To ask if you ever smack?

[thatwasntverycleverwasit]

I am suffering from enormous guilt having delivered one swift smack to the back of DDs legs when I was at the end of my rope (first, and I hope only, time). Yes it was unreasonable and I said sorry to her. But it seems to be a completely taboo subject - surely I can't be the only Mum to have done this?

You should never assume what experiences people have had stata.

Well I have never hit my children, it's just something I feel strongly about.

Then you'd know that a smack in the context of a loving relationship is not DV. Is the naughty step false imprisonment then?

It makes them feel secure? Honestly alt, it's your posts that chill me the most.

You can feel strongly about it for your own children - unless you have any evidence that it causes harm, you have no reason to feel strongly about it for other children.

I'd be more impressed by smacking as discipline if those of my friends who smacked had actually had better control over their children than those who didn't. But I never saw any evidence of that in any of the toddler groups/playgroups I attended.

I have never done that either. (naughty step)

Not my bag either tbh.

My impression has been different. The people who have occasionally slapped seem to be more in control.

I'm always surprised, on a different note, to see how many posters here say they want to slap this or that adult person. Are they the same ones who say that slapping children is bad?

I'm intrigued beribboned. How do you discipline your children?

I have the right to feel strongly about whatever I please. It's a forum. This is a discussion.

You have the right of course but in the absence of any evidence showing any harm, no reason to have any concern about children who are smacked in the context of loving relationships.

Well DD2 is still a baby so no need there.

Friends say I am quite firm but I don't think I am so much. I set clear bounderies. I follow through with everything I say (even when I regret saying it and it bites me in the arse)

If DD1 is not listening I get down to her level and talk calmly and to the point. Maybe I am lucky but hand on heart this usuall works really well. When she has pushed and pushed she has been warned she will lose a treat/TV time and as I said, even when it's hard I follow through.

Look, I'm not perfect, far from it. I wing this parenting lark most days but I try and be respectful to my children.

I think it is quite possible for parents to have firm boundaries and just not feel the need to enforce those boundaries by smacking. I certainly remember the adults surrounded me in childhood as quietly impressive people, who expected to be obeyed. Perhaps that's why they didn't need to smack: they never doubted their ability to enforce the boundaries. It is possible to not smack without turning into some whimpish laissez-faire character fluttering anxiously on the outskirts calling "no, don't do that, please, darling, it's not nice".

I don't think I have particularly violent tendencies; I just think in any battles of with between myself and a toddler, the cards are stacked so heavily on my side anyway, I don't need smacking. My parents clearly felt the same way. And my grandparents. Not an unstable home in my family for the last 4 generations at least .

To me, smacking looks like weakness, like a teacher who screams at the class; seldom the best disciplinarians.

I smacked DD the other day when she hit me in the face with a cup. (a proper mug) She is too young to understand a telling off, and that kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable. But that was probably the second time i have smacked her.

DH would smack her, but recently has been shouting at her and putting her in the corner.

I was smacked as child and DH was too. Although i was very rarely smacked it was more used as scare tactic. With DD i will smack her but only until she is old enough to understand me.

If smacking actually worked it would only ever need to happen once or twice and never again. My experience of parents who smack - and I can only talk from experiencem obviously MNetters may be very different - is that they smack way more than that and that overall it is actually very ineffectual as a form of reprimand or chastisement ebcause it does not appear to actually work.

When I worked in a prison it was a topic that was debated a lot at one time when I was there. The information discovered was very interesting.