I have seen it both ways. Pain and emotional punishment. I will see if I can find some of the links again.
I did spank my children on rare occasions and of course I have also done the restricting them to their rooms or taking away their possessions.
But if I look at it at face value, when I restricted them or took away their possessions, it is pretty much like how prisoners are treated. Or like they do with the Al Qaeda combatants when they secured them in a restricted area and at first withheld the Koran from them as a form of punishment. So imo, it is a debatable issue over what is emotional punishment and physical punishment and are either of them good for the child's wellbeing.
We have been told that emotional issues are harder to get over than physical abuse. But unfortunately they don't hand out handbooks on how to parent when a child is born. There are so many varying views when it comes to child rearing and no way of knowing which one even applies. It is just a smörgåsbord of ideas compiled by many individuals. So I believe that most parents try to adhere to the guideline that works best for them and their individual child or children.
I have not seen where the DA said he was abused. They are there to rule that in or out, which is proper in a case involving a minor defendant. Since corporal punishment is not illegal, if that was done, then it is not abuse. There would have to be bruises left on the child because of the spanking.
Again, yes, we have heard he was spanked but even the defense attorney said that the defense has never claimed it was abuse and that claim was started by the media, not them, he said.
imoo
Sorry, I've been over on the Caylee threads. I apologize for belaboring the point, but, corporal punishment is NOT emotional punishment, although it certainly has an emotional effect. Again, corporal means of the body. So, restricting/grounding a child is not corporal punishment. It must be intentional infliction of pain on a person's body to be such.
Also, corporal punishment
can be illegal and it is often categorized as abuse, but not always. Depends on the culture and the jurisdiction. I have no clue whether this child was abused or not.
I never said that the DA said this child was abused. But, it sure looks like they assumed so, at least at first:
"Police in this small eastern Arizona community are looking into the possibility that an 8-year-old boy who is charged with killing his father and another man with a rifle had been abused, the police chief said Saturday.
The boy, who faces two counts of premeditated murder, did not act on the spur of the moment, Police Chief Roy Melnick said.
"I'm not accusing anybody of anything at this point," he said Saturday. "But we're certainly going to look at the abuse part of this. He's 8 years old. He just doesn't decide one day that he's going to shoot his father and shoot his father's friend for no reason. Something led up to this."
"He had no record of any kind, not even a disciplinary record at school," he said. "He has never been in trouble before."
In a sign of the emotional and legal complexities of the case, police are pushing to have the boy tried as an adult even as they investigate possible abuse, Melnick said."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/08/national/main4586103.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4586103
And here, there is support for my view that most kids who commit patricide were abused:
"Why Do Kids Kill?
Experts familiar with parental murders by young children, but not involved in this case, said abuse is almost always a factor in such crimes.
According to FBI statistics, there were 62 cases between 1976 and 2005 in which children, aged 7 or 8 were arrested on murder charges. Of those,
parents were the victims in just two cases.
"The number of homicides committed by children under 11 is infinitesimal. These are very rare events," said Paul Mones, the only lawyer in the country whose clients consist exclusively of children accused of killing their parents.
"The vast majority of parricides -- the murder of a parent -- committed by minors involve physical abuse and generally involve teenagers. Seventy-five percent of such murders involve boys who kill their fathers and 15 percent involve boys who kill their mothers," said Mones, who has defended hundreds of minors in 25 years of practice, though none younger than 10."
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=6287379&page=1
I do not think that most parents who spank their kids are abusers. I am against spanking (I handled over 20 2 to 4 year olds all day in my preschool classes without laying a hand on them, so I do not feel it is ever "necessary". I also noticed in my daycare programs that the children who parents used spanking as a normal means of punishment, were the worst behaved of the bunch) but many people do it and their children do not grow up to be murderers. It is a very rare thing for a child as young as this to kill his parents. Thus, we look for explanations. If he did this, abuse, such as excessive or cruel corporal punishment, among other types of abuse, must be looked at. Of course, there could be other causes as well. But, I don't think that the average, good parent who may have spanked their kid now and then, needs to start looking over their shoulder!
