To ask how those of us who were smacked

I was and I don’t have any strong feelings either way. The emotional abuse I suffered due to my mum’s untreated mental illness has caused far more scars than a spank on the bottom now and then.

For self harming? That's horrific. I was lucky, although there was DV at home towards my mum and us kids occasionally I was only ever verbally abused and threatened for self harming and having MH issues. My sister was punished with violence for suffering extreme depression as a teenager (threatened with a knife kind of thing. Being told we were able the devil's children and bringing shame on our family for being mentally ill was pretty awful but I don't remember being smacked for those things specifically .

it's shocking that you were smacked for being distressed. I'm so sorry you endured that. 💐💐

But why administer a physical punishment when other methods are just as effective?

I was smacked a handful of times and tbh bar once I would say I deserved it.

No child ever deserves to be smacked.

We don't resolve our differences with other adults by violence so why do we do it with children?

I was smacked as a child but never thought about it-most kids were smacked so I see it as a cultural thing rather than abuse. When I say smacked, I mean on the bottom or legs with a hand. Not with objects or fists-that has always been abuse. There is a world of difference between a tap on the legs and a hard smack which leaves a mark. However, I only smacked my children twice and felt horrible afterwards-there are other ways to make your point. So I personally don’t agree with it, but it was
ar for the course in my childhood-and most of my peers. We grew up pretty happy.

I remember watching a programme about smacking. It was about a very religious family and it was the Dad's "duty" to punish the children (and his wife). He was very pro smacking/spanking but never wanted to act out of anger.

So at the end of every day he would have the kids stand in a line (and presumably the wife) and come into his study one at a time to be spanked for any misdeamers during the day. He had a rule book that specified how many spanks you would get depending on the crime and what you would be spanked with eg hand/belt etc.

The programme actually showed him doing the ritual with a distraught child which ended with him whiping the child with a cane. On tv.

I was smacked a handful of times and tbh bar once I would say I deserved it.

I was told off and if I ignored it repeatedly I got a smack. As I said, it was never hard enough to be sore, but I remember feeling embarrassed and ashamed.

I don’t see anything wrong with what happened to me, but I am only speaking for myself. Your experience sounds very different from mine.

People asking if you were smacked and don’t have any lasting impact from it then why don’t you smack your own kids, it’s because times have changed and we know it’s no longer acceptable and doesn’t solve the problem of why you’re smacking in the first place anyway.

When I was a kid we didn’t wear seat belts. I remember going on many night time drives, lying down in the back seat watching the street lights. It never did me any harm, I’m still alive. Would I have let my own kids travel without a seat belt? No. Because now we know better. There are many things that were just the norm back in the 70s and 80s that aren’t today.

That is terrible but hilarious at the same time.

I was smacked. Not often but the threat was there.

I don't regard it as abuse, did me no harm and I love my parents and have a terrific relationship with them. I was also threatened with a cane at Primary school - it was thwacked down on a chair. Scared the hell out of me. (I deserved it and I respected the telling off.)

We don't smack ours, but interestingly DP has regular play fights with the kids which involve rapid hard bursts of bum smacking which must sting way beyond the intensity of a 'punishment' smack and they laugh all the way through. So there's a massive psychological aspect - if I saw a child being 'seriously' smacked in the way they do in play fights I'd be phoning the Police!

There are so many varying degrees of 'smacking'... I honestly still believe that some level of corporal punishment is okay, though it's not a perfect solution. If it was a rare but effective deterrent, and if the parent(s) administering the punishment were calm at the time (not slapping to express anger or frustration), and if the home was typically a positive and loving environment, I think it unlikely to ruin familial relationships or mess up the child's psyche. When the circumstances are different, yes, it can be abusive, but as I experienced it, I wouldn't call it abuse.

I didn't like it at the time, of course, but that was kind of the point, and my relationships with my parents are fine, now, despite the few smacks they gave me when I was a child. I know they love me and were doing what they thought was right and for my own good.

My siblings and I were ‘smacked’ regularly (or often repeatedly hit or sometimes kicked), I have less traumatic memories about myself and more about the fear and horror of seeing my siblings hurt. As a result, the strongest attachments I have are to my siblings and I have had to block out an enormous amount to have any kind of relationship with my parents.

The long term impact of this (and the verbal abuse that went with it) is that I have suffered with cripplingly low self esteem and anxiety since I was a child. Getting therapy when my own children were babies (as it made my disbelief that anyone could hurt a child even stronger) thankfully made an enormous difference but the mental scars are still there.

Not funny but kind of is... my brother is 2 years younger than me. I was a good kid, he was too but was the naughtier of us and was a biter but is still the golden child as adults. As I've said before, smacks were handed out generously.

My parents were doing something and I was told to look after him. I must have been about 6. He was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. If you're naughty you get a smack. So I smacked him and he screamed. My parents came running and smacked me because it's naughty smacking someone. Yes, that made complete sense to a 6 year old.

He realised Id been naughty so he smacked me too because thats what happens when you're naughty. So then my parents smacked him. He bit them. I laughed so they smacked me again. I hit him again. We were sent to bed.

He snuck into my room and bit my foot. I kicked him. I got another smack because I'm older so should know better (I was 6 and had just been bitten). My mum screamed how I ruined her life.

Still sobbing. I snuck into his room and poured water into his bed so that my parents thought he'd weed the bed. He got smacked. I felt bad.

I hate this. I always feel like saying well you obviously think it’s okay to smack and that’s the harm ! You can’t smack another adult if they upset you so why is okay to smack a child ! My mum used to smack us even as a teenager she would slap me or drag me by the hair she was literally crazy. She would down play this if she was asked if she smacked her kids

Born 1971. I was hit violently by my mother. Because she had a horrible temper and was extremely volatile. I was the most quiet, terrified, law-abiding child - not naughty at all. I look at photos from the time and see how frightened I was: I never knew when it was coming.

And then she’d leave me to sob. I felt bewildered so much of the time, not knowing what I’d done wrong.

I think there were homes where ‘smacking’ was administered in a more ordered way, not because the parent had lost their temper- ie with warnings first etc. I don’t know whether that would have a lasting effect?

In my case I have been left with severe anxiety, panic disorder and I suspect ptsd although I can’t afford therapy.

But the hitting was part of a bigger pattern of neglect and abuse, so I can’t isolate it as a cause.

I was born in the early 90s and remember being smacked occasionally - happened very rarely I think and only if I had been very very badly behaved. I don’t remember ever feeling fear and certainly hasn’t affected me long term at all. I knew I was very loved.

My mum and I have spoken about it since I’ve been an adult and she said it was wrong to do and she was sorry and she wishes she hadn’t done it. She came from a bit of a broken and abusive family and hadn’t been shown good examples of parenting so she was learning as she went along and think she did a very good job for the most part considering the abuse she had experienced.

I am 38 and I was smacked, slapped and caned.

I also had objects thrown at me.

My mother told me a couple of years ago that I have a scar on my back (I was never aware of the scar) from when she threw a fork at me as a 3-year old.

I don't know why she told me - maybe a bad conscience?

My gran was a nursery nurse and was on local BBC news in the very early nineties talking about smacking. She said that only adults who couldn't control themselves hit children and if you can't control your temper in her view you shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of a child. It was quite controversial then! She's in her eighties now and still a lot more liberal than a lot of her generation

I was smacked, but don’t remember it happening. I can remember my mum telling me that, if I didn’t stop, I would get a smack. The threat was usually enough. Once we were old enough to be reasoned with, or sent to our rooms, that’s what happened. Smacking was done to me as a toddler, when words didn’t really work. Mum says we always got a warning first, and clearly after a while, that worked as I have no memory of ever actually getting that far. I probably wasn’t a particularly difficult or resentful child though, so I suspect that makes a difference.

I think it all depends on degrees and whether there is plenty of love and reason, alongside any punishment. I suspect what the punishment is, so long as it doesn’t go to extremes and is used judiciously and not in anger, probably doesn’t matter all that much.

My dad never laid a finger on me or my brother, and very very rarely raised his voice, despite being an older dad for our area in the eighties (in his thirties working class east London) and having grown up in a Catholic family with a slipper and being caned and lashed at Catholic school by nuns, my mum was shoutier and I recall being smacked once or twice but fairly half heartedly definitely no marks, and that stopped when she did her childcare qualifications and went on to run a nursery. She did launch a hairbrush in my general direction when I was about 14, I remember just laughing at her in the dismissive way of a teen who's pushed their mother to the edge, I was a bit of a handful.

If dad was cross it was worse because he so rarely was and I always felt like I'd let him down, he was very vocal about how proud he was of us.

I don't really feel any kind of way about it, it was very normal at the time, and I certainly wasn't subject to done of the physical abuse I know my peers were. I also now see my parents being completely soft with DC.

I was ‘smacked’ - I’d call them beatings - almost constantly for everything. I can honestly say I was a well behaved child (too scared not to be) who tried my best to not annoy my mum but unfortunately never seemed to be able to manage it. All it did was make me scared of her and as I grew up, our relationship struggled. I hated her. We had a few years of no contact and only managed to have a relationship once I had my first child. She was the best grandmother.
I’ve never smacked either of my children.

I feel you. One of my earliest memories from about that age is running from my mother, screaming, while she chased me down the hall to smack me. The absolute fear I felt. The rage and determination coming out of her. I never ever want my own child to feel that way.

There was no legal requirement to wear a seatbelt even in the front until 1983, and in the back not until 1991.

Ironically, though my parents were happy to beat the shit out of me, they were very safety conscious and retro-fitted rear child seatbelts to the family Datsun in 1980.