpret Tanach and Halacha in Shulchan Aruch into meaning the opposite of their direct verbatim pesukim, Chazals and Halachas, is no different than the Reform doing the exact same as yourself using “Tikum Olam” as their justification.
Joseph:
You are not being a troll. You are being a מחוצף. I have no ideas of my own here. I have only reported the psakim and guidance of our Gedolei Yisroel, which you reject because of your personal passion for violence. I am sorry, but you appear more and more hopeless. Go ahead and inflict whatever injuries on your kids you wish. I hope you get caught and have to face the consequences. And I hope on your way to Gehinom, you are confronted by the Gedolei Yisroel that you brazenly ignore and put down.
I will never accept the aggressive approach here, as it is totally anti-Torah. I hope to not respond to your defenses, as they will have the merit of the חוצפה you display until now. Have a nice life. Teshuvah works.
Little:
You certainly have come here offering your personal deios without any haskama or backing of any rabbnonim (other than your alleged unnamed unnameable alleged religious figure) that you’re trying to sell to people under the rubric of דרכיה דרכי נועם , the same way other groups try to sell their modifications of halacha under the rubric of tikun olam.
What I have offered here is not only the same as what the gedolim say, it is exactly what is written in virtually any halachic sefer that discusses the issue. Both before and since and including S”A. Your attempts to toss it aside and reform halacha to your boich svaras in a sure one way ticket to gehenom, not the junk halacha that you invent as you go along — something you’ve been doing over the years here not just regarding the halachas we’re discussing on this thread but rather this has been your modus operandi on a whole slew of halachas you feel don’t fit well in the modern world and need your updating.
Some thoughts
I need that my children keep shabbos. After that I need them to love shabbos too.
Now I know that those are not mutually exclusive , and In normal situations the more they love it the more they will keep it, but if it’s necessary to choose, whenever that may be, (hopefully never)
It’s more important to keep it.
(I know, if they love it they will come back if they hate it they will leave later. Who says? Maybe he they love it without keeping it they will feel OK with that status but if they keep it even while hating it they will grow to love it. Either way I’m only musing)As to Josef’s main arguments
It’s an interesting thing.
Anecdotally speaking, corporal punishment seems to have been the standard method of discipline throughout the ages across all spectrum of Judaism. So of course there are multiple sources that will be major proponents of it.
What needs explanation is what and why has that changed.
Yes I’m familiar with the quote from rabbi wolbe. But why has that become holy grail?
I quoted above from rabbi miller who was staunchly pro justified smacking for chinuch .
He certainly was big enough to argue on rabbi wolbe
I’m not taking a position here. I’m musing.
Thousands of years of chinuch, and then a change in the last thirty years, one certainly has a right to wonderJoseph, it means when an older child who suffers from a developmental disorder gets himself into danger, you do what is necessary then as well.
R23 that’s fascinating. And then when he gets to 22 we just cut him loose to die.
Wow. I never knew that
Thanks for enlightening meJoseph,
“Avram , the posek in Mishlei that I quoted falls pretty much in line with imploring. Otherwise the parent must hate his child according to Mishlei. You can nitpick the verbiage but that is a fair way to put it.”
Nah, that’s a distortion, just like you are accusing The little I know of with דרכיה דרכי נועם.
“You also didn’t respond to my responses to your long comment.”
I’ll get right on it.
“Now back to our 21 year old, please. I eagerly await y’all responses about that emancipated child who may legally purchase alcohol.”
There is no “back” to the 21 year old. This discussion was about small children, and you brought this in tangentially. But I’ll answer. One example is a case like that mother in Baltimore during the riots a few years ago who physically stopped her teenager from participating after seeing him in news footage.
When he gets to 22, it’s already established that if this method was ever going to work, it would have done so already.
Joseph,
“You should be at least as scared of his Mechallel Shabbos R”L as you are scared by that act of his.”
Who says that I am not? These are not equivalent situations. First of all, Shabbos is taught via chinuch – a child’s obligations aren’t even fully upon him until bar/bas mitzvah age, so it’s like training matches that don’t catch things on fire. And if a post bar mitzva child is mechallel Shabbos, R”L, then it’s way too late for slapping the matches out of his hand. The house is already ablaze.
“The same can be said regarding a child being mechallel Shabbos.”
No, again, see above. Shabbos is an issue of chinuch, which is a gradual process, and so Hashem built in a way to do it safely.
“A child should be as fearful of Mechallel Shabbos as he is fearful of playing with matches.”
I agree – but by the matches a parent keeps them away from the child until he is old enough to use them safely. By Shabbos our children participate from infancy. Due to that, the “fear” tactic is ineffective.
“We’re discussing older children, not two year olds.”
No, up to this point we’ve been discussing young children. Hence the running in the street and matches examples.
Why don’t you suggest limiting the parental response to playing with fire or playing on the road to that as well?”
Because a young child will not set the house on fire due to mistakes with Shabbos. And as I said above, by an older child, the damage is already done, and the goal now is a rebuild.
klugeryid,
“Anecdotally speaking, corporal punishment seems to have been the standard method of discipline throughout the ages across all spectrum of Judaism.”
This again is a distortion. Something being permitted in certain circumstances is NOT the same thing as it being standard, or implored, or preferred, or whatever. I’ll ask you the same question I asked Joseph who conveniently ignored it: the Torah permits divorce, and sometimes obligates it. Are you ready to say that divorce is standard for Jews, or that the Torah implores us to divorce?
“What needs explanation is what and why has that changed.”
I think things have changed, but it wasn’t in the last 30 years. It was the last 150. Due to societal changes, parents have become more distant from their children, more tired, and more stressed. And therefore unfortunately many resort more quickly to anger and reactionary responses to children’s behaviors than in previous generations. Hence the increased calls to spare the rod. Don’t confuse 1950s America with the Torah’s ideal society. It was NOT normal or ok for parents to be so distant from their children.
avram your second half is on topic and possibly true
your first half though completely missed the mark
i said anecdotally it was common, ive heard it from many old timers and even when i was a child parents routinely slapped their children for all sorts of things, teachers hit and sometimes paddled even in non Jewish society
i just checked my drivers license, seems i cant honestly remember 150 years back
yet that which i wrote is from my own recollectionAVRAM
I’ll ask you the same question I asked Joseph who conveniently ignored it: the Torah permits divorce, and sometimes obligates it. Are you ready to say that divorce is standard for Jews, or that the Torah implores us to divorce?
WERE WOMEN TO DO THE THINGS THAT THE TORAH DEMANDS DIVORCE FOR WITH THE FREQUENCY THAT CHILDREN DO THE THINGS FOR WHICH DISCIPLINE IS DEMANDED FOR , THEN ABSOLUTELY DIVORCE WOULD BE RAMPANT.
is that a clear enough answer?klugeryid,
“avram your second half is on topic and possibly true
your first half though completely missed the mark”Translation: You don’t want to answer either?
“i said anecdotally it was common, ive heard it from many old timers and even when i was a child parents routinely slapped their children for all sorts of things, teachers hit and sometimes paddled even in non Jewish society
i just checked my drivers license, seems i cant honestly remember 150 years back
yet that which i wrote is from my own recollection”Yes, and I am saying that the knee-jerk paddle culture with a focus solely on behavior and not what’s happening in the child’s world that you are recollecting was NOT the long term norm. If Joseph wants to bring Mishlei, I’ll bring Nach (regarding Adoniyahu): וְלֹֽא־עֲצָב֨וֹ אָבִ֚יו מִיָּמָיו֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר מַדּ֖וּעַ כָּ֣כָה עָשִֹ֑יתָ
You’ll note that it doesn’t say he wasn’t beat up enough. He was never questioned about the reasons behind his actions – a relational defect.
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