Gentle Parenting has failed, lets accept this.

Whether you call it a tap or a smack or a thwack or whatever, it's hitting children. You haven't been lynched and you didn't misword anything; you were called out on hitting your children and now you're trying to make yourself the victim.

Would you be fine with your boss "tapping" you on the hand for a work mistake? Or your spouse "tapping" you on the hand for not doing something they asked?

Gentle parenting =/= permissive parenting. The problem is that lots of people don't know the difference. Children who've actually been gentle parented are generally confident, curious, and happy to take direction from adults.

I only have to look at my son and he knows to cut the crap. I don't have to touch him. You don't need to manhandle your child to potty train them. DS was potty trained at 3 with just kindness and plenty of hugs and encouragement. I'd have to ask why this child is crying, screaming and throwing things.

If I hit them it would have been giving them a 'bat' where I came from.

Just leave me alone please, I did not HIT my children. I commented on this post and i've been lynched ever since because i misworded something in my OP.

You did. There's no getting away from that.

This is the issue people have with gentle parenting, they don't understand it or know how it works at all. Gentle parenting isn't about letting your DC decide and do as they like. It is about holding boundaries in a calm and compassionate way. People who effectively gentle parent have clear, consistent boundaries.

YES you did. If you "tapped" an adult on the hand, that would be assault and you could be prosecuted for it. They court wouldn't care that you've come up with a stupid, cutesy word to try to minimise what you did. You hit them. Own it.

Taps aren't a punishment. You hit them. "Smacked" if you prefer to use your original word, but smacking is just a word for hitting that child-hitters prefer to use.

That also means telling them off didn't work either! And it says tap on the hand - i did not hit them! Google the difference between a tap and a hit.

"A telling off, at the time they did it, if they took no notice and did it again it was a tap to the hand, and a stern No, if they did it again I would remove toys."

You here,.. saying that you'd hit them, then if they did it again take the toy off them ... that's you telling us m hitting didn't work

Why are they not potty training ? Why are they not brushing teeth?

Is is because they are trying to be gentle and if the child says no they are stuck ? How exactly does gentle parenting work when the child just says no ? When the child fights and throws the toothbrush away ?

Gentle parenting isn't the problem it's no parenting. Some people aren't potty training their kids or brushing their teeth or in fact doing anything with them at all.

Keep telling yourself that.

We all know you hit your children as you told us about it. It's quite encouraging that you now desperately want to convince yourself you didn't, because it means you know how wrong it was, but you can't take back your posts.

I didnt hit my children! I could count on 1 hand the amount of times tapped the back or their hand. A stern telling of usually sufficed i've said this!

And yes, I have 3 lovely young men

I did not hit my children

I didn't hit my children!

Where did i say things didn't work?

I did not hit my children!

You hit your children. If you were confident in your decision to smack you'd acknowledge this rather than trying to change the language being used.

I'd say you've got 3 lovely young men in spite of hitting them.

"the James Bulger killers who I think no amount of discipline would have changed their outcome in life"
Your tone seems to suggest that those boys were intrinsically bad whereas I believe that if they'd been born to different families their outcomes would have been different. One of the boys (can't remember which one) had previously asked to be taken into care because his home life was so dreadful. And his mother didn't even attend court. I think, but not sure, that the father was absent.
Of course what they did was horrific but we should consider the bigger picture and think about what drove them to do what they did.

But you intended it as a punishment/deterrent, which a tap on the hand wouldn't do. Clearly you hit them.

Wonderful. If you think it is right to hit children as a way to teach them the expectations in behaviour, then, marvellous.

But you still haven't justified it explained why you hitting your children was the best choice. You admit it didn't actually work as an effective form of correction, yet still insist that it was right to do so.

If it is right and proper to hit children as part of teaching them how to behave, then, presumably had teachers had done the same you would have been okay with that?

That was just to clarify what I meant by a 'smack'. A tap or a smack on the back of the hand is not a hit or a punch.

Hitting children isn't parenting them. And you know it's wrong because you've tried to change it to a "tap" after admitting you hit them. It's okay to learn, grow, and admit you were wrong.