To ask should smacking children be banned.

[HadABadDay2014]

Just seen this on the welsh news.

I am not perfect and once I have smacked ds felt awful and never did it again.

Now I know if this was a patient at work or a member of the public I would had been arrested and highly likely ended up with a criminal record and lost my job.

So the question is should snaking children be banned.

Head of Child Protection Operations at the NSPCC, John Cameron, said smacking does not have a positive, long-term impact on children, in fact there is a "greater likelihood" of children being involved in criminal and anti-social behaviour if "they have been in receipt of smacking as a standard form of parenting".

Irene, I am close to my parents even though they were smackers.

I will say however, that after having my own children there has been a growing resentment at how they handled situations when I was younger and how I was made to feel.

Yes, some children grow up unscathed by smacking, but lots don't and it's not a risk I think any parent should take.

I think the problem begins when parents look at their children as an extension of themselves rather than individual people. You have no idea what sort of damage you could be doing until it's too late.

So teddy boys and mods and rockers never existed then, the youth of today are so much more terrible clearly.

Or do we just hear about it more? After all there are "so many paedos" around today whereas they magically never existed before. If you read the papers.

There is a thing called correlation which can also look like causation. Here's a handy site with many things which have coincided, just like the decline in smacking and the amount of "attitude" (interestingly hard to quantify) in schools.

(I do agree BTW that schools have discipline problems but I don't think hitting is the answer.)

Oops forgot my link

www.fastcodesign.com/3030529/infographic-of-the-day/hilarious-graphs-prove-that-correlation-isnt-causation

Bertie- I completely agree. I grew up in the 1960s when smacking kids was a "normal" thing to do. All of my friends were smacked by way of discipline/punishment ( as was I)

The level of casual violence in society was huge, and looking back quite disgusting. Anyone could have a swipe at a child. I saw shopkeepers smacking kids, neighbours, policemen could hit a kid for being cheeky, teachers would belt kids, throw blackboard dusters at them, books, pieces of chalk.
Men had the right to hit their wives- the police even if called would not get involved it would be considered a " domestic" and they would walk away.
Child sex abuse went unreported, it was considered shameful to have a child in the family that had been sexually abused, so families preferred to sweep it under the carpet.
Gangs of teenagers would have fights with local rival gangs, using bicycle chains, garden tools.

I witnessed all this and much more.

Far from being the Utopian society that Irene describes.

In fact violent crime is falling. Murder rates for example have dropped significantly just over the last 15 years. www.citizensreportuk.org/reports/murders-fatal-violence-uk.html

That's just a quick look, I can try and find some stats relating to the 60s or 70s if you like.

Why are children so much worse behaved than generations that have gone before?
Why is the prison population so large?
Why are schools so disruptive? Teachers used to cope with classes of 45+ and produced better standards of reading writing and literacy than nowadays.
You find me a 60 year old who doesn't know his tables!

Evidence please. And the Daily Mail doesn't count by the way.

The prison population has risen dramatically.Just google it

So has the overall population.

It is banned if it leaves a mark and I would never do it and my parents never did. In fact my father a psychiatrist lobbied in the 1960s to have it banned in schools.
We don't hit our wives if they misbehave or servants so why small children? Large numbers of the best behaved best children are never smacked. The lower your class and lower your IQ and income int he UK the more likely you get smacked which is very sad. Give it up today. You know you can. If you do it in anger and regret it shame on you. If you do it once you aren't cross as some kind of supposedly deserved punishment after the fact then even more shame on you. It's always wrong.

If anyone thinks it's find upload us a youtube video of lovely wonderful acceptable lawful smacking that works and let us watch it and judge.

I'm not sure what the prison population (or multiplication for that matter )has to do with anything.

Unless you are suggesting that the problems of modern society could be resolved with a good smack?

I assume the idea is that smacking results in some sort of respect for authority but, I'm sorry I believe that it very wrong. All it does is cause fear and young people face enough of that already.

It's just shockingly narrow minded.

I don't understand the logic of "it works". Whether it works or not it is unacceptable to me to slap or hit another human being.

My mother was a lovely woman but by god could she manage children's behaviour. She would have been embarrassed to have been reduced to hitting a child. The tone of her voice was generally enough. The only child that tone wouldn't have worked with was a child with special needs (and I presume we all agree we shouldn't hit children with special needs?).

As a result of my own rearing (and rearing my own 3) I generally see smacking as a failure of parenting. The parent just can't find a better way to cope. In most cases it isn't the worst parenting fail you can have. but it doesn't make it right. In some cases, that first, socially acceptable, slap opens the gates for a non-coping, stressed parent to find relief and go down a road where their child associates being hit with being parented.

I would support a ban on slapping. (calling it smacking is just PR)

irene Why should I google it? You are the one making unsubstantiated claims therefore you are the one that needs to back those claims up rather than bandy around statements with no evidence whatsoever to demonstrate those arguments are irrefutable. Until you do so then such wild accusations are worthless.

If you want to 'shock' yourchild, a tap won't shock. It may get attention but I doubt it if the child is being naughty. If you want to shock then you could 'tap' something near the child or slap your hand down on a table. You can do this with your voice too. There are so many ways to get their attention.
To really shock them you would have to do more than tap so what's the point? By tap, you mean slap or hit. Stop trying to make something horrid sound ok!

livingzuid It is in the news all the time.Unless you live on Mars are take absolutely no interest in the world around you, you would know that. You find the govt stats to prove me wrong!

So Irene you think that in order to stop violence we need to hit more.