Parents- what’s your background and what’s your honest opinion on smacking?

[Smidgey7]

I am completely against smacking. I grew up getting the occasional smack, my own mother still stands over smacking us although would never dare smack her grandchildren.
while I am totally against smacking and have and would never, I have certainly been in situations with my own children where I have been extremely frustrated or where they have done something unsafe and I can see how people would feel like that’s what they should do.
work as a social worker and have seen many children who have been abused with the excuse of it being a ‘smack’ and for discipline reasons. I am that person who would say something if I seen a child getting smacked in public or if someone I knew said they smacked their child.

Hitting people is wrong. It would be wrong if my husband hit me, or another adult and we tell children off for hurting each other. So it baffles me that anyone can think hitting someone small and vulnerable, no matter how many of our buttons they push, is in any way acceptable.

My parents managed to bring me up in the smacking 70s without resorting to hitting me ever.

I think smacking children should be treated as any other physical violence towards someone else - especially as it’s someone who is powerless and can’t leave

So I’d ban it too

Agree with posters saying about the damage of shouting. I absolutely hate hearing children being shouted at.

I think a lot of abusers take it behind closed doors now. they know public perception is against them so they won’t do it in public for fear of people knowing what they are or retribution. So they do it in secret.

we need to find a way to make sure children tell. That schools ask. Tv campaigns, if an adult is hitting uou call this number, tell your teacher. We need to try to work together as a society to stop this

abused children will always exist. They are the vulnerable in our society and some people will hit them, hurt them, under the guise of punishment, so we need to identify these people. Understand the scale of it, and then try to resolve it, be it through social worker support, parenting classes, anger management, or full on intervention depending on the scale of it how often a child is being hit in their own home.

I think a lot of abusers take it behind closed doors now. they know public perception is against them so they won’t do it in public for fear of people knowing what they are or retribution. So they do it in secret.

we need to find a way to make sure children tell. That schools ask. Tv campaigns, if an adult is hitting uou call this number, tell your teacher. We need to try to work together as a society to stop this

abused children will always exist. They are the vulnerable in our society and some people will hit them, hurt them, under the guise of punishment, so we need to identify these people. Understand the scale of it, and then try to resolve it, be it through social worker support, parenting classes, anger management, or full on intervention depending on the scale of it how often a child is being hit in their own home.

This.

Had my children in the 80's and they were lightly smacked a handful of times.

I've talked to our adult children about it. They say that they weren't traumatised by it at all, but found it an unpleasant experience (obviously).

Now I think it is totally wrong and doesn't help to discipline children at all. We look after our grandchildren regularly. They have never been smacked by my daughter and we wouldn't dream of doing it. They are in junior school now and are lovely, polite and well behaved boys.

My daughter's ex smacked the scapegoat child and it was one of the many reasons that she left him. It was hard enough to leave red marks.

For more context, we were attending a church in the 80's that encouraged using a wooden spoon to disciplining children. Their argument being that it was somehow one step removed from a parent using their supposedly loving hand to smack and therefore preferable. We were horrified at the time and even more so now. Obviously we never did that to them.

I was smacked and always said I would never smack. Do not believe in smacking.
A smack can quickly escalate into a beating and a beating into something else.
What happens when a smack stops working? Hit harder?
That said...
I have smacked my daughter once when I lost control. It happened within seconds out of instinct - we were in a busy, hot airport lounge about to miss our flight and out of nowhere she ran up to her 6 month old baby brother's pram and bit him on the cheek.
I heard the slap of my hand on her back before I even realized what I was doing and then I knelt down and immediately apologized.
Then I booked myself into therapy. There is no way I am making the same mistakes as my parents did.

I was frequently smacked (as were my siblings) and we were told it was what good parents did, "because we love you". The worst was being spanked, hard, for not eating my dinner. It felt both unjust and humiliating, It was both deliberate and in anger, and left me years later with a very deep sense of shame and upset, and a profound desire to always be in control of my body. I love my parents, and as an adult I have told them I think it was wrong (though not in as blunt a way as I have here). I have only once hit my own DC, in a moment of loss of control and anger and it shocked me that I could - never ever again.

Absolutely against it. My parents were emotionally abusive and sometimes I remember wishing they'd just hit me. Never did though, just lots of "worthless, ugly, stupid, wish you were a cot death statistic" etc.

Dh was caned, spanked and hit with a slipper. He's against corporal punishment with regards to our children but thinks his childhood was less damaging than mine. That said, we've both tried very hard to be better than our parents were.

Meant to say, this was in the 70's, parents are I guess lower middle class and religious.

I agree with some of this.

A friend of ours in the 80's did smack too, but also withdrew affection from her children when they were naughty. They were toddlers at the times and seeing them sobbing and begging to be forgiven was horrifying. She just went cold on them. Awful and damaging.

Smacking is awful, but some parents replace it with worse things, which are more difficult to ban or make illegal.

Background: beaten with a stick as a first resort for punishments, often got smacked for making mistakes I now know were just kids trying their best to do right in the absence of actual guidance.

Not one of my siblings or I use smacking* and are against it. The first half of the grand kids are in or approaching the end of their teens & into adulthood and are all turning out lovely people. Whereas their parents who did get a wallop, kick or slap to the face, are unpicking issues due probably in no small part to the discipline we received. For example, I'm increasingly struggling with having a relationship with my mother. She thinks she was a fucking brilliant mother because we all seem to be doing well.

*Disclaimer, I did once smack DS when he was a toddler for running off. He got a single smack to the back of the legs and I was immediately ashamed that I had done it. I did it because I was frustrated and I realised the true motivation is that emotion and that it's never any kind of teaching tool. I never did it ever again.

Well.

Unless someone comes up with an explanation for -

1. why hitting an adult is not OK, but hitting a child is OK, and
2. why hitting someone less powerful than you is not OK, but is only OK if less powerful person is a child -

I will continue to call violence by its real name which is violence.

I'm always unclear on posts like this what exactly constitutes "a smack" or "smacking". For some people it's one hit on the hand. For others it's one hit on the fully clothed bum. For others it's multiple hits on a bare behind in public. For yet others an implement is used. And for others there's a range of implements.

Some call it hitting, others smacking, others spanking. Some talk about being beaten, others whipped. And the differences between all those terms aren't really defined - because between households it appears different terms are used to mean the same things.

The threads are always the same with people saying they agree or disagree, but the examples they give are often wildly different.

Which kind of demonstrates why the law that you shouldn't hit your children makes sense. Straightforward, simple and easily communicable.

I have been in years of specifically targeted trauma therapy for the physical abuse and threats of it from my mother. I'm not going to detail it, but suffice to say, some people on this thread "had it worse".

So, at best we can say that it doesn't harm all children, but can have lifelong negative consequences for others and there's no way of knowing which category your child falls into, until it's too late. So why, as a parent, take the risk?

I've never hit mine. I knew even as a kid that it wasn't necessary because my friends who were never hit weren't all criminals, they were normal kids, doing normal things. Just like me. So, what was the purpose of hitting?

I am really uncomfortable with the idea of smacking - doesn't set a good example and let's be honest, parents that smack only do it because their kids can't retaliate.

I can imagine my relationship with dd breaking down if l started smacking her as she would always be scared of me.

I was only smacked twice as a child, and witnessed my sister be smacked twice. It was no harder than most smacks, not beatings or anything, but I found it utterly traumatic that the people who were supposed to love me and make me feel safe in this world could do that. I cried many, many times about it (always in secret) over the subsequent years and carried a lot of anger and resentment about it into adulthood. My parents regretted it and apologised and now that I am in my 30s we have a good relationship, and while I still consider it an abhorrent thing to have done I have forgiven them.

I would never, ever lay a finger on my daughter under any circumstances. And over my dead body would anyone else. She will never feel how I felt, and never have the memories I have. Smacking is child abuse, and it is no longer socially normalised the way it used to be, so any children who are smacked these days will grow up knowing it is not a normal way to treat another human being and hopefully will do better for their own children. There are plenty of families where the cycle is being broken like this and it gives me a lot of hope.

I started hitting back when I got to 14 and it would turn into fights. I had no respect for my mum then so refused to accept being hit and I have no respect for her now she's nearly 80. Wish I'd started hitting back earlier

I was smacked as a child. My mother was too smack happy, my father wasn’t. His really meant something. In all honesty though, I feel I deserved it most of the time from my father. My mothers smack not so much, she smacked because she’d lost her cool. I was a difficult child/teen. I don’t feel abused and I don’t feel it done me any harm.

However, I don’t and won’t smack my own children.

Actually this sums my feeling up perfectly

I was smacked as a child. Im firmly in the "it never did me any harm" camp. But I wasn't beaten, I wasn't smacked with any regularity. It was a rare occurrence in my life. Obviously people who were beaten with spoons or belts or smacked every day of the week will view the effects very differently to how I do.
However I wouldn't smack my own kids because that's not how I've chosen to parent them.

I was smacked a lot as a child by both parents. I hit back as a teen and was shunned for it.

I have never and would never hit a child. No exceptions, no excuses.

I would like it to be completely unlawful rather than the vague law we have now which for me makes no sense.

I got smacked, not often I don't think I remember maybe 5 times. Mum and dad, not hard but made me adamant to never smack my kids. To me it's a loss of control on behalf
Of the adult and how can you expect a child to then not copy the behaviour.

I was never smacked (born early 80s but my mum was totally against it and was never smacked by her parents either).

I never have and never would smack my own child. I have definitely been cross or scared enough by his actions to do so, based on what people say they use smacking for, but it would just never occur to me. It's not something I think to do when I lose my temper.

People who were hit smacked as a kid often say 'it never did me any harm' - that is because of the psychological process children go through when their parents hit smack them.

The psychological harm of being hit smacked as a child is that you think it was OK to be hit smacked.

I haven't yet met a person who says they are disappointed their parents didn't hit smack them.