What year exactly, did it become socially unacceptable to swat backsides? About the same time the youth of today went to hell.

[FastWindow]

A tap on the hand /paw stops a child/puppy eating stones.

Honestly, you can't beat your kids. But you can't leave them go feral for lack of boundaries either.

When 'No, Tarquin, please don't poke your baby sister in the eye again' doesn't work, or 'that tiny pebble will do your digestive system no good at all, darling' has zero effect, tell me why a quick seat of the hand is going to land me in jail?

Loose boundaries land kids in jail. (thread title right there)

Didn't hit my kid, and he's turned out pretty well-mannered and with boundaries. If you think hitting is your only option for discipline as a parent, then you probably need to learn a bit more about effective parenting. Hth.

And as for the usual cry of 'how do you stop them running in the road or touching hot things'. Well you hold their hands, or use reigns, until they are old enough not to do it, and you don't let them anywhere near hot things.

Yeah! Let's return to Victorian values! Kids were given a proper beating then and crime rates were...

...oh. Never mind. I'll stick to today's crime rates, thank you.

But as a child growing up in a very poor area, nobody was ever murdered in the street, The same area and they are now. Yes it is small numbers, but that level of extreme violence did not happen

So you honestly think that more smacking would have stopped these people becoming murderers?

I would say less access to cocaine would probably be a better solution

I was smacked by my parents and it taught me that hitting another person is the done thing when they do something you don't like. I often couldn't understand what I'd done wrong either.

The reason I don't smack my children is because I was smacked, abusively. I always promised myself I wouldn't make my children go through that. And anecdotally, I was a nightmare as a teenager, simply because I was acting out due to my homelife.

YOU DO NOT HIT YOUR SISTER

Come here so I can smack your bottom and prove my point

I just don't think I could ever see that logic.