Smacking children "oh everyone does it"

[cantbelieveimhearingthis]

NC for this

So I was on the bus the other day with DD (19 months). Another lady gets on with a pushchair and a little boy, the boy is probably about 2 and a half. Two older ladies then get on and start chatting to the other lady with the pushchair. DD is waving and smiling and the older ladies were commenting on how lovely she was, I said thank you but frankly I'd had a shitty day so just kept my self to myself. They keep talking about children and are clearly trying to get me involved. The other lady with the pushchair and the older ladies get into behaviour and how "naughty" her little boy is. The conversation then turns to the topic of smacking. Older ladies start to agree that nowadays children are too soft and that smacking them does them no harm, but teaches them a lesson. Lady with a pushchair then piped up saying "oh yes when he's naughty I smack him on the bottom, he's got a nappy on so it does him no harm" She then says she threatens her TWO year old with smacking if he doesn't do as he's told. They're now trying to get me involved in the smacking conversation and I'm trying my hardest to be polite. Lady with the pushchair then says "trust me when they start throwing tantrums, smacking is the only thing that works" "everyone does it, they're just too afraid to admit to it". AIBU to be a little bit taken aback by this? I can understand to an extent the older ladies as they were from a different generation. But the other lady blatantly admitting to hitting a two year old?? I thought we had moved past this?

Can you take a punt at the age of the older ladies? I ask this, not as complaining about ageism on MN, but to have grasp on what you think is a different generation.

Smacking = shite parenting. If one of my team at work makes a mistake or does something wrong - do I hit them? Of course not, so why do adults do this to small children?

@echt they were in their 70's or 80's maybe?

You wouldn’t smack an adult so why smack a child. If you have to resorts to violence you’ve lost the argument. Different generation, my God i’m glad I grew up when I did and my parents never hit me.

Yanbu - certainly not.

Research evidence points towards corporal punishment leading to worse rather than better behaviour and life outcomes.

So unless we're sadistic bullies, why should parents hit children?

I feel there's a also a difference between a parent in a difficult situation who loses their temper and slaps a child spontaneously once, and someone who coolly plans how and when to hit a child on a regular basis and laughs about it. Neither is right but I can understand how the first happens.

I agree that there are more children who seem disrespectful and mollycoddled than there used to be, but I don't see why that means we should go back to smacking our kids. Correlation does not imply causation. The world is a very different place now and there are so many reasons why this generation is different to the last. It's not a good enough reason to start smacking children again. We have enough evidence now that shows it does more harm than good.

My argument to this is the only lesson you teach a child with smacking is that you control people/get what you want with fear and or aggression and that that's normal. I used to specialise in working with violent offenders who all said smacking had done them no harm.... I manage a team of more than fifty people I don't resort to hitting them to get them to do what I need them to do, and not all of them are willing and enthusiastic.

I would have found it hard not to say something.
Naughty boy bullshit, if she is already telling a boy that age they are naughty and their only parenting tool is humiliating, threatening and smacking I feel so sorry for him.

It makes me so sad that some people have children to treat them like this.

I'm 47, kids 10&7 I've never smacked them. It tells them it's 'ok' to use violence, it's not!!

Smacking is lazy and shockingly bad parenting IMO .. no excuse for it

My mother hit me all the time growing up, and only stopped after I threatened to hit her back at the age of 15. I eventually came to the conclusion that she was shit at using her words and so violence was the only option.

I use words with my kids, sometimes shouty words admittedly, and I'm not always as kind as I should be. But I try to apologise after I've been unkind and to show I love them overall, and I don't hit them (although often I DESPERATELY want to because I have a temper of my own, and also because it's basically my default setting [Angry? Lash out!]).

They are boys, and rambunctious ones at that. It is a source of pride to me that no matter what else happens, they can never say that I just thumped them around the place. I'm often shouty mean mummy, but I'm not corporal punishment mummy. Small goals

My mother hit me all the time growing up, and only stopped after I threatened to hit her back at the age of 15. I eventually came to the conclusion that she was shit at using her words and so violence was the only option.

I use words with my kids, sometimes shouty words admittedly, and I'm not always as kind as I should be. But I try to apologise after I've been unkind and to show I love them overall, and I don't hit them (although often I DESPERATELY want to because I have a temper of my own, and also because it's basically my default setting [Angry? Lash out!]).

They are boys, and rambunctious ones at that. It is a source of pride to me that no matter what else happens, they can never say that I just thumped them around the place. I'm often shouty mean mummy, but I'm not corporal punishment mummy. Small goals

I think it’s a generational thing but I don’t agree that smacking kids controls there behaviour. If anything it teaches them to be aggressive. My 2.5 year old gets time out when he is playing up and generally is a very well behaved little boy. My 7 year old gets put to his room and told to not come down till he is ready to apologise and behave (he has SEN needs and this can take s while) but it works. I think parents refusing to say no to there kids and trying to be there best friend rather than parent is often the cause of children misbehaving.

Smacking is no longer acceptable but it once was and, provided it was not harshly done, i.e. a tap on the back of the legs to prevent a child running in the road or putting her fingers in a socket, it did little harm and might have prevented a far worse accident.

Conflation is the bane of the age and in this case to conflate hitting a child for personal gratification and a small tap for the child’s safety or benefit or to conflate a hard, indiscriminate whack with a small admonishing tap is sheer irrationality.

Still, as in the fifteenth century, there is no telling folks that a glass of wine with magic words spoken over it is not actually Jesus’ blood.

If you are trying to control/dominate your children then yes eventually you'll find yourself at the point of having to use your only infallible advantage over them which is your relative size and strength. Especially if you're trying to stop them doing something they don't have a lot of control over themselves, like tantrumming - yeah the only way to stop them would be to find something they are more scared of ie pain.

Modern parenting tends not to work along control/dominance lines though so you don't arrive at that conclusion any more. It's more about communication and understanding which does mean that you deal with some behaviours, e.g. tantrums, less directly, accepting that they are just going to happen for a while before the child learns there are more effective ways to communicate.

And yes sometimes people notice the more modern method of ignoring rather than punishing tantrums and wrongly assume a correlation between that and news stories about stabbings, disrespect for teachers, etc. It's no parenting method that causes behaviours like that, it's lack of parenting, or trauma.

Additionally, I know a teacher who was the mother of two boisterous boys. She boasted she had never raised a finger to either of her boys in her life. But I know from her teaching that the things she said and did without resorting to anything physical terrorised some of the children so badly that a few became too sick to come to school.

Physical violence is bad, sure, but children can be outrageously naughty and other means of bringing them to order can be worse.

My mother used to hit my brother and me. My father hit my brother more than me and left bruises on him. Brother reckons that it did no harm. Brother was a violent and abusive bully growing up. He still continues to threaten violence and has been violent with me on occasion.

This imo is the result of smacking and my mother allowing him to get away with hurting me. Father I assume totally unaware due to being a workaholic. He died before I was an adult and could tell him what I thought.

Smacking is wrong.

I work in a supermarket and you’d be surprised how many parents still smack, or threaten to smack, their children. A lot of my parent friends have also said they have ‘tapped’ their children on occasion. I’ve never seen smacking as a practice demonized in real life as I have on Mumsnet. I choose not to smack my dc as there are other ways to teach them how to behave. But i do think the ladies on the bus had a point, that a lot of parents do smack but don’t make an announcement about doing so.

Yes clearly there are other things which are abusive as well as hitting. And perhaps a light smack as deterrent is not "as bad" as some of those things but it's a grey area, isn't it? It's difficult to decide exactly how hard a smack has to be to become abusive. And starts to feel quite perverse to try and define where exactly the line should be, especially since one person's "light" is going to differ from another's, so it's much easier and clearer just to say hitting isn't helpful in any way, especially since it doesn't serve any useful purpose so you don't lose anything by getting rid of it. Saying that smacking is abusive/wrong doesn't mean it is the only thing which is abusive or wrong.

But also, I'd argue that hitting is touching somebody in an intrusive way which always feels wrong somehow - imagine how you'd feel if a strange man touched your bum or breast area - you'd feel violated. You'd feel uncomfortable if a stranger touched you on the waist in an inappropriate setting, because it's not the sexual nature of the body part but more the intention of how you are touched. I think even children are aware of this and feel violated by being hit, because you see it all the time - child is hit (not especially hard) by parent or sibling/other child and protests/cries as though they have just been stung by a bee, yet while playing they frequently hurt themselves in ways which must cause far more pain but barely react. (And yes admittedly, children do sometimes put on more of a performance if they think it will get their sibling/friend into trouble, but that's not what I mean).

I have to say that when I was a child my father would make me hold my hand out to hit me on it if I had been naughty. It was never painful but it was something he did that made me respect him and his word. Also my mother would give me a slap on the back if I ever swore at her and leave a handprint for a day lol. I feel genuinely that this did me no harm but did make me realise that she was not someone I could disrespect or swear at. I can't see doing this with my DD, but I do agree that alot of the time children don't respect boundaries and that all the naughty steps in the world don't necessarily teach a child that. If we look at nature animals will give their babies a little nip if they continue to bite them/run away. However as someone else pointed out the world has changed now so perhaps taking something away like an ipad/xbox temporarily has more of an impact than a slap. But at 2 years that's a bit ridiculous to even be thinking of hitting a baby for being naughty.

Smacking is never ok....tiny,defenceless children having to be terrorized into submission ..no thanks.It doesn't happen in my family,never has and never will....

It was probably my MIL. She’s always going on about hitting children. She’s thick though.

What makes me laugh is she goes on about what a naughty boy my DH was but that he was smacked. So it didn’t work then? Yes it did! How? If he was still naughty? she’s too thick to process this though

I don't know anyone that smacks their kids or threatens to. I would be surprised if it is common.

Eh, there’s different levels of smacking. A rare smacked arse with an open palm and no mark is different to constant (literal) belting.

I’m in my late 20s and had knickers down, over the lap, open palm smacks - as did my childhood friend, and our mums also had explicit permission to do it to each other’s children while on sleepovers etc! I have a couple of friends in 20s-30s who had the wooden spoon or the belt as kids, though I get the impression our area skews old-fashioned compared to some.

Oh yes, and I definitely know parents of my generation who threaten a “tanned ass” and follow through.

It's perplexing how a lot of people believe children are more naughty because of the lack of snaking 🤦‍♀️ Why anyone would find it acceptable to hit a child is crazy! When I get told my child should respect me... but surely that goes both ways 🤷‍♀️

I have memories of my father hitting me as a child and yes I do remember... so yes it does cause harm! He still thought this was acceptable in my 20's until I bit back. I swore I would never hurt my children and as my they grow I will make sure that we defuse any issues like I would with any adult. But I know I will be told by family that I'm a pushover/ too soft 😐