Judge William Adams is a child abuser

[Hatta]

On a radio show named Lex and Terry this morning, Lex said "I get it". Then they watched the video and laughed. They just lost a listener.

You just know that autotune remixes of the video will certainly surface by the end of the week...as will parody videos...etc.

I was thinking Yakety Sax.

[Zing]

The problem is that the father should have stopped hitting her with the belt after the first four swings, at the very least.

So you'd be cool with someone shouting "I'LL SMACK YOU IN YOUR FUCKING FACE IF YOU DON'T DO WHAT I TELL YOU DO TO!!!!!" and then proceed to lash your Grandmother/Mother/Wife/Girlfriend/Daughter with a belt more than once?

Interesting. Says a lot.

Next time, read what you quote. If you watch the video, the first four hits were before he said anything other than "bend over the bed". Being spanked with a belt seems like an acceptable punishment, although I personally don't spank my daughter in any fashion. It was the continued hitting on the legs and arms and venomous language that is the abuse here, not belt-spanking.

Also, your argument makes little sense. This isn't an unknown person shouting in all-caps a ridiculous command at my loved one. This is a father attempting to discipline his daughter in the way he sees fit. Obviously, no one likes to think about it, or see it. No one in their right mind can agree with your statement about "being cool" with anyone being hit with a belt, even a total stranger.

[MrPopo]

Do I think he deserves prison? No. Judge Adams made a choice to lash out in anger, and now, evidently, his daughter is reaping the emotional scars.

So you're cool with him being able to do it again, or with other children he might decide to have?

Is this an isolated incident? Does it matter? Maybe. I don't know. I don't believe the courts have the right to intervene in this. Again, I do NOT condone the father's actions.

If the courts don't intervene then it won't stop. Period. So you're saying that this is acceptable behavior in a parent.

I don't believe a child should be "beaten" but I do believe that child needs his or her will broken, and if that means the old belt, then so be it.

Yeah... this isn't the army son. I really hope you don't have kids of your own.

I hate to tell you Popo, but I come from a long lineage of children on the receiving end of a belt. I sincerely believe today's children disciplined in this "time out" generation are given far too much rope. Our country is running rampant with rebellious, self-willed brats. Undoubtedly, a spanking inflicts pain. But does that make it wrong? I remeber my mother spanking me and then hiding away in her room to cry. I truly believe a parent that loves their child will, if need be punish them in other ways than a scolding for correction. I think I have your answer. I don't expect with the majority of the board to agree with me on this either, and that's fine. Personally, I fear for your kids more than my own.

See, the thing here is I don't disagree that a spanking can be a useful parenting tool, when applied correctly. But a spanking now and again for an egregious offence is not the same as "breaking their will". That's the part of your statement I took the most issue with. I was spanked as a child when I was really bad. It didn't happen often, and never with the kind of intensity shown in the video. That video is not discipline; it is abuse.

[MrPopo]

The problem is that the father should have stopped hitting her with the belt after the first four swings, at the very least.

So you'd be cool with someone shouting "I'LL SMACK YOU IN YOUR FUCKING FACE IF YOU DON'T DO WHAT I TELL YOU DO TO!!!!!" and then proceed to lash your Grandmother/Mother/Wife/Girlfriend/Daughter with a belt more than once?

Interesting. Says a lot.

Next time, read what you quote. If you watch the video, the first four hits were before he said anything other than "bend over the bed". Being spanked with a belt seems like an acceptable punishment, although I personally don't spank my daughter in any fashion. It was the continued hitting on the legs and arms and venomous language that is the abuse here, not belt-spanking.

Also, your argument makes little sense. This isn't an unknown person shouting in all-caps a ridiculous command at my loved one. This is a father attempting to discipline his daughter in the way he sees fit. Obviously, no one likes to think about it, or see it. No one in their right mind can agree with your statement about "being cool" with anyone being hit with a belt, even a total stranger.

No, a belt is not an acceptable punishment. It is abuse.

[Luke]

Next time, read what you quote.

I did. You said four lashes with a belt was okay.

I'm not here for an argument, but you obviously are, so I'm fine with stating that I simply don't agree with hitting a 16 year old girl with a belt while screaming at her.

Again, if you're fine with someone lashing your Mother or Daughter with a belt while cursing at her, intimidating her and threatening, I don't hate you, I feel sorry for you. People who do the same are pathetic and only lash out at smaller, weaker people.

People like this are the ones who blame the controller for not beating Mega Man.

[J T]

I'm kind of confused. If the problem was internet or computer usage, why not just take the internet or computer away? It doesn't seem to make sense to punish the daughter while leaving the door open to further breaking rules. At the beginning of the video, their conversation makes it clear that the daughter had "reinstalled" whatever, so obviously, the computer and internet were still wide open to her after a previous infraction.

^This is a much better form of punishment.

An even better form of punishment is to require the kid to repair whatever the damage is that they have done. And you should not only have them correct their mistake, but overcorrect by going above and beyond fixing what they have done wrong. This strategy is called correction-overcorrection. For example, if your little boy tramples through the neighbor lady's prize winning flower bed, then you have him pay for new flowers out of his allowance and plant the flowers as the correction for his misdeed. Then, as an overcorrection you have him weed and water the flower bed for the next month. This will have to come out of his allotted play time. This not only promotes pro-social behavior, but it gives him a hands-on experience of empathy for the trouble he caused the neighbor so that he learns why he shouldn't destroy other people's property in the future.

Corporal punishment (hitting, spanking, shaking, etc.) is very, very rarely of utility in long term discipline. In fact, it often makes children distrust, dislike, or even hate their parents, which will undo all of the parents' attempts at teaching their children because the children won't value the parents' opinions and beliefs any more. They'll just pretend to when the parents are around to avoid a beating (and when the cats away, the mice will play). The only time corporal punishment is useful is when immediate suppression of a behavior is needed to prevent consequences more severe than the punishment, such as when a child is about to walk into moving traffic, stick a fork in an electrical outlet, or touch a hot stove. Shouting, grabbing, or slapping may be a quick and effective way to stop them from hurting themselves. This form of corporal punishment is applying a painful experience to prevent an even more painful experience from happening though, and is therefore more caring than the typical way that parents use spanking, which follows a misdeed with an aversive experience that hopefully gets paired in the child's mind as a consequence for bad behavior.

Over time, however, reinforcement is a superior strategy to punishment. This is not often clear to the parent that relies on punishment though. The parent that punishes sees their child behaving well around them (and they don't see how they misbehave away from them). These parents think their punishment is working, but they are blind to when it doesn't. Unlike correction-overcorrection, which teaches children that their behaviors have consequences for others (which is the basis for ethical behavior), punishment teaches children "it's only wrong if you get caught".

Punishment is also reinforcing to the punisher. If you hit someone, particularly a child, it usually gets them to stop whatever they were doing that was bothering you. Over time, they also learn to fear your reactions and walk on eggshells around you, which gets confused in the punisher's mind as a sign of respect (though there likely is none). Judge William Adams is clearly highly reinforced by punishing his daughter and likely his wife. This is to an extreme that has obviously come to the point of a sickness. This is a man that believes in the power of his belt. Now he's going to see what is really going on though. He has a daughter that hates him so much that she wants to destroy his reputation and crush his livelihood. Through the internet, she has found a way to cull together enough power to punish him back with a spiteful vengeance. This is what he has raised.

I would encourage everyone, especially parents, to learn more about the principles of reinforcement that can be understood from behavioral psychology. I know some fans of corporal punishment will be quick to write this off and view it from an over-simplified "you get a cookie for being good" perspective. However, the facts are that behavioral psychologists have long studied the effects of punishment and reinforcement for their ability to shape behavior. The science favors reinforcement over punishment in most circumstances, with some exceptions like those I have mentioned above. These principles of operant conditioning are at the very core of the most effective psychotherapies that get people to change their problematic behavior. Obviously people aren't going to therapy to "get the spankings they deserve", they are going so they can learn a different way to live.

Through reinforcement strategies you can strengthen the positive behaviors you want to see, you can put unwanted behavior on a cue so that it becomes controllable, you can train in behaviors that are incompatible with the unwanted behavior and thus make it impossible to carry out the unwanted behavior, you can shape the absense of the unwanted behavior so that just about anything else becomes more reinforcing than engaging in the unwanted behavior, and you can use strategies that reshape the entire motivation for engaging in the unwanted behavior and get it to disappear naturally. If you're looking for an easy to read primer on how to use reinforcement, I suggest Karen Pryor's book "Don't Shoot The Dog". Otherwise, spend some time online reading about operant conditioning and classical conditioning and searching terms like "variable reinforcement schedules", "behavioral extinction", or "Premack principle" that are likely to only show up in more in-depth discussions on the topic.

Also, just because your parents spanked you or beat you and you turned out ok, doesn't mean they had the best parenting strategies. People are incredibly resilient and there will be those that do turn out just fine in the long wrong despite horrible things happening to them, but they weren't really helped by the beatings (though their punishers will gladly take the credit). It makes me sad to see how many people have responded to this story with their own stories of abuse, and in some cases people saying "but I deserved it", which I think is a sad example of internalized punishment where the person has actually come to think that they are bad enough to warrant these violent parenting strategies, which as I've mentioned, don't work. A lot of our parents may have meant well by spanking, but decades of research have passed and it's no longer considered an effective parenting strategy. No one deserves to be beaten.

[dedalusdedalus]

Intelligent psychological comparison of reinforcement v. punishment as behavior modification tool

Thanks for providing your perspective as a psychologist regarding this issue, JT.

Everyone who supports the use of corporal punishment as a parenting tool, please take note of JT's post -- Corporal punishment should only be used in an extremely circumscribed set of circumstances, viz. to eliminate behavior that would pose a greater and more immediate threat to the child's own safety.

[BoneSnapDeez]

The problem is that the father should have stopped hitting her with the belt after the first four swings, at the very least.

Are you fucking serious?

You people are disappointing me.

[Hatta]

^^^Big thumbs up JT. Everything above applies to criminal justice as well.

[brunoafh]

I don't believe a child should be "beaten" but I do believe that child needs his or her will broken, and if that means the old belt, then so be it.

I just want some clarification here, you seriously think it's completely acceptable to beat your own children into submission with a belt if they're misbehaving? I certainly don't have any parenting experience, but I think I would be able to come up with ways a bit more logical and civil to punish my kids. Resorting to violence to deal with misbehavior just seems very unintelligent and primitive. Shows that the parent has no patience, amongst other things.