Aibu to think most people don't smack their children

[sqirrelfriends]

So I just read a daily mail article (I know it's trash, please don't judge me) that's saying that experts are calling for smacking to be banned in England.

The comments section really surprised me, I don't know anyone who smacks their kids but it's overflowing with people saying that its the only way to control children and that half the prison population are there because they weren't smacked. Anyone saying that its wrong to physically punish a child is downvoted into oblivion.

Am I wrong to think this should have been illegal a long time ago? It's just seems wrong to be and my understanding was that kids who have been hit are more likely to be violent themselves.

I will admit to having lost my temper and smacked my children on about 5 occasions between them all. It was very wrong, did no benefit for anyone and I hated myself for it. I would love to have this made law as it may have added a layer of making it wrong and make me stop (though in the moment I was so at the end of my tether it is hard to imagine). I am honest with my friends about the smacking and a few of them have admitted to doing the same. Legislation would make it a clear line. I was smacked as a child a lot and we need to break it.

Smacking is wrong. I was smacked as a child and it just made me afraid. I still resent my mum for smacking me years later and i have very little respect for her.

I should add that my smacks weren't very often. I remember crying because they hurt at the time, but no bruising, physical (or psychological) scarring or anything like that. It just happened, I got over it, knew not to do whatever I'd done again and that was it.

@PumpkinKlNG

Everyone I know that smacks is very open about it, but I mean people on here won’t admit it, I was laughed at by family for saying I wouldn’t hit mine.

It's so odd how people think it's the only way to teach a child something, isn't it? Like if some stranger hit their child you would have a war but then it's fine if they do it themselves? Makes no sense at all to me.

Also, whenever you say you never hit your child people (that think hitting is the right thing to do) seem to hear "I don't discipline my child"

Smacking is absolutely useless.

It only 'worked' in the past was because all you wanted from your children was blind obedience, to survive their childhood to do a brutal, exhausting job that required mindless obedience.

Every time you smack a child you shut down part of their brain. It's not what we want/ need for children in the 21st century.

Born in the sixties and seemed it was the done thing.
Spoil the child spare the wrath -,or some such rubbish.
Though my dad never hit us.
Dad was very strict but didn't need to wack us into submission.
My dh didn't either but the kids were : are well behaved and respectful.

I am in two minds on this.

First there is a world of difference between a smack on the back of the hand or back of the leg and child abuse.

I was smacked as a child, maybe around 10 times over the course of my entire childhood as were most people that I know and it honestly hasn’t done us any harm.

My best friends, the only ones who would be honest about it, are a mixed bag, some have smacked and some haven’t, I think the ones that have occasionally generally have better behaved children than the ones who haven’t, the one who “gentle parents” child is terribly badly behaved with no sense of boundaries or acceptable behaviour at all.

Most of the arguments against snacking don’t make sense to me -
if it worked you’d only do it once - show me any parenting method that you only ever do once.

You can’t teach non violence by being violent - I don’t think that a measured tap on the hand is violent

Abuse requires the brain / impact neurological development - yes it does but a tap on the hand isn’t abuse and type of thing that shows these effects is sustained and long lived

I have never smacked DS but I wouldn’t like to see it become illegal because I do think that innocent parents acting on instinct would end up being criminalised. It’s hard enough to get serious abusers through court without the courts being flooded.

If it’s not acceptable for me to smack a boyfriend when they do something I don’t like or agree with then how can it be acceptable for me to smack my child?

I really hope that none of my family or friends uses smacking to “teach” their children, certainly none that I know of.

I lived in fear of my mother hurting me when I did something wrong. I will never, ever inflict that on any child of mine.

The day you smack your child is the day you've lost control of them tbh. I think it's disgusting. If some one in the street does something you don't like, you wouldn't go and wallop them would you?. Then again depends what it was though! Man robbing a granny then I'd probably retaliate!

I have never and wouldn't ever hit my child. I was hit a lot as a child. I grew up fearing my mum and now I am no contact. My daughter behaves due to mutual respect between us. The count of three still works. Neither of us knows what happens if I ever get to three. I once in a while raise my voice if she is ignorning me in her room but never to me actually being angry. It kight change as she gets older but as a sullen almost 12 year old we navigate things well through communication! Might eat my words in a few years but she often tells me she knows how lucky she is to have the life she has and she is loved and doted on. I had a child because I wanted to give her the world not to have her scared of me.

My father smacked me

I still have zero respect for him

My mother was quite brutal sometimes too but at least she used hands instead of the back of a hairbrush like her mother did to her.

My mother stopped when I slapped her back right across the face.

Satisfying.

Most people irl smack their kids. They just don’t always admit it & might not refer to it as a smack.

This is why it’s such a huge problem because there are so many definitions.

In some families a beating is considered to be a ‘smack’ so if you don’t do that but you do slap, pinch, bite, pinch ears, strangle that’s somehow considered okay. I work in a nursery & we had to report a child recently to SS when during a game of head and shoulders that her dad lifts her up by her hair for being naughty .

In other families, I have seem mums try to report themselves to social services because they think their ‘smacking’ is out of control when in reality they just tap their kids bums or hands. We’ve even had contact from SS saying they think certain parents might have depression by how often they report themselves.

It’s all so woolly. I think it’s probably better just to ban it altogether.

Daily Mail readership tends to be an older demographic, from when it was more common and acceptable for children to be smacked.

Most of the parents I see in our neighbourhood don’t seem to use any kind of discipline for their children at all, it’s all performance parenting and whimsy “oh, Olivia, we mustn’t do that, darling” as Olivia causes havoc for everyone else.

I agree that I think the majority of people still do, they just won’t admit it because it isn’t “socially acceptable” anymore. It even makes me sad that when kids fall or are just upset about something you hear parents going “what are you crying for?!” in an exasperated tone, as if children having emotions is such a bad thing.

Most people irl smack their kids.

Not if they're good parents they don't.

It's a mixed bag in my friendship group. I don't and would never smack mine. Those who smack have said to me over the years 'just you wait until they get to X age... my eldest is 5 now and I still haven't and am confident that I won't. I completely disagree with it.

A couple are exactly like me, zero tolerance for smacking, a couple have stacked and probably will again. My friends who 'do' don't do it with any regularity or as a usual course of discipline, for them it's been the occasional thing when they've lost control of their children's behaviour. Which is not ok, and in a way I think is worse than a deliberate tap on the hand because they've done it through losing their temper.

I wouldn't tolerate it if they did it in front of me. But I don't tend to spend time with my friends with their children, we tend to meet child free (because their children are pretty wild and tbh I don't enjoy spending time with them though I would never tell them that!).

I'm early 40s and was smacked constantly as a child, hit around the head and the back of the knees and the majority of my friends were too, although my parents do seem to have been a lot stricter and dished out the "punishment" more often.

I never smack my children and I don't know of any friends who do either.

It's incredibly poor parenting and shows a complete lack of control.

All my children are well mannered, respectful and kind- I didn't need to smack them to make them that way.

I think that people in prison are more likely to have been victims of physical abuse.

I agree that it should have been illegal a long time ago.

I have never and will never smack my children. I didn't think it was a thing anymore if I'm honest, but since having children I've had a few people casually mention that they've given their children smacked bums and I'm always shocked. I think it happens more than we think just people aren't as open.

@Pinchoftums I'm the same - I've done it in the past when stressed or lost my temper when DS was younger and trying to get him to breakfast club and me to work at 8.30am.

It was a loss of control and I deeply regret the times I did it and feel very ashamed. I agree the law should change, its not acceptable to hit children.

I got smacked as a child in the 80's and I hated my mum for it.

I've never talked to her about it as an adult but as a doting granny she's only ever been gentle with DS and tries to calm things if I even have a cross word with him.

I really hope that smacking is dying out. I think it is. Most people have better ways of sorting things these days.

I find the taping the hand argument chilling tbh - it’s calculated violence, you decide to do it. And of course you do it to hurt them - that’s the whole point of smacking.

Tapping, not taping, obviously.

People who don't have the tools to parent properly resort to smacking.

Agree!!!

Smacking is physical abuse at the end of the day. And what a shit example to set to kids too, that hitting is the thing to do??? There is ALWAYS a better way to approach an issue than smacking. Some parents might smack because they don't know what else to do, but some will do it out of anger - both are bad reasons.

I once had a knee jerk reaction of a hard tap on my daughters arm when she'd pulled my hair for the 10th time that day. It really was no more than a hard tap and I was mortified with myself (more upset than she was).
I would never ever threaten or follow through with any violence, that was enough for me to scare myself. No idea how people can be so okay with it.

Smacking is awful. I have never smacked my dc and they are nice, well behaved kids - it really isn’t that difficult to raise dc without resorting to violence.

I also don’t smack but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s not that difficult. I don’t find it hard but I think that’s down to my DCs being quite chilled in general and because I work with children for a living so I’m trained to use another methods for discipline. Many people don’t know how to verbally correct and discipline or use other strategies. I don’t ever see people smacking their children in public - but I do see a lot of ineffective verbal discipline because clearly people don’t know how to it, and I don’t think that’s their fault. You need to have a knack for it or have learned it from somewhere.