Have you ever smacked your child, given 2021 UK statistic?

[Tinkerbelle4]

Just seen this clip, not really a big fan is super nanny but was shocked to hear the UK 2021 statistic that 62% of parents had physically disciplined their child.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1HXeNmtEDB/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I’m curious- do you fall into that statistic? Especially if you have children say under 16- have you ever smacked them?

Yes , probably a handful of times (4/5)between them . They are older then the under 16 mark.

I’m not pleased with it, and I do know it was always when I had lost temper/ overwhelmed.

now I don’t know if it’s relevant to your statistics, I was an exceptionally young mum who was completely by herself the vast majority of days. And while not excusing- 20 years later I can see how I was so overwhelmed.

my mum smacked a lot. She had and still has a very short temper, and we had even been hit when she would make a mistake- for example- and we would be blamed for being too noisy or naughty and distracting her.

i think it’s something each generation does less and less - which is a good thing. Also the internet on hand full of advice on behaviour ideas is a brilliant thing (sometimes) to give different strategies

also I random thought I had while typing this, I do wonder if parents are actually spending less time with their children when both parents are working full time so child care does a lot of the awake hours.

I'm late thirties with older teenagers, and I smacked mine literally a handful of times – only when they tried to do something dangerous when they were very young, like touching the stove or running out on the road (I got a harness after my eldest did that) and I wanted to create a negative association.

I don't think smacking is inherently awful though, especially when children are too young to be reasoned with and trying to do something dangerous, but I don't think it should be done in anger, or the first (or second, or third) choice – most of the time there's a more constructive way to deal with the siuation.

But I also don't think the rare smack is dreadful if their home life is otherwise stable and loving. It's a bit silly to act like a smack once in a blue moon is a horrendous crime that will scar a child for life, but spending the majority of their waking time in the care of poorly paid, overworked employees every weekday does them no damage at all

Once for each child. Now 23/27.

I'm still ashamed as I was regularly beaten as a child by my mother and older sister.
It was all behind my father's back who was gentle.

I can't think of a single scenario that would justify me assaulting a child.

62% is really shocking.

We never hit our children. It’s terrible ‘parenting’ to even do it once.

It’s not brave to admit you’re an abuser. What kind of weird logic is this?
I could never hit my child. Anecdotally, I have several friends who do hit their children and they have the worst behaved ones. Children who are taught that violence doesn’t solve a problem are much much better behaved in my experience.
How anyone can hurt a child is beyond me. They’re smaller than you, unable to defend themselves. It’s reprehensible.

I think it’s fear of what might have happened that can make people lash out.

Yeah, I agree with this. Also the generation that has just been raised up with 'gentle parenting' etc seems to be having the most mental health problems. Now, I'm not for a minute saying 'just give them a smack then', and perhaps other factors have also had an impact, but a lot of people are acting holier than thou when there are things we are also not doing right in our parenting as a whole, at this point in time.

No. I’ve reached points of sheer anger and rage so I’ve left the house to stand on the doorstep and breathe. One moment of parenting which was not my finest was locking my DD out of the house when she was about 5. She had this ability to enrage me till I saw red. She had been on a mission to wind me up all day, screaming and shouting and kicking off over utter nonsense. Then she intentionally slammed younger DD’s fingers in the door. No accident about it, she actually did it with full intent. I locked her out.

It wasn’t for long but I needed to breathe and I couldn’t believe she’d done it. To my shame, a passerby knocked on the door and gave me a telling off which I did not need. I slammed the door in her face. Really not my proudest moment and one DD (now a teen) likes to raise to get at me every so often. Still think it was preferable to hitting her. She was safe outside fwiw and it wasn’t cold or anything.

It’s all just excuses though.

I don’t agree with hitting children.

also haven’t seen it encouraged to yank or force things in their mouths?! Yes I’ve clipped them in car seats and pushchairs but not with excessive force that causes harm or is a punishment. I’ve not “pinned them down” either.

This is where even as a non-smacker I'm cynical. The reduction in smacking clearly hasn't dramatically improved the mental health of our young people.

I grew up in the 90s where most people I knew got the odd back of the leg smack when naughty and I find it really weird when people try and retcon it into a traumatic childhood when it was just normal.

i wouldn’t hit as a punishment but one of my kids gets a light smack to get his attention fairly often in afraid. It would be to break up situations when he has gone into a kind of frenzy or tunnel vision and won’t stop some kind of harmful behaviour. Leaping around manically on a train platform was a recent example.

my other kids don’t get this because they don’t get in that same kind of state where they don’t even hear your voice.

Only once with my youngest when she was about 5 and being an absolute nightmare, she kicked out at me when we were on the stairs - I could have fallen backwards if she had made contact, I slapped her thigh straight back.
Felt awful afterwards but it did work at the time

You seem to be equating ‘not smacking’ with ‘gentle parenting’. I don’t smack, but also don’t particularly follow a ‘gentle parenting’ ethos. There are plenty of parenting strategies that fall in between the two.

Yes. I'm Indian and we live in England and has always been legal here. Only ever in primary (stopped in year 6) and only for serious misbehaving. They are all successful well educated adults.

I think maybe I’m very lucky than none of my 3 children have ever ‘seriously misbehaved’ in a way that I think a smack is the only suitable way to deal with it.

@tomatoplants sure if your child is happy to go in the car seat you don’t need to use force. If they are fighting you with every force of their being then you have to fight back, trust me. So that’s OK, acceptable but for the purposes of discussion the only difference is intent.

I can't believe all these people who admit that they hit their kids! It should be illegal IMO. Physically restraining is not the same as hitting, for which there is no excuse whatsoever.

You hit your child because she talked back to you?I Peppa Pig is a red herring, that is unacceptable.

Also, my mother smacked me occasionally as a child. I'm not at all traumatised by it. I only remember a few occasions (it happened maybe a few times a year), and it both wasn't particularly hard, and was usually after I'd been utterly horrendous (I could be an absolute menace - I think I had PDA). My brothers were both really placid and obedient in comparison, and pretty much never got smacked.

As I said above, I smacked my children about three times in their lives (and shouted) when I was trying to create a negative association so they never tried to do the dangerous thing again, and it did work well. Otherwise, I always found other methods worked - and once they were old enough, we reasoned with them wherever possible.

But I don't think parents who provide a stable and loving home, but who smack infrequently, are traumatising their children.

I wasn’t at all traumatised by my mum smacking me, it just made me lose respect for her. Even then I just thought it was shoddy parenting. I just remember feeling shocked that an adult would resort to it.

I understand why, actually. She was a single mum, and I was undiagnosed AUDHD, who most likely had PDA, and in between bouts of being a lovely, well-behaved child, used to refuse to eat, deliberately wind up my older brothers until they were nearly in tears or lashing out at me, get into dangerous situations because of a lack of risk assessment, and tantrum all the time (probably meltdowns, I realise now). Absolutely nothing else worked (and even that didn't always work) and she was at her wit's end and didn't know what else to try.

I can't blame her at all 🤷 I would have been driven to madness trying to parent me too.

With my mum it was just a case of her losing her temper. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t traumatise me, it just made me think less of her.

I'm sorry - that does sound like the sort of thing that would make you lose respect for her.

Fight back?!

wow. This thread has been eye opening.