Gentle Parenting has failed, lets accept this.

Why do I need to justify myself to you, make your own comment on the OP and move on, let me have mine FFS

It worked for me, it was the way I chose to parent my children, i didn't 'hit' them,

I have 3 very confident, caring, kind, HAPPY, responsible and conscientious men I have raised that I am very close with are in very secure loving relationships and all have worked well at school, have gone on to do very well in work

Did I do something wrong - No

You really haven't. Though it's interesting to note that your previous posts start by saying you "smack their hand" and that progressed to "a tap" when you were challenged.

Really? Where? All I saw was you saying you would tell them ... hit them.... remove the toy. Nowhere have I seen where you explain why hitting was the correct response and how it helped (which it clearly didn't if you then had to take toy away after hitting).

Otherwise if hitting was effective in your world then surely that would be the end of it? Hitting stops the undesirable behaviour...?

I've addressed all this in previous posts

So, why is society full of adult violence and criminality? All this people that grow up being smacked in the 1940-1980s... Why do they go on to break the law, not follow rules, harm other people??

I have not read all the responses in this thread. I don't gentle parent. With that being said I don't equate gentle parenting with permissive parenting. I am not against smacking children but I don't think it work particularly well. I was smacked as a child on the odd occasion, I don't think it did me any long term damage other than I was bit fearful. I don't think being smacked was helpful as I received it when my parents lost control. Whilst I am not against smacking, I do not advocate it and wouldn't want to smack my children

It has been proven, over and over again, in multiple studies conducted in different countries and cultures over many years, to be completely ineffective and have no measurable impact on behaviour long term, and some studies indicate it makes behaviour worse.

It baffles me that some parents enjoy hitting their children so much they will refuse to accept any research showing that it's pointless.

And by your own admission, smacking them didn't stop them you still had to take the toy off them...

Yes, but why resort to hitting them THEN removing the toy. When removing the toy was the thing to do. Skip the hitting bit.

The hitting served no purpose...

As for "no telling off" that isn't what we mean.

Child is told "do not do X, or I will have to remove toy". Child does X, you remove toy

At what point do you need to hit them???

Why did you do that?

What does that achieve?

I never 'hit' my children, I tapped the back of their hands with my fingers, never the palm of my hand

I would not be up for punishing a toddler as some kind of performance.

I was smacked a lot growing up by both my parents. My DM claims that she always felt that my F smacked us too hard, but she never stopped him from doing so.

As to how much it affected me, it’s impossible to say as my F also sexually abused my DSis and me. What I do believe is that it partly explains why neither of us told my DM about the CSA, because we thought we’d be in trouble as our abusive F would accuse us of lying and lying was always punished severely.

In her defence, my DM regrets it all and accepts that smacking is wrong. It has made it easier for me to have a relationship with her as an adult. I do believe that she genuinely didn’t know about the CSA, as her reaction when we told her 9 years ago was completely genuine, one of devastation. (We’d repressed the memories for many years, they came back when we had young children.)

In short, smacking only succeeds in making your children scared of you and much less likely to open up to you if there is something bad going on in their lives.

in the 70s I would write a note ‘please cane this boy’ and the boy would take it to the the house master and get caned returning with a signature on the note

I’m absolutely with you on this one. Smacking can often come from the parent losing control of their emotions and not having the tools in place to do anything different. I was smacked as a child and it was never ever a controlled punishment. Consequently it was often unjustified and confusing. And I still flinch at raised voices in my fifties.

Yes, and we also know which is being used to punish the child (and it’s not a ‘tap’).

Interesting that people who use physical punishment that causes the child pain feel the need to pretend otherwise - maybe they should consider why that is?

According to google.....a tap is a light quick and often gentle touch, a hit is full force

I think anyone with common sense knows the difference

According to google.....a tap is a light quick and often gentle touch, a hit is full force

I think anyone with common sense knows the difference

Think the name Gentle Parenting doesn't help.

If you actually read what it entails it's teaching your kids to respect, talk, be kind, etc.

Hitting your child into compliance isn't teaching them anything.

The usual mischief-making - either that or a small number of jokers currently have an excessive amount of time on their hands.

There are a number of threads I haven't even wasted time posting on as they were so obviously someone's weak idea of a wind-up. Another one - about the 6-year-old - just disappeared in a puff of smoke in the time it took me to refresh my page.

@mysecretshame I did. It was horrible. There is something very weird about the number of these posts popping up.

I accept that's your experience, but I'm Gen X too and it did affect me, as did the fact that every time it happened I was told I 'deserved' it. IMHO your parents should have been capable of 'keeping you in line' without resorting to hitting. As far as I'm concerned crossing the line into physical punishment just demonstrates that the adult has lost control.

In my experience, though, there does seem to be an extraordinary amount of pro-hitting, 'never did me any harm' sentiment among Gen X-ers.

Did you see the biting thread? That made me feel a bit traumatised to be honest.

A "tap" is neither a deterrent or startling enough to stop a certain behaviour. It's a euphemism for "hit" by people who can't admit they hit they children because they know it's wrong, but do it anyway.