Do you ever think it is acceptable to smack a child?

[planetfedup]

Only asking (and no this isn't a thread about a thread, just a general observation) but there is another thread here and a woman hit her dog and is being berated on here. However, in the past I have seen people admitting to hitting their kids without half as much vitriol being spewed out. By the way, I don't believe in smacking in any way.

@drspouse

Not justifiable. But understandable. I have been in the "child is hurting me so I over reacted" situation. DS bit me, aged 3, I screamed in shock and pushed him away. DH points out that my natural reaction to being hurt (e.g. falling off my bike) is scream first and work out what happened later. Hard to stop if there are children nearby even if they didn't hurt you but I'm trying. I have also been in the "child being dangerous and needs physically preventing" and pulled a DC back from the road, possibly hurting them in the process. DS has SEN and can be aggressive and I have also had to physically remove him and restrain him. I get very very wound up. I occasionally want to lash out. I'm also sure HE thinks picking him up and lifting him out of the situation is me hurting him on purpose. So if you are hanging on by a thread I can understand how you might hurt a child.

Neither of the situations you describe was a calculated hit to deliberately hurt your child.

If someone bit you on the street and you pushed them away, it would be self-defence. If you then hit them back when they had stopped biting you, the situation changes.

If some stranger started walking into the road without noticing a car and you grabbed them and pulled them back, they would thank you. If you then smacked them to punish them for this, you are assaulting them.

My siblings and I were smacked A LOT as children. That included our faces being slapped. My DM says now that she always thought that my F smacked us too hard but she never intervened when he did this.

I will continue to use the word 'smack' rather than 'hit' however. As I've always understood it, a 'smack' is done with an open hand whereas a 'hit' means a punch with the fist. This has been illegal for long time (since I was a small child and I'm 50 now) and considered to be child abuse.

I don't think my DM was abusive, she was parented that way, and worse, but she's always considered her parents as loving towards her and not abusive. (She may not have felt this if she hadn't been orphaned at 10, though.)

Unfortunately, though, the end result was that we were afraid of both our parents. My DM didn't stop my F from smacking us too hard, so we had no reason to believe that she would intervene if we told her about the other far worse abuse that we were going through at the hands of my F (sexual). She's asked why we didn't tell her, well that's the answer, I think.

At my father's all boys school, in the cruel distant past, they were sometimes allowed to chose between a caning and an all-day Saturday detention. Most chose the caning - but that might just have been male bravado/stupidity.

No dr, they are different.

There are obviously times when some minor pain or discomfort happens in order to achieve something necessary - a vaccination, or pulling a child away, or accidentally dropping something onto a child. These things happen, they are totally different from smacking a child.

Smacking a child is when the parent is enjoying it. No parent gets any pleasure from say accidentally dropping a kindle on a baby’s head.

No, it is definitely NEVER acceptable.

a slap or tap (NOT "hit"

You can minimise or deny it all you like, but you’re hitting them. Hitting does not mean punching - it’s hitting. You’re hitting your children, not tapping them. Christ.

@Mittens030869

I’m so sorry that happened to you.

Neither of the situations you describe was a calculated hit to deliberately hurt your child.
Absolutely not but a) it's a very fine line between "quick, get them off the road" and "my bloody child, I'll show them what happens if you go on the road" YANK. Really easy to react to a safety situation but in anger.

Sorry, that was about @Sojo88’s post

ShebaShimmyShake Sorry to disappoint you but I have never smacked/hit/tapped my child

I just don’t agree that a smack let’s say if a child has run into the road or bitten their sibling is abuse

Lots of people pride themselves on not smacking yet are very controlling and dismissive and their children still fear them or are constantly wanting to please their parent/s

As always high drama on MN there is a difference

Do you really honestly believe that dr?

@Surviving1 I suspect they chose the caning so it would be over with and so that they could go out and play with their mates.

But yanking them out of the path of an oncoming car is completely different to assaulting them once they’re out of danger. It’s a false equivalence. One is protection, the other is abuse.

@drspouse

Neither of the situations you describe was a calculated hit to deliberately hurt your child. Absolutely not but a) it's a very fine line between "quick, get them off the road" and "my bloody child, I'll show them what happens if you go on the road" YANK. Really easy to react to a safety situation but in anger.

I agree but I was talking about the PP’s examples. If my DD was walking into the road, I’d 100% grab her back and could possibly hurt her in the process. I would obviously hope not to because I never want to do anything to hurt my child.

I would say that, if the parent wanted to use the pull back as a show of their power, they wouldn’t stop before a smack.

Do you really honestly believe that dr?
I do believe it's possible to "save your child in anger" for want of a better phrase and to hurt them because you are wound up and they are ALSO in danger. But for it not to be a smack.

Lots of people pride themselves on not smacking yet are very controlling and dismissive and their children still fear them or are constantly wanting to please their parent/s

Lots of people are bad parents. You can have bad parents who don’t hit, as you’ve described above. You cannot, however, have good parents who do hit. You can have good parents who don’t physically OR emotionally abuse their children (a shocking concept to you, I’m sure!), but once you’ve made the calculated choice to hit your child, that’s that really.

No - it’s a horrible way to discipline a child. Nobody has the right to lay their hands on anyone, let alone a child who can’t understand what is happening.

I don't smack, so I'm not trying to justify smacking. But I do hate all the blaming that goes along with a child getting into a dangerous situation. Yes, if you let your child walk alongside a road without holding your hand, that is a failure in your duty to keep them safe. But one of the worst moments of my life was when my son, who was about two at the time, jerked his hand out of mine and ran across the lawn into the road. I was holding his hand tightly at the time, trying to get him into the car, but I have a long term shoulder injury and when he jerked my arm the pain was so intense that I didn't have the strength to keep holding onto him. That was not crappy parenting on my part, it was an unfortunate physical limitation. And if he had been hurt or killed I would have felt guilty for the rest of my life. But it wouldn't actually have been negligence on my part.

But that’s not what I asked dr - do you really think pulling a child out of danger and smacking them are the same?

You must know that they are not.

Everybody understands that sometimes situations like that occur isabelle, but it does ultimately come down to you. I don’t mean I would have blamed you if something happened, I mean that punishing a child for a parent failing to supervise is so wrong.

I mean that punishing a child for a parent failing to supervise is so wrong.

I agree with that. He got hugged to the point of no escape, he didn't get shouted at, much less smacked.

@isabellerossignol

I mean that punishing a child for a parent failing to supervise is so wrong.

I agree with that. He got hugged to the point of no escape, he didn't get shouted at, much less smacked.

A normal reaction from a loving parent!

I was smacked as a child. As an adult, I thought it was ok to smack children because it 'didn't do me any harm'. Well, I believe it did. Just a few smacks and yet I can still feel to this day that fear of the anticipated smack bubbling up in my stomach each time I remember it - and the hurt and anxiety caused. When I got pregnant with DS1, I knew I would never smack my child. Thinking it was harmless lasted precisely until I became a mum.

Frustratingly, my mum has always been quite smug about the fact that she never hit her children. I don't know if it was so insignificant that she didn't remember or if it was revisionist history in light of how unacceptable smacking became. Interesting choice of language though, not saying 'I never smacked YOU', but 'MY CHILDREN'. Weirdly, I have never put her straight. I think perhaps I doubt my own memory.

She has Alzheimer's now and most of her memories are jumbled and blurry, changing from one day to the next. She genuinely doesn't connect the daughter she sees in front of her now with the child she raised, so the depersonalisation has become something she genuinely can't help. And she is still adamant that she 'didn't smack her children'.

This talk of "parents enjoying smacking their child" - that is abuse, a parent should never enjoy hurting their child and if they do they are an abusive parent.

Also, smacking and hitting are different - an adult wouldn't "smack" a fellow adult because a smack is what you give a child. Again, hitting would be abuse.

You don't agree with me, that's absolutely fine.

@EnthusiasmIsDisturbed

ShebaShimmyShake Sorry to disappoint you but I have never smacked/hit/tapped my child

I just don’t agree that a smack let’s say if a child has run into the road or bitten their sibling is abuse

Lots of people pride themselves on not smacking yet are very controlling and dismissive and their children still fear them or are constantly wanting to please their parent/s

As always high drama on MN there is a difference

Why would you think I'm disappointed that you don't hit your kids?

Hitting your child to teach them not to hurt other children is arse about face. And if you don't smack your kids, you know that.

As a PP said, it is indeed possible to be a bad, non smacking parent. So what? We are discussing smacking and how it is always bad parenting, which it absolutely is. And if you on principle don't smack then you must agree, even if, like so many self proclaimed non smackers, you're a bit too invested in justifying it.

As for complaining about "high drama" among people who don't hit their kids as opposed to those who do, that's as arse about face as any justification of smacking. It's pretty clear what annoys you but there's no decent reason for it.