Gentle Parenting has failed, lets accept this.

That's hitting.

Isn't a tap to the back of the hand hitting?
And when does a tap become hitting and hitting become beating?

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.

I am going back 25 years, but you are telling me if my child did something wrong I was not to tell them off just take a toy off them? How does that work exactly.

And I was not 'hitting' them, it was a tap to the back of the hand.

Well, we can all see here how it did or didn't affect you.

There are a lot of pro hitting children threads on mumsnet recently, have we been invaded?

What was the point of the hitting if you then went in to remove toys, which should have been the actual consequence in the first place?

It rarely got to the smack on the hand to be honest - a stern telling off was what it normally took. After the smack on the hand I would restrict some toys, TV programmes and stick them on the bottom stair, etc until they were ready to apologise and they learned what they had done was wrong.

No I would not have hit them harder. I would like to make that clear to the people who have commented on my comment. It was a tap on the hand, not a whack or a beating.

What would you have done if the smack on the hand didn't suffice? Hit them harder?

How are you measuring effectiveness and what are you comparing it against?

Eg, if you want your child to stop teasing the cat then stubbing your cigarette out on their arm would likely stop them teasing the cat faster than, say, giving them a biscuit. Does that make stubbing your cigarette out on them justified?

When do you stop? When they are 18?
Do you hit them in public or only at home?

Do your parents still hit you?

My experience of children that have been gently parented is that they are well behaved and respectful. They certainly understand boundaries. So in that sense, all good.

However my observation has been that they have no resilience when a more authoritative tone is used by others that don’t subscribe to gentle parenting and they tend to be emotionally very fragile in that regard. It doesn’t set them up very well In The wider world in that regard, I dont think.

But how does the consequence for the child breaking something outweigh the loss for the person/people? When my child was 8/9, he was riding his scooter in our cul de sac and despite warnings, he went to fast and damaged a neighbour’s van, and he paid for half the repair from his savings and I paid the rest. I understand as a parent he was my responsibility and that was settled. However, when he was younger, his younger sibling received a lovely gift which had batteries, it made various noises/colours and he (younger) loved it. Older child asked for some batteries for one of his toys and we didn’t have any so I said I’d get some when we went shopping; he took it upon himself to break the toy to get the batteries out. I removed his battery toy but younger sibling was left without his present, and we couldn’t replace it so effectively he also got punished. Older child wasn’t really fussed about losing his toy so there wasn’t really any consequence for him.

Because she just needed telling off in a stern voice rather than 'don't do that darling' voice. She's not my child, i wouldn't smack her.

Mine got a smack on the hand, nothing more and that was in extreme circumstances if a good telling off didn't suffice

I’m sorry your friend is struggling with her child, parenting can be very hard.

Not all parenting approaches work for every child (or for every parent). If her chosen approach isn’t working she needs to adapt it or find another method entirely.

But there are loads of positive, healthy parenting options - there’s absolutely no need to jump to smacking as the answer however tired and frustrated the adults are.

My kids were always very well behaved and as a teacher I keep good control of a whole class of teens. I have never needed to smack anyone. Discipline imo comes from clear expectations, firm boundaries and consistency. You must follow through. I have seen time and time again teachers and parents make a threat eg removing a privilege etc and then not following through. It is the most basic thing to get right.
I was smacked as a child. I’ve grown up with no lasting damage but it’s never ok to smack someone.

The boundary between gentle (authoritative) and permissive parenting isn't blurred.

It your/some people's understanding of the term.

I have 2 dc with ADHD. I think I probably did gentle parenting without knowing about gentle parenting.
all I knew was I didn’t want to scream and shout at my children every single day for any minor mishap. I wanted to raise confident children
If dc did something that needed correcting I would get down to their level and tell them why it wasn’t a nice thing to do and how they could have tackled somethings differently. How they would feel if someone did that to them and what to do if something like that happened again. It took such a long time but I like to think they learned what to do if a situation arose again rather than it was better to not do something just to save having the long boring conversation about why it’s best not to do something naughty

Although having ADHD myself (not diagnosed and not knowing that my dc or I had ADHD at the time) I had very few rules overall.
I would sit listening to other mothers listing all the rules that they required their children to adhere to and knew there was no way I could remember all the rules as an adult let alone expecting dc to remember them.

I was a complete shit as a child (think biting my parents if I didn't get my way) - a complete horror at home and an angel at school. My parents regularly smacked me, shouted, used authoritarian punishments, but I saw all these things as positive. They were very young when they had me and didn't spend a lot of time with me, so I got their attention any way I could.

I've never raised my voice to my 10 year old, never mind even considered hitting him. I told myself long ago that I would not repeat my parent's mistakes. Ok, I'm slightly biased, but he's mature, kind and (mostly) extremely well behaved.

I don't believe that kids are more badly behaved these days - I remember a lot of the kids in my class in school who were awful. Many of them had parents who were just not that interested in spending time with them and I think the same holds true today. I think it's partly attention seeking, lack of good behavioural role models and lack of effort in teaching proper boundaries and respect for others.

Gentle parenting has been an amazing parenting tool for me and lots of other people I know - I agree that there's some inverse snobbery around gentle parenting, with comments like "Tarquin" being overly pandered to by his middle class parents being very telling 🙄

Oh OK. I'll return my first class degree in education, my PGCE, my Master's in education and my Doctorate in education because someone on Mumsnet said that I "clearly know nothing" about education.

You're just embarrassing yourself. It's most amusing, though.

What are you on? You're advocating for corporal punishment! So, if the first smack didn't work, you would do it harder? Until when?

Not a fan of gentle parenting, it doesn't prepare children for life outside home, Everyone has to find a balance but 'authoritative parenting', strikes a reasonable balance of nurture with respect for boundaries.

Any adult who hits a child has failed, it's a fundamental safeguarding issues and should be reported as such. No exceptions.

I agree with this 1000% although I realize in many cultures this is frowned on.

If you think that gentle and permissive parenting are similar, and that gentle parenting "ends badly", you're working in the wrong field.

This. It’s fucking disgusting that it’s legal to assault a child.

The smacking ban will, without a doubt, come into force in England sooner or later. I don't know why they keep faffing about with it. Just do it already.