Does anyone still ‘agree’ with smacking in 2019?

[BlueMoon1103]

Really honestly curious about this, does anyone still smack their children and think it’s the right thing to do? If so what are your reasons?

Please don’t comment having a go at other peoples’ parenting, I just want to hear more about ‘stricter’ parenting styles as they seem to have gone out of fashion so let’s keep it respectful.

Yes, within reason. Never in temper. Appropriate force (ie a smack on the bottom) and after warnings.

Worked fine for me and my siblings.

I smacked my kids from time to time. Was a single mother of five, time out didn't work - they would just get up and walk off, plus time spent disciplining one meant the other four were running riot where I couldn't see them (and then everyone blamed everyone else and I could never get to the bottom of who actually did whatever it was).

It was a nightmare. And I feel guilty about it constantly. They've all turned into well rounded, pleasant, professionals and I have a wonderful relationship with all of them. I hope they understand that I was driven by desperation and tiredness (plus them having a pack mentality).

Hopefully this is a safe thread for people to say what they believe without being attacked. I believe very strongly in smacking as discipline. Very strongly. Every day my view is strengthened when I see the foul-mouthed and aggressive rudeness of kids these days. It just proves my point, imo. Back years ago, kids weren't the ill-disciplined over-indulgent brats they are now. Clearly 'other methods' do not work. Smacking does work, and it is tried and true and has stood the test for many generations. In most countries. Today. This 'other methods' experiment is a failure and this is proven every day. The lack of smacking is the reason why kids are the way they are. The more kids I see and read of on here, the more stronger my belief is, and the more I feel vindicated. I feel eventually this 'experimentation' with 'other methods' will go the other way and the pendulum will return, because it is a failure. Chickens have already come home to roost with the societal destruction.

I struggle with this tbh. My parents are Irish & my siblings & I grew up with smacking. My parents received harsh physical punishment at school & home but were much softer on us.

My dh was also smacked (his family are French). We were never beaten & always given a couple of warnings but sometimes we pushed the boundaries & got a smack. It definitely made me stop what I was doing & on the few occasions my parents sent me to my room I begged to be smacked. I preferred the smack & then it's over to the isolation of my room.
DC1 has been smacked once when he ran from the car & it was more out of shock. He's a very compliant & sensible child so doesn't really misbehave so often the treat of the thinking corner works. DC2 is more like me, wilful, determined, stubborn & a daredevil. I think I'm going to struggle using the step etc as it doesn't seem to have worked so far.

The one thing that I will say is that when smacking was an accepted form of discipline, standards of behaviour were higher. Kids behaved in school much much better than they do now when they knew their teachers could hit them. I’m not saying that makes it right, but echoing a PP, it does show it’s probably effective.

Well said! Good to see common sense on this issue. Regarding schools, for example, several months ago there was a thread on here about students going to the toilets in between break times. I found out that many schools in the UK don't allow it because 'students will trash the toilets, smoke, throw toilet rolls about etc'. I was gobsmacked. In my country hardly any student gets up to that. Students are allowed to quickly go during class if they have to. The thought that kids older than 7 years old are throwing rolls about is a strange concept to me because most kids usually aren't that emotionally/intellectually immature, so why is it seemingly a huge problem in the UK? Only answer I can come at is that it goes right back to lack of discipline. Students don't fear nor respect teachers or parents. Because they know the worst they will get is a talking to and/or something taken away. They don't care about it. They really don't. It does absolutely nothing. I think unfortunately that the UK is a failure when it comes to this. Lets face it this 'no smacking' has been a dismal failure. The more I see and read, the more I feel my position is vindicated.

I think the reason children "these days" behave worse is not due to smacking or not smacking. In the US the majority of parents smack and the kids over there are certainly NOT better behaved than European children (I have a lot of family living there).

Children are viewed to have more rights in 2019 than in previous generations. They are valued more. People have fewer and treat them as precious. We think childhood is an important phase of life that should be protected and cherished. In so many ways this is a good thing but it also means that the gap in respect - and let's face it fear - that used to exist between parents and children has narrowed significantly.

There are so many TV programmes where child characters have attitudes and act sassy and rude towards adults. It's seen as "normal" now whereas in say 1970 that was totally unacceptable by wider society.

I was smacked as a child, it is common in my parents' culture. All of us siblings/cousins/etc have a shared experience of hiding things and lying to our parents to avoid harsh discipline. We appeared to be obedient and compliant but we were not. The point of that discipline was to make sure children didn't embarrass their parents. And we didn't, because we had secret boyfriends and secret parties that were hush hush. Didn't make us perfect angels in the slightest.

@NotMeAnymoreOrEverAgain I dint think that standards of behaviour were higher because if the smacking. They were higher because children were EXPECTED to behave better.

I think it's a bit of both. The expectation is higher, but children also know they will get a smack if they misbehave. In my experience parents who don't smack and instead rely on 'alternative methods' usually are laxer in their parenting all round. So the kids know there are no consequences for anything. Those who smack seem to be stricter and follow through. Usually their children are far better behaved than the ones who are not smacked.

And I would also add 'doesn't it depend?'

In my case, with the five children, close in age, I was a fairly permissive parent, not really strict at all. They got away with murder, and I had a good sense of humour over a lot of childish fails and behaviour. When I had to resort to smacking, they really knew that a line had been crossed and I meant it.

All the softer punishments like time out, naughty step, a good talking to etc, only really work if you can concentrate on one child, one on one, for a longish period of time. If, like me, you are on your own and trying to make one child stay in their room (for example) because they are in time out, whilst the other children are busily emptying the entire toy box over your bedroom floor, flooding the bathroom and eating all the biscuits in the kitchen because a) they know your attention is elsewhere for a fixed period of time and b) they can all blame each other for the resultant chaos and, if they all stick together and to their stories you can't punish them because you don't know who to punish? What then?

A sturdy smack to say 'that's enough, that is the boundary and no further', after warnings - is that so terrible?

I remember calling my mother a bitch and she smacked me really hard round my face. I didn't do it again.

A while ago I was walking behind a mum and her preteen son....he was really rude to her and told her to shut up. She did nothing. I remember thinking to myself, if this was the 1970s, she'd have clipped him round the ear and no one would have done anything.

I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing...just an observation.

How many posts do we see on these boards from busy bodies who want to report random parents in the street and their neighbours just for raising their voice and shouting at their kids? It's ridiculous.

Sometimes you read threads on here which, in my darker moments, I mutter to myself “nothing that a smack on the bottom wouldnt cure” but I would never type that on those threads for fear of being shredded. For example there was one recently where a child refused to walk anywhere and after a short while would just lie on the pavement and refuse to move. He was 4! And holding the entire family hostage in their house because he wouldnt walk anywhere! All the posters had great suggestions about pretending to walk on, removing treats, explaining about how his behaviour was impacting everyone and all I could do was just hmm. A smack on the bottom would have got the little angel moving!

I also had a skim read of that thread, and retreated from it because of what I really wanted to say. I was utterly amazed at the attitudes on there of indulging the child. There is no way my mother would have allowed that to happen, nor would I. That is a thread that I feel validates my views on discipline. When I read threads like that, I just sigh and shake my head, but I know I will get completely shredded if I point out the blatant obvious.

I’ve smacked my 6 year old when he’s hit his brother and not regretted it.

No hypocrisy there at all...

I have never and will never smack my DC. Her behaviour is impeccable and I would say I am fairly strict with her.

@Stuckandsad

I was smacked hard as a kid, I have smacked my dd once when she was 3 ( she dropped my hand and ran into the road) have never felt so sick and disgusted at myself before or since. Seeing her face look at me frightened was just horrific

I think though that the key is to warn the child beforehand, ie 2 or 3 warnings, then smack. Not smack, completely out of the blue with no warning. When a child is warned, they know the consequences that will come. I don't believe in smacking suddenly with no warning at all so the child has no chance to pull back before the smack.

People do. I've seen it, and I don't like it.

I don't. Aside from the fact that I think hitting anyone is awful, how on earth are you supposed to teach children not to got if you hit them? It's nonsensical. I can't imagine physically hurting either of my children, ever.

You can teach children to behave without resorting to whacking them. It's lazy parenting.

And I was a child of the eighties who got smacked. Not abused, beaten etc, but a smack on the bum when I was being really naughty.

I don't think, in the absence of abuse, either smacking or not smacking will be the deciding factor on the outcomes of a child. I don't think it's the tipping point in the destruction of society as we know it. 😁

A stable home, filled with love and good humour, which models calm and moderate behaviour is the foundation of discipline - beyond that it's just tinkering with parenting approaches.

The parents I hear calling their kids horrible names or telling them to shut up when they are desperate for some attention are the ones I judge.

formerbabe I had a similar experience when I was around 13. It was one of the very few times I remember being smacked growing up.
But it was my dad, not my mum. I can’t even remember exactly what I’d said to him, but it must have been bad because he wasn’t the physical punishment type at all. He just saw red, and I was met with an almighty smack around the chops

"I think there's a massive difference between strict parenting and smacking."

Agree with this. The worst behaved kids I see out and about are the ones whose parents ignore their behaviour, set no boundaries and then slap them out of nowhere.

Personally, I don't feel that arguments in favour of smacking really add up. On the one hand, proponents of smacking say "how dare you say that it's abuse? Of course I'm not really hurting my child - it's just a firm loving tap". On the other hand, a smack is supposed to be the ultimate sanction, the mere threat of which is enough to terrify kids into angelic behaviour when otherwise they'd be "feral hordes". That just doesn't add up. If I gave my kid a firm but light tap on the bum or hand, she'd think mummy was playing a game. It wouldn't work as a sanction unless I was genuinely hurting her. And if the reason your kids are afraid of being smacked is that you inflict real pain and leave marks, then own that. Don't dress it up in cutesy language about "smacked bums" and "little pops on the hand".

The occasions that I feel most bitter about being smacked were when it was for something I didn’t know yet was wrong. There was a time when a blind man suddenly stopped walking, and I bumped into him, because I wasn’t expecting him to stop. My mum smacked me to make a point that I should have been more careful: I was then crying and in no fit state to understand her explanation. It went from a nice day to being made to cry in less than thirty seconds. That and other occasions gave me a real fear of being out and about, in case I accidentally did something wrong: to this day I’m bearing grudges about how she sometimes “ruined” a nice day out by smacking me to make a point. I would have understood the explanation without that. Even at the age of five, I noticed the hypocrisy of “you can’t hit, but we can”.

This is a good article. I've certainly noticed that the best behaved teens I know weren't smacked and the worst behaved ones were.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/science/children-smacking-more-aggressive-antisocial-scientists-study-behaviour-punishment-kids-parents-a8061471.html%3famp

I read that child-wouldn't-walk thread too, and was equally gobsmacked. That situation would have been nipped firmly in the bud in mine or my parent's house. No smacking necessary

That situation would have been nipped firmly in the bud in mine or my parent's house. No smacking necessary

How? It's very to say that. Some children are naturally far more compliant than others.

There are some ovious gaping gaps in that research that makes it suspect. First of all they simply divided the children into those who smacked and those who didn't, with no real regard for how smacking was being used in the family and the severity.

It would be like declaring that children who were subjected to time outs are emotionally harmed by the practice and including those kids who were locked in cupboards.

I don’t smack, I’m sort of on the fence about it but I don’t do it.

However, I don’t think smacking has anything to do with being strict. I’m one of the strictest parents I know. My kids have manners, know how to behave in restaurants etc and I don’t tolerate any bad behaviour (they try like all kids do their not perfect of course!) I don’t tolerate a lot of the bad behaviour that I see going on. Mine get consequences if they overstep a boundary.

However, my friend smacks and I think she’s out of order. She’ll let her son do as he likes for ages then all of a sudden tell him to stop and then smack him.

I find her to be quite idle and that’s why she won’t discipline him properly. He’s just turned 6 and still sets himself. She asks him if he needs the toilet and he says no and wets himself then she smacks him.

I was there a few weeks ago and he was touching himself. She asked him if he needed the toilet and he said no. I just took his hand and said come on we’re going the toilet. She couldn’t be bothered to get up off the sofa.

So I don’t think being strict is related to whether or not you smack.

I think smacking a child is abhorrent and shows a lack of self-control by the parent. My DCs would alter their behaviour with one look from me and I've never smacked them in their lives.