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?

I aim to please.

I wonder if I can help in other ways?

If a baby wants milk in the night, the best thing is to give it milk.

The age rating on games and DVDS are there for a reason

It's fine for 8 year olds to go into the gender appropriate public loos on their own.

Slides are for going down, not up.

It's OK to taste one grape to make sure they are nice before you buy.

Your baby will not be harmed by being touched by a stranger.

Sheets should be changed once a week.

Weirdly enough I agree with all of those points. Aside from the smacking one.

What's self righteous about my comment?

I don't recall saying that you were self righteous.

Guilty conscience?

Sorry - I thought your self righteous comment was directed towards my 11.20 post.

No just a general statement, after I'd read through the last page!

I do very much like the irony of a child being too young to understand logic and reasoning but expected to understand its mother hitting it.

I find it very strange that you'd smack a child without logic or verbal reasoning skills for doing something illogical like playing with a plug socket. Surely as the logical adult you should be protecting/preventing the child from accessing electrical points, not expecting them to understand the tenuous link between curiosity and a caregiver physically chastising them.

seeker, I like the cut of your jib.

I am a bit at the posters who are saying that they only hit until their DC can understand them.

Surely (barring speech delay) this means you are happy to hit mobile babies and young toddlers? I just can't get my head around this. I can (kind of) understand hitting a 4 year old who knows not to stick their fingers in a socket, but a baby?

Does anyone fancy explaining to me exactly why they would hit a baby so young they are unlikely to understand the reason for it anyway?

And it's always bloody plugs and roads!

It's ddumb insolence that has made my palms itch to smack mine, not perfectly avoidable dangers!

Weird isn't it that a child, by definition innocent, naive, curious, impetuous can behave as you'd expect any child to and some people think it's their job to safeguard their child against harm from such behaviour and others think inflicting harm upon them is enough to prevent the behaviour in the first place. It's fuzzy logic.

I think I live in an alternate universe. Other people live in the land of sockets and looming roads.

The anti-smacking brigade has just as many Bingo phrases as the Smackers so sneering at comments is really a little pathetic.

WHo's sneered?

Er... you for one! :o Making snide sarcastic comments about bingo phrases and dismissing pro-smackers comments.

This is why I try not to get sucked into certain Old Chestnut threads on MN as they are all the same. The Fors come up with their arguments, the Cons dismiss them and come up with their own followed by the Pros dismissing them. A spot of sarcasm, dismissing arguments as nonsense and a few accusations of one side or the other being stupid.... then someone calls Bingo! and we're back at the start again. Smacking, private education, breastfeeding and 4x4s are prime examples I think.

What about that logic - "I was smacked and it didn't do me any harm"??

Yeah - right!!!

How is anyone, mn'er, doctor or anyone else, supposed to conclude that smacking did or did not do harm ?

I was never smacked. dh was. How can you prove or disprove the previous statemnet ?

I often wonder about how provable that statement is, too. I was hit as a child/teenager, and while it didn't do me any 'harm' (no noticeable psychological effects, no problematic adult relationship with my mother etc), it certainly didn't teach me anything, other than that it didn't work and made me disrespectful of my mother and her methods at the time.

when me and my siblings were younger ,we got hit with the leather belt ouch and it hurt, like i said i tapped him on the hand i dont hit him as he has sn but i do tell him things he cant do

I was hit as a child and shouted at usually for things my siblings had done and became a nervous, uncertain teenager. Only managed to shake off the feelings of being wrong all the time when I was about 30.

In answer to OP- yes I have, a small handful of times in the last 17.5 years as a parent, and always under dire provocation. I have always regretted it later. I do not think that hitting serves any purpose in childrearing. It is the last refuge of the powerless parent.

agree oblomov.

reverse situaion here. Dh never smacked and very naughty.
me smacked on occasion and very good

shines two shoes<

proves bugger all either way

"aking snide sarcastic comments about bingo phrases and dismissing pro-smackers comments"

They weren't snide or sarcastic - they were merely observations. It is absolutly true that people who believe in smacking always talk about putting fingers in plugs and running into roads. AND it is absolutely true that they always talk about the benefits of a "short sharp shock"/

Nothing snide about pointing that out!