Originally Posted by Rathji
You could easily make a case, and would likely be 100% correct, that the parents didn't have the tools to deal with the kid, so instead just let him do his thing.
It's a cycle.
Parents don't know how to deal with their kids because their parents didn't know how to deal with them. Kids screw up and then the cycle continues.
I am a foster parent and you look at these kids who come in where they were taken from their parents up because of abuse, neglect, etc and there is almost always evidence of the same thing happening to the parents. You give these kids a better environment, either by educating the parents or moving them to a safe home, and you improve their chances in life for sure. More importantly, you break the cycle of neglect and abuse, so that their kids don't have the same thing happen to them.
An example from my personal life: I remember a time when my kids were acting up, and knowing I was a bit of a handful when I was younger, I asked my mom what she did with us, so I could maybe get some pointers. She flat out said, "You can't do what I did, because I just smacked the living #### out of you." It made me think, before becoming a foster parent, where you must agree not to use physical discipline on ANY child in your home, including your own, I would spank my kids. It never really stopped the bad behaviour, because kids will be kids, but that's what In was raised on, so that's what I did. Now, I use different techniques, and of course they still don't make my kids perfect, but they work better or just as well as the spankings did.
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