Manitoba social workers want parents of an orthodox Mennonite community to promise they will only spank kids on their behinds and not use objects, such as belts, as punishment.
Makes sense to me. (“But I suppose that comma after objects shouldn’t be there,” said the Grammar Guardian.)
The parenting rules and discipline guidelines are spelled out in a recent letter from the government’s Child and Family Services Department to members of the tiny community, where Mounties made arrests over several weeks this summer.
The Canadian version of CSD actually allows spanking?! 😯
The letter says that while Child and Family Services doesn’t support spanking, it’s not illegal.
Oh, OK. Well, I hope those last three words continue to hold true in Canada. (Are they still true in the USA? I think so.)
It further stipulates that parents must not “pinch, pull hair, sit on, slap faces, pull/pinch ears, burn, withhold food, or have children stand or sit for extended periods of time as punishment/correction.”
Burn?! 🙁 You gotta be kidding me. That has to be stipulated? 😥
I’m sorry to see Christians in general and Mennonites in particular in the news for that kind of thing. Some of those things should be understood as out of bounds for any human child training. May God bring healing and restoration to any abused children. And conviction and cleansing to their abusers.
If further details of the story interest you, it’s only a click away: Only spank kids on their behinds.
Additional reading:
Kind of interesting. However, I disagree with the Grammar Guardian about the comma. There are three punctuation marks used to set off an explanation or aside in a sentence—commas, parentheses, and dashes. If not at the end of a sentence, a pair is correct. See http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/dashes-parentheses-and-commas?page=all
Yes, I know about the three punctuation types to use for parenthetical elements. 😯
I was just kinda surprised (at that time and in passing) that the compilers of the rules provided the loopholes they did with that particular use of commas.
My own observation was an aside, a sideshow to the main points of interest to me. 😆